A middle ground is achievable on evolution

I'd like to respond to Lorin Wainwood's letter titled "Still looking for proof of evolution," which was a rebuttal to my "Evolution can be your friend" piece, and also offer some comments on Kevin Urquhart's "On evolution versus creationism, think for yourselves."

First, I'm sorry I got Lorin's gender wrong (it's not a common man's name these days so I flipped a coin).

Mr. Urquhart has a point. It is true that over the years, there have been a large number of scientists that believe in God (this is still true today). But there's a crucial fact to be included here--they believe in evolution as well.

In fact, the most common belief system in America is to believe in both God and evolution.

Religion provides a baseline of belief, an enrichment of life experiences and often a community of friends. Science can provide everything listed above, but its main goal is to provide an ever-increasing understanding on the processes that shape our world.

As always, it's the extremists that ruin it for the rest of us. Overcooked scientists can be too cruel to people who just want to believe their own religion on their own time, and dogmatic believers can be too closed-minded when it comes to simple facts about life on earth.

I'm not going to bother arguing Mr. Wainwood's comments on the fallacy of evolution point by point; his comments show that he's ignorant on the process of evolution and is just arguing out loud to be heard. I can go on for days about how evolution works, how we can see it happening in bird populations year by year, how fossils paint a fascinating picture of the human past, etc.

It doesn't matter how eloquent my rebuttal is if it's thrown up against a wall of ignorance. And I don't say this to be unkind.

I'm sure Mr. Wainwood is possessed of fine intelligence; it's just that he doesn't possess a shred of understanding of how evolution works. If he did, he wouldn't be so obstinate in his views. Furthermore, Mr. Wainwood complains that "a lot of smart people agree" with evolution. Since when has it been bad to listen to smart, educated people? For some reason, we seem to fear knowledge and smart people in this country (observe our current administration).

Why is that? It's also become okay to refute anything, no matter how much overwhelming evidence there is, just by saying you don't believe in it (again, observe our current administration's policies on global warming, losing wars, etc.). This is not okay!

What to do? The answer is simple: Become an educated person. Don't fear things that you don't understand; endeavor to understand them.

If people like Lorin Wainwood who vehemently disagree with evolution would just take a biology class, they wouldn't be nearly so angry. They'd find that evolution isn't a scary idea bent on taking away God; it's an elegant method of explaining life on earth.
Andrew Kinkella
Thousand Oaks