FreeThinkingAtheist.com

 I took a class on Anthropology last year. It ended up being a very rewarding class. One thing I remember from it was the island of Madagascar, and how it had so many species that are unique to it. The instructor asked the class “don’t you wander how this is possible?” As an Atheist, I already knew the answer was clearly evolution. I knew exactly where she was going to take her lecture. We now know that continental plates exist and shift. We now know that Madagascar was once a part of the African continent that broke off many millions of years ago. And no so mysteriously, there are so many totally different wildlife that are unique only to Madagascar. Well, evolution states that if you isolate a species and let mutation and natural selection do its job, that over millions of years, the species there will naturally evolve. So how does this go up against Creation? 

This is something that Darwin apparently wandered himself. In fact, he devoted two whole chapters on the subject in Origin of Species, except his voyage was to the Galapagos Islands. Darwin happened to stumble upon multiple species of birds that were previously unknown, that could only be found on the islands. However, the majority of the plants and animals found on the harshly volcanic islands bear a resemblance to the ones found on the tropical American continent. The environmental conditions do however closely resemble the conditions found on Cape Verde Islands that are 400 miles west of Africa. Here is a very similar environment to the Galapagos, with completely different flora and fauna. In fact, the species on Cape Verde bear a resemblance to what could be found on the African continent. 

And so Darwin asked: Why would a Creator place two completely different creative stamps, one African and one American, on species that live in nearly identical environments and fill similar ecological niches? He argued that Creationist theory ought to predict that such island species would either be identical or closely allied based on the similar environments that they are supposedly designed to be adapted to. Australia also falls under this category and even the Americas themselves. Before European colonization of the Americas, the New World and Old World had so many distinct species of their own. Even down to primates… 

The Americas had New World monkeys, which are the small little ones with tails that live primarily in trees. Where as the European/Asian/African Old World, only have Old World monkeys: Apes, Orangutans, and Chimps. All with no tails and all lived primarily on the ground. How is it that two sides of the world that have such similar environments (tropical, volcanic, desert, plains, arctic) but have so different plants and animals? How is that isolated places like Australia, the Galapagos, and the Cape Verde Islands can have such unique species. Why, this is something that Creation fails to explain and that only Evolution can explain.

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Darwin’s predictions about human evolution have been tested by the recovery of evidence showing that the living world was articulated buy evolution. Humans were part of the process. There is a lot more to learn about how that happened. The ultimate cause(s) are currently intractable, but there’s already plenty of evidence to show that evolution did happen and that we humans are among its products. 

There are now tens of thousands of hominid fossils in museums around the world supporting our current knowledge of human evolution. The pattern that emerges from this vast body of hard evidence is consistent across thousands of investigations. All models, all myths involving the singular, instantaneous creation of modern humans fail in the face of this evidence. 

And none of these myths have predicted what we have so far learned from the recovery and analysis of fossil evidence as well as from the biochemical and anatomical similarities and differences that characterize living things. 

Today, evolution is the bedrock of biology, from medicine to molecules, from AIDS to Zebras. A denial of evolution, however motivated, is a denial of evidence, a retreat from reason to ignorance.

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The "Bible Belt" is a slang term used for a geographical region in the South and the midsection of the United States — areas that host large groups of fundamentalist Christians. The area of focus here is basically the southeast of the U.S. I personally live in Florida and I once thought all of America was so Christianized. Although I don't feel exactly accepted here, because I can't just go around saying I'm an Atheist. People tend to look at me differently, and think something must be wrong with me if I don't believe in God. So the only people I bothered talking about Atheism with is close friends and family really. I plan on moving to Pennsylvania or perhaps another state in the northeast when I finish college. I'm glad to see that things will be much better there!

To be a true Bible Belt Christian, you must have a clear understanding of the things you don't do, like smoking, dancing, going to the pool hall, drinking, or making a public appearance without a Bible in hand. You must believe that your actions are controlled by the Holy Spirit and that doing God's will is the most important part of your life — no matter what scoffers might think.

Some say that certain people in the Bible Belt go overboard in both their religious and political (usually conservative) practices. But Bible Belters believe that their lives are totally controlled by God and they could no more change their ways than fly. Furthermore, they don't apologize for their seemingly irrational behavior. Like a favorite bumper sticker declares, "Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven."

Quoted from: http://ca.essortment.com/whereisthebib_rgux.htm 

Of course, the quote is poking fun at the Bible Belt, but unfortunately it's an all-too serious issue that does get to me at times. Living in its proximity has caused me to develop a bias towards Christians many times when I have to keep reminding myself that it's just the people around here. Not all Christians are like them. In my area, Christian businesses who proudly display Jesus Fish on their business doors and signs are ripe for the picking. I all too often see Christian bumper stickers, some cars having more than 5 at once. There are so many people here who advertise their faith, and it's only Christians who do it. There is even a local Christian yellow pages called "The Shepard's Guide", that has Christian-only businesses in it. To me, this is both wrong, and foolish. It's wrong because public yellow pages should not be allowed to single out and allow Christian businesses only. That would be like having "The White Man's Guide" that has a list of businesses that host an all-white man staff, no blacks, women etc. And it's foolish because the fact that a business is Christian does not mean crap, they'll still rip your ass off. A lot of Christians are using "The Shepard's Guide" to find Christian businesses that they trust just because the business is Christian. That is just plain ignorant.

Picture of the Bible Belt: The most conservative, gay-hating, flag-waving, Jesus-worshipping, anti-evolutionist, church and state joining, conservative Christians are located in the red area. I'm in Tampa, FL, at the very bottom of the blurred red area. I cannot imagine what the dark red areas are like! Pennsylvania looks very nice to me!

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“Anthropologists have long known that every culture has a traditional story about how people were created. There are Babylonian, Hindu, Cherokee, Yoruba, Maori, Norse, Mayan, and dozens of other myths. Our Western biblical origin stories are rooted in the pastoral societies of the Middle East and have been retold for centuries. Literal interpretation of the biblical account holds that humans remained basically unchanged after they were created. This interpretation was tested with the discovery of the Herto man (155,000 year old fossilized human discovered near a tropical African lake). Here was someone whose anatomy linked him to earlier fossils that were not human.”

- Tim D. White, Human Evolution: The Evidence

     The fossilized Herto man is just another piece of evidence in the evolution timeline that shows that Earth has been home to life for billions of years, not just 5,000 years. I think it is important what Tim White said about every culture having a traditional story about how people were created. The story of Creation just happens to be the most standardized story in Western Culture. People just take Christianity as the truth, just because it's to common. When really, if you just step back and take a Anthropological look at religion as a whole, you will see that Christiantiy is just another religion is a sea of religions. You will see that these stories of the supernatural and where our beginnings are rooted are abundant in cultures, and greatly differ and go far back into time. Where as all these cultural religions just tell stories and calls them truth, science actually seeks the real truth and nothing more. I can't comprehend how somebody can dare say "I don't believe in evolution", I mean come on, what do you think science is out to get you, out to fool everyone? Science seeks only the truth, if something fails in their scientific method, it is discarded, unlike religion.. where if something fails to modern thought, the story ironically "evolves" to fit modern day thinking.

Such is the Bible.

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"In the summer of 2005, the intelligent-design hoax, many years in the making, blossomed spectacularly. Over the course of a few weeks, its victims made headlines around the world. 

-         Cardinal Christophe Schonborn, Roman Catholic archbishop of Vienna, published an op-ed piece in The New York Times of July 7, proclaiming the Catholic Church’s disavowal of the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection.

-         A month later, President George W. Bush announced at a press conference that he was in favor of teaching schoolchildren about intelligent design, saying that “part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought.”

-         Shortly afterward, Senator Bill First, the Senate majority leader, made the same point to reporters after a Rotary Club meeting in Nashville. Teach both intelligent design and evolution “doesn’t force any particular theory on anyone,” Frist said. “I think is a pluralistic society that is the fairest way to go about education and training people for the future.”

 Where did nonscientists like Cardinal Schonborn, President Bush, and Senator Frist get the idea that a proposition favored by their religious perspectives is also a serious contender within science that ought to be taught? 

These declarations were a public-relations coup for a well-organized group of conservative religious activists who are intent on persuading the American public that there is a significant controversy within biology about the status of the theory of evolution by natural selection. The challenger to the scientific establishment, they suggest, is the hypothesis of intelligent design. In response to their vigorous campaign, many Americans have come to think that ID is a legitimate school of thought in biology, worth of stuff in classrooms."

 - From Danial C. Dennett's essay of the same name, in the book Intelligent Thought

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