Very well said. And it should also be noted that it is the Temple of Darwin who fears a presentation of the evidence on both sides, not the other way around.
It doesn’t even make sense. Why are they so afraid? Where does this irrational fear come from? I do not and have never feared Science. It was truly my first love as a child. One of my mentors was Isaac Asimov by proxy of course. I probably as a child read more articles written by him than any other and he most certainly was an atheist. I cried the day he died. I don’t think any other author affected me that way. I remember getting into an acute argument with my country grandmother and telling her she was descended from monkeys. I think it was a response to her calling negros monkeys (her terms not mine) or something to that effect.
I think it is the first time I ever confronted anyone like that. I also read a lot from Stephen Jay Gould.
Ironically it was through reading the Origin of the Species and many other references on Darwinism that I found the picture wasn’t so clear. That natural selection and random mutation and even neo-darwinism didn’t explain evolution fully. It was my hunger for science that led to the conclusion that there was more going on. Also I wasn’t impressed with the reliance on silly concepts like monkeys and typewriters. Monkeys and type writers will always produce gibberish and never Shakespeare (as if their is a limit on the amount of gibberish a monkey or politician can produce) yet Darwinists for the longest time kept using that silly story as if it were some kind of unchallengeable truth. Smart people should not need to rely on patently ignorant claims to prove a point. Science does not need to attack religion to be valid a religious person should not insert theology into science and a scientist should not tilt their findings toward an atheist mindset.
I feel as Kant did that such things are “two independent discourses of a dualistic system”. That is one reason why I object to trying to use the Bible to derive what God didn’t do or what he did do where no elaboration is provided. I don’t like putting God in a box. I think that Christians often do this. There are no innocent parties where this debate is concerned. Much of the antipathy to religion expressed by atheists and secularist was fueled from the pulpit from those who substituted anger for grace.
Here is a neat little story: (Isaac Asimov Illustrates Creationism)
http://1truebeliever.wordpress.com/2007/10/26/isaac-asimov-illustrates-creationism/
Who is more likely to be afraid, the person whose pride is threatened or the person who looks objectively on the world? The earth is not the center of the solar system, man only became human when touched by God, and we are not alone in the universe—and it is pride that makes people fear such statements.