I was raised the child of two atheists in the rural Bible belt. There was a hitching post at the Kmart. My father was a scientist. He taught at the local college, where my mother worked in the library.
My father got into editorial page wars in the local paper on the topic of evolution. This was in the 1970s. The folks in town didn’t like the fact that evolution was being taught at the college level so nearby to them.
I grew up believing that the human body required liquids so that we didn’t become dehydrated and that evolution was a fact of nature. To my mind these two things were equally true and equally unassailable.
As you might imagine, I have a complicated relationship with religion. I have always believed in God. My faith is something I take seriously and also something that I do not need to question. As a Muslim, I never found evolution and religion to be in conflict.
However, I looked askance at Christians who doubted the veracity of evolution. Until very recently (in fact, that would be today), I believed that there was something not quite right about you if you didn’t believe wholeheartedly and without doubt that humans were descended from apes.
Today, however, I was thinking strategy and it led my mind down a heretofore unknown alley.
I have a good friend who is a Baptist. I have no idea what she thinks about evolution. I have asked her to have a frank discussion with me about prayer. I have been feeling conflicted on this topic of late and wanted a fellow believer to discuss the matter with. As a friend and an evangelical who is well-versed in the Bible, she graciously agreed to have a conversation with me about prayer.
I was thinking about the best ways in which to discuss prayer and at the same time not risk treading on areas where we may be divided in our faithes. The notion of evolution came to mind.
It occurred to me that as a matter of either faith or just her everday beliefs about how science and the world work, she may not believe in evolution.
It occurred to me that this is a friend I deeply like and, more importantly, deeply respect. It occurred to me that she would not be foolish for not believing in evolution, whatever her reasoning. That she has a right to hold an opinion that differs from mine for any reason, or no reason, and still earn both my respect and my friendship.
It occurred to me that she has just as much of a right to consider the matter and fall on the creation or non-evolution side of the question as I do to blindly follow my paleontologist father (its not like I ever personally studied evolution at the college level. I believe in evolution purely on faith and upbringing.).
It occurred to me that I was mightily narrow minded to require any particular belief about evolution in another person.
Indeed, today is the day that my rigid ideology cracked and my scientific worldview, born of faith in my parents’ teaching and not rigorous thinking or study, bowed to the fact that the world is a big place. Big enough to hold a lot of different views, not all of them mine, and come through on the other side stronger for it.
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