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to be the favorite-Darwin's famous "survival of the fittest"-but there are other ideas being bounced around out there, like the theory of the "thrifty gene." I don't pretend to understand all of them, although I think some of them are based more on wishful thinking than anything else, but anyone who's made even a brief once-over of the current thinking in biology would know that Darwin is the least of our concerns these days. Science considers his ideas a done deal for the most part, and has been steadily building upon them ever since, right on down to the present day.

The phrasing in this question, then-"Can God and Darwinism coexist?"-the word "Darwinism" obviously being equated with "evolution", and sounding eerily like some weird religious cult, is bothersome to say the least. It speaks of a narrow, disrespectful, overly-limiting concept of a limitless God, a severe lack of education, and an unwillingness to correct that lack of education when one has the tools to do so. The sad part is that the most obvious of these, the public library, is free and easy to use. Anyone who has time to memorize Bible verses and their favorite quarterback's statistics and the recipe for Grandma's sour cream biscuits has the time to flip through a few books at the library and learn a thing or two. That so many Americans have refused to take this simple step worries and dismays me.

Aside from that, I've spent enough time reading the Bible and hanging around with Christians to know that what this is really about is the whole basis for the Christian faith. If God didn't create Adam and Eve, then Adam and Eve couldn't have eaten from the Tree of Knowledge; if Adam and Eve hadn't eaten from that Tree, sin wouldn't have come into the world; if sin hadn't come into the world, Jesus wouldn't have needed to die on the cross; if Jesus hadn't needed to die on the cross there would be no Christianity now. I get it, but it's silly; can we not discern for ourselves that people pretty much do what they want to do whether the Garden of Eden ever literally existed, even when what we want to do harms ourselves or others? Might there not still be a need for salvation, then? I would imagine Pope John Paul II reached the same conclusion, which is why he stated that there was no reason God couldn't have created life on Earth using evolution.

I doubt they had advanced biology courses in seminary school, so if the Pope could figure it out, maybe there's hope for America yet.

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