Darwin vs. God: The Battle of Ideologies and Known Truths

I attended an Alternative Classroom Learning Experience (ACLE) session last Wednesday entitled Darwin vs. God, which was hosted by the UP Zoological Society (UPZS). I attended it with a few friends since no one was available to accompany me to the UP BROADcasting ASSociation's ACLE about the "Top 5 Sex Scenes in Philippine Movies and Why they Fire You Up!" That could have been pretty interesting, since it was an "Orgasmic ACLE" but with no one to enjoy it with, what's the use?

The Biology Pavillion was just within a short walking distance from my dorm so I decided to catch up on the ACLE even if it was already 2pm and it started an hour ago. I actually ended up going to the second floor where another ACLE was being hosted, thanks to certain bond papers with arrows pertaining to an ACLE pointing up the stairs and down the second floor hall. While waiting outside and texting a friend to fetch me, a girl approached the same room, clad in jeans, a tank top, and carrying a huge bag that looked like a hiker's backpack. She asked if I was attending the ACLE. I said I was but I was just waiting for a friend. She on the other hand, was waiting for her friend to return her cellphone to her. Apparently, her friend who was inside the room had her phone so she asked me if she could text her friend saying she was outside. She seemed nice so I allowed her to use my phone. Introductions commenced after. Her name was Mia. After she used my phone, I read a text from Josef that said that the UPZS ACLE was on the 1st floor, so I bid Mia goodbye and headed downstairs. When I was already attending the right ACLE, Mia texted me, introducing herself as Mia de Villa, thanking me for letting her use my phone. Wow, lucky her. If I didn't end up going to the wrong room, she might have had to wait longer because as far as I have noticed, nobody else looked as stupid as me waiting outside the room.

I thought the UPZS ACLE, being entitled Darwin vs. God was something science-based, given that it was by the Zoological Society. Apparently, it was the total opposite, it was this "holy, holy crap" kind of ACLE. The pamphlet had certain information about evolution and creation, wherein they were trying every possible way to say that Darwin's theories were wrong. How? By taking bits and pieces from the Bible to answer queries that have been tried to be answered by numerous books based on scientific research.

Now, I have nothing against the ideas of evolution and creation. I have been taught both and it is my decision on whether I'd believe either, neither, or both. Ipersonally don't like the idea of us evolving from apes, but I certainly cannot believe that the Earth was created within 6 24-houred days. Time is relative, right? Let's just believe that their perception of days before was a far cry from ours today. One day today may have been equivalent to 100 days befpre maybe. That's a personal theory, though, just to disprove the 6-day theory a little bit. Because I just can't believe that every single animal was made simultaneously and as the years passed, many of them, mostly huge and ferocious-looking, died while us weaklings and some animals meant for domestication lived. Survival of the fittest? Just how unfit were the others? There's also this idea of the Behemoth. It is a biblical creature which was described in the pamphlet as a dinosaur that was mentioned in the Holy Scripture saying "The Bible describes it in accurate detail..." Accurate? The Bible says it's an animal that eats grass like an ox, with its strenght in its loins, a tail that swings like a cedar, and legs that were like bronze tubes. That's not accurate enough to paint a picture of a huge dinosaur with a very long neck. It could have been a dinosaur but please give it a short neck if it eats grass like an ox because we all know that animals with long necks wouldn't strain themselves to eat grass when their necks could easily reach the highest branches on trees.

And how about Noah's Ark? Apparently, he had dinosaurs on it, too. A pair for every kind, right? The flood, as described in the Bible, began with "the Flood Gates of Heaven opening." A video simulation showed us something else. The flood was caused my the moving of the earth's tectonic plates, a move so great it had catastrophic results (think of the wave on the 2012 movie poster). If the WorldWide Flood was to be linked to science, this could have been the cause, "the Flood Gates of Hell opening." But based on the simulation and the way the wave was going to crash into Noah's Ark, it could have been smashed to pieces. The continuous raining was more probable since that was steady rain and it wouldn't damage the Ark. Even if the Ark was on a mountain, awaiting the flood, with a wave that big, it may have not been crushed by the impact but it could have been thrown towards a certain land mass that would make it end up like Titanic. Think about it.

The whole time the speaker was discussing in front, we were having our own mini discussion about our beliefs and the flaws in everything we have observed. We didn't bother listening since everything he had to say was on the projector. Things got heated up when the lecture ended and when we shifted to the forum session. One girl asked the speaker if she had to unlearn everything she learned since grade school that was related to Darwin's theory just because the Bible disproves it. It's like 10 years gone to waste if you tell me. I think everyone in the room had the same thoughts in mind while the lecture was going on. Did we have to forget everything we were taught in Biology after this revolutionary way of answering man's queries?

The forum ended up with theories being disproved, scientific minds battling out with the speaker to give them evidence and hard proof about what he just discussed. The discussion was even lead to gravitational time dilation. The topic might have arised with the argument that the earth did not exist for 4B years but rather 4K years. The speaker said that with gravitational time dilation, it wouldn't reach how many years for a star's light to reach the earth, it could reach it within a short span of time. Here comes a UP student who totally disagrees with him saying time dilation is possible but it wouldn't cause a huge impact. It's effect is just ever so slight that what the speaker said was completely false.

It was just too heady for me. Physics and Biology theories were wrestling with Biblical quotes in that room. They were hovering over our heads and enveloping us like light particles. We couldn't shake them off even if we wanted to. The forum ended with the speaker explaining himself and a few students telling him that if he wanted to give that kind of lecture, if he wanted to tell an audience that science and the Bible shared the same data and that they weren't trying to disprove each other then he should have used another approach. It was an insult to the years we have spent learning and memorizing certain theories to answer the earth's mysteries. It was an insult to the scientists who used up their brain cells to try to come up with answers for us. It was an insult to throw all of that away all for a single book that was compiled by a man who took a tiny fraction among the thousands of written accounts about God, Jesus, and the life they had before. With so many accounts, he had to choose a certain few that were in line with each other, with information that they wanted the people of the future to believe. And how about the other books? The church hides them. It wants us to believe only in one compilation, discarding the rest. What if the other accounts held the truth? Our beliefs will crash since us humans have very fragile minds. This system was created to protect our fragility. But this has been countered by numerous philosophical minds that just don't seem to stop asking. Where science breaks boundaries, the church builds. The question is, are we all ready to find out about the information that has not been compiled in the Scripture? I believe I am but that would totally alter my perceptions. Many are scared to know what lies beyond the Bible's bindings. If everyone would grab copies of every written account that was not chosen to be among the books in the Bible, people will end up committing suicide and the world will lose its order upon man's loss in his own beliefs. Protect yourselves.

What are we to believe in, then? Well, whatever we want to. Belief is all we've got and it wouldn't hurt whatever theory we'd want to believe. Either way we wouldn't have all the answers anyway.