I was just reading The New York Times online, and I came across this editorial about the widening gulf between intellectual and religious thought. The author points out that three times more people believe in the virgin birth of Jesus than believe in evolution.

Why do people insist on making belief in Deity and belief in evolution mutually exclusive? Case in point -- a sermon at a local Southern Baptist church a couple of years ago was entitled, "God is right, Darwin is wrong." I know plenty of people who believe in both, that one stems from the other. I just so happen to be one of them. My brother made a very good point a while back in a heated Bible study. A devout church-goer loudly proclaimed, "God created the world in six days!" My brother calmly replied, "Yes, but how long is a day to God?" How long, indeed? And why would we be given lovely and complex brains capable of inductive and deductive reasoning if we weren't meant to use them?

What many people don't realize is that Darwin wasn't some rebel trying to undermine church doctrine. From what I have read and learned, he didn't announce his ideas for quite some time because he knew people in the church wouldn't understand what he was trying to do and attack him as Godless. Evolutionists today are still attacked as Godless heathens who are seeking to undermine the faithful. Yeah, we're a bunch of guerrillas running around with our dinosaur bones and our fossils held out before us like automatic weapons, telling the faithful they can't believe in God AND understand Darwin. The problem is that many people I know who believe in evolution are some of the most faithful people I've ever met. I could ask each one if s/he believes in a higher power, and each one would resoundingly answer, "Yes!" Darwin was a religious man who read the clues God left just lying around for us. New scientific discoveries shouldn't be seen as an attack on religious faith but rather an enrichment of it, because each new discovery is a testament to the beauty and complexity of the Higher. I'd rather embrace the Great Spirit's gifts than argue about them.