Anyone actually paying attention to the world beyond their small, conservative community in northeastern California (around whom the world decidedly does NOT turn, no matter how many times the county supports Republican candidates) would know that this is Evolution Weekend and the yearly culmination of the Clergy Letter Project. From the Clergy Letter Website:
Evolution Weekend is an opportunity for serious discussion and reflection on the relationship between religion and science. One important goal is to elevate the quality of the discussion on this critical topic – to move beyond sound bites. A second critical goal is to demonstrate that religious people from many faiths and locations understand that evolution is sound science and poses no problems for their faith. Finally, as with The Clergy Letter itself, which has now been signed by more than 11,000 members of the Christian clergy in the United States, Evolution Weekend makes it clear that those claiming that people must choose between religion and science are creating a false dichotomy.
Every year the project gets larger as more and more people come to understand that they do not have to give up their faith in order to accept the scientific fact of evolution. As expected, no congregations in Lassen County are participating, but I understand that it would be difficult for them to consider a serious discussion of science and faith without sacrificing the illusion portrayed to the community that they have all the answers. I see, however, that the Clergy Letter Project lists a local consultant, Dr. Christopher O’Brien, to help any congregation sufficiently courageous to engage in reasoned conversations about evolution and religion. Doubt any of them will take him up on it. There are churches in Redding and Reno, however that will be participating in the effort to educate their congregations on this subject as opposed to simply offering the usual false portrayal of evolution as a theory in crisis, the basis of Nazism and Communism, and inherently atheistic.
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