The really troublesome issue is that some people try to pass off faith-based beliefs as part of empirical science. These individuals, subscribing to a 14th century mindset (a time when the collective human intellect was barely scratching the surface,) follows a certain ancient book of folklore and try to use certain parts of that book (while ignoring others) to teach the history of the universe and dictate what the future should be. Problems and conflicts arise when they attempt to impose their private faith as far reaching public policy. And they seem to have a predilection for such behaviour, labouring as they are, under the delusion that they alone are privy to some sort of ultimate “truth”.

“It will always be an uphill task for anyone to take the scientific findings of the last 150 years or so and try to overturn 6000-plus years of a religious belief system that is premised on creationism,” Mr. Mervin says. But this is not really so. A report in the Chicago Sun Times says about 80 percent of people in 34 countries including Iceland, Denmark, Sweden and France believe that humans evolved from earlier forms of life. In the United States, Mr. Mervin’s adopted country, that figure is an embarrassing 40 percent, second to last, which may explain why he incorrectly considers it an uphill task getting people to understand and accept the principles of biological evolution. The country next to America at the bottom of the denial column is Islamic Turkey.

While fundamentalist religious faith is mostly responsible for the rejection of evolution, the report says educational level also plays a role. Adults with some understanding of genetics are more likely to have a positive attitude toward evolution. For instance, studies in the U.S. suggest substantial numbers of American adults are confused about some core ideas relating to 21st-century biology. Researchers cite a 2005 study finding that 78 percent of adults agreed that plants and animals had evolved from other organisms. But, nonsensically, in the same study 62 percent believed that God created humans without any evolutionary development. Apparently these people still mistakenly think humans are not part of the animal kingdom. In Guyana I learned about the animal kingdom in primary school. Tellingly, fewer than half of American adults can provide a minimal definition of DNA without which one cannot understand the mechanism for biological evolution.

While Darwin’s Theory of Evolution “was developed less than 150 years ago and attracted a huge following since, the truth is that the concept of creation has had an even bigger following that predates Darwin by almost 6000-plus years,” Mr. Mervin says, revealing a rather strange thought process.

First, no one “follows” evolution. The theory is the basis on which all modern biological sciences are based and this implies the use of the scientific method which is always about rigorous and continual testing; science makes progress and our understanding of the world improves accordingly. The word “following” implies a blind, unquestioning adherence and is related to the undoubting nature of religious faith.

What we consider modern scientific thought has been around for only about 200 years or so. Before that, in the “6000-plus years” Mervin cites, people looked to magic, gods and spirits in an attempt to understand their natural environment.

The “even bigger following” of wandering desert tribes and camel-herders that Mervin alludes to thought the world was flat and had four pillars; that the sky was a solid firmament dotted with stars; that the moon generated and not reflected light; that the sun moved around the earth, and I can go on and on. These are the very same people that brought us the Adam and Eve story with the talking snake and so forth. This old tale is what Mervin now polishes up as “creationism” and which he somehow thinks adds credibility to his position.

Mr. Mervin believes that the likelihood of a convergence of views on evolution and creation is difficult. But again, this is not true. Over a decade ago, Pope John Paul II stressed the Christian view that the human body evolved according to natural processes, while God specially infused the soul. The Catholic Pope added that the evidence for evolution is vast and that the convergence of independent lines of evidence point to the same conclusion in support of the Theory of Evolution. Incidentally, the Catholic Church is the largest Christian denomination in the world today with more than a billion followers constituting about half of the world’s Christian population.

Finally, Mervin wanted to know if I was “speaking exclusively to evolutionists and not creationists in Guyana” when I said, “Guyanese should be exceedingly proud” of the former slave who taught Darwin how to stuff bird specimens. I thought I was being crystal clear who I meant exactly when I said “Guyanese”. Maybe Emile Mervin knows of Creationists-Guyanese and Evolutionists-Guyanese, but I do not. Perhaps Emile’s much vaunted religious faith tells him of such divisions, but for me a Guyanese is simply, well, a Guyanese.
JUSTIN DE FREITAS