Darwin didn’t start it.  The Bible story of Genesis did.  This book of the Bible shortened eons of  prehistoric time and change and explained in simple terms the sequence of explosive creativity that led to our familiar world.  It left out a lot of detail of what came before familiar animals and humans appeared.  This explanation did not account for chronological time.  It simplified incomprehensible periods in which the earth heated, cooled, racked with earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and allowed simple life to appear in the shallow seas filled with toxic chemicals.  Darwin didn’t say this.  Scientists before and after him pointed to the evidence of forms of life emerging through erosion of strata of time when whole sections of the world became up while others were submerged and became down. The Bible didn’t explain evolution in that way but the Biblical explanation is one alternative NON-SCIENTIFIC one.

A Rabbi from New Jersey evolved courses of religious studies out in the Turtle Back Zoo that I have visited.  I didn’t know him but only have just heard of him and his work AND that he was labeled a HERETIC by his fundamentalist brethren. He sees no conflict between what Bibles say and the Darwin scientific recounting of the same message.  Geology is read as a very long time far before the interpretation of actual years – say approximately 6,000 years ago – that life appeared on this planet.  And, remember the Flat Earth Society. There are those who dispute that the Sun is the center of our solar system.  Rabbi Nosson Slifkin is immensely popular because he makes sense and fun out of learning and thinking. He is at ease talking about the Bible AND science – but some of his Rabbinical counterparts think he is dangerous and needs to be thrown out of the religious community.  I think this was done to Baruch Spinoza, the Spanish theologian whose questions upset the Jewish community of that time.

Since my professional educational life (before puppetry) I was a teacher of history.  I solved the problem of teaching religion because I taught ABOUT religion in the way different religions are related and how they evolved and changed over time.  My teaching was comparative, not evaluative, history. I showed how the symbols of the different religions meant different things to different peoples but I did not try to proselytize or point out how one was better than all the others.

I suspect that I am a heretic along with Rabbi Slifkin and all the fuss about Darwinism stems from ignorance and rabid zealotry.  The Bible is NOT a scientific text.  Its appearance as an alternative to science texts in schools is an abomination.  I would be saddened when the zealots take charge and put their non-scientific texts into the science classrooms of the schools and test students on their knowledge.