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Friends with Apes
Growing up, my mother taught me that to have a reasonable opinion about something, you need to be able to understand it. I kept an open mind, and I did participate in a lot of religious events, but I chose to believe in what science told me. So, when a friend says that they don’t believe in Evolution, I can understand completely. However, when I ask them why, their answers often make me cringe. “My mother wasn’t a monkey” and “I didn’t come from a gorilla” are some of the more common replies I receive. To say the least, it’s frustrating to have people talk down on what you believe in when they themselves don’t even know what it’s all about.
In many communities’ protests and comities are being formed to remove evolution from the school curriculum. You can Google “taking out evolution in schools” and you’ll come up with many websites that show discrimination against sciences and demand that evolution shouldn’t be taught. The fact is that evolution is not taught to be “the truth” and is in fact only a theory, which is why it is only called the theory of evolution. Despite these protests, schools remain stalwart and refuse to take out evolution in their science classes.
Since schools require that the theory of evolution be taught, why is it though that evolutionists are still frowned upon? Teachers can do their best to explain and try to make students understand, but they can’t make someone understand something if they don’t want to listen. Sciences like the theory of evolution have always battled with religious belief in the past and famous theorist like Galileo and Darwin where socially unaccepted and religiously prosecuted because of it. Since those times the extremity of discrimination has died down, but controversial sciences are still viewed harshly.
The theory of evolution doesn’t need to be accepted to be understood, and you certainly don’t need to accept the theory to be my friend. I have several friends, and it’s true that they may not completely understand either, but it doesn’t change their opinion of me. That is how it should be, but it rarely is. I’m not the only one who has a hard time making friends as I see other people in my school who are avoided because of what they believe in. You don’t see any news reports or articles on this subject, and that is why I’m writing this. I am sure that evolutionist students face the same problem being socially accepted throughout the nation.
The social aspect of believing in Evolution breeds very few friends no matter who you are. The trick is to keep an open mind, and turn around this discretion towards evolutionary science. So don’t let the fact that the nice person next to you believes that we “came from monkeys” affect what you think of them and whether or not you become their friend. Let people believe what they want to believe, and respect them as they do you.
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