Somewhere Over the Rainbow,
or Get Me the Hell Out of Kansas, and Fast.

The recent decision in Kansas to throw out evolution from the state's testing curriculum is a prime example of "Millennial Madness," an ignorant move toward a darker, more cruel world where people (mainly white) rule over all other living things. Without the study of evolution, without the acknowledgment of where we came from, without honoring those that lived and died before us these past hundreds of thousands of years, we are doomed.

All was driven home when the news interviewed a high school student who said, "I can't believe we descended from a bunch of monkeys; I believe in creationism."

To my mind, no god would willingly create such a moron, which, in itself, is a valid argument against creationism. Charles Darwin, on the other hand, is an argument for the existence of god. Only He could make such a bright light.

So what does it mean to be human? I agonized over this most of my young life. Consciousness was a bizarre concept. I would start to wonder who I was, what was I, where did I fit? I would never have been able to accept the easy answer of faith, even if I had been raised with God. I didn't even believe in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. How was I going to believe that Adam and Eve started the human race?

It wasn't until I began studying human evolution that the pieces began to fit. Not only did I see my life in a totally different light, but I saw our place in the grand scheme of things differently. There probably was an Eve, but she was no fair-skinned, straight-haired white woman. She was, if anything, a short, dark black woman in Africa.

The study of evolution is as miraculous as the one the various churches are foisting upon us (or trying to). Is it not beautiful that such a wide variety of life has existed on this planet and will go on to exist? Is it not miraculous to study the chain reaction of an asteroid hitting the Earth, wiping out the dinosaurs, allowing a small, furry, warm-blooded creature to thrive and eventually to evolve into apes and then into humans? There is nothing more miraculous, in fact.

Evolution also proves that we are evolving beyond what we were in the past centuries. For example, one way of looking at this is to acknowledge that part of what kept us alive thousands of year ago was exactly our belief in and our appreciation of religion. The belief in a god or a higher power eases the pain of consciousness and living with the knowledge that we are going to die. A heavy burden, that. Does it get any heavier?

So, perhaps we are learning how to survive without the need for religion. Yes, a frightening thought, I'm sure, to those out there who believe evolution is the road to the Hell. To me, it has been a god-send ... er, so to speak.

Those idiots in Kansas are not doing their children any favors. All they are doing is making Kansas an even more black and white world, with citizens who long to escape over the rainbow. Email us at editor@cinescene.com.

Reader Michael D. Rairdan responds with:
On Morons and Monkeys