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The Daily Tar Heel

Letter: ?Biology and theology can mutually co-exist

TO THE EDITOR:

Many parents, knowing very well that their adult children will not have the opportunity to learn a biblical perspective of creation at public universities such as our 17 campuses in the UNC system, tend to send their kids to private schools where biology is taught with the book “Biology: God’s Living Creation.”

Moreover, these church-going parents often home-school their children. Dr. William D. Snider of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine recently expressed his serious concern that the the contents of the book “Biology: God’s Living Creation” are responsible for misconceptions of basic biological concepts.

One of our nation’s founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson, insisted that our national Constitution should separate church and state, and as a consequence, we, in our great nation, developed our curriculum both in public schools and colleges to use books like the textbook of biology by Ken Miller and Joe Levine.

In recent years, there is a significant body of new knowledge that supports the view that creation as narrated in Genesis and biological evolution as advocated by Charles Darwin and neo-Darwinist scholars are not mutually exclusive and, if properly interpreted and explained, students need not just study evolution in a strict Darwinian indoctrination, rejecting the biblical or Christian perspectives.

I recommend as a first step the creation of an expert panel with both theologians and Christian biologists to constitute a committee to explore textbooks on Christian world views to be introduced in all academic departments of philosophy and religion in public universities, though not in departments of biology. Such a new avenue will offer a prudent wave to halt the atheistic world view that is now prevailing all over American academia and serving as a catalyst to a secular society that America has now become. Ethics and morals are virtues that guide us to become responsible citizens with good behavior. This is what my mother taught me at home and encouraged me to pursue all through my secondary and higher education.

Robert Y. George

Science Adviser

Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary

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