20 December 2013
The time is 6:38 AM. I have just completed Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Today has started much better than yesterday. Coffee in hand, I walk to the bus with my zombie-like gait.

In a world where social status and importance is based off the accumulation of Instagram likes and Twitter followers, I have created a somewhat unexpected friendship in an eighth grader named Abishai. What interests me the most about Abishai is not his music selection, address book of female contact information, or Instagram followers; rather, his desire to learn the realities of the world is his most prevalent trait.

Using me as his personal encyclopedia, one day he posed a quite interesting question. Once again, here is a direct quote as I remember.
“If you believe in God, how are you supposed to learn about evolution? I mean, I believe in God and stuff, but my teacher told me we evolved from monkeys. Is that true?”

Biology being one of my favorite subjects, this was a question I had thought of and analyzed for two years now. As an eleventh grader, it is my duty to guide the successes and education of the younger generation. As a former Christian turned Atheist, I too once debated whether or not God had indeed created us from mud and dirt. This seemed to be scientifically impossible and I doubted whether or not any being could rearrange atoms in such a way. To me, Darwin’s theory of natural selection and evolution is much more plausible than a spiritual novel crafted, edited, and passed down through many generations of humanity over time. Take a second and estimate how many terms, sentences, and phrases have been mistranslated or just plain lost in translation. As with many religions, there are a large number of contradictions in the Bible.

With all this background information I’ve gained over my 16 years, I still needed to give my dear friend a response.

“I don’t really know man, I can’t tell you what to believe, but I can tell you what I know about evolution. Over time, organisms develop traits that are favorable to survival. These traits allow them to continue reproduction in the future, increasing the appearance of the before mentioned trait.

A lot of scientists believe that humans are just the product of the growth, evolution, and mutation of very primitive bacteria. As the bacteria were able to grow and develop these favorable traits, over many years it developed into the first human. That’s about all I know, but if you believe in evolution more than Christianity, don’t let anyone tell you that you’re wrong.”