People tend not to budge on issues that could possibly discount their way of thinking. It took the Catholic Church until 1993 to admit that Copernicus was correct that the Earth rotated around the sun. There is even a Flat Earth Society in existence today. These are relatively extreme examples, but the fact is that if someone is convinced of something, there really is not a lot someone can do to convince them otherwise, especially when it comes to evolution. Likewise, someone who is convinced that Genesis is not an accurate account of the origin of the Earth will not suddenly accept it. If someone is opinionated enough on the subject to call themselves a �creationist� or an �evolutionist,� they probably won�t change; and if they do, it will neither happen quickly nor will they switch to the absolute of the other side. The prime examples of those who refuse to change include the fundamentalists such as William Jennings Bryant. Nearly eighty years after the Scopes Monkey Trial with vastly improved technology and a fossil record with fewer holes, William Jennings Bryants still exist. Take, for example, an old acquaintance of mine: Brandon Brackett. He is the epitome of the word �fundamentalist.� When I mentioned that I had a paper due for a class entitled �Darwinism,� he immediately declared: �Evolution is just wrong. It�s ridiculous. Darwin was an idiot.� When I asked him if he has ever read On the Origin of Species, he responded that he has not and will not, but from what he has heard, his opinion is correct. His kind is nearly immovable and utterly impossible to argue with.

But there is a chance that he will gradually change his mind, and perhaps when he is about eighty or ninety, he just might agree with Charles Darwin. Maybe. Before even attempting to reason Brandon into believing one shred of evolution, one would have to convince him that perhaps Genesis� days were not literal days, perhaps years, centuries, eons as our current concept of time would indicate. The evidence that one must present to him thereafter would have to be the more complete parts of the fossil record�horses, dogs, birds, et cetera�to attempt to appeal to the logical person in him. Yet presenting evidence to a fundamentalist would not immediately convert him. It takes time for him to consider such evidence�to allow it to germinate in his mind and gradually cause him to move towards the acceptance of the idea. In Darwin, the contemporary responses are all within the past forty years�most within the past fifteen or twenty. It took a long time for the mainstream religions to respond and accept any part of evolution, evidencing that such a belief change does not happen overnight, especially after a few thousand years of believing a certain thing. Perhaps the end of literal interpretation of Genesis was a long time coming, but that end did not occur immediately after the publication of the Origin of Species (Loesberg, 2/12/2004). It took time to set the wheels turning. There is no punctuated equilibrium in the beliefs of societies. Only gradualism with events that slowly lead the belief system in a different direction. However, such chances of converting a fundamentalist are small. To them, anyone suggesting the idea that their beliefs might be more metaphorical than literal is offensive. To them, the persuading evolutionist is attempting to undermine their faith in the worst of ways. They shut out the words of anyone who tries to enlighten them by contradicting their beliefs before they have even opened their mouths.

Similarly, staunch evolutionists will not budge. They rely on logic, not theology, on scholarship, not stories. Even though religion and evolution can coexist, oftentimes, the atheistic evolutionists will accept none of it. To an atheistic evolutionist, one would have to prove the existence of God to indicate that any part of Genesis might be correct�even in very loose construction. And yet, it perhaps would be easier to use logic to pull evolutionists to the middle. The fundamentalist Christian might hold firm to God-breathed words, but the evolutionist holds firm to logic.

Hence, an evolutionist might be convinced that believing in God is rational through mathematician Blaise Pascal�s wager: A man cannot decide whether to accept or reject the doctrines of the Church. On a coin toss, truth and falseness have equal odds, but the payoffs are not. Suppose he rejects the Church. If the Church is false, he loses nothing; if the Church is true, he faces infinite suffering in Hell. Suppose he accepts the Church. If the Church is false, he loses nothing; if it is true, he wins eternal bliss in Heaven. The logical payoffs of this decision are infinitely in favor of betting the Church is true (Gardner, 109). The other evidence that might be provided for a higher power exists within the human brain. In a brain study, neurologists noticed that when an electrode was placed in a certain part of the brain, the patient reported feeling that he or she had experienced God. In her book Mapping the Mind, Rita Carter asks the question: If we were created by a higher power, wouldn�t it make sense that He would enable us to recognize him? (Carter, 1998). And, of course, a near-death experience may induce a non-believer into becoming a believer. Furthermore, scientists don�t particularly like the idea of a single creation event (Loesberg, 2/16/2004). However, the Big Bang theory is a single creation event. The Law of the Conservation of Matter states that matter cannot appear from void. There are three explanations: all the matter in our present universe came from a previous Big Crunch of this universe or entered through a quasar or black hole from another universe�both theories which eventually go infinitely backwards in time through infinite previous universes, leaving us with the question of whether or not there was an original universe and the origins of that original matter; the third explanation is that there is or was a Creator who produced all original matter, which breaks the eternal loop of previous universes to the antithesis of eternity. It may not be entirely scientific, but it is an explanation that does not get lost in the infinity of quantum physics.

However, none of this would directly lead to the absolute acceptance of Genesis on a word-for-word basis. At best, it would put us exactly where contemporary religions are today: there is a higher power which set the whole thing in motion, but evolution is the most well-supported mechanism. What are unsubstantiated stories are not enough to convince scientists of the truth of those stories, especially when they have a pile of evidence to the contrary.

This golden middle must simply be where the whole argument stops. The evidence for evolution is undeniable and it does not necessarily conflict with belief in a higher power. One will neither convince the theologians that there is not a God who put the whole process of life into motion, nor convince the evolutionists that Genesis happened literally. But the fundamental creationists and atheistic evolutionists are very unlikely to switch sides, no matter what the evidence or argument. And they will bicker until we all evolve into a different species, perform Natural Selection on ourselves by blowing up our planet, or experience Revelation.

Appleman, Philip, Ed. Darwin, 3rd Ed. W.W. Norton and Company, United States, 2001.

Carter, Rita. Mapping the Mind. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1998.

Gardner, Martin. Aha! Gotcha: Paradoxes to Puzzle and Delight. W.H. Freeman and Company, San Francisco, 1982.

Loesberg, Jonathan. �Evolution in Science and Culture.� Honors Darwinism. American University, Washington, DC. 12 Feb. 2004.

Loesberg, Jonathan. �The Argument from Design.� Honors Darwinism. American University, Washington, DC. 19 Feb. 2004.