Welcome! This particular blog post doesn't contain educational material and instead is a personal account of my own religion and scientific experiences.
My Story
This blog post has religious undertones and expresses a belief in a God so please keep that in mind as you read. This is not a conversion story or meant to make people feel uncomfortable. I recognize that it's a sensitive topic that can be upsetting so please keep in mind that this account is my personal perspective. For Christians or creationists who read this blog, please keep in mind that this post expresses a belief in evolution and a rejection of creationism. For more detail about my story, click this LINK.
I grew up believing in creation science, a literal 7-day creation according to the story of Genesis in the Bible. I never had any experience in the topic of science and especially evolution. I felt strongly that evolution was anti-God, fake, and that people who believed in it must not be 'real believers' in God from the Christian perspective.
In college, I devoted all my time to my biology class and although I learned a lot, I felt I had to protect my religion. I thought that microevolution and macroevolution were two separate things and that's where my comfort zone ended. For more information on evolution, click HERE.
I devoted my bachelor's degree to learning and understanding evolution even though it terrified me. After three years of furthering my education, it wasn't until the summer of 2017 where I had my own a-ha moment and finally understood EVOLUTION. I found it to be a genuine, true explanation for how the world experiences change over time through the generations.
After years of comparing the evolution and creationism, I had to recognize that the Genesis creation story wasn't 'true' in the way I was raised to believe. I know that some of my Christian readers may be getting angry with me, but please take a moment for yourselves to calm down and then keep reading.
Context
The Bible has to be kept in context to the people of its time and read how the people of its time would have understood it. I learned through my religious studies and personal research that there are different literary styles to the Bible. Narrative, poetry, and discourse. If you don't pay attention to the literary style of what you're reading, you can get confused or make the mistake of interpreting something in a way it shouldn't be which is what I was doing with the Bible. I got closure with the issue of religion and science and am able to keep the two separate from each other.
Learning about evolution and science is the best thing that could've happened to me. I had to open my mind to challenging my own limitations on how I read the bible and believed God created things. Now, I don't interpret the creation story as a literal account of how things came to be. Looking into the bible historically, you can see the proper context. In order for me to grow and learn, I had to be willing to let go of my deeply held beliefs, but doing that showed me a whole new world of things I can learn and do to help others!
The Bible Project
Here's a LINK to a basic guide to the Bible according to The Bible Project. The summer where I finally let go and recognized evolution as a real theory was a freeing experience that taught me a lot about myself and I hope I can share that experience with others!
Christians don't have (rarely) formal education over reading the Bible and if they do, there is typically an agenda or a limitation to how in-depth the research goes (based on my personal conversations) in the bible study materials and beliefs. Christians can feel threatened by evolution because they can feel that it's a threat to their beliefs in God.
I encourage everyone to explore secular research, different perspectives, and different literary styles of the Bible. Find educational materials, books, professors, and anyone who can challenge you to learn something new. I hope to make my blog a safe space for the topic of evolution no matter who is reading it.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. I really appreciate it. Please contact me if you have any questions or ideas for future discussions in my blog! Please follow me on TWITTER and add me on LINKEDIN for more updates and be sure to subscribe below!