For the past couple of days, Dundee has been struck with polemics about Christmas Lecture from University of Dundee. The lectured is titled “Why Evolution is Right and Creationism is Wrong”, given by Steve Jones. There are some Christians students who think that the lecture is in cons of Christmas itself. I tried to observe the situation and it is truly getting ‘hotter’ day by day. Some scientists think that we are not supposed to believe in myths like religion (or Creation – Intelligent Design) because we have a sophisticated technology and rapid progress of science.

For me, this issue is quite philosophical. It is between human pride – pride of knowing everything. The Christians believe (literally) 6-Days-Creation is true while scientists believe evolution theory has explained the origin of life. We have to bare in mind that there are Christian scientists who believe that evolution is actually the way of Intelligent Design by ‘The Designer’ (called Theistic Evolution).

Let me quote CS Lewis, 1898-1963, (again – I love his thoughts!): “A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and of course, as long as you are looking down, you can’t see somethings which is above you”

This is true, me as a scientist, I am trying to keep my mind open. Not bluntly put my trust in merely data and observation which is given. My supervisor, Sir Philip Cohen always says, “Don’t believe the data you get unless you have tested them”. As we are living in such complicated world, we should keep our eyes around – not just looking down. Me as a Christ-believer, I do not take teachings which are not realistic – there are passages which were written metaphorically – so do not take them literally. Jesus said, be ‘Fisherman’ for the world – it does not mean we need to catch people in the city centre with fish-nets. I think pride makes us fundamentalists. It is not pride of being scientists and religious only but it can be also seen as pride of being seniors for the juniors, pride of having powers and fame, and many other things. It is nice to be able to look down, but we need to be careful, probably a ball heading to our head – we never know. Painful if we get hit… or probably some us need to get hit until realize the blinding pride.

‘fundamentalistic’ (according to my perspectives – well, who am I to judge anyway?)