Inquisited.com

My friend sent me this rather amusing web comic the other day. “You’ll like it” he promised, and to his credit it did bring a smile to my face. But one thing that was immediately clear to me was that the whole evolution-creationism controversy no longer pumps me up like it did back during college. I just don’t care that much anymore.

A little background info: Kansas in 2005 was a hotbed for the Evolution-creationism debates. The state board of education was about to introduce creationism into the school curriculum and as the only columnist in the K-State collegian with any sort of science background, I felt like I had the burden to say something. Yes, college. Where everything you do happens with an exaggerated sense of self-importance. So I wrote a couple of columns in the school paper on the matter and promptly received a mountainload of hate mail (of varying degrees of coherence and profanity) from fervid believers as far away as Florida. Not that I was ever deterred by them; the articles did give me some serious street cred with professors.

But that was back then. These days I look at the whole issue with only detached interest. Part of the reason, I suspect, is because I’m no longer in Kansas. After all, Its a lot harder to get excited about an issue if you’re not physically there to see any tangible implications. But the other reason is that the unabashed idealism I once had in college has since worn off. Coming to think about it, there there aren’t that many issues that incite the same kind of fiery passion I had for almost everything from the Iraq war to how I wanted my steak done.

Its not that I’ve become jaded, just that I’ve discovered other things to focus my energies on. Perhaps its a natural progression in the evolutionary course of the psyche, so to speak.