In response to Holly Hull's letter Tuesday regarding the choice between creation and evolution, I must first say that I mostly agree with and am impressed by her open-mindedness. While I don't think the choice is imperative, I certainly agree that our decision needs to be properly informed if we choose to make it.

However, there is one major bias here that should be addressed.

The belief we foster about our origins can potentially lead to ramifications for ethical behavior, but it all depends on the individual. She mentioned that evolution promotes racism by implying that some races are closer to primates than others. However, physical anthropology teaches us that there is more intra-racial than inter-racial genetic variation, meaning that the human species is strikingly genetically similar across the globe; effectively reducing the concept of race to a mere social taxonomy. Belief in un-designed evolution usually rejects the concept of objective morality, but who says we can't make our own? I have my own code of atheistic and subjective principles drawn from my own beliefs and the world around me. You are just as free to reject my ethos as you are God's. Conversely, it could be argued that creationism can lead to racism and ethnocentrism, as many faiths make distinctions between the "Chosen People" and the "heathens" who are respectively saved and damned by a deity that is far from pluralistic.

Moreover, it could be contended that creationism chains us to the antique values of past millennia rather than the relevant ethics of today. I don't believe that any of these concepts are universal to either creationists or evolutionists; there are good and bad apples in both barrels. But they do demonstrate that an individual believer can take an idea absolutely anywhere.

Remember that when you make your informed decision.