Scanning through my e-mail a couple days ago, I saw that the Office of Student Life has declared the month of February as “a time to acknowledge and celebrate faith.” It’s called “February Faithfest.”

The event is put on by CORA (Council of Religious Advisors) in order to “help build and foster an atmosphere on campus conducive to religious life and thinking.”

I was immediately pleased to hear this, as I consider myself a man of faith, but more importantly, I believe that religious freedom is something to be celebrated. It’s easy to forget that many people would die for this kind of opportunity.

There are quite a few events planned, like a Jewish lunch, a Catholic speaker, a religious fair, an Invisible Children video presentation and a food and supply drive, just to name a few.

Interestingly enough, my roommate casually told me that February is also the birth month of a very influential and prominent figure in history, particularly in the movement against religion. Charles Darwin was born 200 years ago tomorrow.

Ben Stein’s documentary “Expelled,” which opened in theaters this time last year, exposed the slow but effective disintegration of ID (Intelligent Design) in education, especially secondary education. The documentary clearly illuminates the fact that ID and evolution are essentially only theories, and that if professors have been fired for even identifying ID as on the same plane as evolution, that’s a concerning injustice.

Six months later, “Religulous,” a documentary by Bill Maher, opened in theaters. The film showed Maher’s interviews of people and their thoughts on religion. Without having seen this movie, I can’t ascertain how effective it was, but it definitely stirred and awoke thoughts in a lot of people that I talked to about the infatuation humans have with religion.

We often take “faith” and extract it from its origin as the catalyst in our worldview and place it in the foreign land of “religion,” which is a severe mistake.

Darwin was not religious, but he was a man of faith. Just because his faith was not in a god or gods, certainly doesn’t mean that he didn’t have faith. An argument could be made that he was one of the most faith-driven people in recent history.

We all are driven by faith in something, even if it’s nothing.

Clearly, this is a commonly debated issue and it’s something we, as college students, have to consider.

Are we going to follow the traditions of our parents, pick from the buffet line of whatever faith looks most tasty, create our own or just not care?

Well, maybe you will have reason to at least care. The New York Times reported that there were 813 earthquakes in 11 days during late 2008 and early 2009 at Yellowstone National Park.

Typically, this is a sign of volcanic activity, as Yellowstone resides over a massive volcano. Although the volcano is fairly dormant, dormant volcanoes have erupted before.

Even though scientists say there’s nothing to worry about, scientists have also been wrong before.

Reach Houston at hfriend1@asu.edu.