In front of the Tempe campus’ Memorial Union, a travesty against the integrity of scientific inquiry and the pursuit of knowledge occurred this week.

Copies of Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” were handed out to unsuspecting students, students who had no idea that they were being handed a heavily edited and altogether duplicitous version of Darwin’s true work.

The infamous creationist Ray Comfort wrote the forward to this edition; four chapters from Darwin’s original were omitted.

The forward by Comfort is mostly a tirade of long defunct arguments against evolution, with straw-man arguments, malicious misinformation and a slew of other logical fallacies. Furthermore, the four removed chapters offer much of Darwin’s evidence for the validity of evolution.

I ask you, would it be prudent for a racist to write the forward to and edit a book about tolerance? No, one would immediately recognize such an act as ludicrous. I cannot understand why, then, would Ray Comfort believe that such a clearly unveiled plan would work in convincing anyone that evolution is false.

The evidence for evolution is vast, and if you really want to learn about it, I suggest obtaining a credible version of Darwin’s work or any current biology book with a chapter or two on evolution. That said, I am still confused as to why creationists so fear science.

Creationists surely take no issue with the methodology used by the scientific community to have produced penicillin, microchips, plasma screen TVs, and essentially everything else we take for granted in modern society.

I believe that this irrational loathing of science and evolution in particular stems from faith gone awry.

I am a Jew, and I believe fervently in my faith, but I am not a creationist in any way. The great Jewish sage, Maimonides, said whenever G-d does something in the Torah, for example, it must be able to be explained through some normative physical, chemical or biological constant. In other words, G-d made rules about how the universe is to operate; evolution follows those rules.

To me, the story of creation as put in the Torah is actually not all that impressive: G-d simply willing things into existence willy-nilly. However, the infinite complexities of the formation of the universe from the Big Bang, the beauty of the atom, the fragility of DNA, etc. all leave me breathless.

Do I believe in intelligent design? No. I believe that G-d is simply in the fabric of the universe, but I am not about to presume that our understanding of the world is somehow fundamentally flawed because science conflicts with the faith of some.

More than half of Americans do not believe in the validity of evolution; this simply will not do. I firmly believe that one can be a person of faith, an atheist, an agnostic or anything else and believe that evolution is true. To believe otherwise is not a faith-based difference of opinion, rather a denial and tacit attack on the very foundation of modern rational society.

Reach Max at mfeldhak@asu.edu