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Noah Alston

Professor Sheila Fielding

WRTC 103

9 September 2017

What Do I Believe?

As I am sitting in my extremely uncomfortable desk, my classmates and I are talking

amongst ourselves about the scores of our last unit test. Mrs. Mullins, my AP Biology teacher,

begins to write the name of our next chapter on the white board in blue marker, Evolution.

According to The Webster Dictionary, evolution is defined as: The process by which different

kinds of living organisms are thought to have developed and diversified from earlier forms

during the history of the earth(Merriam). At the time, I did not think much of anything about

what she wrote; little did I know, it would be the very thing that would cause me to challenge my

religion, something that I thought could never be wrong. Little did I know that it would open my

mind and shape the person that I am today. Taking AP Biology changed my perspective

drastically on basically everything in life, because of the way it challenged a belief of mine that I

thought to be true my entire life.

As a young child, religion was a big part of my life. My father grew up in the deep

South, in a Baptist family where religion was all they had to depend on in times of hardship and

stress. Meanwhile, my mother grew up in an Italian family, coming from a Catholic background.

This habit of practicing a religion was passed on when they had a family of their own. Ever since

I could remember, church and Sunday school were a regular occurrence every week, until I was

about 8 years old. This was the age where I started to play competitive travel soccer, and all the

games were on Sundays so it was very difficult for us to attend church on a regular basis. As
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time went on we rarely went as a family at all; however, we still remained faithful by praying at

the dinner table before every meal and living by the basic morals taught in the Bible. Just

because we did not attend church every single week, did not mean that we became less religious

as a family. The lessons taught from the Bible, and Christianity in general, are where I gained the

values and morals that I have today. Its how I know right from wrong.

This concept of Christianity, and religion in general, all became a huge question mark

during my junior year of high school. Confusion would be the best way to describe my

thoughts as we began to learn the topic of evolution. When Mrs. Mullins first introduced the

topic, she gave a speech about how she was not attempting to interfere with anyones beliefs, and

that it was just in the curriculum and it was her job to teach it. Thoughts were racing within my

conscious, asking myself questions like: What is she talking about? These thoughts were not

exiting my head anytime soon; it was only the beginning. The first part of evolution begins with

the various theories for the origin of life: 1) Primordial Soup 2) Deep Sea Vents 3) Panspermia

4) Deep-Hot Biosphere (Ayala). Not one of the theories mention anything about God, and once

again, I was left perplexed. On surface, all the ideas seemed extremely far-fetched to me,

especially because the only origin of life I knew was God. However, as we went into more detail

with each theory, it started to become more and more of a reality. It seemed as these so called

far-fetched theories, continued to be supported with facts, whereas religion was never, and

never has been, backed up with factual information. As time went on, so did the questions

surrounding my religion: Is God real? Are the events in the Bible factual? What do I

believe? The fact that I questioned my religion this much, caused me to lose faith. However, I

still believed the morals and lessons taught from Christianity, and to this day I believe it plays a

huge part in keeping the world from chaos.

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Because of the seemingly never-ending questions racing through my head, I gained self-

realization. With the knowledge that I now possessed, I realized that I have a very logical way of

thinking; seeing is believing would be one way to describe it. When I looked backed on it, I

realized that I was always that way. This self-realization assisted my decision-making process

when it came to choosing what I wanted to focus my college education on. The extreme curiosity

that I had when taking biology, drove me to major in something along the same lines;

biotechnology. I hoped to find answers to the nonstop questions in my head. Along with self-

realization, my perspective on everything, had a new meaning. Instead of believing everything I

was told, I took it upon my-self to make sure what I was, was in fact true. My reasoning for this

was because religion was the only concept that I was taught my entire life and nothing else.

When one is taught one thing for their entire life, without reason to believe otherwise, they are

going to take it for a fact. Taking AP Biology gave me that reason to think in a different way. It

opened my mind to many ideas. Everyone should have a mind changing experience like the one

that I had. It has opened my mind in a countless number of ways, and I have entered into a whole

new world of thinking.

This picture was taken on July 18th, 2017

at 7:49:36 pm. I choose this picture
because it exhibits a sense of openness
with the vast water in the background,
and in a way it represents my mind after
my experience that opened my mind into
a whole new way of thinking.
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Works Cited

Ayala, Fransisco J. Read Science and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of

Sciences, Second Edition at NAP.edu. National Academies Press: OpenBook, National

Academy of Sciences, 1999, www.nap.edu/read/6024/chapter/3.

Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, 2011.