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Anti-evolution Christians are right to fear Charles Darwin. The brilliant English scientist did not just show that all those begats in the Bible might be something less than the whole story. He fatally undercut the most effective argument for the existence of God, an argument that still tugs many intelligent people toward a belief in a greater power.

Who can see a sunset, watch a river flow by, listen to a bird singing or gaze up into an azure sky and not wonder how such a perfect world could exist without a benevolent creator.

Darwin, that's who. He turned that reasoning upside down. It's not that the world was made for us, it's that we were made for this world, with a billion years or so for nature to come up with creatures adapted to this particular environment.

Simply, the world appeals to us because we evolved in it. Just like we all like Mom's cooking.

But the creationists and their wishy-washy brethren, the advocates of intelligent design, persist in willful ignorance and worse, pass it on to children.

Here are a few points to make to your creationist neighbor's children:

-If you sit on a riverbank on a summer day, basking in sunlight with a soft breeze, a fishing pole dangling in your hand, you might see a perfect god-given world.

But if a fish tugs on that line, and you bring it up to your river bank, and bask the poor animal in that god-given sunlight and that soft breeze, it will gasp for oxygen, and - unless you practice catch and release - die flopping desperately on that beautiful river bank.

Why? Because the fish is adapted to water, not air. Just as you could not survive more than a minute or so under water - an environment that is heavenly for that fish. Natural selection adapted us all to our environments. Just as Darwin told us.

-Many fundamentalists live in rural farming areas, which is a supreme irony. No one sees the effects of evolution more clearly than farmers and ranchers.

Most if not all of the cows, sheep, chicken and crops on the farm or ranch were developed in the last few hundred years through selective breeding. Also known as evolution.

-Finally, look your neighbor's children in the eye and ask them if they look like Mom or Dad. If they are like most children, they will have heard a thousand times that they have Mom's smile and Dad's laugh, or Grandpa's eyes and Auntie's nose.

That, you can tell them, is evolution. Nature combining genetic characteristics and changing the species in the process. Then tell them they're as cute as a button, because they're just kids, after all.