Part Two: Physics

Chapter Five: Creation

5.2 Evolution

One thing about science that for me is such a true delight is the many ways science defends a religious perspective! One would think that rather than being placed under judgment as the bane of faith, science should be viewed as inspirational by the Faithful.

As a little scientist, I used to believe that science made silly the notion of invisible spirits bustling about their daily duties!  Preposterous!  What are they made of?  How can they be invisible?  Ghosts and spirits and demons, oh my!  It seemed the role of science was being portrayed (mostly by the religious right wingers) as proclaiming that faith was  “all the internal imagery of an uneducated and, possibly, malfunctioning mind.”  Science, from a religious perspective, was pure heresy.  Although one is certainly free to pursue that line of thinking to its ultimate conclusion (as we have and will in other sections of this writing), I believe the more moderate modern theists will be a little more open-minded, or, as I like to think of it: having Guarded Optimistic Discretion – GOD – working on their side.  Our minds are filled and we are now educated (most of us anyway).  Science, and the steady, logical progression of discovery, has made clear that the preposterous is quite often just the way things really are.  There are stranger things being discovered in quantum physics that make ghosts and demons seem run-of-the-mill!  The understanding that we have achieved of the material world, the natural world, has revealed a great deal that is in fact wholly existent and yet utterly invisible to the unaided human senses.

One could also argue that the micro world could be considered invisible, since without the aid of human invention, it too would be for all practical purposes invisible to the unaided eye.  So also would the macro world of the galaxies and galaxy clusters.  How might religion had progressed if glass and magnification of microbes had come about very early on in our history?  If the ancient world had known that bugs caused disease, how might God have been seen differently?  Maybe He wouldn’t have gotten the rap every time an epidemic broke out or stomach flu went around.  A very different God indeed that did not punish the wicked with His wrath for transgressions that we lowly mortals could only guess at!  What did we do wrong this time that makes our God(s) punish us?  Maybe it wasn't God after all.  Maybe it was drinking the same water that we shit in.  Guilt and shame for imaginary wrongs against the all-powerful being might not have taken such deep root in our psyche that today we poor out our hard earnings enabling the psychotherapy industry to flourish!  Might we be a more sedate and rational being today if the human condition had not been founded on Suffrage playing itself out to appease an angry and vengeful god?  It was perfectly obvious that we must have done something wrong for God to punish us with sickness and disease.  We are so bad.

It is ironic, then, that, science has taken a rap in modern times for ‘killing God’.  What few recognize is that science, in many ways, has shown that the inspired truth of ancient religious teaching has an uncanny accuracy in the notion (if not in the particular details…) that there exists a great many things beyond the capacity of the human system of perception through the five senses to know or Understand. 

Evolution is one of the most fascinating examples, which was hinted at with the idea of an Adam and an Eve.  How did the idea that all of mankind descended from one couple come about?  (Although the existence of other humans to whom the children of Adam and Eve took mates is one of the glaring inconsistencies of the ancient biblical texts).  Recent revelations across a range of the physical sciences strongly suggest that modern humans most probably did arise from a very small group of pre-modern ancestors, and genetically we are probably traceable back to a single individual female.  God could have just as easily have created the world complete with a full complement of humanity.  How is it that the writer or writers of the genesis account should have so closely “guessed” that the human race came from one initial “family”? 

I start the examination of evolution with these thoughts in mind since evolution is probably one of the hottest issues in conflict between the faithful and the skeptical community.  Now lets proceed with an open mind and for the moment give the infamous Charles Darwin the benefit of the doubt.

Three older sisters who constantly berated him raised Charles Darwin, born in 1809 in Shrewsbury, England.  His father was a physician and so our dear Charles was, by the age of 16, a student at the University of Edinburgh.  Medical studies did not seem to suit him and moving over to Cambridge he soon discovered his true calling as a naturalist.  Plants and animals held more fascination for him than did the scalpel and the blood and gore of the operating theater.  

He was by all accounts a rather meek individual.  Not at all the evil hard-ass our to corrupt the minds of innocents that the Christians have demonized him into being, but rather a gentle and unassuming man. 

IN DEVELOPMENT FROM HERE – still researching and gathering references.  Should be completed before the summer is out.  Please accept my most humble apologies.  I encourage you one your quest for knowledge and hope you find other useful information within the published texts of Faith and Physics.  Thanks,  JY

Natural Selection - Bestows upon the lineage survival benefits. DNA mutation (hand of God ongoing direction of His creation?) Natural selection describes how organisms change and adapt for increased chances of survival. It does not reveal how organisms increased in complexity. Rather than small and continual changes some biologists have concluded that complexity can be explained by “a small number of major changes in the way in which information is stored, transmitted, and translated.”¹

Species Explosions, Cambrian, (?) .

Species Extinctions.

Mammals to Man.

#1 The Origins of Life: From the Birth of Life to the Origins of Language - John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry, Oxford University Press, 1999 [Back to Text]