©2001 Jon Youngblood

Unity Through Understanding

A Guidebook for the Recently Alive

Part Two: Physics

Chapter Five: Creation

5.3 Creation VS. Evolution

The Battle:

Science is not malevolent. It's not out to 'get' anyone whether they be Christian or secular, Professional or lay person. It did not set out with intent to blaspheme God. It simply did what science does: Examine and report. Theorize and test. It is not inherently evil, as some Militant Christian groups would have one believe. And certainly the majority of people in the Judaic faiths do not seek to shape politics around biblical literalism.

I find it very revealing that the groups who oppose the teaching of evolution in public schools have chosen a point of contention (earth history sciences) that does not affect their own daily comfort. They have selected, for now, a purely intellectual conflict. But what if they took it upon themselves to pick a fight with the sciences of the cosmos, for example. Cosmology, astronomy, astrophysics, etc. Why not? The bible says that the heavens are the domain of God and the angles. Not other planets, suns, or galaxies, black holes or supernova. What if they should find heresy in the biological sciences? All medicine and related research, they might say, must be stopped. It is only God that determines when we should be born and when we should die.

This reversion to Puritan rationality is not so far fetched! There was a case recently where two parents were tried for the death of their son when they failed to provide him with medical treatment, which would have easily saved his life, because they felt it was going against the will of God. They were Seventh Day Adventists I believe.

Abortion is another issue that won’t stop the world (no cynical pun intended) but is beloved of the Ones Who Shake Fists. It it not a question of whether a woman can choose or not. A woman can always choose. She simply jumps up and down vigorously until a spontaneous abortion of the aggregate of dividing cells is detached from its supportive medium (Uterus) just as women have done for thousands of years. What is being attacked is a scientifically based medical procedure.

I am encouraged for the future of our species and our prospects of moving beyond this little planet earth, only because the biblical literalists seem to recognize the foolhardiness of clambering to and fro creating opposition to the sciences that would seriously change our daily lives. They seek a holy war when nobody else wants to, or needs to, fight! Perhaps that is just human nature. We have been fighting for so long. Perhaps traditional religious groups find it harder to identify with their faith unless challenged. There has to be an enemy, some opposition, with which they can visualize themselves “marching off to war…” for the greater glory of God, in order for the inherent goodness of their faith to become manifest. This is alarming noticeable in one of the spin-offs of Judaism, Islam, where "holy" conflict, in it's most extreme (murder of innocents) is flourishing, and where martyrdom is seen as Instant Access to the glories of eternal paradise.  What the enlightened need remember, is the necessity of this conflict, no matter how disgusting, or cruel it may seem, because without it, it’s a bit like dancing without a floor. Without the floor with which to push against, and move in relation to, one cannot hope to dance. Or you might think of it as dancing in space, in a vacuum free of gravity. You need something to push against or you just sit there and wriggle.  It is only in a situation where you have resistance, something to push against - a floor and gravity - that you can dance.  And if we think of life as a dance, as some religions do, then this analogy becomes even more rewarding.

I would dare to challenge the hyper-righteous to try picking a fight with a more utilitarian science like physics. (I get a chill down my spine imagining a war fought with EMF pulse bombs which would disable (read: melt) all electronic devises in huge areas, if not all, of the planet. Once the survivors get settled down to life as usual, such a Dark Ages could easily return. Like in Omega Man with Charlton Heston).  Let's see them advocate living without the same scientific evils of altering God’s creation by tinkering with the natural state of electrons so as to make our lives slothful - one of the Seven Deadly Sins after all! No lights, TV, or the World Wide Web. No more Creating unnatural contrivances which burn unholy gases to subjugate the purpose of God having given us legs with which to walk upon the earth. If God created dinosaur bones when none could have really existed, why not create cars because they would at some point exist? If they were meant to exist He would have made them. Therefore the wonders of science could only be the unnatural influence of the Evil One attempting to detour us from believing absolutely and forever the word of God as proclaimed in His Book.

Minds that cannot envision a changing, growing, evolving, universe, are doomed to seek out an enemy on whom to take out their frustration, and dream of an existence that will never remain in stasis. Why these people even wish to have existence unchanging has always, and perhaps regrettably, been beyond my comprehension. Christ forever changed the world, how can any fundamentalist conveniently forget or neglect to acknowledge this? 

But many followers of The Big Three live with the belief that change is an anathema to Faith in God’s will, thereby denying His Creative Will!  That His ongoing Creation is not static, as professed by the change wrought by his Son. Indeed, God appears, quite frequently, to change his mind in regards to his evolving relationship with his creation.  Consider Noah's arc and the covenant, or the evolution of Yahweh from war god, protector of his chosen people, to the loving God of All Mankind.   It is not too suprising, in this context, that we too should, as his less Majestic counterparts, find ourselves changing over time.

Evolution, Universal expansion, the acquisition of biological control, all seem as reasonable as growing old and dieing, so that something new can take its place. Change is all around us in the natural world and yet traditional theists still resist the notion, and would apparently love to have us living around camp fires again - if they themselves had not become so utterly addicted to technology and its life of a golden age.

For the sake of solidarity to the group, nay the very survival of the dance itself, the Faithful of Yahweh have pointed the finger at His new enemy, science, but only in so much as it does not seriously effect their own daily lives any more than it does the rest of us, which, fortunately for the rest of us, I believe can be taken as a sign of their lessening resolve in the face of the reasoning and rational Minds that God gave us. And because their fight, taken to its logical conclusion, would require utter and complete destruction of the world as it has become and as we all know it today. Because we are all in this technological civilization now. No matter where you go in the world, or what race or faith you are, you cannot live without the ‘shell’ of the technological world that we have created. As basic an item as our food supply needed to feed ourselves and all the additional children we should be having (according to the right to life constituency) requires a vast system of various technologies - technologies ALL based on science - scientific discoveries and the same principals applied to those discoveries to produce useful applications and the knowledge gained in the forms of mechanized devises used in food production. All of it. Everywhere.

To take then, and to pick on, only one simple, harmless branch of science, or one medical procedure limited in importance but to a few squeamish women, is just plain silly. Why only mess with the small fish? (no, this is not a cynical pun either) But again, perhaps it is just our nature as humans to be silly every once in a while.

It is ironic that the southern protestant churches should be the ones out to suppress teachings counter to their own, and to very strongly promote their dogma and forms of worship in our countries educational system. It was they themselves that, as we saw in Chapter 4.1, rebelled against the first church of Christ worship and split off into a new sect which was free to think for themselves, free to interpret the Bible as they saw fit as individuals, and to be free of the dogma of the Catholic Church and so created Protestantism for themselves.

As the debate of Creation versus Evolution continues, it provides us a clear example of just how strong of a continued grip traditional religious thought holds into this century. It continues to play a prominent role in the decision making process within our society; particularly within the educational system. 

Men like William Curtis, president of the Creation Resource Institute (http://www.icr.org/), not only believe the earth is 6,000 years old, but they have devoted a great deal of time and energy to promote the idea of the literal biblical account of creation within the school system. He and others feel that the teaching of evolution is steering minds away from God and the Bible. Indeed, a large number of people agree. 

Public Favorable to Creationism

 2/14/01 -- The American public favors teaching creationism in schools along
 with evolution (68% favor and 29% oppose), but is opposed to the idea of
 teaching creationism instead of evolution, by a 55% to 40% margin. Further,
 Gallup polls conducted last year suggest that a quarter of Americans believe
 teaching creationism should be required of the public schools, while another
 56% say creationism should at least be offered to students as a subject of
 study.

 To view full release go to
 <http://www.gallup.com/poll/releases/pr010214c.asp>

Assuming that these numbers do accurately reflect the beliefs of society at large, then we must acknowledge that the idea of Creation is no farther from being dead than is God Him/Her self.

On the other side of the battlefield, Professor Donald Wise of Franklin and Marshall College, is standing his ground. Creationists, he is quoted as saying in an article in The Philadelphia Inquirer, "are a very powerful and influential group. The scientific community has to stand up and be counted." The article went on to assert that what is "At stake is far more than a child's understanding of Darwin's theory of evolution. The literal biblical version of creation contradicts most of geology, geochemistry, geophysics and paleontology, all of which hinge on the idea the Earth is 4.6 billion years old."¹

Is Creationism the anti-Christ of modern scientific thought? Ever since the Scopes "monkey" trial in 1925, the scientists have rested assured in the decades that followed that the issue was settled once and for all. (An excellent film recreation of this trial was made in 1960 called Inherit the Wind , staring Spencer Tracy and Gene Kelly. A more recent production was made for Showtime in 1999 under the same title and staring Jack Lemon and Spencer Tracy; a must see movie!! For more info see: http://www.teachwithmovies.org/guides/inherit-the-wind.html) Yet in some parts of the country (read: the south), teachers and those who make a living in the scientific disciplines are becoming extremely concerned at the infiltration of the religious right into the developing minds of impressionable youth. The United States has scored very low (essentially second to last) on international tests of science skills among high school students. Only the Italians did worse than us. The winners, which comes as no surprise, were the Swedish students (what is it? That fresh mountain air or what?). Our nations economy is based on our marginal lead in the high tech market. Whoops. I am worried about my Social Security now...

As we read the scrolls of the evolution debate, lets consider for a moment, and yes, this is a minor sidetrack: Why man? And why here and now? It behooves us to consider some other possibilities. Why is Man the creature to be so engaged in this lofty debate? Why not dinosaurs or dolphins? Well, why not the dinosaurs? It has been suggested that evidence exists indicating the rapid cranial development of many dinosaur species just prior to the Extinction Level Event that wiped them out. Suppose for a moment that the meteor, or virus, or whatever cleaned the face of the earth of the dinosaurs, had missed or not caught on? Would it then be some sort of lizard like creature, standing before the bathroom vanity, staring back at it’s self in wonder? Was T-Rex or his descendents suppose to be the first beneficiary of Spirit Awareness? And not some furry little monkeys called homo sapiens?

Instantaneous Creation or Evolution over billions of years? Why does it matter anyway? To “prove” the truth of the word of God? God (and the Logos) are based on a foundation of Faith, not on physical proof. Why is it not conceivable that the truth God chose to inspire into the minds of the biblical authors was only as much as the simpler minds of the day could comprehend? Is it so far off to assume that God reasoned that the concept of billions of years and complex thoughts of evolution was more than the readers of the time could handle and so gave them a truth that they could more easily understand? It is the burden of us moderns armed with the tools of science to have to go around ‘proving’ things!

Perhaps it matters more because traditionalists refuse to relinquish their grasp of the world as being one in stasis - as even some of the early scientists had trouble doing. Biblical literalists are so confident that we are ‘there’as we always have and always will be - just like God. The final and ultimate achievement of The Creator. But what if we are just one stage in a long series of transitions on the way to being that ultimate achievement? Some little hairless gray skinned things or something… What if God isn't done yet?  Why would that make our lives lived here and now any less profound? It doesn’t. It is only our religious arrogance that leads us to that conclusion.

The eastern faiths have a much deeper relationship with change.  The cyclical nature of the faith of the Hindi, the existentialist views of Taoism, and the many naturopathic faiths such as Wicca or Voodoo, have a far more acceptance of the principals of change - even if only for that change to lead back in circles to the same point in another time. 

But here we come back the the duality of need; the floor of resistance upon which the universe dances.  The Yin and the Yang principal.  It is because of the desires for stasis that many of the Big Three Faiths find so alluring, that the enlightened find their ability to see the beauty and necessity of change.  Of physical and spiritual evolution towards something better; a concept that would be less clear without the opposing background these people have in their desire for change not to occur in our understand of, or our relationship to, the world around us.

One virtue of the scientist, is, hopefully, his trained ability to maintain an open, and objective - mind. Such objectivity is far too often absent in the deeply religious. Whereas the believer rejects out of hand any information which conflicts with it's basic tenants, the scientist must, by his own methods, be open to any and all possibilities - including those that prove false whatever popular notion he may be holding dear at any given time.

So where the religious may be temped to always resist new insights or truths about the world that do not conform to established belief systems, the scientist is forever adapting to new information, and revising his Understanding. Concerning God, the scientist must always acknowledge the implication of God. In the hardiest of sciences, physics, even though no clear or concise analysis of His being is forthcoming, there are still haunting possibilities. The Anthropic Principal is one way in which science confirms that God is very strongly implied in the universe around us. There is a clear implication of conditions and events being stacked in, and for, our favor.

Far too few of the traditional Faithful, but not all by any means, fail to acknowledge that the hand of god, the "proof" of his existence, is realized through His interactions with "his people". They give lip service to God's plan to better his flock (as with the sending of His Son) and in many ways inspire them to "rise up" and progress from ignorance, savagery, and barbarianism, to one of spiritual and social perfection.

The Urantia book has some interesting discussions about the angels and their duties of biological and spiritual "uplifting".  Just so in science, evolution shows how simple life become more and more complex over time. The complexity of the central nervous system lead to the evolution of intelligence, and then sentience. Intelligence, now as if having a life of it's own, continues to be challenged by nature towards ever increasing complexity of facts and knowledge. This growth of intellect, like the growth of a child, is recognized and nurtured by society. And just as we know the fate of a parentless child is grim, we anthropomorphize that their must be some more experienced "force" "out there" guiding us in our successes and failures (as a species if not as individuals). And indeed, their seems to be, in nature, such a force at play. In medicine for example, once a new level of understanding arises, and the major plagues of the day are wiped out, so that it would appear stasis was achieved, some new bacterium or virus or carcinogen comes crawling out of the woodwork. As if to say "Fine son, now what can you do with this?".

Entropy and Evolution

As it rolls forward into ever increasing complexity evolution appears to defy the laws of entropy - working in direct contradiction to the second law of thermodynamics.  We should be breaking down into slim mold.  Instead we develop sophisticated body functions and grow larger brains.

Just as our forefathers believed that God could not be directly perceived (at least not without the trained intervention of a priest or rabbi or some other intermediary) science is as yet unable to define God. He remains hidden. But it is through repeated and in-depth investigation, science, that a strong implication of God has arisen. Through, shall we say "god given" reason and logic, measure and number, we can begin to Understand this implication of an intervening and biased force at work.

God is not dead. He does however continue to remain rather "murky" in our ability to understand his nature. (For those of the Catholic persuasion: in this at least, the "mystery" of the Lord (God) is preserved.)

Racism and Evolution

Another direction of attack on evolution comes in the form of inciting the name of racism. Recently the Louisiana Legislature is considering a measure that would seek to ban the teaching of evolution in favor of creationism because "Darwin "teaches that some humans have evolved further than others." That he "holds that people of color are 'savages,'" and that in doing so he has "provided the main rationale for modern racism."²

Charles Darwin was most likely not a racist as we would think of a racist today.  In the early 1800's when Charles grew up, slavery was still a way of life and was perpetuated by the society of the time.  Changes were in the works but back then it was not uncommon to justify the slavery of another race because they were considered inferior.  This was not a notion invented by evolution, but there may very well have been pressure on Darwin to assist the slave owners in their cause by suggesting a biological justification for continued subjugation of "inferior" races.  Unfortunately, men of science in those days were often dependent on the funding of wealthy benefactors in order to continue their research - many of whom were slave owners. 

Whatever personal convictions or social pressures may have influenced Darwin's less than clear wording regarding the races, he would undoubtedly turn over in his grave at the notion that his less important personal views would one day be used to destroy his own theories and lifetimes work, and the work of hundreds of researchers to follow, because he chose not to cause even more of a stir by defying the notions of the races which were prevalent for his day. 

Darwin was by all accounts a rather meek individual.  If he were alive today he would certainly not be running out to join the KKK.  These were not the issues that absorbed his able mind anyway.  And scientists today would no more consider using evolutionary theories to promote racism than would today's Christians promote stoning disrespectful children to death.  I mean COME ON!

Louisiana Get A Grip!!

More to come as I get it edited and ready.  Please stand by...

#1 Quoted originally from The Philadelphia Inquirer by The Oregonian - This Week, Tuesday, July 21, 1998 in an article entitled In Search of New Beginnings by Faye Flam, Knight-Ridder Newspapers  [Back to Text]

#2 From the article Louisiana calls Darwin a racist by Fiona Morgan, http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2001/05/04/darwin/print.html  [Back to Text]