| This is one question that has sparked a lot of debate in recent times. Did we evolve, by a process of natural selection, or were we specially created as-is, along with all other creatures, by a God who made the world in six days? Staunch Evolutionists will argue that yes, we did most definitely evolve and it was by a process which was entirely "natural"--ie, God is nowehre to be seen. There was no divine planning, no divine influence, no "let there be light", no....well, you get the picture. Things happened by random chance alone, end of story. To a staunch evolutionist, evolution is a complete explanation for our existence and leaves little or no room at all for a divine Creator existing outside of the percievable Universe. These guys love REASON! Logic and analysis are above all. To them, there is nothing that exists which isn't ultimately percievable by the five human senses (though perhaps with the aid of tools such as a microscope). Staunch Creationists tend to rely on a literal interpretation of scripture. They believe that the opening chapters of the book of Genesis are an accurate record of the formation of the Earth and everything on it. They believe the Earth to be approximately 6,000 to 7,000 years old, if I recall correctly, and that all the species we see today are just as they were when they were created during the six days (which they believe to be 24-hour, Earth days) spoken of in Genesis. A recent trend in this movement has been the idea of "Creation Science," which attempts to advocate the idea of creation as a scientific theory. These two points of view are of a mutually exclusive nature--one says there is no God and there is only evolution, the other says there is no evolution, there is only God. Naturally, advocates of these views have a hard time getting along. Each side attempts to block the other. However, some people favor a middle way. The philosopher Aristotle said, wisely, that extremes tend to be unhealthy (for example, cowardice is extreme lack of bravery, and bravado is bravery so extreme that it is outright foolish--true bravery lies somewhere in the middle between these two extremes). The idea here is to find some set of ideas somewhere in between staunch evolutionism and staunch creationism which might be a healthier, more balanced, and perhaps more holisticly accurate view. Is there a way to look at evolution such that it allows for the activity of God? Or, to ask the same question another way, is there a way to read the scripture such that it could include evolution? Perhaps there is. A Middle-Way look at Staunch Evolutionism First, kudos: evolutionists remind us that reason is a valid and very effective mental tool. Their belief that this world is percievable and understandable is the very belief that opened up the doorway to science away back beginning with the Greeks. These guys have faith in the human mind--I like that. By placing living things into an evolutionary family tree, and by placing us in that setting, they also give us an important reminder about how Nature works. Nature likes consistency, in that what is fundamentally true is true across the board (ie, gravity pulls "down," and that's the same for everybody). Nature does not like radical discontinuity, or "broken chains"--Nature is a system where everything is connected to everything else, like in food chains, and in the way species of animals are related to one another. There really is a family tree of living things: cats are mammals, which is just one form of animal with the distinction of posessing a spinal cord--there are others, (ie, fish) and cats are just a leaf off of that branch. And animals which posess spinal cords are just one form of multicellular creature, and multicelled life is just one broad category of living thing. Nature likes to connect things together, and evolutionists remind us that this goes for us, too. Nature does not like to have things fundamentally separated from one another. Take Einstien's E=mc^2, for example--matter and energy are connected, where we used to think they were completely different. Nature does not like discontinuity. The reminder that we fall into the scheme of Nature kind of takes us off our high horse and serve to give us needed humility. But now, un-kudos: why did we have to kill the idea of God? A staunch evolutionist would probably answer that the idea of an active God introduces an instablilty into the whole picture: how could you ever predict what God was going to do? Evoluionists stand for the idea that there is an underlying order to the Universe which makes it comprehendable, and they may fear that to have a God would knock that askew. They as scientists may as well sit at home because everything could change without warning, and there's nothing to be done about it. How could we really trust that the basic scientific laws would remain stable from day to day? they ask. Which is not a bad point. They are not really threatened by God per se, but rather by the idea that He can (and by creationist accounts does) intervene in the affairs of Earth. But, since the idea of divine intervention is almost always thought of as an indespensible part of the nature of God, evolutionists conclude that they are forced to throw out the idea of God as a whole. This is a terrible penalty to pay, because by losing God you lose a lot. A world without God is sort of like a brown cardboard box--plain, dry, not so attractive, and completely boring. Lifeless. There is no room for wonder, amazement, dreams are a waste of time, and nothing can be anything more than what it appears. If nothing else, the idea that God exists, and that thre is something beyond this world brings hope. This world can be hard, full of sharp corners and jagged edges. It means a lot to think that that's not all there is to life. Suggestions? Just as the Evolutionists like being able to know how things can work, they need to broaden their point of view so that they can learn about the widest possible range of things. Perhaps what we need here is a different way to look at God. Let's put aside the image of a God existing wholly outside the Universe, and who frequently intervenes, *interrupting* the rational, natural flow of cause and effect. In its place, let's construct a different image. What if instead, God was a part of the Universe, a sort of meta-consciousness that moves life like a river moves a floating leaf--the river carries the leaf in a broad, general direction by force of its flow, but within that, the leaf may move about in a much more random pattern, which the river has less influence over. This agrees nicely with the evolutionist ideal of everything sharing similarities, everything being related. Just as man is not separate and apart from the animal kingdom, God is not separate and apart from the Universe. God also does not interrupt the fundamental truths scientists rely on because He underlies and exemplifies all of those truths. The leaves retain their freedom and identity, but at the same time the river flows on. If God is pictured in this way, there is no need to reject Him while at the same time believing in evolution. A Middle-Way Look at Staunch Creationism: First, kudos: if nothing else, supporters of Creationism stick to their guns. They're loyal! Loyalty is a virtue, so the Creationists earn respect for that. What creationists give us is the stability of faith. That's a thing about humans in general--we really love stability. Evolutionists crave the stability of logic, reason, and creationists present us with a second form of stability which is based on unflagging belief. Creationists also remind us of something important: we are God's children. That means that we are loved, protected, and it means that we have value in God's eyes and that we should therefore have value to each other. This gives us dignity. Furhtermore, since the creationist view very much asserts the existence of God, it therefore avoids the pitfalls to which staunch evolutionism was subject. With staunch creationism, we may believe in the unseen and place our hope outside of the cold, physical world. This is so much more emotionally fulfilling, and in its way, Creationism gives us a different remider of our place in the cosmic scheme which is also very important. Now, un-kudos: Creationists get upset (and not unreasonably) about the philosophy that gets attatched to evolutionism--the idea that there is nothing (including God) beyond the phyyiscal universe, that everything is reducable to its component parts, and that morality is entirely relative.... Creationists don't like this philosophy and I don't either. They probably feel threatened by it, and they want to defend themselves. Unfortunately, they do something similar to what the evolutionists did--since the creationists automatically associate the purely scientific theory of evolution with the philosophy some people attatch to it, they throw out evolution as a whole--much like evolutionists felt they had to throw the idea of God out as a whole. I think it was a mistake for the evolutionists, and I think it is a mistake here. Both sides are blinding themselves to something--but why do we seek blindness? I don't think that's such a good approach. When we blind ourselves to things, we are almost always sailing in dangerous waters. Creationists also tend to ask the question, "if you say life started with a single-celled organism, than where did that single-celled organism come from?" I say, good question. They may say triumphantly that this disproves evolution, but that's where I say, "not so fast". Evolution in iit's most fundamental form, really talks about what happens after life arisies which is capable of reproducing itself and passing on genetic information. But they have unearthed an interesting point--just how was it that a collection of inorganic molecules became coordinated in that orderly way which we call a "living cell"? What gave that cell the spark of life? The Creationists have not struck a blow against the "real" (for lack of a better word) theory of evolution, but they have struck a blow against a worldview which sees no room for God to work. Probably the biggest problem comes with the way Genesis talks about the six days of creation. Are those 24-hour, Earth days? I tend to say no. After all, wasn't God in Heaven when He was creating? In Heaven, for God, time can flow very differently than it does here on Earth. A Day, to God, might be billions of years to us. However, Creationists much prefer to understand scripture with as little of this non-literal interpretation or inference as possible. Yet there is the old question of Cain's wife--where did she come from? She is mentioned in Genesis 4:17. Either another woman besides Eve was created, which we were not told about earlier, or Adam and Eve have had a daughter we were not informed of (and the implications of her being Cain's wife are rather uncomfortable). Here, we are forced to interpret and go beyond what would be considered strictly literal. I would ask, why would interpretation be "allowed" here, but not in relation to the six Days? But why wouldn't Genesis just come out and say it if these Days weren't the standard, 24-hour package? Why didn't Genesis read "and there was the first Day, (which was really something like a billion years, guys....)"? There could be a really simple reason why. Picture yourself as a parent with a five year old child, who has just asked "where do babies come from?" for the first time. A parent attmepting to answer that question for a five year old child is probably not going to start talking about genes and gametes and embryo development and other "Human Biology stuff" unless it is in a very simple manner. The answer is going to be presented in the simplest terms (and probably least embarrassing terms, since adults can get embarrassed about this sort of thing) and it is not going to go into some of the formal, thorough detail a biology text would in answering the same question. It's probably going to be different from the way that same parent will explain things to the same child about the same subject ten years later when the child has become an adolescent. The information and the answer is tailored to the person who is going to receive it, for the benefit or the person asking the question. Now change the picture slightly--say about 1000 BCE man has just asked for the first time, "where did human beings come from?" and God is trying to aswer the question. The man asking the question has no idea that microscopic, single celled organisms exit. He has no idea there are cells, period. Genes? What are those? He has never seen a fossil, more than likely, and his sense of time probably only covers about ten or twenty years at most. He has no concept of a million years, or a billon years. He probably doesn't even have the numbers one million and one billion in his vocabulary! If God is trying to answer the question for this man, He would never be able to present the idea of slowly evolving life that descended from single-celled organisms that lived in the sea and began to change over billions of years. The man asking the question would never understand God's response, and his question would more or less stay unanswered. Perhaps the story in Genesis is less literal and more of a simplified retelling of what occurred, so that the real point of the story--that man comes from God--would be easy to see. That's the real heart of the answer, and it would get swamped under if the answer got as technical as a full-scale evolutionary theory which the poor man has no hope of really understanding. Suggestions? Just as Creationists value human beings, I would urge them to value the works of human reason--reason does not explain all things and it should not overreach its bounds, but I think Creationists see this very clearly and I don't think that they would over-emphasize reason. I simply urge them to trust it. Evolution is certain things, and other things it is not. I think if both sides understand this, they may be able to approach each other without feeling threatened. Thoughts From the Middle: What really makes the most sense to me is a system of thought that includes both God and Evolution. It helps us to explain certain things, like how a nonliving soup of chemicals could form something which was alive--even just a bacterium. Life is made of protiens, sugars, carbon--we could mix those up and zap it with electricity and what do we get? A big mess. But somehow, it all actually worked one time through. (We're all sitting here, aren't we?) This mysterious leap into life is somethinhg I talk about in the Go Figure: Genetics paragraph. There's also the origin of the Universe itself: we figure that there was a Big Bang, where a small, fascinatingly unusual object called "singularity" exploded and when it expanded and cooled it became the Universe we live in. Great! That's good scientific work, but I have one tiny question: where did the singularity come from? True science does not answer that question with certainty because it is wise enough to admit that it can't really tell us. I absolutely cannot discount the results and conclusions we find when we use reason, but I am forced to admit that even reason has a limit beyond which it cannot pass. Reason has not yet explained the human soul, and it may never explain it. I even believe the wisest possible God would have used evolution to give rise to life. Systems which are healthy grow and change, and systems which do not grind to a halt, stagnate, and ultimately die. We see this everywhere in Nature--change is very important. Therefore, creating life with a built-in mechanism for change and adapting to change gives all forms of life (humans included) the highest chance of success. I think that it does not dishonor us but rather honors us that we are a part of that evolutionary succession, not only included in Nature's safekeeping, but also surrounded by a family of beauty because we bear relation to the magnificent tree, the trusting kitten, and the majestic whale. Nor do I think it dishonors God to believe that He did not, perhaps, specifically design all forms of life. I think that there was evolution, and by the evidence surrounding us every day, it is a powerful process capable of producing things which inspire awe. The Creator who could concieve of such a process, and who could be so patient as to wait billions of years to see the arrival of man and to trust Nature to do her work is great indeed. Some people still worry that if we evolved, that distances us from God. That it means He's not our "real" creator. But when I think about that, something interesting comes to mind. At Jesus' baptism by John, the Bible tells us there came a voice saying "this is my son, with whom I am well pleased". I have heard, once, that this phrase was used in the culture of the time to seal an adoption--like for example, if a man's brother were to die and the man adopted his brother's children into his own family. This could be mistaken--I am not sure--but something about it feels right, like it is fitting. For God, it seems, has adopted us--by loving us as His children, and according to Christian belief by sending His Son do die for our sins and to reconcile us with Him. But adoption is a funny thing, expecially in today's culture. When we talk about an adopted child's "real" parents, we're talking about his or her biological parents. We seem to assume that the biological bond is somehow more important. But...is that really accurate? Who are the child's "real" parents--those who passed on their genes, or those the child calls "Mommy" and "Daddy"? The parents who have adopted the child, who read it bedtime stories, give it hugs, teach it, care for it--those are the child's real parents. (I recently read an article co-authored by Fred Rogers--that's the Mr. Rogers!--on this subject, which was expressing these views.) Evolution tells us that nature is, in essence, our biological parent. But who is our "real" parent? Nautre is essentially blind, neiter bending nor stopping for anything nor anyone, taking notice of no man. Naure is, but God is with us. He teaches us, reaches out to us, hears our prayers at bedtime. He has adopted us. He is our real parent. Adoption doesn't change that. It does not make the love of God for Man less, or Man's love for God less, and it does not invalidate hte relationship between them. By refusing to blind ourselves to science or to spirituality, we illuminate a whole new perspective on the nature of things. I think there's really a lot we can see if we open ourselves up to different ideas and try to see where things fit together rather than where they come apart. But, now I want to know: what do you think? |
| 7) Creation or Evolution? |
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