The End

I have quoted this line before, but still love it. I quote it again having now read everything leading up to it. I [finally] finished reading Origin of Species - a long, difficult read (with a bit of an abuse of punctuation and the run-on sentence - I counted in one line no fewer than 13 commas!), but well worth it.

I have wanted for a long time to have a better understanding of evolutionary theory, and reading the beginning - Darwin's theory of Natural Selection - gave me a much better understanding of it than I even expected. So many of the "it couldn't be that way because of __________" arguments against evolution are answered here, in this book, written 150 years ago - that so few opponents ever pick up! Would people still question the holes in the fossil record if they had read Darwin's answer to that problem, already written for us to see? Would people understand the significance of similarity in embryos, or homologous bone structure if they read Darwin's writing on it? When you get into it, it is truly fascinating.

My brother-in-law James (who finished Origin far ahead of me!) quoted parts of the last chapter that are well worth reading, even if you don't have time for the whole book. As James says, there isn't much of a summary you can give that would do this work justice. I am astounded at just how much Darwin understood, even without our modern understanding of genetics. I am also amazed by just how much Darwin knew about creation and the lengths he went to to learn even more (digging through bird poop on multiple occasions and more!).

Beyond that, reading the Origin of Species makes one wonder how our society today has re-interpreted "Darwinism" to be godless. Darwin himself refers more than just once to the "Creator" in his writing. Details of his life indicate he struggled with his own religious beliefs as he was told by the church that they did not align with his theory. His writing echoes his struggle - containing a quote from "a celebrated author and divine" who saw religion and evolution as compatible. I wonder how many Christians and non-Christians alike are turned off from science (the study of Creation!), Christianity, or both as a result of being unable to harmonize God's word given in Scripture and in Nature?

Darwin looked to the future, to the young naturalists of his day, hoping they might be able to move beyond the "it's always been this way" attitude of the older generation and accept his theory. I hope something similar for the church today: that our young people might see evolution as the beautiful development of God's creation - all part of his plan - rather than as something to continue using as a wedge between the Church and the world - "for thus only can the load of prejudice by which this subject is overwhelmed be removed" - and no longer be a stumbling block for so many.

From Scratch

If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.

~ Carl Sagan

Grandeur

Darwin's Creation

I'm not sure how I missed hearing about this, but was asked about the new movie on Charles Darwin just yesterday, and had to look it up. Creation: the true story of Charles Darwin is based on the biography "Annie's Box" written by one of Darwin's great-great-grandchildren. I have not yet seen it, but the trailers and video clips show the film's purpose - portraying the struggle Darwin faced of reconciling his theory with his (and his wife's) faith. It certainly looks interesting, and likely shows a face of Darwin that far too many Christians have never seen nor considered. He was raised in a household of faith and considered a life as a priest before becoming the naturalist we all know him as. Given the positions held by the church at that time (and by many today), he saw his theory as writing God out of the story, like so many still do.

It seems a great irony to me that now, 150 years later, so many Christians who reject his science outright nevertheless embrace his theology wholeheartedly.

How technical....?

Today, my church started the "Bible in 90 days" challenge, and having never actually made it through the whole book, I decided I'll give it a try. We were encouraged to all read the same version, so all have a common starting point, so I pulled out my old (and rather beat up) NIV Quest Study Bible ('94 edition!) I got in middle school and opened up to Genesis 1. I don't remember seeing this before, but found the following blurb at the bottom of the first page:

How technical is this description of creation? (chs. 1-2)
While the "days" of creation could be either a figure of speech or literal 24-hour periods, this passage is nevertheless an orderly narration of what took place. It tells us that there is intelligence, meaning and purpose behind all existence. In other words, the word of God is seen in the method of creation as well as the source of creation (Psalm 33:6,9; Heb. 11:3). Yet human beings have been given the privilege to explore, through scientific investigation, how God may have engineered these events, and how long he took [emphasis added]. Most understand the six days of creation to represent long periods of time simply because 24-hour days were not created until the fourth day. Actually, the word day is used in chs. 1-2 in three distinct ways: (1) as approximately 12 hours of daylight (1:5); (2) as 24 hours (1:14) and (3) as a period of time involving, at the very minimum, the whole creative activity from day one to day seven (see 2:4, where the word that is translated when is the same word that is elsewhere translated day)....

While the "orderly narration" phrase could be interpreted in a couple ways, judging by what follows I think the writers had in mind an "organized" narration, not one "in order" of how it happened. Nice to see this in a pretty common young adult bible - especially one printed 16 years ago.

I like the line I've italicized - it is indeed a privilege to be able to study the wonderful works of nature, especially for the Christian who can fully appreciate their value as part of God's creation.

What is our goal?

The so-called Great Commission gives us, as Christians, our "homework", shall we say, from God.

Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

A couple of recent events stick out in my mind, reminding me how utterly unimportant to fulfilling the Great Commission the "creation-evolution debate" is. Really, does it matter, ultimately, how God created the earth? Will it impact your faith? Your salvation? What if God seeded earth with creatures from some other planet - would it change a thing?

I rather think not.

On the other hand, consider the results of arguing the point.

This past year was the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth, and the 150th anniversary of his publication of the Origin of Species. As a biology teacher, naturally I had to do SOMETHING to commemorate it. I started reading a few short bios of Darwin's life. (Yes, this is relevant, bear with me!)  I knew before I started that Darwin started his life in the Church. However, I learned a bit more about him that was somewhat surprising - and very sad. Darwin initially intended, at the urging of his father, to enter the priesthood. That was before his travels on the Beagle. We all know the story - naturalist on the HMS Beagle, visited the Galapagos and saw the finches (and a whole lot more, but they're the ones who got famous), proposed the idea of Natural Selection, and became the black sheep of the Church.

The thing that hit me about Darwin's story, though, was that he started as a Christian! In the end, he gave up his faith, because he found too much evidence for natural selection. Not just that though - the Church told him that his ideas and the Bible were incompatible. It was not natural selection, evolution, studying nature that drove him from God, but the Church itself.

Around the same time this year, some friends shared with me about their granddaughter and her friend (I'll call them Alice and Bill, just to make this easier). Alice is a Christian; Bill is an atheist. Alice and Bill made a deal - he'd come visit her church if she came to an atheist's meeting with him. The meeting Alice ended up going to was a birthday party - the 200th birthday of one Charles Darwin.

Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ; atheists grasp on to Darwin, as the man who made God unnecessary for the creation (beginning, I suppose) of life. What if Christians didn't so forcefully reject Darwin, natural selection and evolution? Six days, ok, fine - but why the big deal about it?

The Christian church (the vocal part of it, anyway) has turned the HOW of creation into dogma, rather that the minor footnote it should be in our walks of faith. The result? We are driving people AWAY from the Church, and the Christ we are called to make disciples for. Is it really that important?

I'm fairly confident that if we asked Jesus whether it was more important to make disciples or to make 6-day-creationists.... the creationists are not the winning answer. It is time to drop the small stuff and come back to the main point - glorifying our God and Creator through spreading his message. The important one.

Why?

First, I am a Christian. Second, I am a Biologist. I've been asked before, by someone certainly a bit uninformed, if that's possible, to be a Christian and a Biologist.

"Um, yes. Why wouldn't a Christian want to study God's creation?"

All around me, every day, I see the evidence of His work - the plants, animals, rocks, clouds, sun, moon and stars that He made. NOT to study it, not to learn about it, not to appreciate it and be intrigued by what it has to say about HIM - that, to me, is sin. Not to care for it, steward it, that is sin.

"But what about evolution?"

I remember several conversations I had in school that still stand out in my mind as defining in my ideas about creation. The oldest was with a neighbor, the father of one of my friends, and a Catholic. I don't recall why, but we got to discussing what would have caused the Big Bang. I remember him asking, "Why not God?"

That simple question, so long ago, opened a new line of thought. My home church was not one that dwelt on issues of "Creation vs. Evolution" (for which I am thankful!), so I had not ever thought much about it. I remember rearranging the continents to form Pangaea back in elementary school without questioning the age of the earth. But nevertheless, "Why not God?" helped me to think about it - about what I believed.

Later, in AP biology, I remember studying the earth's timeline and looking at what emerged when. Hmm, it sort of lines up with Genesis, more or less. And Genesis 1 is a bit poetic, anyway - like something written to make a point, not give details. Besides, "a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like a day." Well, then, why not a million? God wrote it, right? God-breathed and such? Old-earther, to be sure. But still, every bit of biology I studied, I became more and more convinced of a God behind it.

A few years later, I sat in Biology 101 at my Christian college. The first week of class was spent looking at several different views of creation. We didn't spend a whole lot of time on the "6-day" variety, though obviously many students came in with that perspective. Gap theory (bit wacky, if you ask me), Day-Age theory (what? you mean there are other people who agree with my high school musings?), and Theistic Evolution (I learned later there are more shades of theistic evolutionists than there are colors of crayons).

Four more years of college, two years working at that college with those professors (not a 6-day-er among them, by the way), and two years teaching high school biology and looking more at the evidence that exists that led to the Theory of Evolution - every new thing I learned pointed more and more to evolution as the process that created our earth and everything on it.

But God? Here I'll steal from a speaker I heard once (sorry, can't remember his name!). Which is more impressive: a God who "waved a magic wand" and everything poofed into existence, or one who created a universe and all the laws in it such that at a word, a beautiful, elaborate system would begin, that over billions of years would by itself produce the world we live in now and all the living things in it? I have to lean toward the latter.

Remember, we are called to wisdom. We are told that creation itself speaks to God's truths. Should we then set aside wisdom and reason when looking at God's creation? I think not. Creation is God's, and he has given us the ability to reason - to waste that would be to say to God we do not appreciate his gifts to us. All signs in nature point to an old earth, and many more to the evolution of species on earth. I choose not to believe in a God that deceives, planting evidence in His creation to lead us astray. That is not my God. I choose instead to honor my God by valuing his creation and studying it to learn more about him.

Is scripture not important? Certainly that is not my meaning. But all written text (even this, which you probably read in your own native language), MUST be interpreted. Think about the word "no". Think about the near-infinite number of meanings this one word might have, depending on tone of voice, context, and more. Remember the parables of the New Testament. Did the prodigal son really exist? Does it matter - does it change the meaning of the story - if it did not?

The same is true for Genesis 1. Read it - then read, say, Genesis 25. The latter is certainly narrative, but the former? It is possible, at least, that it is instead a story. It tells us clearly that God created, and valued his creation, and I believe that was it's intent. The HOW of the creation is not the focus of the story - nor is it the least bit theologically important.

Biologically, the HOW is fascinating and useful. It helps us understand the world we live in, the relationships between different living things (different parts of creation!), the ecology of different areas, the potential impacts of changes to an ecosystem, and so much more.

This blog has been rolling around in my mind (never being started for lack of a name... this current name is on trial!) for quite some time. My goal is to share articles, ideas, and arguments relating to science, evolution, and the interplay between science and religion. Comments are welcome, but please, thoughtful, respectful posts only. Questioning, intellectual discussions are the goal!