SOME TRIPS BACK IN TIME
(Posted 2010-04-26 09:07:22 by Ray Lopez)

I've been spending some time lately reading online articles and blogs about
many different aspects of religion, particularly the issue of science and
religion.

One of the many things that bugs me about the mostly vapid discussions you
see online are the arguments made by folks on both sides of the
believers/non-believers divide related to evolutionary theory.  Most
atheists tend to believe that one cannot be a Christian and simultaneously
believe in evolutionary theory of the Neo-Dariwnian sort.  Unfortunately,
there are a lot of Christians, particularly fundamentalists, who are quite
happy to fit right into that stereotype.  They'll argue passionately
against Neo-Darwinian evolution, or at best will use the cringe-worthy
phrase, "It's just a theory, not a fact."

I happen to be a person of deep Christian faith who also happens to be a
long-time student and teacher of evolutionary theory.  To me, there is no
conflict whatsoever between my faith and the paradigm of Neo-Darwinism.

Almost 20 years ago, I wrote a short article about this debate.  I wrote
this article for a little electronic magazine I was writing on the old
StarText system.  StarText was a text-based BBS and was one of the first
online services and virtual communities in existence prior to the rise of
the Internet.  The electronic magazines on this system were basically like
blogs.  You could write whatever you wanted to, and then readers would send
you electronic messages with their opinions on what you wrote.

Two copies of my little e-zine (called the "Darwin Times") have been stored
away on the Internet (I've since lost the other copies).  Given my recent
encounters with people who can't seem to understand how a person of faith
can believe in evolution, I've decided to reprint a portion of an article
here.  I've not edited it, and paste it here the way it appeared on
StarText back in 1991.

** Commentary:  Evolution or Evilution?*

_We have all heard it before for our entire lives.  Unfortunately,
many people are under the mistaken impression that to believe
life evolved and IS evolving on this planet is to NOT believe
in God and the Bible.  In my view, nothing could be further
from the truth.

This anti-evoutionary perspective has been around for as long as
evolutionary theory has.  One of the earliest opponents to
evolution in general was the Reverend William Paley.  In 1802,
he published a book wherein he described all of the remarkable
beauty, utility, and diversity of nature, and used this to defend
his claim that God created everything by design.  These ideas
form the roots of modern creationist thought.

Nowadays, people read the Book of Genesis in the Bible and
basically say to themselves, "Yes, the Lord put together the
universe, including all of the critters on this planet."  Why
should this view of Genesis preclude the existence or validity
of Darwinism and of evolution in general?  Because (supposedly)
the Lord made everything AS IT IS!  To say otherwise is to say
that somehow the Lord is imperfect, that He must sort of try
different things to find the right things that work.

Well, I do not quite know how to respond to that.  All I can say
is this:  Why does the story of Genesis recount, very broadly, the
basic story of the EVOLUTION OF LIFE AND MATTER ON THIS PLANET?
Let's look a little more closely at the first chapter of Genesis.

First, there was the earth, formless and desolate.  Then came
light, along with night and day.  Then came the sky (our
atmosphere), followed by dry land, called Earth, and patches
of water called Sea.  Then came the plants, then the creatures
of the sea, and the birds.  Then the Lord commanded that the
earth produce animal life, herds and herds of it.  Finally,
we came along, and on the seventh day, the Lord rested.

As a maven of science and evolutionary theory, this scenario
sounds very familiar to me.  As a matter of fact, it is the
same, basic scenario that science recounts as the way in which
the earth was formed, and the way in which life evolved on this
planet.  A formless planet forms an atmosphere from the gases
it emits from volcanic eruptions, etc.  Land is formed, and the
seas are defined.  Primitive plants begin to thrive as they
evolve from some sort of "primordial soup."  Millions of years
later, there are primitive sea animals.  They evolve into ever
more complex animals, and eventually come to land, where they
thrive and diversify.  The reptiles give way to the mammals
and before you know it, after only about 4 or 5 billiion years,
here we are, reading StarText!

Why did God tell us this story the way in which He did?  I
mean, if He wanted to, it seems to me that He could have just
said, "The universe and earth were all created in one big
swoop."  Why didn't He?  In my view, it was because He was
telling us THE TRUTH.  The truth being that He formed all of
the life on this planet by letting evolution take its course.
There is nothing wrong with saying this, in my view.  Religion
and the Bible tell us WHY things have happened the way they
have.  Science is telling us HOW things happen the way they
have, with absolutely no reference to WHY.  When Sir Issac
Newton introduced his laws of physics, people did not chastise
him for somehow messing around with the Lord's natural order
of things.  Instead, Newton was praised by some for having
been able to describe the inner workings of the Lord's
universe, and nothing more.  In the same way, it seems to
me that the mechanisms of evolution worked out by Darwin
(i.e., natural selection) simply describe the inner workings
of how our Lord has managed to create such a beautiful
diversity of life on this planet.  To ask HOW something
came about and to ask WHY something came about are to ask
two completely different questions.  This is a fact most
do not realise.

Something else that often comes up is the fact that evolution
has occured over billions of years, while the Bible clearly
states that it took six "days."  What is a "day" to the Lord?
To me, it seems very presumptuous of us to think that one day
is the same length to the Lord as it is to us.  To the Lord,
billions of years are probably the same as a day, or a week,
or whatever.  Who are we to say that God and the Book of Genesis
must stick to a 24 hour day?  Who's not to say that the Book of
Genesis says six days because people then (and now) could
not possible conceive of ANYTHING occuring over billions of years?

These are some of the basic reasons why I feel that modern
evolutionary theory need not contradict religious beliefs or
thought.  All of this is simply my opinion.  Science and
evolutionary theory deal with the HOW question of life on
our planet.  Religion deals with the WHY question of life on
earth.  These are entirely different questions, and must be
looked at from entirely different perspectives.
_

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