God v Evolution

I am a Christian and do not believe in evolution. Let's just get that out there right now. After hearing that statement, you likely thought one of two things - hey strong work brother for believing in God! Or hey man, how could you let religion control your mind like that! 

Am I right?

The funny thing is, I cannot for the life of my figure out why these two thoughts would be opposing. My personal faith offers no objection to the theory of evolution. I believe in the creation as reported in the Bible with God's creation occurring in the seven creative periods - the creation of the day/night, stars, heavens, light, water, plants, animals, man and culminating in the creation of women.  

As I see it, God could have easily used millions or billions or gillions of years to let His creations evolve. The Bible teaches that God created the Earth in seven periods, not 24-hour days, though some may believe the latter. The "third period" may have very well been when the microorganisms turned into plants and the "fifth period" when they turned into animals. 

I do not doubt that it was God who started the process, regardless of how it occurred.  Whether He plopped the creations down during each creative period or let them evolve over millions of years, it makes no difference to my personal faith. Maybe he crushed some stars together a few billion years ago and then they exploded back out, creating the universe. I have no spiritual qualms about the theory and if that is how it all went down, it would in no way diminish my faith or beliefs (I do not claim to represent the teachings of my own religion). 

It does seem odd to me that the goal of teaching evolution seems to be disproving God and shaming His followers, more than furthering scientific knowledge. Seriously. Read just about anything on evolution and a large portion of what you read will be devoted towards informing you how dumb these religious zealots are who do not believe in it. I can learn about black holes, Pluto, gravity, or the physics that keeps it all moving and not once read about God. Once evolution comes into the discussion, everything changes.  

After a study of Darwin and his "theory" and the "scientific proofs" of evolution, I'm having an even more difficult time buying into this. I am going to explain my feelings by looking at Charles Darwin, the role of hate, the beginning of our earth, the missing link and DNA evidence. Enjoy the ride.... :-)

CHARLES DARWIN
Charles Darwin is credited for much about what we know with regards to evolution. He definitely was not the first to theorize about evolution but he did bring his theory to the mainstream. 

He was born in to a very wealthy family in the 1800's. As he grew older he attended college, got bored, and then decided to sail the world. Not a bad plan at all!

Long story short, he traveled the world and while in the Galapagos Islands, he noticed something peculiar about the finches on the different islands. The birds on each island appeared nearly identical, however, the birds on different islands had different beaks.

His thought was that a bunch of these birds were blown over from South American. Finches of all types blew over and only those who had the physical build allowing them to adapt to that specific island, lived.

Thus began Darwin's life long study of why certain animals seemed to change throughout history. He was fortunate enough to come from a family of wealth allowing him to dedicate his time to his studies. After reading the painfully long and super popular - On the Origin of Species - I lost all faith in the theory of evolution. So many people seem to be clinging to its teachings, but I feel no one has really read what Darwin had to say. Of course, we Christians might not be doing much better with the Bible, but I digress!

The funny thing is that during Darwin's life, it was blasphemy to not believe in the Bible's account (as accepted by the major religions of that era) of the creation and talk of evolution was outlawed. Things didn't get much better for those who believed in evolution for the next hundred years. You either believed one way, or were shunned. 

In 1968, things started to swing in the other direction and the supreme court ruled that all state laws prohibiting the teaching of evolution were unconstitutional.  It is difficult in our day to imagine the need for such a ruling. Though I do not believe in evolution, it warms my little heart that the supreme court allowed for different views and ways of thinking. Unfortunately, the openness of thought did not last long.

Over the past 50 years, we have quickly recaptured the hate and closed mindedness of the 1800's, though the feelings are now pointed in the opposite direction.  We have now come full circle (well I guess it is actually half circle) as only Darwin's theory of evolution or close variations of it are allowed to be taught in schools.

Billions are spent in lawsuits so that no one will learn that a large portion of the Earth believes that a higher being created the earth. If a teacher mentions that there are those who believe in the account of Genesis, they will be fired and portrayed as hateful monsters attempting to force their values on others. I read about one teacher who was in trouble for teaching that many believe in the Bible's account of the creation and he was an atheist!

Teaching students that there are those on the earth who believe in a higher being, really makes some people angry! Saying that this higher being created the Earth, or that there are those who believe God created the Earth, is just downright offensive. It seems the lawsuits must continue until we are all forced into believing one way. The moment God comes up in a conversation, lawsuits are headed your way.

I find this especially bizarre when you look at the percentage of the world's population that are either Christian, Muslim or Jewish (50-60% of the world, depending on your source) and believe in the beginning books of the Bible. However, the moment God or Allah comes up in a conversation, lawsuits are headed your way. 

The passion used to degrade those who do not believe in Darwin's belief of evolution is fascinating and is what has drawn me to this topic. Hateful comments from people citing their favorite cable news channel, politician or more commonly memes from Facebook, showing that anyone believing different than they do is obviously stupid and blind. In fact, there is a good 99.9% chance that someone will be sending me a private email after posting this, asking why I am closed-minded or refuse to see the "facts".   

There is something very wrong when one must use hatred 
and lawsuits to convert others to their way of thinking

It is fascinating to me that if a belief were so obvious and true, that the need would exist for lawsuits and legislation to force people to believe in it. There are no lawsuits forcing science books to include teachings about gravity. The rotation of our Earth around the sun will be taught without lawyers, politicians or celebrities mocking and suing those whose beliefs are different than their own.  

I find that those who shout the loudest, who are the most angrily, and are the most condescending, are often the ones who are in the wrong. If you do not have a legitimate argument, you turn to mocking and degrading and that is where we have ended up today.

THE BEGINNING
We are taught that it all started several billion years ago when a giant explosion caused the formation of our wonderful planet.  As luck would have it, this planet ended up cycling the exact distance from a star with the perfect amount of atmosphere, oxygen, water, rain, earth and all the key ingredients in precise proportions needed for life.    

Miraculously an organism came to life on this violent young planet, likely as a result of a lightning blast.  No one knows how and even with today's knowledge we cannot duplicate this creation of life or even come to a reasonable consensus on how it may have occurred.  These astonishing events of course, only happened on our planet and not on others. I'm sure lightning is creating life all over our planet today, we would just never know because life already exists here and there is no way of telling the old lightning creations from the new. 

This amazing super-organism, was then able to find food, oxygen and was able to quickly reproduce itself before becoming extinct.  Not too shabby considering I can't keep a plant or goldfish alive for more than a couple of days and that so many viruses and bacteria can only live outside the body for a few hours. This is even after billions of years to "evolve" and grow stronger. The original super-organism not only lives but thrives and multiplies.

The original organism then split and evolved with some going to water and turning to fish who swim, others going to the air and learning to fly while others stay on land.The ones on land (which may have come back out of the water) turn in to lizards, which then turn in to monkeys which then turn in to humans and voila, here I am McDonalds using their free wi-fi and drinking a Diet Coke.

These little organisms evolved into every plant, animal, insect, man, germ, disease and anything that has life. Though this initial organism lived and reproduced on its own, nearly every living thing that came from it evolved into males and females, needing each other to reproduce. It was a slow evolution for each of these and occurred over millions of years.

It is also interesting to note that over 99% of species that grew from this micro-organism, who have grown stronger to adapt to their climates, have since become extinct. Yup, the tiny organism grew, evolved and thrived and then over 99% die out and go extinct. And so many of the living things, need to consume other living things to even live! Quite the miracle huh?!

Yup, this is how we all get here and if you don't believe it you are definitely lacking in intelligence and have a closed mind. Really?

Back in my college days, I took a few physics classes. The teachers were constantly eager and excited for the next break in science or the next proof of how things on Earth work. They fully believed in the theory of evolution, but were very open about the myriad of unproved arguments. As with Darwin, they looked forward to advances in science that would prove their arguments. It really is exciting!

On the flip side, in my philosophy, English, psychology and other classes I took, the teacher tried to prove that evolution was a completely godless act. No, I don't know why teachers of totally unrelated subjects all felt the need to try and disprove God in my classes. For them however, scientists knew exactly how evolution happened every step of the way, with an exact certitude. Science is always looking for more knowledge and and those who claim to follow the scientists already have all the answers.

Maybe the astrophysics professors should have the philosophy teacher fill him in on how it all went down! Or maybe their favorite politician or cable news network would be able to provide the missing information that they work so hard to find!

THE MISSING LINK 

Every child learns we evolved from monkeys, this is mandated. We are brought-up seeing the picture with several different slowly changing images of us turning to man from a lizard or something. And the term "missing link" makes it sound like we are one small discovery away from proving the entire thing. It is as if there are 5,000 animals, each differing just a tiny bit, taking the evolution of a horse to a giraffe. In each version, that neck just gets a little longer and those cool spots slowly start appearing.

Unfortunately, not only is there not a "missing link", but huge sections of chain.  We have the first and last links of a long chain and are guessing that there are a bunch of links between them.  We've never found any of them and we don't know how many there might be, but they are certainly there. Not only have we not found the missing links for any type of animal, we haven't found them for any of the millions of species out there.

Another problem with the missing link is that it is indeed missing.  I may see a horse and a giraffe and think to myself "wow those are really similar, they must obviously have common ancestors".  Or we could think that God has millions of creations and there is a good chance that some of these will be similar.

Why do missing links exist?  Why are there no animals roaming around that are one of the hundreds of species linking a horse to a giraffe, or an elephant and a hippo or a donkey and Justin Bieber?  And why did the evolution seemingly cease hundreds of millions of years ago leaving no trace of the process?  We have monkeys and humans with no existence of anything between the two.  Ever.  We have no historic proof of evolution and it apparently the whole evolving thing ceased millions of years ago.

Oh, after doing some google searching, it looks like we have found the missing link, remnants of a fossilized dinosaur who had feathers.  This guy (not an actual photograph of the dinosaur) is apparently the missing link and prove the entire theory of evolution.  Not sure how though, but lots of people seem to believe that.   

DNA "Proofs"
DNA results leave us desperately wanting as well. Depending on the "study" I apparently have a 70-96% DNA similarity with a monkey. Depending on which politician or cables news network you follow, those numbers are much higher. Percentages are similar for a whale, raccoon, cat or most any other creature but the only comparison with monkey is the one one mentioned.  Sure you can scream "You are a 87% DNA match with an ape!!!!! How can you deny evolution?!".  Well pretty easy.  What does that number even mean? Well nothing. Can we put it in context and ask what percentage match we are with other stuff laying around the Earth?

Apparently I have a 60% DNA similarity with a fruit fly and 50% with a banana.  Yup a banana! Really? I'm hoping future evolution charts will show banana, fruit fly, whale, can of Diet Coke and a cat before the monkey.  Even a 99.99% match with some animal shows nothing for the argument or evolution (though it sounds really good!) and simply leads us closer to understanding how God created us all. 

I believe science is man's search for how God runs things. DNA takes us one step closer to understanding His awesome master plan and how he uses common building blocks for his creations. 

End Result?
Why are humans the greatest result of evolution?  How come there are not other animals or plants with equal brain power as ours?  Why just us?  And why can I not fly or breathe underwater or teleport myself?  How did humans evolve to this point but still have plenty of developmental issues, handicaps, depression etc?  Why can't I run as fast, jump as high, be as strong as another animal of my size?

The following pic is of Harry Potter when he had gills in one of the movies. Why did we lose our gills?  And where are my wings?

                 

Why can't trees grow above the oxygen line?  Why don't those who live in the South Pacific who swim every day for food, have gills or eyes that allow them to see underwater?  Why haven't human evolved to have tougher hands after thousands of years of manual labor or those living in cold place grow more hair? Or those living in hot places have less hair?  Why, why, why, why?  The list could go on forever.  

l think this argument about which of two sides might be correct is silly. Of course, that goes the same for every argument where people try and force complex issues into only having two sides. How sad and closed minded we become when we can only adhere to one of two ways of thinking and if you choose one different from someone else then you are the enemy. We seemingly must choose either A or B and hate those who choose the other one.

Such thinking in the 1800's and the huge uproar about Darwin's theory is what likely gave his thoughts so much traction. I believe that a lack of uprising against a different way of thinking back in the 19th century, would have resulted in his philosophies being chalked up to simply another theory, and probably one of the better theories, as to how the world began. Now it is the truth, the only truth, so help me G-- oops, I almost mentioned His name. My bad! Tell your attorney I apologize.

I believe in God and given the countless and daily signs I witness of his life, I find it difficult to believe that someone would not believe in Him. However, I believe that all people are free to believe as they will and will not take action to convince others of my way of thinking, well besides this blog or friendly discussions with friends of course. No, I will not be suing or hating anyone for not believing God's role in the creation.

It seems odd that an atheist uses this platform to denounce other's belief in God, as if these two beliefs are unalterably connected. Darwin altered his own theory throughout his life and we would benefit in following his example and allowing our thoughts to mature over time. 

IN ENDING

I believe in God.  I believe that he created our world, and like my ridiculously smart physics professors, I have no idea how. I freely admit that I have no idea how God got His start either but I see daily proofs of Him and His influence in my life, so I have no doubt of His existence. It seems to me that it takes far more faith to believe in evolution than it does to believe in God's hand in all of this.

One way that God may have accomplished this task would have been through evolution. This is definitely one of the better theories out there, though the incredible lack of evidence makes it rough for me to believe. Darwin had a theory that was not proven at the time but hoped that one day it would be. It hasn't yet and I doubt it will.

If you have a better idea of how it all happened I'd love to hear it (and don't worry, I won't call my attorney if you disagree)!