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Creation Versus Evolution
Few subjects have caused as much turmoil, confusion and heart-rending change as the creation versus evolution discussions this past one hundred and fifty years.
You would probably have to go back to the time of Galileo to find a comparative, all embracing aspect of religious thinking which was more or less forced to undergo a major change in concept.
The sixteenth century Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus finished his great book, ‘On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres’ in 1530.
His theory was in opposition to the teachings of the Roman Catholic church.
Two other important scientists Kepler (1571-1630) of Wurttemberg Germany and Galileo (1564-1642) of
The concept of creation is at the heart of religious thinking.
It is the underpinning for the most abrasive conflicts in our society.
Abortion, capital punishment, euthanasia, doctor assisted suicide and other like subjects are all related to how we believe about god.
Is there a god up there making the rules that we are to follow or did all of life just evolve from a fortuitous combination of chemicals that developed their own set of rules.
Maybe the truth lies in a combination of the two concepts.
In the tricky business of deciding what to believe, it is critical to examine both sides of the issue and weigh the pros and cons.
Of course, most people don’t do this; they simply assume as truth what they were taught as a child and don’t rock the belief boat for the rest of their lives.
It is important, however, for some individuals in a society to take a hard look at critical issues in order to maintain a balance in society.
If Galileo and company hadn’t come along we might still be thinking that the sun revolves around the earth.
This is an exaggeration, of course, but it demonstrates the point.
There is no lacking of evidence and discourse on both sides of the
evolution/creation controversy.
Evolution has its weaknesses due to the scarcity of the intermediate forms leading up to the human development as we know it now.
It is a serious omission and provides the creationists with ammunition for their attack on the theory.
Also, evolutionary theorists may conjecture on the purpose and process of the development of the first organisms, but there is no scriptural or historical record possible on those first developments.
So we are left with this grand conjecture that all of life, with its highly complex forms is just a result of an accidental combination of chemicals.
It seems like there must be more to it than that but at the present I can only make some plausible assumptions and wait for more information.
Evolutionary theory has recently gained support from the new field of molecular biology.
This quote from the book Darwin’s Ghost helps to demonstrate the case.
“A hunt for similarity through the dozen and more DNA sequences now known in all their detail, and the hundreds for which long segments have been worked out, reveals the very framework of existence.
About a thousand genes are shared by every organism, however simple or complicated.
Although their common
ancestor must have lived more than a billion years ago, their shared structure can still be glimpsed.
It shows how the grand plan of life has been modified through the course of evolution”.
1
Whether we like it or not in these next few decades molecular biology and its related fields are going to have a profound affect on health and medicine and on our philosophical and religious views.
The traditional creationist view that God created man at a certain point in history is going to have to do some tall explaining to clear up the findings in molecular biology.
Rather, what is likely to occur is an altering of the traditional creationist view to allow for the possibility that god is using the evolutionary process in his creation and that the process is continuing unabated.
The basis for the creationist’s belief is from Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament.
The following is chapter 1 from Genesis:
1.
In
the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
2.
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3.
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4.
And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
5.
And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.
And the evening and the morning were the first day.
6.
And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
7.
And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
8.
And God called the firmament Heaven.
And the evening and the morning were the second day.
9.
And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
10.
And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.
11.
And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
12.
And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
13.
And the evening and the morning were the third day.
14.
And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night: and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
15.
And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
16.
And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
17.
And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
18.
And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
19.
And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
20.
And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
21.
And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
22.
And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.
23.
And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
24.
And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
25.
And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
26.
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
27.
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
28.
And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
29.
And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
30.
And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherin there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.
31, And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.
And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.”
The King James version that I used for quoting Chapter 1 actually gives the dates that this all happened; the week of March 27, 3976 B.C.
That is roughly 6,000 years ago, written in a language three or four times removed from ours, growing out of a culture that we can only guess at and stated in a manner far removed from our modern way of progressing.
I have included the entire Chapter 1 because of its critical importance in the underpinning of the beliefs of our three great western religions, Christianity, Islam and Judaism.
Since Galileo and Darwin intruded on the scene, there is no doubt a wide range of beliefs concerning Chapter 1.
Due to the abrasive disputes concerning creation and evolution that are common in our society, we can be assured that many people believe Chapter 1 pretty much as it is written.
We also know that those who believe in modern science, particularly anthropology, biology and geology, don’t give much credence to the literal interpretation of Chapter 1.
And then there are all of those people in the middle with varying interpretations of what they consider the truth.
Probably the largest part of the middle group are those quasi religious people that trust in God and don’t sweat the details.
It is easy to understand how Copernicus and Galileo got in deep trouble with the then main Christian church, Catholicism.
Stating that days and nights occur due to the earth revolving on its axis around the sun must have looked to the Church leaders as mere humans dabbling in the affairs of God.
It is not that these concepts necessarily conflict with Chapter 1, it is rather a clarification of what is actually occurring.
The Two-Star Theory
"
The two-star theory suggests that the Earth might have been formed when two stars passed quite close to each other.
Their gravitational attraction would cause huge tides on the surface of each, and great masses of material might be pulled from the surface.
These would be left circling each star and would eventually solidify into planets.
Scientists used computers to test this theory.
They concluded that after the stars had passed each other most of the material pulled out would fall back into them.
Very little, if any, would remain to circle outside.
The Cloud Theory
Most scientific work has centered on the theory that the sun and planets were formed by the slow condensation of a gigantic cloud of dust and gas.
Such clouds exist in the Milky Way and other galaxies.
It seems reasonable that the gravitational attraction among the cloud’s particles would gradually pull them together, and that as a mass increased its gravitational pull became greater.
Thus, the observation of dust and gas clouds serves as a starting point for the nebular hypothesis of the solar system’s formation.
Most scientists believe that the nebular hypothesis is basically correct.
But many details have not yet been explained in terms of this theory.
The Age Theories
Age is an important factor in any theory about the Earth’s formation.
If modern theories are correct, all parts of the solar system would be about the same in age.
All would have formed within a few hundred million years of one another.
Scientists estimate the Earth’s age by measuring the ratios of various radioactive elements in rocks.
The oldest Earth rocks tested thus far are about 3 1/3 billion years old.
But no one knows whether these are the oldest rocks on Earth.
Tests on rocks from the moon and on meteorites show that these are about 4.5 billion years old.
Scientists believe that this is the true age of the solar system and probably the true age of the Earth.
The Big Bang Theory
"
This is a general theory held by many astronomers that the universe may have originated about 12 to 15 billion years ago as the result of a violent explosion of some primordial mass; since then the universe has been expanding and evolving; a refinement of the theory states that the universe pulsates, expanding and contracting every 80 billion years.
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The Genesis description and the scientific descriptions of the creation of the earth seem irreconcilable if one insists of the literal interpretation of Genesis.
We really don’t know in what manner the statements in Genesis should be taken.
Perhaps our concept of a day, in God’s terms, is completely lacking in the consideration of this momentous subject.
Perhaps the Genesis 1 manner of explanation is simply God’s method of communicating with his people in a way that they could understand.
Perhaps if we don’t destroy ourselves in some ill advised nuclear excursion or are laid waste by some bacteria that are smarter and quicker than we are, we may actually get a pretty good grip on the creation of the earth.
Who knows?
At least we should be heading in the direction of an ever increasing knowledge of the truth of our existence.
Belief is indeed a tricky business and on the subject of creation we are just going to have to keep working at it before we can nail down this important subject.
