I know there is a lot of evidence out there for evolution. We're silly not to believe it, right? This post isn't about whether or not evolution is true, necessarily, but more about the doctrine of creation. For example, how do you explain to a kid being taught evolution in school that we owe our very existence to God, if we just evolved from some ape? How do you convince him his life has meaning and purpose if we just got here by an extraordinary series of random chances? And, how do you explain the existence of a soul? Did it evolve, too, or do apes have souls? Is the soul just a higher form of consciousness? If that's all it is, does it just fade away when the body dies? Or am I even asking the right questions about this??
Not surprisingly, I have my own thoughts about this, but I'd like to hear someone else's first.
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Ah yes, the old Quarks to the Quasars delima. Starting at the beginning, in the singularity before matter and energy existed all things knew each other, they were all one. Then God said (that's a metaphor). Let there be light. BANG (a really big one)! There was light lots of it and lots of other stuff too. And God knew it all, where it was ,and what it was doing, and maybe even supplies the energy for it all to work. At the instant of the BANG the entire sequence of events are set in motion that will result in what you see today and have yet to see in the future. How that happend is science. Why that happened is theology. It takes billions of years and at least three generations of stars acting a furnaces to make the heavy elements necessary for carbon based life. Now there are billions upon billions of solar systems and many more planets and God is over them all and in them all and of them all. So far we only see one planet with life and souls occuping it, but we can dial up the Hubble Telescope on the web and look out to those magnificent Quasars at the very beginning of time and know that God knows and controls every sub-atomic particle in them and always has. And we can also know that they are so far away that what we see has been gone for billions of years.
Evolution is a feeble and primative understanding of how and what happened along a minor part of the pathway till now. It is a useful way of dealing with the world as it changes.
Does the soul evolve too. Some say yes, most say no. I would suggest that if it does, then it is not a supernatural thing. But then I don't much believe in the supernatural, only that we don't see or understand all things natural yet (and maybe can't).
Obviously I am not a dualist.
If you are a human, then no matter what metaphor or insight or science you have to descibe and explain God, your God will be too small.
My head always hurts about this point. I'll stop there.
I've just never had a problem with the idea that God is the author of Creation, no matter how it happened.
The only time evolution is a problem if one takes the Geneis stories literally. I never took them as anything other than stories even when I was little, which was before the fundamentalist-literalist takeover of my beloved SBC.
Beyond all that, I just don't care how we got here. The fact is we are here now. Since I hold to no doctine that is threatened by evolution, my faith is not threatened by evolution -- so what the heck does it matter?
Anyone who wants an attitude adjustment about man's place in Creation -- to be reminded that we are NOTHING, but that God, we believe, has decided to make us something -- should go to a skywatch event with an astronomy club or something.
Ten or so years ago, Dr. ER and I went to a spot in the middle of West Texas when the Fort Worth atronomy club had its big guns set up, about six or 10 of them.
All you had to do to see into the past was walk up to a telescope and look. It was like looking through a jeweler's loop and a time portal at the same time.
My heart and mind did not lose their grip on the fact that God loves us greatly, perhaps above all else other than God's self, as out faith teaches.
My eyes insisted that I behold God's Creation, through those well set-up lenses, in a new way. I was in awe, truly, maybe for the only time in my life.
And I was humbled. And hushed. Amd restored.
There is such an event in Kenton, in the Panhandle, in late October. Y'all should go.
Actually, I was wrong. I thought I had an opinion on this, but it turns out it just makes my head hurt,too.
I agree that how it happened is science and why it happened is theology. My son seems to be stuck in a state of mind, however,that says if the two aren't compatible, one must be false.
And, if one of the by-products of evolution is that it disproves God, how is that not a threat to your doctrine? Even if you set aside the story of Adam and Eve and the whole Creation story as literal, doesn't evolution say we're just highly evolved mammals, and nothing else?
Hi, this is Seeker's son, and I'm finally getting around to posting on here. I'm just about 17, and I guess I wouldn't call myself a full blown atheist just yet, more of an agnostic. Anyways, I'd like to just address the series of questions in the original post:
Q: For example, how do you explain to a kid being taught evolution in school that we owe our very existence to God, if we just evolved from some ape?
A: Well, the the same way you explain anything in religion, I'd guess. You say it's part of God's mysterious and unknowable plan. I don't see why God's plan would have to be a 6,000 year old world that was fully formed in 7 literal days. You can choose to interpret it as such, but you're making the assumption that God couldn't work in other non-church approved mysterious ways.
Q: How do you convince him his life has meaning and purpose if we just got here by an extraordinary series of random chances?
A: Well, first of all, evolution seems to be a very specific and precise process that takes billions of years to occur to the degree it has now. Alot of creationists try to make it sound like the reason we've survived is because we live in world specifically created for our species, and there's no other way to explain it. I'm not an expert of evolutionary biology by any means, but I do know enough to know that we adapted to survive. We learned to fit into the world, we don't have the world revolving around us. This seems to be why the church wanted to kill Galilieo for the idea of a heliocentric universe. And what of the billions of stars and galaxies that occupy this universe, and what of space outside of the universe? This was all created to revolve around this little blue speck, specifically a certin mammal living on it? Seems like an arrogant claim to make to me. As to how do we teach about life's meaning, well, without an afterlife, life doesn't become meaningless it becomes meaningful. Perhaps one of the more depressing aspects of atheism is the acceptance that we are not immortal. It all ends someday. So, you have to give your life it's own meaning, and find your own true passions, because you don't have any time to waste.
Q: And, how do you explain the existence of a soul?
Did it evolve, too, or do apes have souls? Is the soul just a higher form of consciousness? If that's all it is, does it just fade away when the body dies?
A: That seems to be making the assumption that a soul exists. If by soul you mean, the magical part of us that, when we die, stores our memories that were formally stored in our brain, as well, as our old personality, and takes it to a new plane where it can be judged by a deity whether or not it gets eternal paradise or eternal punishment...Well, I haven't seen any hard evidence for any type of non-physical existence within any species. Everything we do, from our 5 senses, to our sense of self-awareness, to our individual personalities, can be explained by some physical factor. In short, I suppose we're biological machines, who just react to the world around us as each individual sees it based on life experiences, upbringing, etc., and we form different and completely unique personalities, thus, different people will react differently to same environnment. I don't see what the Theistic version of the soul (or even some dhamric definitions) have to do with anything, or why we should be trying to present such ideas in schools...
Also, to her comment questions:
Q: And, if one of the by-products of evolution is that it disproves God, how is that not a threat to your doctrine?
A: I wouldn't say evolution proves or disproves the existence of any God or Gods. However, God or Gods seems to be irrelevent to it. I guess I've been lingering on agnosticism for this reason, the theist vs. atheist argument seemed to be alot of "YOU prove it," "no, you have to prove it," "NO, YOU PROVE IT!!" meanwhile no actual proofs are being provided. However, I'm now bordering on atheism because it seems theists make the claim of God's existence then say that if atheists can't disprove the unprovable, we must assume it's the truth. If you have no evidence of something, you usually discredit it as untrue. But when it comes to God this is simply not the case, and I don't know why other than because of emotional appeals. Kind of: Would you rather believe that when you die, you just cease to exist, or would you rather believe that when you die you go to an eternal paradise? Of course, everyone wants to live as immortals in a realm of constant joy, but reality is whatever's real, not what we decide we like the best. For that reason, the more I want to believe, the less I actaully do...
Q: Even if you set aside the story of Adam and Eve and the whole Creation story as literal, doesn't evolution say we're just highly evolved mammals, and nothing else?
A: Yes. I don't really know what else to say to that... Yes. We are highly evolved mammals...I wish there was some kind of magic to it, but I think that's all she wrote...
Well, I know I've gone on for a long time, I have a tendancy to ramble but I hope it was entertaining, at least...
MJC
To seeker and seekersson. My two sons are in their 30's now. One is an agnostic and the other (and his wife) claims to be an atheist. Their older sister is a practicing nominal Christian and her husband is an atheist. Me, I'm an apostate basically as far as any organized church is concerned.
So you can see how far my wisdon has influenced my own.
Yet, I do not dispair at my sons' positiions because both of them are there because they can not tolerate what they see as the hypocracy and lies of the "establish" religions.
They are more humanist than religious butall my children have more "good works"(feeding the sheep etc.) under their belt than most church members. All of my children are worried about the world and the people in it. I am proud of them for that. Especially since they know from living with me and their mother that the axiom "no good deed will go unpunished" is abosolutely true.
By the way, both boys have bachelor's and graduate work in Philosophy and both quit their advanced degrees because the "philosophers" of today were as meaningless as the regligions they were rejecting.
My little story of "creation" has taken me 50 years to come up with. That's an example of a near life-times's thought process. Well, you might say, if it takes that long just to get that far, I think I will stick to drugs, sex, and rock n' roll!
OK, but when that get's tiresome, you will always come back to your own basic questions about life , God, meaning and so forth.
Everybody wants meaning. Every person is a good person as they themselves know. Every person feels (unless they are really really broken). Every person strives to be good and do good, even the people who don't. Each of us is not alone in what we want. But it damn sure feels like it.
It is a long tip. And your head will hurt along the way.
One suggestion don't label yourself.
Those lables are invented by others in order to capture you into or exclude you out of their group. Lables are almost magic.
Don't give someone else that power over you.
Don't ever stop thinking and considering how and why.
Remember that if there is a God he/she/it is in and of and above everything, and it is all natural.
Mystery does not equal Supernatural.
All natural laws are God's laws, and God does not break God's law.
Now for specific answers:
...just highly evolved animals and nothing else....
Gracious, what do you mean "just nothing else", this life stuff is pretty big... try making some from scratch...hell, try making the scratch...
.... convince life meaning and purpose.....you're looking for meaning and purpose, everybody does, why is that? What's it all about Alfy? Good searching!
...explain the existance of a soul... I am tempted to say metachloria and let it go at that...some say that it is in the mitrochondria and we are just here to carry them around and pass them on...some say all dogs go to heaven..I think the Law of Conservation applies perhaps: matter and energy are neither created or destroyed...I'm beginning to look at some form of re-incarnation on the cosmic scale...
...just have biological reactions...of couse we are and do follow the SIR (Stimulus-Integration-Response)and other bioligical process...of course we are a product of our "environment"...nature/nurture.....genetic determination....all of which allows for some unbelieveable combination of possibilities couple with sex-death-and evolution that squares the possibilities....
....random.... a highly overused word...a very misunderstood concept...random does not equal chaos...chaos does not equal nothing.... nothing does not equal a negative.....
Not much help was I?
I have to make a comment,now. Seeker's son, please grab a copy of C.S. Lewis's "Mere Christianity." Mr. Lewis was an atheist before he converted to the Church of England. Maybe he can help you. There is no way anyone can convince me personally, that this wonderfully complicated and beautiful world could have happened by accident and since it was not an accident, some very Wonderfully Knowing and Loving Designer must have fashioned it (caused it to be). Humans have an amazing capacity to learn and explore, but we don't have an infinite capacity to understand or explain what we discover. All of the final answers are with the Great Designer (read God).
As Catholics, we weren't taught "Apologetics" as children. However, in a way, we have always known what we believe since we say the Nicene Creed at every mass. I have started to acquire books on the disciples of the Apostles and other books to help me understand and explain what I believe. Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Ignatius, are just some of the men taught by the Apostles and continued to carry on Christ's work to make His church the Universal church that would gather all of Jesus's sheep into the fold.
I'm at work, so I have to stop talking. :)
OK, well, I read both of the comments, and they both have some interesting ideas, but one sentence really popped out at me:
Rowan Asterion made this claim:
"There is no way anyone can convince me personally, that this wonderfully complicated and beautiful world could have happened by accident and since it was not an accident, some very Wonderfully Knowing and Loving Designer must have fashioned it (caused it to be)."
No one can convince me? I've personally decided to never make this claim. What that does is it closes the door for discussion. You've decided before hearing the argument that they can't convince you. Instead, I choose to say, I demand to be convinced. And that goes for all sides. Anyone who makes a claim has to be able to back it up with credible evidence or else I'll dismiss the claim.
But to say no one can convince me means you have already decided your conclusion before such claims have even been made. Not to say by any means that you shouldn't be firm in the conclusions you come to, you absolutely have to be, (it's OK to say, I've heard THIS particular claim, and until better evidence is provided, I'm not convinced of it) but I've heard the religious and secularists alike say "Well, no one can convince me what I believe isn't true," and I make sure never to say that.
I think it's so highly unlikely that I will be convinced otherwise however, I challenge anyone to try to sway me otherwise. I think you have to have the confidence to listen to both sides, because if you've already decided that you'll never be convinced, there's no point in me even writing this right now.
Let me pose a question about that: if a non-Christian said "No one will ever be able to convince me, no matter how strong the evidence, that anything about Christainity or the Bible are or ever were remotely true," how would you expect them to listen to your opinion? What reason would I have to read Mere Christainity , if I already decided before I read it, that none of it was true?
I may have decided that what I know about Chirstianity isn't true, thus trying to argue against it, but I'm not gonna act like I've heard from every Christian in the world. People, no matter what side of the fence, are always coming up with new and interesting arguments and claims every day, claims that deserve to be heard before dismissed or accepted. All I ask is that they convince me. I don't mean to dwell on that phrase alone, but I've heard the "no one can convince me" argument too much, and believe personally that, you have to leave room for the idea that you could be wrong, and if you are you should admit to it, and the same goes for me, and anyone with any kind of point to be made.
"...that this wonderfully complicated and beautiful world could have happened by accident and since it was not an accident, some very Wonderfully Knowing and Loving Designer must have fashioned it (caused it to be)."
Well, there is alot of complexity in this world, but it wasn't just some random freak accident. It was a very deliberate and precise process that progressivly gets more and more complicated over time. Over time, billions and billions of years, life gets more and more complicated until we're where we are now. To say it couldn't have happened by accident also makes the assumption that it had some divine purpose in the first place, something which I don't think has actually been proven.
As far as the beautiful argument, that it's just too beautiful whether you use something as grand as a sunset or melodramnatic as a weed growing, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. And what's going to look more beautiful to a species that's adapted to it's enviroment, than the enviroment itself? If I tell you that I hate all sunsets, you can't exactly tell me I didn't, right? I don't know of anyone who thinks there's no beauty in the world, but if someone held that bleak opinon, you couldn't exactly tell them otherwise, that they do see beauty in the world, regardless of what they think? It's such a subjective assumption to say that something visually or even intellectually stimulating in nature, is proof of the existence of an all loving, all powerful, omni-present being, who created the world in a week, 6,000 years ago, then 4,000 years later, came incarnate to a virgin, was crucified, and rose again 3 days later. Seems like a strech to me that you can get all that out of how pretty the sunset is.
Also, if your going to make the claim that he MUST have fashioned it, the question it all comes back to is: why? Of course, the typical answer is, we can never know God's plan,and I suppose there's no way to refute that, because it's simply saying I don't know, but believe because I don't know.
By the way, I will pick up a copy of "Mere Christianity." My mom has mentioned it to me several times, but can't find her copy of it.
Alright that's all from me this time.
MJC
Seeker: Turned out that this was a hellishly busy day.
MJC: You are right where you should be in your thinking. But at its root, religion actually isn't about thinking. I won't dare say the opposite, that religion is about not thinking, however.
Thinking is only one of the faculties we puny, yet amazing, human beans have to get to that mystical "thing" that some of us dare -- dare! -- to call a "relationship with God."
For instance, I challenge anyone to sway me to think my experiences in life haven't been real. Well, actually, I don't. I challenge myself about them all the time. But one cannot challenge another one's experience.
Just one thing, I guess: Faith isn't certainty; certainty isn't knowledge; knowledge isn't faith. That's kind of circular, but so is the cycle of life itself.
I choose to try to follow Jesus. That's all I can say. He seems to be very kind to those who do, as well as those who don't.
Whether it all leads to "heaven" quits being that important when one starts to think of "eternity" as being "now." For we all are living in the now.
If you want certainty or a convincing argument, don't look to faith traditions.
ER said: "But at its root, religion actually isn't about thinking." :(
Dang, is that whats wrong?
No wonder I haven't been getting this stuff right all these years.
I guess I didn't need to make my head hurt so much. :)
There is a theory that God changed when mankind got the written word, and specifically the alphabet.
This "might" speak to what ER was saying before I stooped to ridicule.
Before writting God was female, all imagery, and a product of one side of the brain. (Magna Mater)
After writting came into existance, God was male all linear and the product of the opposite side of the brain. (Deus Pater)
The female God was the God of the left hand, the artist, the image maker, the synthesizer. 20,000 years or more ago left handed and right handedness were split 40/60.
Comes the alphabet, the keeping of records, the linear writting, and God becomes male and the God of the right hand. The right hand, the hand of the weapon, the spear hand of the Spartan Phalanx, the hand of the salute, the hand with which we write, and now the split is left/right about 10/90.
Once God had a companion at creation, or was it the other way around. Come history and the writting of it down, and she was erased (almost but not quite)and can be barely seen in the current Bible. But look and you will see her in the very words from which she was expunged.
There is another theory about Conan and the invasion of the Kurgans, but that is for another posting.
I'd say that what you mean is that human perception of God changed. On the other hasnd, I don't kniow why the insistence in some quarters that "God doesn't change." Anything that lives changes. What we think -- !!! -- (among other ways of putting it, ahem) is that God remains consistent in God's love and justice. We hope so, anyway.
ER said:"Anything that lives changes."
Infering, after he stated that it was our perception of God that changes, that he doesn't know why people insist that God does not change, that he does change because he is alive.
Alive, as in a biological being? Living breathing? As in an Avatar?
Are we just talking about the third that is Jesus?
The Morman's believe that God has a human body although it is perfect.
Maybe he does have a body, I mean he impregnated Mary did he not? That denotes gonads and a sperm delivery system, doesn't it?
Something to get off subject about.
Seeker's son. It is true that I very much believe in God and can not be convinced otherwise. The idea that I have no purpose other than to live, make offspring, and die is too frightening to me. There have been too many times that despair could have taken me to death and the hope and belief in God is the only thing that pulled me through it. I would never have known that life has many good things in it if I had despaired and killed myselfwhile the bad things were happening. (what purpose do we have to live if things are so bad for us?) Humans would be no more important than elephants or bacteria or rabbits. There's nothing to set us apart from the animals other than the purpose of moving closer to God (this is why we have a soul). Our purpose here is to grow closer to God so that we may be with Him someday.
By the way, on the off chance that all of us believers are correct and God exists, you might consider trying a little harder to believe in Him instead of trying so hard to be convinced He doesn't. At least we have hope and the purpose of something beyond. If it turns out we were wrong, so what? We lost nothing. The unbeliever loses infinitely more.
There is nothing anyone can say that is clever enough or convincing enough if a person does not want to believe in God. Usually a person has a very good reason not to be convinced--they don't want to change their behavior. If a person is half convinced then he/she might as well go the whole nine yards. Why sit on the fence?
Rereading this, I probably sound condescending and I apologize if you are offended.
Re, "If it turns out we were wrong, so what? We lost nothing."
No offense, but this reduces the whole idea of faith in God to a cheap kind of fire insurance. If you're wrong, all you've lost is the premiums you've paid! And I'd say that anyone who can say that so blithely might need to reevaluate everything. If all "faith" is a gamble that a certain set or list of assertions of doctrine or "fact" are correct, then that, indeed, is mere religion. Not a living faith at all.
Man!
So, as I said above, thinking isn't the only faculty we have to experience God. The main other one is LIVING, and to a Christian that pretty much means giving -- of oneself, one's riches or even humble resources. Striving to empty oneself for others. It's that whole faith-without-works thing James talks about.
You would focus on the one thing I said flippantly, E.R.! The "fire insurance" you are referring to has extrememely high premiums. The price is nothing less than a person's body and soul.
Creation? Just the concept itself reeks of human culture. You can not even define the word without useing some type of human bound metaphor. Just like the words used elswhere here of "accident" and "purpose", I think I would through "design" into that bag of homo sapien bound concepts as well.
Does anything in the Natural World (existance without man for the sake of argument) actually have purpose without some human giving it one? Can the Natural World have "accidents" where all things are governed by strict laws, and those laws function at the sub atomic and ultra-macro levels?
To say God designed and created something is purely a human limitation on the concept of God.
To say that some sequence of events over time that we catagorize as "evolution" contains "random acts" or "accidents" is to contradict the concept of natural (or scientific) law.
Those rigorist who insist on the purity of their views on either extreme side of the creation/evolution beliefs are blasphemers, either of God and/or Science. They are further identified by their the exclusionary behavior, If you aren't with us then you are our enemey, nay, your are God's or Science's enememy.
Creation? Best stick to the metaphors and obsevations when discussing this concept.
Now metaphors of such abound. We can talk about the "E" or the "J" stories of creation in the Bible. There are two different versons of creation in chapters one and two of Genesis. Chapter one is the Elohim version which make male and female equal and says God is an "us", (Elohim is a plural word).
Then chapter 2 is the Jehovah version, which makes man first, woman much later, and has only one God in it. Or we could jump to the Cosmic egg of the Hindu Black Swan, or the Coyote of the Nez Perce, or the Sipapu of the Pueblos, and so forth and so on.
They are all quite interesting, and all worthy in their own way.
A couple of books on the subjects of evolution and apologetics that I recommend:
Icons of Evolution by Jonathan Wells. Plenty of intelligent thought and science in this book. Excellent for someone who believe science in some way opposes the idea of God.
Reasonable Faith by William Lane Craig. An excellent book on why faith is a reasonable response to the world.
Also, on apologetics:
Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview by J.P Moreland & William Lane Craig. This is a huge book and takes careful reading, but it's worth it.
I hope these are helpful. They're all available from Amazon, which is where I got them from.
As far as the evolution of the soul, try Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's, "Phenomenon of Man".
de Chardin was a Jesuit paleontologist and his work was forbidden to be published by the Church until after he was dead.
Most libraries will have a copy.
MJC and I certainly have a great reading list to start working on! He's reading some book by Spong (sigh) but has promised to read, "Mere Christianity" next and then, hopefully, I can get him to read the "Screwtape Letters" by CS Lewis. I'm making a list of all the books you guys are suggesting and slowly but surely hope to work our way through them.
By the way, thanks for coming along on this ride with us. It's been eye-opening for both of us. :)
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