On Creation and Evolution

I saw a post over at sikkdays and had to respond. I ended up putting essentially a blog post together, so I thought I’d re-post here. The original post at sikkdays was regarding the new Michigan Legislation that is working it’s way through the State House and Senate regarding the teaching of Intelligent Design as a challenge to Evolution.

The thing that frustrates me is that after over 100 years of having this theory, we’re no closer to reconciling it with our faith. I personally believe that it’s very easy to believe in both Evolution and the Bible, and here’s the hint: most of the details in both are wrong, especially when interpreted by the layperson.

Evolution as a process and as a theory is still not greatly understood. We don’t really know how or why DNA mutates, or how genes split and become 2 genes in the following generation. We’ve got experiments that show that these things happen, but aside from random chance, we haven’t discovered all the mechanisms that make Evolution actually work. All we know for sure is that natural selection happens, and it operates to create enhancements in species over time relative to environment.

The Bible is far from well-understood. It’s been well-studied (much like Evolution), but there seems to be little consensus on what the damn thing actually says. Ask ten different pastors from ten different denominations what the most important verse of the Bible is, and you’ll get ten different answers. If not twenty. But ask them what Jesus stood for, and you’ll get the same things: forgiveness, compassion, understanding, and sacrifice.

The Devil is in the details. Literally, folks. As Christians, we can easily get caught up in who begot whom, and exactly how much pork we can eat and on which days during Lent. We almost always seem to forget the important stuff like love and grace. We argue about the details so much, that when some “jerk like Darwin” comes along and says something that’s “so obviously not in the Bible,” we all gang up like Greek City-States against the Persians.

Believe me, the important parts of the Bible are not the details. They are the truths. If you read a verse, and you can’t say, “this is self-evident, and thus Godly,” then it’s probably editorial written by some guy who’s been dead between 6,000 and 2,000 years who had an axe to grind, and should be taken in that context.

To bring this rather lengthy response back around, Evolution has absolutely zero conflict with the Bible. The only argument that can be made is the Literal Genesis argument, that presumes that God is some cheap magician that pulled Light, Land, Sea, Time, Life, and Humanity, out of a hat, one (1) day (not exceeding 24 hours) each, starting at 9 AM, October 17, 4004 BCE. (I have yet to see an “on this date: Oct 17, 4004 BCE: World created. Rejoice.” on the last page of “Popular Science.”)

I’m not saying God couldn’t do it, but why would he? Doesn’t it make more sense, if you’re going to make faith something of any real import, to create a world where the existence of God could be shadowed by the natural and logical? Wouldn’t God create a system where his very presence was either completely apparent or completely unnecessary depending solely on faith?

I can believe in Evolution, and I can believe in God. I can believe these things because while I believe in truth that is scientifically tested like natural selection, I also believe in truth that is spiritually tested, like the teachings of Christ. These things shall not be foreign to me simply because they hadn’t been discovered when the Bible was written.