Is it one or the other?\u00a0 Don’t ask me to give up my faith.\u00a0 Don’t ask me to give up my science.\u00a0 Who’s right?\u00a0 Who’s wrong?\u00a0 What did Darwin say about evolution, about random chance?\u00a0 What does the Bible say about intelligent design, about God? I refer to the Bible because that is my faith.\u00a0 To those of other faiths, I apologize for not being able to articulate your beliefs as I wish I could.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Darwin’s theory is that random genetic mutations occur, those beneficial to the organism are preserved and passed on, and those not beneficial are cutout by natural selection.\u00a0 With billions of random genetic mutations one cell will develop into a human being.\u00a0 This is theory, not fact.\u00a0 An example used to show how this occurs is bacterial resistance to antibiotics.\u00a0 But, when a bacterium ‘develops’ resistance to an antibiotic, is it evolution or is it simply adaptation?\u00a0 Was a new organism created or was an existing organism adapting?\u00a0 Was Darwin observing evolution or was he observing adaptation?<\/p>\n
Darwin had doubts about his own observations saying, “And to think the eye could evolve by natural selection seems, I freely confess, absurd to the highest degree.”\u00a0 Evolution requires billions of random genetic mutations beneficial to the organism.\u00a0 But true genetic mutations are rare and beneficial genetic mutations are even rarer.\u00a0 Evolution also requires the first living cell to spontaneously generate life. Yet, while we cannot create anything as intricately complex as one living cell, we are expected to have the reasoned ‘faith’ that life occurred by chance, spontaneously, in a cell infinitely more complex than Darwin ever imagined.<\/p>\n
A man of faith was contemplating God’s existence.\u00a0 As he mused to himself, he picked up a handful of dirt and quietly said, “God, do you exist?\u00a0 After all, we are close to making life from a handful of dirt, just as You did.\u00a0 A quiet voice in his head firmly responded, “Make your own dirt.”\u00a0 This is not meant to be trite, it makes the point that there is so much more we cannot explain than we can explain.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In his later years Darwin also said, “. . . to my astonishment the ideas took like wildfire.\u00a0 People made a religion of them.”\u00a0 Isn’t this a reasonable perspective on the theory of random genetic mutations creating all life?\u00a0 Is it more a religion because of the ‘faith’ needed to believe in spontaneous generation of life?\u00a0 Personally, I cannot accept random chance over intelligent design. The faith, however reasoned, needed to believe in spontaneous creation of life in one cell, and then mutating over billions of years to a human being is just too staggering.\u00a0 We cannot understand all the complexities of the universe, yet we consider those near infinite complexities may have occurred by random chance rather than by intelligent design.\u00a0 Which is more logical, more plausible, more reasoned; intelligent design or random chance?\u00a0<\/p>\n
What of intelligent design?\u00a0 As I said, my faith is the God of the Bible so I can only write from that perspective.\u00a0 And if I recall correctly, there are two places in the Bible where God says His time is not our time.\u00a0 Although I find it a bit dangerous to extrapolate meaning from only two short references, I will proceed to do so anyway. What if God does see time differently?\u00a0 What if one day to God is 1 billion years, rather than our twenty-four hours?\u00a0 What if God spent 6 billion years creating the universe in a scientifically understandable way, and then rested for 1 billion years?\u00a0 Is that inconceivable?\u00a0 Would that diminish the power of the God of the Bible or would it enhance it?\u00a0\u00a0 Doesn’t either way show the power of an Intelligent Designer?\u00a0<\/p>\n
If there is an intelligent designer who designed the designer?\u00a0 If the universe is finite, what is on the other side?\u00a0 If the universe is finite but ever expanding, what is it expanding into?\u00a0 Both sides can ask each other these types of unanswerable questions.\u00a0 God is not diminished because we cannot fathom the Designer.\u00a0 Science is not diminished because we cannot fathom either an infinite universe or an ever-expanding universe not knowing what it is expanding into.<\/p>\n
When I try to understand the complexities of the arguments on both sides of this issue, I find I am lacking several PhDs.\u00a0 But I can sit and consider this with my own logic, however flawed it might be.\u00a0 I believe spontaneous generation of life is implausible.\u00a0 I believe to be equally implausible a one celled organism becoming a human being through natural selection, if just allowed enough random genetic mutations and enough time.<\/p>\n
Isn’t intelligent design more compatible with the complexity of the universe, the scientific age of the universe, and the mathematical and physical details of the universe?\u00a0 These questions and observations are meant to be for our consideration. Each of us must make our own choice.\u00a0 It’s worth some thought.<\/p>\n
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CORRECTION:\u00a0 The following quote I attributed to Darwin has a great deal of controversy surrounding it, debating if Darwin actually made the statement.\u00a0 I\u00a0should not have used such a controversial quote.\u00a0 The quote:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0“. . . to my astonishment the ideas took like wildfire.\u00a0 People made a religion of them.”<\/p>\n
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