God and Evolution
Okay, when I first started my little blog I solicited help from another blogger. She gave me some advice and invited me to contribute on two of her sites. It was fun to do. If you want to visit one of my hero’s sites you can go here for her brilliant political commentary or here for her more personal stuff. Either way I think you’ll enjoy it. She is truly an incredibly gifted writer.
Anyways. She gave me some advice on how to be an effective blogger. Two of the things she said were: 1. Try not to write more than 800 words. Most people won’t read it if it is too long. And 2. Always use references.
With this article I’m afraid both pieces of advice are going to be largely ignored. I’m looking at my notes and there is NO WAY to boil this down the 800 words, and although I might put in a few references, most of this stuff is just my own, personal dumbassery I’ll be spewing.
So…you’ve been warned.
A few things happened to inspire this article. First, I was watching “Friends” on Netflix with my girlfriend. Later, I was talking to a colleague of mine who told me about a friend of his who claimed to be able to PROVE there was no God. (I know…I just rolled my eyes so hard I almost fell out of my chair.)
I’ll start with “Friends.”
Ross was talking to Phoebe, she had said she didn’t “buy into” the theory of evolution because it was “too easy.” Ross looked at her like she had just cut off his tail and said, “Uh, excuse me. Evolution is not for you to buy, Phoebe. Evolution is scientific fact, like, like, like the air we breathe, like gravity.” He then went on to say, “I have studied evolution my entire adult life. Okay, I can tell you, we have collected fossils from all over the world that actually show the evolution of different species, okay? You can literally see them evolving through time.”
“Friends” is a funny show. I sincerely enjoy watching it. The problem I have with that entire exchange is nothing Ross said was true.
Now stop. Take a breath. Before you get your panties in a wad you need to understand where I’m coming from. First of all, I believe in God. I believe He is our creator. AND (maybe I should say “but”) I have ZERO background in biology. ZERO. So whatever I’m about to spew is going to be tainted by a healthy dose of good old fashioned ignorance. That’s not going to stop me from spewing it, however.
Most Christians believe in a creative concept call “Ex Nihilo,” or “out of nothing.” In a nut shell that means that for a long time there was nothing and then God decided there should be something and BOOM, the universe popped into existence. I don’t buy that. If that was the case then why would Heavenly Father form the earth in stages? Dividing the waters, creating plant life, the sea creatures and then lower life forms, etc.
“But Danny,” you whine, “it sounds like you’re okay with the theory of evolution. What is the point of your article?”
My point is: I don’t know how God did it. And I don’t care.
The biggest issue I have is there is a line drawn: you either believe in God or you believe in evolution.
I know I can’t “prove” God exists. Just like I know no one can “prove” He doesn’t. So what I wanted to do today is write down some of the things I see as evidence of the existence of God. If you’re an atheist you will probably look at this list in horror, or you’ll scoff at it. Either way, I don’t care. If nothing else, it’s for me.
The issues I have with Darwinism:
Many Darwin groupies use Darwin to show that humans are no better than a squirrel, and are, in fact, the worst thing to happen to the planet.
I really struggle with the idea that EVERY living thing started from a single-celled organism. That the, I dunno, millions of species that have been in the world all started from primordial goo. Darwin’s theory is that random mutation, sex and death, allowed the “fittest” to survive. The weak would die without reproducing. Okay. I’ve seen the picture where there is a monkey and it slowly turns into a man. The “mutations” don’t appear to be random; if anything they are deliberate. If we were the only species on earth I would totally believe it. But we are not. If the mutations that created all these species are completely random wouldn’t there be a bunch of mutations that didn’t work out? Where is the fossil of the “man” with his eyes in the palms of his hands, or the man with wings? How about a squirrel evolving into a bat, or a bear becoming a whale (Darwin actually made those claims.)
The truth is we don’t have fossils for any intermediate creatures, despite the claim from Ross on the TV show “Friends.” In fact Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard referred to the absence of transitional fossils as the “trade secret” of paleontology.
For 3 billion or so years the fossil record shows nothing but bacteria and worms and then BOOM, within a 5 to 10 million year period (the Cambrian Period) the fossil record shows all these new species appearing out of nowhere, with eyes, fully formed. Paleontologist Jan Bergstrom, said the Cambrian Period was not “evolution,” it was “a revolution.” Hmmmm…
Moving on…
This is an example I gave my Sunday school class once. I told them about my boss’s BMW. It was an amazing car. The ride was so quiet and so tight. It was engineered to perfection. I then told them to imagine the outdoors. Either the woods, or a swamp, a canyon, a lake. I asked, “Can you image the outdoors being able to produce such a thing?” They said – no. “How about in a thousand years?” Still no. “How about a million years? The swamp is now a mountain range and the lake is now a canyon, the scenery is completely different. Can you see mother nature creating an amazingly engineered creation like a BMW?” Still no. “Why?” It’s too intricate, it’s too well-designed. I would then show them a picture of a cross section of the eye. It is amazingly intricate, amazingly engineered.
That happened by chance? Darwin couldn’t explain it.
What about pubic hair? If evolution largely caused the hair to recede off our bodies, why do we still grow it in our pubic area or armpits? (That’s not really an “evidence” of the existence of God, but it deserves an answer.)
I would think there would be some “rules” to evolution. An example is with most mammals the eyes, nose, ears and mouth are on the face. That’s sort of a rule. Why do human women have breasts? Correct me if I’m wrong (this is one of the dumbassery things I mentioned earlier) I’m not going to Google it, but every other mammal I know of, the females only have breasts after they give birth to feed their offspring. Evolutionarily speaking, why are human women different? OH…and while I’m thinking about it. What is the evolutionary explanation for the female clitoris? Mother Nature already gave men a high sex drive. Evolutionarily speaking, why would the female of any species need to enjoy sex?
What about the placement of the earth? If we were a little closer to the sun we would burn up, if we were a little further away we would freeze. How lucky is it that we are just at the exact right place so life can exist?
What about plant life? Everyone just blindly accepts the fact that all living things (humans to spiders to fish) all have a common single ancestor. What about plant life? You’re telling me a strawberry and a banana (which taste delicious together, by the way) evolved from each other? How about a zucchini and an orange? And how lucky is it all these things have seeds. How did that happen, anyways? (That reminds me, I’m going to order both a chicken and an egg from Amazon…I’ll let you know.) If I learned anything from watching Jerry Seinfeld’s “The Bee Movie” it’s that plants are dependent on Bees. So Bees would have had to come into existence about the same time as plants…right? Why haven’t they evolved more? And while I’m thinking about it, which species are we worried about? Who is catching up to us? By now you would think one of them would. How lucky.
Think about it. Are we not the dumbest animal to be at the top of the food chain? Okay, we’re smart, we have big brains, but we would have had to survive a bunch of winters first to get on the right track. Name another animal who has to kill another one, tear the skin off of it, and put it on their feet so they can walk around in comfort, or wear it on its body for warmth or protection. How did we survive to get to be the smartest? I get a hangnail and I’m down for the count. How lucky as a species we survived.
And how incredibly lucky is it that the HUGE variety of animal life on the planet breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide, and the HUGE variety of plants breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen. I mean, WHAT ARE CHANCES?!?! How lucky.
Mathematically speaking it isn’t possible. If we humans were the only animal life and, say, a potato was the only plant life, it could work. Scientists know this. The real kind, not high school biology teachers, and not the Professor Ross Geller’s from TV. The very real molecular biologist Professor Francis Crick, you know, the Nobel Prize winner for co-discovering the structure of DNA (he ain’t stoopid like me is) very seriously suggested the theory of “Direct Panspermia” where aliens seeded earth with life. He co-wrote a scientific paper on the subject with biochemist Leslie Orgel. You can read it HERE.
I’m a simple man. Not very bright. Here’s how I boil it down: Let’s say there are gazillions and gazillions of planets, and of the gazillions of planets there is a one in a gazillion chance there is a planet just close enough to a sun that it is ideal for sustaining life. Of those gazillion planets, let’s say there is a one in a gazillion chance there is water on a planet like that. Of those gazillion planets, let’s say there is a one in a gazillion chance there is one with a single celled organism. Of those gazillion planets, let’s say there is a one in a gazillion chance that man evolved on one of them. Of those gazillion planets, let’s say there is a one in a gazillion chance the potato plant evolved on one. Of those gazillion planets, let’s say there is a one in a gazillion chance the cow, the horse, the bear and countless other animals evolved on them, along with a bunch of plants. It is mind blowing, huh? For me, and my little brain, it is easier to believe there is a one in a gazillion chance there is a Supreme Being, who loves us and created and organized all this for us. And wants us to be happy.
But that’s just me.
LIFEZILLA: No trees were destroyed in the writing of this article. I will concede, however, that a significant number of electrons may have been inconvenienced.
