In recognition of the latest ruling by a Pennsylvania judge on teaching "intelligent design" in science classes, I'm reposting something I wrote last year on the subject. Frankly, I have no problem with not teaching ID in science classes, but I have nearly as much problem with the teaching of evolution in those same science classes. It isn't that I don't believe that all creatures "evolve" through the constant exchange of DNA and mutations, but the astronomical number required for life to have started by chance makes the "theory of evolution" suspect. My take or better yet my questions on the matter were detailed in the following post:
I do not really understand this controversy as my religious training and study leaves room for both Intelligent Design and Evolution. It is a simple philosophy and idea that basically boils down to "the Glory of God is Intelligence." Actually, to modify that a bit, "the Glory of God is Conscience."
If you read the Genesis creation story carefully and juxtapose the idea that we all started from amino acids in the primordial soup ... the Bible starts out with a pretty much scientific bent with the words: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters." How did the writers, pre-stone age Nomads, know the order of scientific beginnings? How did they know that the earth was without form and empty and dark? What would make them even imagine an earth like that? We add light and water and finally land appears. We move on to the land as vegetation that "produced seed and fruits according to their kinds" begins to appear. The first life. So far so good evolution-wise. Intelligent Design would follow with the end of the verse, "And God saw that it was good." So what's wrong with that?
Moving on, we now learn that lights were added to separate the day and night. So I learned that at some point a big chunk got blasted away from the earth and captured to form our moon with its influences on the gravitational pull and because of its regular orbit, the moon and earth's orbit around the sun combine to influence our seasons and our weather. Genesis tells us: "And God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth."
Moving on again, we begin to see the amphibians, then the reptiles and then the birds. Sounds pretty much on the evolutionary track as the Bible describes: God said, "Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky." Did you see that Terradactile? So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good and so he blessed them to "be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth." And then we get to Number Six, the biggie.
Mammals appear. How do we know? Well, we read in Genesis that God said, "Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground and wild animals each according to its kind." The verse ends: And it was so. And wasn't it so? Ask an Evolutionist.
Now we get to the part that freaks out the nonbelievers and causes all this dissension over Evolution vs. Intelligent Design. We've eclipsed 10s of millions of years at this point when God says, "Let us (notice the plural here) make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground. But what does it mean this word image? In this sense, image includes such characteristics as righteousness, holiness and knowledge. And the Bible tells us that God bestowed on this last of his creations a type of kingship or dominion over all the seeds, fruits and animals. Sounds like the beginnings of homosapiens with their larger brains, their ability to form groups and learn from each other, an ability to design and manufacture tools, to move from being foragers and hunter/gatherers to farmers and ranchers and hey, eventually even computer nerds. Intelligence is what sets us apart. We think and that thinking sets us apart from all the other "creatures" who exist and survive on instinct. And when God breathed "life" into the last of his creations by imparting this dominion, the seeds were set for the final item that sets man apart from all other living things, whether plant or animal and that was ... spirit and/or conscience. And how do you explain conscience as an evolutionary concept? What earthly or universal genetic mutation could come about that imparts conscience and spiritual awareness? And how did this now spirit-filled creature called man discover all this in order to pass the story down through the ages when this same evolutionary man had barely gotten to the stone tool stage on the evolutionary scale?
The theory of evolution is far too limiting and it stifles understanding. It explains the nuts and bolts but nothing more. It is to the totality what ordering a T-Bone, Sirloin or Fillet Mignon, rare, medium or well done is to the diner's understanding of cattle breeding and the gene pool. Although the Bible is specific about God creating each to its own kind, there is nothing that says that within those broad boundaries there is no room for selective breeding and survival of the fittest. In fact, one of the very first things we are told is that God gave Man the right to choose and by extension the creatures of the sea, land and air could choose as well. And once man was trusted with "dominion" he was given the ultimate power to make choices for all the other creatures. I think that is called farming, ranching, marriage, science and just about anything else you can think of and probably much we haven't thought of yet.
If you follow any of the wonderful Discovery Channel science shows, you have probably seen the "Story of Eve." In this documentary, the "out of Africa" migrations of the very first homospaiens is traced through DNA and the DNA mutations that occur naturally. Surprise, surprise, we find that all peoples, all races, all ethnic groups whether Eskimos or Islanders, Africans, Asians, Europeans, it doesn't matter, they all track back to the four daughters of one woman's DNA. When Genesis moves to Chapter Two to give an "account" of Adam and Eve, how did they know, how did these stone-age dwellers know that their entire genetic line tracked back to one woman's DNA? Maybe it is "just" evolution, but I don't believe it.
As an aside and conclusion, my interests have always leaned toward understanding how prehistoric man developed a God-concept. To me, the very fact that they did speaks to more than "just" evolutionary forces and genetic memory at work. Evolutionary thought is the result of the arrogance of man. That arrogance has already taken some major blows with the discovery of such things as black smokers under the sea where creatures live and die without the necessary light and oxygen that science was saying only a few short years ago was necessary for life to exist. I don't believe in a "He" God that spews fire and brimstone and makes all kinds of rules meant to set man up for failure. That is a "man creation." But, I am hard pressed to say I don't believe in some kind of over all DESIGN.
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