EVOLUTION

Do you want to hear something really spooky?

Evolution is in the Bible. And so are a whole lot of modern scientific ideas.

Let's sum things up. In the ninteethth century, naturalists explored new ecosystems around the world, and Charles Darwin proposed the idea of species differentiation through natural evolution. In the early twentieth century, red shift measurements of star spectra by Edwin Hubble implied the notion of an expanding universe. And later ideas about nuclear and subnuclear particles defined a theory now known as The Big Bang. It kind of goes like this.

In the beginning, all of the matter and energy of the entire known universe was concentrated in an area of space smaller than an atom. We don't know or understand how this happened, but the evidence points to this as our reality. An explosion into empty space started in darkness, because the density was too great to allow light to propagate. Some time later, energy was converted into nuclear particles like protons and electrons, and some time after that stars formed from the hydrogen gas clouds. Planets formed from supernova debris ejected by early, massive stars. Our own Earth formed as a hot, rocky, impact-scarred planet, later covered with water oceans formed from icy asteroids. Primitive life originated in these oceans, and later developed into land animals.

Now suppose you are Moses. You were found in a reed basket along the river, and raised in the Pharoh's court. You have been educated by the most civilized, most powerful, most sophisticated culture in the Western world.

But you still don't know as much math and science as a typical third grader these days. You don't have numbers like billions and trillions, because you don't have the modern number system invented in the ninth century. You don't know the sun is a star or that planets like Earth move in orbits around stars. You don't know about deep ocean thermal vents or bacteria or kangaroos.

Just suppose that some other being comes to you in a dream, and shows you how the world began. Just suppose your words are passed by word of mouth for many centuries before being written down for the first time. Just suppose even the first hand-copied written Scriptures don't even agree exactly with each other. What would we be left with? Maybe this?

In the beginning, there was nothing. And God said, let there be Light, and there was light. And first He separated the light from darkness, craeting the stars in the sky. Then He created the Earth, and covered it with seas. Life began in the oceans, as fish. Later forms of life were the amphibians - who moved from the water to the land - and the reptiles. Then mammals appeared on Earth. And finally, last in the chain of life, most recent in the history of this planet, mankind appeared.

I think it's a pretty good description of Evolution, and a whole lot of other stuff. It's spooky.

Why do so-called Christians object to Evolution? It's not because they are defending the Bible. What they are defending is their own egotistical, self-worshiping, sanctimonious desire for the Bible to mean what THEY say it means.

It's one thing to believe in the Bible. Then you approach it with reverence and humility, believing it was inspired by a superhuman, immortal creature far beyond your comprehension. You seek to learn and understand, with the admission that your knowledge will always be limited and imperfect.

It's another thing to say you believe in "a literal interpretation of the Bible". That's just code for "The Bible means EXACTLY WHAT I SAY IT MEANS!" It's kind of a way for a sanctimonious creep to identify himself as a sanctimonious creep.

People who attack attack Evolution aren't defending the Bible or any legitimate religious belief. They are simply showing themselves to be one of two things. They may be timid sheep who do not dare to admit that they are responsible for their own choices, and desperately wish to yield that responsibility to some other authority. Or they may be arrogant, self-worshipping asses.

The Bible itself has no problem with Evolution. In fact, it's kind of amazing that Evolution appeared in it so many centuries before science figured it out.