Evolution and Christianity - Through My Eyes

A little preface to this post:

This summer at the state park, I was talking to one of the park hosts and I mentioned that I had reconciled evolution and Christianity, although for me it was never too much of a problem. She said that I should write down how I reconciled the two, because it might help someone else. So I did. The result was about two pages, but it really is the result of my entire life in church and at least a year and a half of biology courses (I have taken even more since I reconciled my belief in God and evolution and they often provide additional support for my understanding). After I wrote this, I had planned to share it here, but I didn't plan to share it so soon.

Before my internship started, my parents and I stopped in Sonora, Tx at the little Methodist church there. The pastor talked to me beforehand and during the children's sermon, she asked if she could pray for me. One of the things she prayed  for was that God would help me to share my faith while at my internship, and I remember thinking "how am I going to share my faith as an intern at a state park out in the middle of West Texas?"

Well Saturday, I was speaking with the wife of one of the men who lives and works at the park and she mentioned that one of the campers had given her a Bible because they were talking about religion, and she is an athiest. She told me that she wants to believe because it seems to provide a lot of comfort to some people, but she just can't.

I've been thinking about how I can share this with her since then. My heart was moved and I really want to reach out to her. So this is my first step. I'm sharing it here, and then I am going to write her a letter and leave it in the Bible the camper gave her. It might be cowardly, but that is what I plan to do.

God conspires (I love that word) in strange ways.

If you are scientific and you are questioning Christianity in light of evolution, I hope this helps you. And if you are Christian and wondering how to speak to people who accept evolution as true, I hope this helps you as well. And for everyone, I hope you'll find this interesting and thought-provoking and I hope you'll learn something. 

As a biology student and a Christian, I realized early on that I needed to reconcile those two things. So I did some thinking and discussing with those around me. The evidence for evolution was strong. But the conviction in my heart that God IS real and that God created ME (and all of the beautiful things around me that made me want to study biology in the first place) was equally strong. The definition of evolution (change in allele frequencies in a population over time) was logical. But if the changes occurred to a great enough extreme, it would follow that a group of new, different, possibly reproductively isolated (the Biological-Species concept) individuals (yes, a species) could potentially arise. And this process could occur often enough to create the chain of organisms that scientists recognize. But, if this were the case, shouldn’t there be some sort of record of ALL of those intermediate forms (this would be Gradualism, of which, Darwin was a proponent)? Perhaps, the forms were indistinguishable from one another until the new species emerged? That explanation isn’t very satisfying; perhaps something else was going on?

Cue, Punctuated Equilibrium. If you don’t know, this is the idea that there were long periods of no change followed by shorter periods of rapid change. If the changes were rapid, then it would make sense that there would be few of the intermediate forms, and lots of the forms from the periods of stagnation. Makes sense to me.

Now let’s say we go all the way back to the very beginning of the chain of life on earth. We are taught in biology that life began with some sort of unicellular organism which could exist in an anaerobic atmosphere. Some sort of cyanobacteria came onto the scene, producing oxygen and maybe some bubbles of oxygen gas rose up from under water supplying oxygen to our atmosphere. Once there was oxygen in the atmosphere, further evolution could occur.

But we haven’t gone back far enough yet. What caused the planet to exist with an anaerobic atmosphere and that unicellular protist which eventually gave rise to all life? Depending on your school of thought, your answer may vary. Perhaps you’ll say the Big Bang. Or perhaps, you’ll say God. Let’s consider the former.

The Big Bang tells us that all matter was this huge ball of energy and one day it just exploded randomly forming the universe (which may be expanding or collapsing, go see a physicist for more, my understanding of the Big Bang is, admittedly, hazy) including our galaxy, including our solar system, including our planet.

So let’s go back even further. What caused the Big Bang?

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No, I’m serious, tell me, what caused the Big Bang?

Imagine a series of dominoes falling. The last domino has just fallen. What caused it to fall? The domino before it. And what caused that domino to fall? The domino before it…And eventually, what caused the very first domino to fall? Someone or something pushed the first domino which caused a chain reaction which ultimately caused the very last domino to fall. So what pushed the first domino? Let’s just say it was a finger.

The first domino is the Big Bang, by the way.

God is the finger.

In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth.

On the third day, God created seed-bearing plants and fruited plants.

On the fifth day, God created fish and birds.

On the sixth day, God created the animals of the land.

Evolution says that plants were one of the first lineages to arise. Followed, eventually, by fish. Which in turn were followed by amphibians, then reptiles, then birds, and mammals. Sound familiar? It is essentially the same order.

But the Bible says that creation took a total of seven days, while evolution says these same events occurred over millions of years. There is this funny thing about the Bible, it wasn’t originally written in English. It was written in a variety of ancient languages, including Hebrew. In Hebrew the word "yom" which means “day” has at least three meanings: the first is the 12-hour period from sun up to sun down, the second is the 24 hour period from sun down to sun down, and the third is an indiscriminate amount of time (it could be a very, very long time). So maybe, the “day” mentioned in Genesis is really hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of years.

So maybe Genesis should actually say:

In the first thousands of years, God created the heavens and the earth.

In the third thousands of years, God created  seed-bearing plants and fruited plants.

And so on.

Now, I know some of you are challenging me. Maybe that’s all good and well to you, but you think you have the nail that will seal the case against me: what if we keep going back, if God caused the Big Bang, who or what caused God?

Dear friends, I remember as a little kid, I sat and asked myself that very question, I thought and I thought and I thought. Perhaps, God has a mom, I thought. But then, God’s mom would have a grandma, and she would have her own mother and so on and so forth. Friends, I gave myself a headache. Eventually, I accepted that God just was and is and ever shall be. I know from a scientific stand-point, that’s not very satisfying. But, from a religious stand-point, it is. I don’t have to understand God to believe in Him. I don’t have to know what chemical reaction has to occur to change cookie dough into cookies, I just know it works. And for me, God works. It might not be satisfying, it might not be testable. But I, you, we are too complex to have occurred through some long, convoluted process that occurred simply by chance. God was there, God made it happen. God is the finger that pushed the first domino.