Posts tagged ‘Creation’
God Talking to Himself about You
When God creates the plants, fish, and land animals in Genesis 1, He speaks to the land and water He has already created to bring these creatures forth:
Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds. (Genesis 1:11)
Let the water teem with living creatures. (Genesis 1:20)
Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind. (Genesis 1:24)
God calls to the land to produce plants and animals and to the water to produce fish. Why? Because the land is where plants and animals belong and the water is where fish belong.
And yet, when God creates human beings, things change. Rather than speaking to the land, where we will live, God speaks to Himself:
Let us make mankind in Our image, in Our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground. (Genesis 1:26)
If the land is where humans will live and belong, why doesn’t God call to the land to bring them – to bring us – forth? It’s because ultimately and in a very unique way, we don’t belong to the land, but to God. We are created in His image:
God created mankind in His own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:27)
Yes, we will live on the land. And yes, the first man Adam is even created from the ground. But he belongs – and we belong – to God.
This is why Adam’s fall into sin in Genesis 3 is such a tragedy. He goes from belonging to God to wanting to be like God, which shatters his relationship with God. But God does not give up. Through the prophet Jeremiah, He envisions a time when:
“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel…” declares the Lord. “I will put My law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be My people. No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” (Jeremiah 31:33-34)
God will make sure we belong to Him. We will be His people. He will be our God.
God loves you so much that, when He created you, He had a conversation with Himself about you. You belong to Him. And nothing can change that.
Water and New Life
When God is first ordering creation, He begins with a formless, watery blob:
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. (Genesis 1:2)
But the watery blob does not last long. He separates the waters up above from the waters down below, and He separates the waters below into land and water:
And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. God called the vault “sky.” … And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good. (Genesis 1:6-8)
The separation of these waters eventually sets the stage for God to give life to human beings:
God said, “Let Us make mankind in Our image, in Our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created mankind in His own image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them. (Genesis 1:26-27)
When God rescues the Israelites from their slavery in Egypt, they quickly find themselves backed up against the banks of the Red Sea, being pursued by the full force of the Egyptian army, and being terrified at the prospect of their impending slaughter:
“Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians’? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!” (Exodus 14:11-12)
But then God steps in and redoes what He did at creation – He separates the waters of the Red Sea and forms dry land:
The waters were divided, and the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left. (Exodus 14:21-22)
The separation of these waters sets the stage for God to rescue His people and give them a new life.
Over the past few months at the church where I serve, I have been privileged to witness and be a part of many baptisms. In baptism, God does once again what He did at creation and at the Red Sea. Waters are separated by pouring or dipping, and the separation of these waters is the stage on which God promises to give people life – new life as His children:
We were therefore buried with Christ through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. (Romans 6:4)
With water, God not only creates, He recreates. And He does so intimately – personally – for you. If you have not been baptized, now is your time! If you have been, give thanks to God for His creative work in you. It’s a beautiful gift of His love for you.
“Very Good”
Creation was never intended to be what it has become. Wars. Disease. Hunger. Refugees. This world has come a long way from what God called “very good” when He first made it (Genesis 1:31).
When Jesus arrived, part of His mission was to restore what God had made “very good” to its intended and original state. This is why Jesus preached peace, healed disease, fed the hungry, and gave a place in His kingdom to the displaced of the world.
The German theologian Jürgen Moltmann captures this mission in Jesus’ ministry well when he writes:
When Jesus expels demons and heals the sick, He is driving out of creation the powers of destruction, and is healing and restoring created beings who are hurt and sick. The lordship of God, to which the healings witness, restores creation to health. Jesus’ healings are not supernatural miracles in a natural world. They are the only truly “natural” thing in a world that is unnatural, demonized, and wounded.
What Jesus does, Moltmann argues, is the work of recreation in a world where the destructive and demonic powers of de-creation are hard at work.
This begs a question: where has your life been de-created? Are you struggling with a sin? Is your body ravaged by illness? Are you mired in depression and despondency? Are you somehow unable to provide for yourself or your family adequately?
At moments like these, we often pray for miracles – acts of power that are supernaturally wrought by God Himself. But perhaps we also ought to pray for Genesis 1:31 to come to pass in our life. Perhaps we should pray that the most natural thing fathomable would come to pass in our lives – that we, and the world around us, would be restored to its God-ordained and God-intended created state – that of “very good.”
The Sabbath: More Than Just a Day
One of the interesting features of the creation account comes when God rests from His work on the seventh day:
By the seventh day God had finished the work He had been doing; so on the seventh day He rested from all His work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it He rested from all the work of creating that He had done. (Genesis 2:2-3)
This is history’s first Sabbath day, practiced by God Himself. But this seventh day breaks a pattern that is found in days one through six. Each of these days are described as having “evening and morning”:
And there was evening, and there was morning – the first day. (Genesis 1:5)
And there was evening, and there was morning – the second day. (Genesis 1:8)
And there was evening, and there was morning – the third day. (Genesis 1:13)
And there was evening, and there was morning – the fourth day. (Genesis 1:19)
And there was evening, and there was morning – the fifth day. (Genesis 1:23)
And there was evening, and there was morning – the sixth day. (Genesis 1:31)
On the seventh day, however, there is no “evening and morning.” God simply rests.
Though there is no reason to believe that the seventh day is any different than any of the other six days per se, the break in the pattern seems to indicate that this day is special. There is something more to this day than just a day.
The preacher of Hebrews speaks of this first Sabbath when he says:
There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from His. (Hebrews 4:9-10)
The preacher of Hebrews seems to be picking up on the broken pattern for the first Sabbath day. Though it may have been just a day, there seems to be something about it that lingered, something about it that transcended evening and morning, something about it that, as the preacher of Hebrews puts it, “remained” right up to the present day.
When God set a pattern of work and rest, He was not just setting a pattern, He was making a promise – a promise that rest does not merely need to be confined to one day between one evening and one morning. This is what the Jewish religious leaders of Jesus’ day forgot. They became so obsessed with keeping the Sabbath day, they forgot that the Sabbath was not just meant to be a day, but a gift for anyone whenever they needed it. As Jesus puts it, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27).
These past fifteen months have been brutal and exhausting for many people. Summer officially began yesterday. My prayer is that you’ll take advantage of God’s gift of a Sabbath during this season of time off and fun. Get some rest with family and friends. The Sabbath is God’s gift to you. And it remains for you.
It’s a gift worth using.
Dirt to Stars
At the church where I serve, we end each service with a commission from the apostle Paul:
Shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life. (Philippians 2:15-16)
This picture from Paul is tied to the very beginning of history.
When God creates the cosmos, He fashions a couple of ruling bodies. On creation’s fourth day, He speaks into existence the ruling bodies in the sky:
God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. God made two great lights – the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. (Genesis 1:14-18)
The stars, moon, and sun, Genesis says, “govern” the day and night. They are heavenly ruling bodies.
Then, on the sixth day, He creates some more ruling bodies on the earth:
God said, “Let Us make mankind in Our image, in Our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created mankind in His own image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” (Genesis 1:26-28)
Human beings, Genesis says, “rule” over all creatures. They are earthly ruling bodies.
As Genesis goes on to explain, these human beings who rule over the earth come from the earth:
The LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. (Genesis 2:7)
And yet, there is this hope that human beings, like the heavenly ruling bodies, will not just be dirty and dark, but will shine like the lights in the sky. Sin, of course, dashes this hope when God tells Adam that He will return to the dirt:
Dust you are and to dust you will return. (Genesis 3:19)
But Paul restores this hope. He says we will “shine like stars in the universe” (Philippians 2:15). But how? Paul explains:
Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.” (Philippians 2:14-15)
Paul says when we live without grumbling or arguing, we shine. We go from being dirt from the world to offering light and hope for the world.
This world is full of dirty stuff. Let’s not add to it by our grumbling and arguing. Let’s shine light on it by our joy and peacefulness. This is our world’s need – and the Church’s call.
Back To The Beginning
A couple of weeks ago, a scientific discovery significant enough to merit coverage in The New York Times was revealed. Geologists have discovered the world’s oldest fossils in Greenland. According to these researchers, the fossils are around 3.7 billion years old and are thought to be stromatolites, which are formed by the growth of layers of cyanobacteria, a single-celled microbe that lives in shallow water. But the discovery has posed a problem for scientists. Nicholas Wade explains:
The great age of the fossils complicates the task of reconstructing the evolution of life from the chemicals naturally present on the early Earth. It leaves comparatively little time for evolution to have occurred and puts the process close to a time when Earth was being bombarded by destructive asteroids.[1]
For years, scientists have struggled to date the age of and construct a prehistory of the earth. Just when a consensus about the earth’s age seems to emerge, new evidence surfaces that forces scientists to rethink the prevailing wisdom. Theories of the earth’s origins and the origins of life are constantly being modified.
Part of the trouble with the discovery of this fossil is that it forces the origins of life, from an evolutionary perspective, back to more than 4 billion years ago. This timeframe coincides with cataclysmic meteor events on the earth, including a hit by a meteor so big that it tore out a chunk of our planet that spun into orbit and become our moon. As Mr. Wade notes in his article, “It is difficult to see how life could have begun under such circumstances.” It is difficult, indeed. That is, unless there’s more to life than evolutionary chance.
Whenever a discovery like this is made, it points not only to the wonder of the earth, but to the problems that emerge with what appears to be a designer planet when one denies any sort of a Designer. This is why the Bible opens its pages with a declaration of one Designer: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). Whatever one might think of fossils that are purported to be billions of years old, this much the Bible says we can know: the fossils, and the life they represent, did not happen by accident. Someone formed life and, through whatever this planet has endured, has sustained life. This is why some researchers struggle so mightily to reconstruct earth’s origins. They work out of a worldview that will simply not allow an author and sustainer of life. They may study fossils to date them, but they do not take the time to marvel at the very existence of them.
The question each of us must answer is this: am I wedded – philosophically and academically – to a universe that is constrained by naturalism? Do I believe that there is no cause of anything save what we can see and measure? Or, as Christianity claims, am I open – philosophically and academically – to a universe that bears the marks of supernaturalism? Do I believe that what we see is simply too fantastic to be described in merely mechanical terms? Do I believe that things can also be described in theological terms?
Christians should by no means be closed off to scientific study and discovery. Curiosity, after all, is hardwired into the human spirit. But scientists also should not close themselves off to God. For if one is subscribes to sheer naturalism, he may be able to accumulate lots of information about what he sees, but he will still be left with little meaning as to why it’s all here.
Christianity tells us that everything is here because, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” He is why everything exists. He is why we exist. And that means He is worth at least considering in any theory of origins.
The fossils got here somehow.
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[1] Nicholas Wade, “World’s Oldest Fossils Found in Greenland,” The New York Times (8.31.2016).
Why I Don’t Read The Bible Literally (But I Do Take It Seriously)
It never ceases to amaze me how misunderstood the orthodox Christian belief concerning Holy Scripture is. Even The New York Times can’t seem to figure it out. Take Charles Blow, an op-ed columnist for the Times, who stands stunned at the views of many Americans on the Bible. With a mixture of disbelief and disdain, he reports:
One Gallup report issued last week found that 42 percent of Americans believe “God created humans in their present form 10,000 years ago.”
Even among people who said that they were “very familiar” with the theory of evolution, a third still believed that God created humans in their present form 10,000 years ago.
It’s not clear what the respondents meant by being “very familiar” – did they fully understand the science upon which evolution’s based, or was their understanding something short of that, as in, very familiar with it as being antithetical to creationist concepts?
Whatever the case, on this issue as well as many others in America, the truth is not the light.[1]
Blow goes on to cite people’s opinions on the Bible itself according to this same Gallup pole:
Nearly a third of Americans continue to believe that the Bible “is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word.”
Furthermore, nearly half believe that it is “the inspired word of God but not everything in it should be taken literally.”
About a fifth of Americans said they believe the Bible is “an ancient book of fables, legends, history, and moral precepts recorded by man.”
The questions Gallup asks concerning the nature and character of the Bible frustrate me. Gallup wants to know, “Do you believe the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word?” Personally, I would have to answer “yes” and “no.” Do I believe the Bible is “the actual word of God”? Yes. Do I believe it is to be “taken literally, word for word”? No. But this is not because I want to discredit the Bible’s veracity, authority, or inerrancy. Rather, this is because I follow the Bible’s lead when it interprets itself non-literally in some places. The Bible is full of metaphors, symbols, and other figures of speech as even an elementary reading of it will uncover. One need look no farther than “The LORD is my shepherd” (Psalm 23) to find a metaphor – and a beautiful metaphor, I would add – of Scripture. Thus, I would find myself more at ease with Gallup’s second position: “The Bible is the inspired word of God but not everything in it should be taken literally.”
Blow, however, summarily dismisses this second position:
I am curious which parts would get a pass from most of these respondents and which wouldn’t. Would the origins of the world fall into the literal camp? What about the rules – all or some – in books like Deuteronomy?
Perhaps Blow has not yet discovered the difference between reading something literally and reading something contextually. Just because I don’t practice, for instance, the sacrifices outlined in Deuteronomy doesn’t mean I don’t understand them literally. It just means that I read them in light of Hebrews 10:10: “We have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” Christ’s sacrifice for sin put an end to all those Old Testament sacrifices for sin. For me to try to follow those laws would be like me taking a ticket for an Elvis concert, going to the venue listed thereon, and expecting a concert usher to let me in! Though I may read the ticket “literally,” that ticket’s time is past. So it is with the Old Testament sacrificial system. Its time too is past because it has been fulfilled by Christ. But that isn’t me reading the Bible non-literally. That’s just me reading the Bible contextually.
I suspect part of the reason Blow disparages option two when it comes to reading and interpreting the Bible is because, for him, only option three, which says the Bible is “an ancient book of fables, legends, history, and moral precepts recorded by man,” is viable. He writes:
I don’t seek to deny anyone the right to believe as he or she chooses. I have at points in my own life been quite religious, and my own children have complicated views about religion. As my oldest son once told me, “I’d hate to live in a world where a God couldn’t exist.”
That is his choice, as it is every individual’s choice, and I respect it.
What worries me is that some Americans seem to live in a world where facts can’t exist.
Facts such as the idea that the world is ancient, and that all living things evolved and some – like dinosaurs – became extinct. Facts like the proven warming of the world. Facts like the very real possibility that such warming could cause a catastrophic sea-level rise.
Ah yes, facts. Facts like the Bohr model of the atom or the rallying cry of biogenetics: “Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.” Oh, wait. Those “facts” turned out to be not quite as factual as we once thought. Contrary to Blow, I’m not so sure that a great uprising of people who want facts to not exist is the problem. The problem is there are people who disagree with him on what the fullness of the facts are and how the data that form the facts should be interpreted. Now, I’m not saying these other people are correct on the facts. I’m just saying these other people with other thoughts on what the facts are that contradict Blow’s thoughts on what the facts are not necessarily rejecting facts themselves.
Blow says he is “both shocked and fascinated by Americans’ religious literalism.” I don’t think he even understands what “religious literalism” is. Nor do I think he understands that many serious people of faith understand and trust the Bible theologically, morally, and historically without always reading it literally. No wonder he’s so shocked and fascinated. He simply doesn’t understand. Then again, I’m not so sure he wants to.
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[1] Charles Blow, “Religious Constriction,” The New York Times (6.8.2014).
Explaining Our Existence
I recently came across two articles – both dealing with gender concerns – that caught my attention. The first article is by Lisa Wade of Salon and addresses the deep friendships – or the lack thereof – between men. Wade opens her article:
Of all people in America, adult, white, heterosexual men have the fewest friends. Moreover, the friendships they have, if they’re with other men, provide less emotional support and involve lower levels of self-disclosure and trust than other types of friendships. When men get together, they’re more likely to do stuff than have a conversation …
When I first began researching this topic I thought, surely this is too stereotypical to be true. Or, if it is true, I wondered, perhaps the research is biased in favor of female-type friendships. In other words, maybe we’re measuring male friendships with a female yardstick. It’s possible that men don’t want as many or the same kinds of friendships as women.
But they do. When asked about what they desire from their friendships, men are just as likely as women to say that they want intimacy. And, just like women, their satisfaction with their friendships is strongly correlated with the level of self-disclosure.[1]
Men want friends, Wade contends – real friends, with whom they can share real cares, concerns, and fears. But most do not have these kinds of friends. Why is this? Wade chalks it up to society’s assertions concerning what it means to be a “real man.” She explains:
[Real men] are supposed to be self-interested, competitive, non-emotional, strong (with no insecurities at all), and able to deal with their emotional problems without help. Being a good friend, then, as well as needing a good friend, is the equivalent of being girly.
Real men, our society says, keep their emotions hermetically sealed. This is why so many men eschew forming deep and abiding friendships. But as many men seek to be really masculine through sensitivity sequestration, they only wind up being really isolated.
The second article I found interesting is by Sarah Elizabeth Richards of the New York Times. Richards tells the story of Andy Inkster – a woman who underwent surgery and took testosterone to become a man, but has now stopped taking testosterone because she wants to get pregnant. As it turns out, Andy had trouble getting pregnant and sought fertility treatments from Baystate Reproductive Medicine. Baystate denied her request. She received help from another clinic and got pregnant, but sued Baystate for discrimination.
Such a desire of transgendered people to have children is not unique to Andy:
One study published last year in the journal Human Reproduction of 90 transgender men in Belgium found that 54 percent wished to have children … Other research, published in 2002, by Belgian fertility doctors with Western European transgender women found that 40 percent wanted to have children, and 77 percent felt they should have the option to preserve their sperm before hormone treatment. As fertility technology improves and becomes more widely available, transgender people are realizing that they will have more options in the future.[2]
Transgendered people apparently have a strong desire to have children in biologically traditional ways despite their deep reservations with their biologically assigned genders.
At first glance, these two articles seem to address phenomena on opposite ends of the cultural spectrum. The first has to do with entrenched machismo while the second has to do with blurred gender identity. But for all their differences, there exists a common theological root: the divorce of human existence from divine creation.
Foundational to the Christian conception of the cosmos is the belief that everything came from somewhere. Or, to put it more precisely, Christians believe that everything came from someone. We do not just exist. We were created.
It is from the Scriptural story of creation that we learn not just that we are, but who we are. We are creatures and not the Creator (cf. Genesis 3:5). We are fashioned in the image of God (cf. Genesis 1:27). We are fearfully and wonderfully made (cf. Psalm 139:14), which is to say that God intentionally and lovingly fashioned us to be a certain kind of person, the corruption of sin notwithstanding. In the old “nature versus nurture” debate, the story of creation tells us that nature does indeed shape us, but not by naturalistic means. Rather, we are shaped through nature by the One who made nature.
Both of the articles above exemplify with a convicting candor what happens when people forget this story. Men who try to play the role of the sturdy and strong lone ranger forget the part of the story where God says, “It is not good for the man to be alone” (Genesis 2:18). People who undergo surgeries and treatments in an effort to change their gender forget the part of the story where God revels in how He has created us “male and female” (Genesis 1:27).
The apostle Peter warns there will come a time when people will “deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens existed and the earth was formed” (2 Peter 3:5). They will forget their existence is a product of God’s creative word. And they will forget their existence is to be guided by God’s sacred Word. May it never be so of us. May we always be able to say: “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth…and of me.”
[1] Lisa Wade, “American men’s hidden crisis: They need more friends!” Salon (12.7.2013).
[2] Sarah Elizabeth Richards, “The Next Frontier in Fertility Treatment,” New York Times (1.12.2014).
Cosmology and Philosophy
Your philosophy is an inextricable concomitant of your cosmology. Charles Darwin knew this all too well. Most people are at least passingly familiar with Darwin’s seminal work, The Origin of Species. In it, he proffers a framework for understanding the origins of human life – and all life – using his mechanism of evolution by natural selection. In his own words, here is Darwin’s theory in a nutshell:
As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive, and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form. (Origin of Species, p. 29)
Darwin begins with the assumption that life, at its root, is a struggle for survival. He then concludes that those who win the struggle for survival carry on while those who lose the struggle do not. This is natural selection. Moreover, those who win the struggle for survival propagate more of their kind and develop “modified” characteristics which further benefit them in their struggle. This is evolution. Over time – indeed, over lots and lots of time – these beneficial characteristics continue to evolve so radically that whole new species arise from common ancestors while other, weaker species die out. This, then, is the origin of species. This is the origin of our species. We are the product of the cold hand of evolution by natural selection. This is Darwin’s cosmology, that is, his view of the laws of the world and, by extension, the cosmos.
But how you view things cosmologically inevitably informs how you view things philosophically. That is why, after publishing The Origin of Species, Darwin published The Descent of Man, a philosophical take on his cosmological theory. Thus, Darwin lamented according to the presuppositions of his cosmological theory of evolution:
We civilized men do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus, the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed. (Descent of Man, p. 168)
Darwin laments that humans work against evolutionary progress through wrongheaded ignorant attempts to save and care for those which natural selection would eliminate. If evolution by natural selection is the incontrovertible law of the forward progress of life, then to work against it by tending to the weak and sick is to take life backwards rather than forwards.
Most people, of course, are not nearly so bold connecting cosmological evolution to philosophical evolution as was Darwin. Allowing our sick and maimed to die in the name of natural selection would appall the vast majority us. And yet, Darwin is simply teasing out the philosophical inevitabilities of his cosmological presuppositions. He is being perfectly consistent. Why aren’t we?
The fact of the matter is, the way one views the universe informs and, finally, dictates the morals and ethics one holds. Darwinian evolution, if it is perceived to be the engine behind the improvement of life, cannot be meddled with by the likes of so-called “do-gooders” who are not really doing good at all. For such people are slowing evolution’s forward march by caring for the lesser evolved among us.
Christianity, of course, has a very different view of humanity’s place and value. According to Christianity, human beings are not merely the products of an inexorable evolutionary march, eventually to be displaced as the kings of the cosmos by a better and higher form of life thanks to natural selection. Rather, we are specially created by God “in His own image” (Genesis 1:27) to be the caretakers of His creation (cf. Genesis 1:28-31). Thus, we can, and are even bound, not by some unfathomably lengthy evolutionary progress, but by the intentions of our Creator. And one of His intentions for us is “to love mercy” (Micah 6:8). So, we are merciful to each other. We care for those who cannot care for themselves.
Your philosophy is an inextricable concomitant of your cosmology. So what is your cosmology? One that is driven by evolution by natural selection? Or one that rejoices in the merciful, creative hand of our God? How you answer that question makes all the difference in how you view your life…and the lives of others.
ABC Extra – On The Multiverse
This past weekend in worship and ABC, we continued our series ”Credo!” with a look at the doctrine of creation. As part of our study, talked about how the how the modern, broad consensus among scientists concerning the universe’s origins is often antagonistic and dismissive toward the biblical account of creation. Thus, many scientists and theologians alike have sought to reconcile these two seemingly conflicting accounts using different theories, two of which I briefly mentioned in ABC: the “Day-Age Theory” and the “Theistic Evolution Theory.”
In order for the theory of evolution to be correct, two things are needed: lots and lots of time and lots and lots of death. You need lots and lots of time because one species does not evolve into another overnight. Rather, billions of years are needed for one species to adapt in such a way that it actually becomes another species. You needs lots and lots of death because the mechanism by which evolution functions is natural selection, a.k.a., the survival of the fittest. In other words, for evolution to happen, species with less desirable traits must die out and give rise to species with more desirable traits. The “Day-Age Theory” of creation, which asserts that each of the days in Genesis 1 are equal to thousands, and probably millions, of years, accounts for the lots and lots of time that evolution requires, while the theory of Theistic Evolution, which states that God got the ball rolling on creation, but then it pretty much evolved the way scientists say it did, accounts for the lots and lots of death demanded by natural selection.
And yet, there is something else needed. Scientists have long noted that the earth and, indeed, even our solar system and universe, seems “fine-tuned” to support our life. In other words, there is a constellation of factors, each of which, if they were even the slightest bit different, would not have allowed evolution to happen at all because the environment would not have supported any life at all, no matter how strong or desirable an organism’s traits might have been! Scientists describe this as the “anthropic principle.” In a recent article for the Wall Street Journal, Stephen Hawking, professor at the University of Cambridge, explains:
The emergence of the complex structures capable of supporting intelligent observers seems to be very fragile. The laws of nature form a system that is extremely fine-tuned. What can we make of these coincidences? Luck in the precise form and nature of fundamental physical law is a different kind of luck from the luck we find in environmental factors. It raises the natural question of why it is that way. (Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, “Why God Did Not Create the Universe,” Wall Street Journal, 9/3/10)
It is Hawking’s final question, posed as a statement, “It raises the natural question of why it is that way,” that he spends the balance of his article seeking to address. And he seeks to address it apart from God:
Our universe seems to be one of many, each with different laws…Each universe has many possible histories and many possible states. Only a very few would allow creatures like us to exist.
Stephen Hawking adds another need to the arsenal of requirements for our existence. Not only does our existence require lots and lots of time and lots and lots of death according to the theory of evolution, it also needs lots and lots of space according to the theory of the origins of the universe. For evolution, as it stands, can account only for the existence of life on this planet, not the existence of this planet itself. Something else must account for that. If this something else is not accounted for, then evolution becomes somewhat of a “red herring” theory, for how can evolution account for one form of life giving rise to another form of life, and even a form of non-life giving rise to the first form of life, if it cannot account for that non-life material itself? Enter Stephen Hawking’s theory. Hawking postulates that there are an infinite number of universes, each with their own laws, which have spontaneously arisen out of nothing. Thus, if there are “multiverses” which, taken in toto, exhaust every possible combination of astrophysical laws, it is not surprising at all that our universe and our solar system and our planet with our life should exist. It is merely the inevitable consequence of a countless number of universes doing a countless number of different things.
How does Hawking know these multiple universes exist? Has he observed them? Has he tested them? No! Instead, the multiverse theory “is a consequence predicted by many theories in modern cosmology.” In other words, it is a theory predicated on other theories. Is it just me, or does that sound a little speculative for science? Thus, according to Hawking, “It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.” It is here that we find Hawking’s real motive for postulating the multiverse: it makes the need for God’s creative hand even more obsolete than does evolution. It puts God out of business, so to speak.
It is important to note that Hawking’s theory is nothing new. He, along with other scientists, have promoted the multiverse theory before. And there are many who are scrambling to explain why God is still needed even if there are indeed many universes. But we need not join them in their scramble. For rather than adopting a “God-in-the-gaps” strategy, where we seek to shoehorn God into the spots that science cannot answer by means of its speculative, naturalistic mechanisms, I would suggest that it’s better to take the creation account as it stands, believing in the best intentions of its human author and the divine inspiration of its giver. For the doctrine of creation does not exist merely to explain how God set into motion all the stuff for which science cannot account. Rather, it assures that we have a God who not only created the heavens and the earth a long time ago, but also:
Has given me my body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my limbs, my reason, and all my senses, and still preserves them…He provides me richly and daily with all that I need to support this body and life, protects me from all danger, and guards me and preserves me from all evil; and all this out of pure, fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in me…This is most certainly true! (Martin Luther, Small Catechism, First Article of the Creed)
And this is most certainly the proper doctrine of creation!
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