The New York Times started a new series on the "intelligent design" debate today. This stuff is big news nowadays, and rightfully so, because, not considering the belief the earth was created in six days, the intelligent design concept recognizes a Designer.
And what is wrong with that? The science-is-dogma scientists will tell you that you can't assume anything miraculous (anything that can't be reduced to natural processes), and that anything supernatural is non-scientific. But let's think about this a little bit ... say you believe all life evolved from an ameoba. Does that obviate the need for the miraculous? No, not really, because someone created the building blocks of life and the world in which this ameoba was conceived. And what of the Big Bang theory, does that explain our existence? Maybe, but from what I've heard about the Big Bang, scientists think it was nothing less than a miracle. The whole shebang--springing instantaneously from nothingness! That's not a miracle?
Basically, whether you believe in evolution or not, eventually you still have to recognize the need for the miraculous to explain our existence.
That's why I can't believe the world is simply a bunch of physical processes, that my consciousness is nothing more than interconnected neurons firing away ... because none of those beliefs do away with God. The Creator is still there. I can't ignore that fact, or explain it away with scientific knowledge.
3 comments:
Whatever youthful doubts I may have ever had as to whether or not God really existed were completely erased during my college years. It was not the church or a Bible study or Christian group that solidified my belief in God, but my Biology 101 class.
In that class, we learned exactly how evolution happens: that random rays from the sun strike the nucleas of a cell, mutating the DNA, and how once in a billion chances, the mutation actually improves the cell's function rather than messes it up.
Later in the semester, we studied how an ordinary human nerve cell works -- damn complicated, and I never fully understood it.
It struck me: there's no way that humankind has evolved from nothing by accident. That nerve cell that I didn't undersand could have never just come into being randomly. It's completely obvious to me that God is the guiding hand behind the universe.
thanks, dan, for your thoughts. personally, i think evolution is possible, but that it doesn't erase the need for a creator. that's what i think many people take it as ... an answer to the question of their existence.
evolution in the classroom is something getting big headlines nowadays. at first, i thought it wasn't a big deal if kids were taught evolution without questions in school, but now that i think about it, i understand that evolution can also be taught as a religion that also requires unquestioning faith.
I for one see no conflict in believing in both evolution and God.
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