Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Are you from Apes?

As I was doing my usual tasks on social bookmarking, a friend from Digg, David Hallstrom, shouted to me his article and the title made me curious. So I read through it and something in it stirred some thoughts and it really made sense. Here's the article.

Why Can't The Theories of Evolution And Creationism Co-Exist?

I am not a scientist or a religious authority, therefore my question "Why Can't The Theories of Evolution And Creationism Co-Exist?" may seem unintelligent, however it seems to me that the theories of evolution and creationism can be merged.

It is my understanding that the theory of evolution basically holds that mankind evolved from a lower species over numerous generations through natural selection, gene flow, genetic drift and other selective forces.

It is my understanding that the theory of creationism basically holds that mankind, the earth and everything else was created by a supreme being or god.

When people say that "god created the heavens and the earth in six days and on the seventh he rested", who can say how long one of god's days is. Why are we so egotistical as to believe that his day is the same as ours. We don't know god (Most of us who believe in god do so because we want to not because we have proof.) but if there is a god why can't his, her or it's day be a thousand or a million or even several billion of our years.

Chapter 2, verse 7 of the book of Geneses states "then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being." It does not state how long this took or what form the being we call man originally took. God's image can be many things. We have no way of knowing. Additionally, although the bible is supposed to be the word of god, it was written by humans and therefore subject to human interpretation.

When we create something we start out with one thing and then add to it and alter it until we finish and with some creations, such as a garden, we never finish adding to and altering it. Who says that god could not have started with one cell and through evolution added to it and altered it until it became a human being. Who can say for sure that he, she or it is still not adding to and altering mankind. Who can say that god did not make us in such a way that we would continue to evolve without his, her or it's intervention. Who can say that the process is finished. Chapter 2 verse 1 of the book of Genesis states "Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.". I have not found any place in the bible that states humans were finished.

It is said that "god created man in his own image". Since no one has ever seen god who can say what that image is. Who knows what humans will look like or how they will think in a thousand, ten thousand or one hundred thousand years. Maybe someday all humans will look and think exactly alike. Maybe someday all humans will merge into one being.

If there is a being powerful enough to create us then that being would be so far above us that we could not possibly understand it's thought processes or how it created or is creating us. We can not know what is intended for us or how or if things will end.

No human knows or understands everything. No human can state beyond all doubt that there is or isn't a god. No human is infallible. Anything is possible, even the possibility that evolution and creationism are part of the same process.

6 comments:

Spot a Leopard said...

Cool Article...this maybe the answer to the debate about the real origin of humankind...

Skron said...

Nice post. I know a lot of people always had trouble connecting science and religion. But it's really easy if you just open your mind.

Religion was written on an age where science, research and proper documentation barely exists. So, usually, they just write or tell stories in a way they could explain it. No scientific jargon, or proper research, whatsoever. A perfect

Then those stories are passed down through generations, which are then eroded in time, by time. The end result will be something symbolical, that something happened but it's not how it actually happened.

Now, that's where science comes in to decode the symbols. As one scientist (forgot his name) even said that science is there to study God's work and present it with a factual explanation.

So if the leaves are green because of photosynthesis it doesn't mean God didn't had a hand in making that leaf green. It's just a factual explanation of how the leaves are green. With that in mind, if Darwin said we came from monkeys it doesn't mean that God didn't created us.

tijel said...

thanks for the comments :)
nice insight skron.
hope all the debates will soon come to an end ;) by both parties meeting halfway.

Skron said...

You're welcome. I'm adding you to my blogroll...if you don't mind.

Anonymous said...

wow brilliant!!!

this is cool... but i deem that treatise like this is metaphysical enough to be justified by human reason. metaphysical in the sense that it is beyond physics, and human logic can never be separated from what is physical. so how can we speculate-given that we think in cove of human logic-about the idea of creation well in fact we have no conception of the metaphysical?

the notion of creation is a long argued topic and never been resolved as far as science and religion juxtaposed the idea. as you know, the world is ultimately managed by duality (science and faith) and as long as these both exist with no common unity, the ideas of creation will be in endless conflict.


ill link you to my blogsite. im from barotac too.=)

tijel said...

yes, we can never comprehend this thing. yet it has always been a subject for debate. thanks for the comment and for the link too ;)