The longer I study biology and science in general, as a rank amateur of course, the more undecided I become on the debate between evolution and creation. I don't have any doubt at all about the fact that God initially created all that is. The Big Bang seems pretty conclusive evidence of that to me.
When it comes to the origins and development of life though, I find myself simultaneously agreeing with about a half dozen contradictory theories, and this just doesn't quite work for me :-) I mean, I can easily believe two or three contradictory things at once but I start to lose my balance when I attempt to juggle a half dozen. So, I either need to get better at mental gymnastics or keep on studying and reading and pondering and praying. Which, since I find the subject of origins so fascinating, is undoubtedly what I will continue to do.
I find much to agree with in the Reasons to Believe model, but it starts to seem a lot like the old God of the Gaps take on things and that just pushes God into little corners that get smaller and smaller as we find good solid explanations for those gaps. Now, to be fair RTB maintains that they are not God of the Gaps people and they have good explanations for why that is the case. But it still tends to look like God of the Gaps to me when you strip it down to its essence.
On the other side I find that naturalistic evolution, à la Richard Dawkins, fails to account for the very origin of life itself in any remotely plausible way, that is one gap that really needs an explanation! Then, after failing to get the whole process started they proceed to claim to have eliminated the need or even possibility of a God from the cosmos. This leaves the whole thing rather pointless and a bit depressing I think. Though I suppose one might buck up and have a good time anyway, even though when you're dead it's over and in the end the entire cosmos fades out into the despair of entropy.
Theistic evolution, which is really where I tend to settle most of the time, is OK I suppose but it is little different from naturalistic evolution when you look at it, we just say things like "God intended it to go that way and it did." Which I think is true but not very compelling to most non-believers. :-) I tend to think that God maybe entered into the evolutionary process from time to time to nudge things forward and then in Adam and Eve he intervened by somehow "breathing" the Image of God into them. Or maybe God, being Omniscient after all, set the whole thing rolling at the Big Bang and knew it would all come out the way it did. But that has problems too, like the whole sin and salvation thing doesn't quite make sense without free will and this view, that it could not have gone another way, just fails to explain things for me.
As to Young Earth Creationism (YEC), well the less said about that the better I'd think. "It's Turtles all the way down" just ain't gonna cut it with me, ever.
Hey, look, really I'm only juggling three things here, all is well after all! I believe in all three for the moment, which means I can't stop thinking about it or the whole thing crashes to the ground. Heh.
That said here's a bit on the RTB side, the complexity of the inner workings of the cell simply boggles the mind, putting it all together through evolution seems impossible, but is that just a gap, or is it evidence of design? I'm not decided yet.
The Nobel Prize, Ribosomes, and Evidence for Intelligent Design | Reasons To Believe
When it comes to the origins and development of life though, I find myself simultaneously agreeing with about a half dozen contradictory theories, and this just doesn't quite work for me :-) I mean, I can easily believe two or three contradictory things at once but I start to lose my balance when I attempt to juggle a half dozen. So, I either need to get better at mental gymnastics or keep on studying and reading and pondering and praying. Which, since I find the subject of origins so fascinating, is undoubtedly what I will continue to do.
I find much to agree with in the Reasons to Believe model, but it starts to seem a lot like the old God of the Gaps take on things and that just pushes God into little corners that get smaller and smaller as we find good solid explanations for those gaps. Now, to be fair RTB maintains that they are not God of the Gaps people and they have good explanations for why that is the case. But it still tends to look like God of the Gaps to me when you strip it down to its essence.
On the other side I find that naturalistic evolution, à la Richard Dawkins, fails to account for the very origin of life itself in any remotely plausible way, that is one gap that really needs an explanation! Then, after failing to get the whole process started they proceed to claim to have eliminated the need or even possibility of a God from the cosmos. This leaves the whole thing rather pointless and a bit depressing I think. Though I suppose one might buck up and have a good time anyway, even though when you're dead it's over and in the end the entire cosmos fades out into the despair of entropy.
Theistic evolution, which is really where I tend to settle most of the time, is OK I suppose but it is little different from naturalistic evolution when you look at it, we just say things like "God intended it to go that way and it did." Which I think is true but not very compelling to most non-believers. :-) I tend to think that God maybe entered into the evolutionary process from time to time to nudge things forward and then in Adam and Eve he intervened by somehow "breathing" the Image of God into them. Or maybe God, being Omniscient after all, set the whole thing rolling at the Big Bang and knew it would all come out the way it did. But that has problems too, like the whole sin and salvation thing doesn't quite make sense without free will and this view, that it could not have gone another way, just fails to explain things for me.
As to Young Earth Creationism (YEC), well the less said about that the better I'd think. "It's Turtles all the way down" just ain't gonna cut it with me, ever.
Hey, look, really I'm only juggling three things here, all is well after all! I believe in all three for the moment, which means I can't stop thinking about it or the whole thing crashes to the ground. Heh.
That said here's a bit on the RTB side, the complexity of the inner workings of the cell simply boggles the mind, putting it all together through evolution seems impossible, but is that just a gap, or is it evidence of design? I'm not decided yet.
The Nobel Prize, Ribosomes, and Evidence for Intelligent Design | Reasons To Believe
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