For the beauty of the Earth...
I returned a week ago from a mission trip to the Lakota Sioux reservation of Cheyenne River in South Dakota. This was my first trip to the Great Plains region and, while I did not step foot in Montana, I was definitely in "big sky country" nonetheless. The small community of Bridger where we stayed and worked is situated in an absolutely beautiful setting. We were in a broad, grassy valley surrounded by hills on three sides. The tree-lined Cheyenne River meandered along the southern edge. Sunsets were red, breezes were strong, and nights were cool.
The week renewed my appreciation for the wonder, diversity, and vastness of this creation that God has wrought. One really gets a sense of scale, for example, when one is driving along a ridge in the plains and can spot the destination that's several miles down the road. Needless to say, I don't get so much of a chance to feel as small here in the South. There's not much to see driving along the highway when thick forest marks the edges. Although, I must say, it also feels good to see lush green when I fly back in after a trip out west.
The sheer diversity of life on this planet, a diversity that shouts the delight of its Maker, was driven home by a visit to the Black Hills Museum of Natural History. It's really a small building masquerading behind an impressive name, but the operators have packed a goodly number of fossils in a small space (the second most-complete T. Rex skeleton being among them). I still have the five-year old's love for dinosaurs, but this time I was really struck with a fascination for the myriads of small creatures that multiplied and thrived long before they came on the scene.
I also thought about how I don't feel threatened by the idea of evolution like I once did - like I once thought I was supposed to be. As a matter of fact, my opinion about this theory has followed the proverbial swing of the pendulum. When I was a young child, I accepted evolution without blinking an eye. It was in those dinosaur books I was reading, after all. My mom even gave me a book titled Evolution at some point. But then, in fourth or fifth grade, I received this creationist book. It also happens to be a book by Jehovah's Witnesses, so about halfway through it jumps radically from creationist arguments to JW eschatology. But I didn't stop there. As my hunger for knowledge in all manner of subjects exploded during middle school, particularly my desire for the tools to hold a reasoned faith, I imbibed creationist literature like a pirate his rum. I was just about convinced that Christianity stood or fell on what Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis called the trustworthiness of Genesis.
College complicated matters. I wasn't introduced to critical study of the Bible then, but I became immersed in it from the inside. Yet I wasn't shaken in my convictions by JEDP. Rather, it was the Christian science professors at LC who said they couldn't be intellectually honest and support Young Earth Creationism. But at least one of them was a fan of Intelligent Design. So I abandoned Genesis literalism but kept a critical distance from evolution. Over time, my interest in the issue waned to a fairly neutral apathy.
My rather tentative support for Intelligent Design was increasingly based on a conviction of fairness rather than any apologetic or theological rationale. It seemed to me that ID needed to be heard and argued in a more open manner than it seemed the scientific orthodoxy would allow. More recently, I have begun to understand the arguments supporting the declaration that ID is unscientific and therefore inadmissable. I'm still fine with seeing more debate, but I can now recognize a little more coherence and a little less venality to the evolutionist side.
My thoughts are now the closest they have ever been to the default position of the elementary-age dinosaur nut. Last fall, at the National Youth Worker Convention in Nashville, one of the guest speakers was Francis Collins, the evangelical geneticist who led the Human Genome Project and who is now Obama's pick for the NIH director. Collins is both unabashedly Christian and unabashedly evolutionist, and his lecture strongly defended this hypostatic union. He provided some evidence from genetics that I had not seen before and that I recognized would be difficult to refute at best. I remember thinking, rather calmly, that maybe the game is up.
I'm still not "convinced" but that is largely because, having long lost a dog in this fight, I don't feel any pressure to settle with a particular position. The only matter I am convinced about is that the YEC crowd is wrong, and that has as much to do with my understanding of Scripture as it does with the many Christian scientists who have pointed out young-earther misrepresentations. But, as I said above, I can say at least that evolution does not feel like a threat anymore. In fact, seen through a theological lens, evolution can be a doxology for me. As my eyes ran over the myriads of fossils on display, drinking in their mute testimonies to eons of vitality and change, I felt that the quietness of the museum hindered the only proper response I could make, which would be shouts of joy and praise. If evolution is true, it is a story of the Creator endowing His handiwork with the power of creativity, and within that creativity calling forth an imaginative variety of creatures, granting to each a season for growth and complexity until giving way to yet something else bursting forth. I think I can celebrate that.
The week renewed my appreciation for the wonder, diversity, and vastness of this creation that God has wrought. One really gets a sense of scale, for example, when one is driving along a ridge in the plains and can spot the destination that's several miles down the road. Needless to say, I don't get so much of a chance to feel as small here in the South. There's not much to see driving along the highway when thick forest marks the edges. Although, I must say, it also feels good to see lush green when I fly back in after a trip out west.
The sheer diversity of life on this planet, a diversity that shouts the delight of its Maker, was driven home by a visit to the Black Hills Museum of Natural History. It's really a small building masquerading behind an impressive name, but the operators have packed a goodly number of fossils in a small space (the second most-complete T. Rex skeleton being among them). I still have the five-year old's love for dinosaurs, but this time I was really struck with a fascination for the myriads of small creatures that multiplied and thrived long before they came on the scene.
I also thought about how I don't feel threatened by the idea of evolution like I once did - like I once thought I was supposed to be. As a matter of fact, my opinion about this theory has followed the proverbial swing of the pendulum. When I was a young child, I accepted evolution without blinking an eye. It was in those dinosaur books I was reading, after all. My mom even gave me a book titled Evolution at some point. But then, in fourth or fifth grade, I received this creationist book. It also happens to be a book by Jehovah's Witnesses, so about halfway through it jumps radically from creationist arguments to JW eschatology. But I didn't stop there. As my hunger for knowledge in all manner of subjects exploded during middle school, particularly my desire for the tools to hold a reasoned faith, I imbibed creationist literature like a pirate his rum. I was just about convinced that Christianity stood or fell on what Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis called the trustworthiness of Genesis.
College complicated matters. I wasn't introduced to critical study of the Bible then, but I became immersed in it from the inside. Yet I wasn't shaken in my convictions by JEDP. Rather, it was the Christian science professors at LC who said they couldn't be intellectually honest and support Young Earth Creationism. But at least one of them was a fan of Intelligent Design. So I abandoned Genesis literalism but kept a critical distance from evolution. Over time, my interest in the issue waned to a fairly neutral apathy.
My rather tentative support for Intelligent Design was increasingly based on a conviction of fairness rather than any apologetic or theological rationale. It seemed to me that ID needed to be heard and argued in a more open manner than it seemed the scientific orthodoxy would allow. More recently, I have begun to understand the arguments supporting the declaration that ID is unscientific and therefore inadmissable. I'm still fine with seeing more debate, but I can now recognize a little more coherence and a little less venality to the evolutionist side.
My thoughts are now the closest they have ever been to the default position of the elementary-age dinosaur nut. Last fall, at the National Youth Worker Convention in Nashville, one of the guest speakers was Francis Collins, the evangelical geneticist who led the Human Genome Project and who is now Obama's pick for the NIH director. Collins is both unabashedly Christian and unabashedly evolutionist, and his lecture strongly defended this hypostatic union. He provided some evidence from genetics that I had not seen before and that I recognized would be difficult to refute at best. I remember thinking, rather calmly, that maybe the game is up.
I'm still not "convinced" but that is largely because, having long lost a dog in this fight, I don't feel any pressure to settle with a particular position. The only matter I am convinced about is that the YEC crowd is wrong, and that has as much to do with my understanding of Scripture as it does with the many Christian scientists who have pointed out young-earther misrepresentations. But, as I said above, I can say at least that evolution does not feel like a threat anymore. In fact, seen through a theological lens, evolution can be a doxology for me. As my eyes ran over the myriads of fossils on display, drinking in their mute testimonies to eons of vitality and change, I felt that the quietness of the museum hindered the only proper response I could make, which would be shouts of joy and praise. If evolution is true, it is a story of the Creator endowing His handiwork with the power of creativity, and within that creativity calling forth an imaginative variety of creatures, granting to each a season for growth and complexity until giving way to yet something else bursting forth. I think I can celebrate that.
I, too, have largely left YEC, but I still have a number of problems with evolution. First, it is a religion and a militant one at that. It is simply a political tool to oppress the wrong group (e.g., one the establishment doesn't like). Secondly, Alvin Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument against Evolution. If evolution is true, then I can't know it to be true because my brain is currently evolving and cannot function as a reference point for evaluating data. It's more complex than that, I admit.
Posted by
Jacob |
Tuesday, August 18, 2009 7:22:00 PM
.... "If evolution is true, it is a story of the Creator endowing His handiwork with the power of creativity, and within that creativity calling forth an imaginative variety of creatures, granting to each a season for growth and complexity until giving way to yet something else bursting forth".......Wow!..thats good..
Posted by
Anonymous |
Friday, August 21, 2009 10:30:00 AM
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