"God of the Gaps," or God Behind it All?
I was reading this article in the Boston Globe today (http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2005/10/23/missing_links/), about evolution and Intelligent Design, and one particular paragraph really struck me. Now, I should say, I frankly don't know tons of biology and I don't know what processes God may have used to create the universe and life on Earth. But listen to this:
"Significantly, Kirschner and Gerhart write, while random genetic mutations in our DNA code cause variations, these mutations do not create random effects (a traditional working assumption of many evolutionists). Instead, all organisms have maintained an essentially intact set of vital mechanisms-metabolism, reproduction of DNA, growth mechanisms, and more-for at least 2 billion years. These elements, along with a long-conserved body plan common to many animals, serve as the platform for subsequent, often more visible variations."
Now, since I'm not a biologist I can't comment on whether what these scientists are saying is true or not. But even if it is true (and the writers seem to think this would be a blow against Intelligent Design), listen to what they're saying! Basically, "These crazy organisms are even more amazing, even more capable of adapting to difficult situations, even more strangely and beautifully made to deal with all the crap this universe could throw at them in order to produce life and life abundantly." To me, the beautiful simplicity of complexity has God's signature all over it! You take a complex, insane, wacky idea like mass and energy being correlated, and you boil it down to the beautiful, elegant and simple E = mc^2 -- how could the universe BE that way unless God made it that way? How could such elegant simplicity be the driving ingredient in this soup of chaos? How could such simplicity as these biologists are describing--the same basic body plan, metabolism, etc. for 2 billion years--nonetheless producing the vast, dizzying array of diversity we see in life on Earth, NOT lead one to stare in awe at the glory of the God who put it all into being, who thought of these beautiful, simple and elegant solutions to such complexities as the development of life on Earth?
Evolutionists (and even Intelligent Design theorists at times perhaps) miss the key argument in the question of God's existence--the very awesomeness of any potential theory to explain the existence of the diversity of life, including intelligent, conscious beings like ourselves, cries out for explanation from a deeper source than just mere mechanisms. We can say, "Well, natural selection and genetic mutation, produced by these crazy modular structures we're discovering in genetic adaptions, is responsible for the evolution of life." But even if that's true, that explanation demands a further explanation--if life is so amazing like you say, how did it get that way?? Why is it here to begin with? Why are we here to begin with? Why is the whole universe here to begin with?? If the universe began at a specific point in time, as the Big Bang theory argues (and as nearly all scientists nowadays accept), then Something must have caused it, Something must have caused us. There's no way around that one, no matter how nifty or how elegantly, complexly simple your evolutionary theory gets. The very complex simplicity of your theory ought to drive you even more strongly into the pursuit of your Creator.
My prayer is for all the scientists who are studying the works of God, that they might see the grand signature of their Creator in the awesome beauty of His creation, and fall into repentant, joyful worship.
"Significantly, Kirschner and Gerhart write, while random genetic mutations in our DNA code cause variations, these mutations do not create random effects (a traditional working assumption of many evolutionists). Instead, all organisms have maintained an essentially intact set of vital mechanisms-metabolism, reproduction of DNA, growth mechanisms, and more-for at least 2 billion years. These elements, along with a long-conserved body plan common to many animals, serve as the platform for subsequent, often more visible variations."
Now, since I'm not a biologist I can't comment on whether what these scientists are saying is true or not. But even if it is true (and the writers seem to think this would be a blow against Intelligent Design), listen to what they're saying! Basically, "These crazy organisms are even more amazing, even more capable of adapting to difficult situations, even more strangely and beautifully made to deal with all the crap this universe could throw at them in order to produce life and life abundantly." To me, the beautiful simplicity of complexity has God's signature all over it! You take a complex, insane, wacky idea like mass and energy being correlated, and you boil it down to the beautiful, elegant and simple E = mc^2 -- how could the universe BE that way unless God made it that way? How could such elegant simplicity be the driving ingredient in this soup of chaos? How could such simplicity as these biologists are describing--the same basic body plan, metabolism, etc. for 2 billion years--nonetheless producing the vast, dizzying array of diversity we see in life on Earth, NOT lead one to stare in awe at the glory of the God who put it all into being, who thought of these beautiful, simple and elegant solutions to such complexities as the development of life on Earth?
Evolutionists (and even Intelligent Design theorists at times perhaps) miss the key argument in the question of God's existence--the very awesomeness of any potential theory to explain the existence of the diversity of life, including intelligent, conscious beings like ourselves, cries out for explanation from a deeper source than just mere mechanisms. We can say, "Well, natural selection and genetic mutation, produced by these crazy modular structures we're discovering in genetic adaptions, is responsible for the evolution of life." But even if that's true, that explanation demands a further explanation--if life is so amazing like you say, how did it get that way?? Why is it here to begin with? Why are we here to begin with? Why is the whole universe here to begin with?? If the universe began at a specific point in time, as the Big Bang theory argues (and as nearly all scientists nowadays accept), then Something must have caused it, Something must have caused us. There's no way around that one, no matter how nifty or how elegantly, complexly simple your evolutionary theory gets. The very complex simplicity of your theory ought to drive you even more strongly into the pursuit of your Creator.
How many are your works, O LORD!
In wisdom you made them all;
the earth is full of your creatures. (Psalm 104:24)
My prayer is for all the scientists who are studying the works of God, that they might see the grand signature of their Creator in the awesome beauty of His creation, and fall into repentant, joyful worship.
Great are the works of the LORD;
they are pondered by all who delight in them.(Psalm 111:2)
posted by Seth | 11:06 PM
1 Comments:
You're quite right, of course, that theories about the natural origins of life shouldn't be any threat to religious belief per se. We don't take any *other* kind of natural laws as a threat to God's existence, and a greater understanding of the nature of life should be no different from the weather, or the movement of solar systems, or any number of other natural developments that don't in any way make us worried about God's providence (if anything, quite the contrary.)
It is unfortunate that the scientists who promote theories about the origins of life don't seem, in practice, to take this kind of view. As I'm sure you realize, Darwinist literature has in practice been infused with strong anti-religious rhetoric practically from the beginning, and since this thinly cloaked materialism has been promoted for years in public schools, religious people start to feel that they have no choice but to try to answer in kind with scientific theories that were developed with an obvious philosophical agenda in mind. I don't blame them, but it does seem a shame to be subjecting childen and their education to this kind of ideological haggling. I maintain that the best idea is just to stop teaching anything about the origins of species in public schools.
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