God, Atom Or Ape? Essay, Research Paper
Let me explain it to you in a language you’ll understand… Have you ever heard these words before? Have you ever said, or even thought, these words before? I would dare say that everyone that has raised children or has a little brother or sister has found the need to explain something to a child “in a language they’d understand”. Then why is it so difficult to understand that the story of creation is not a scientific explanation of how we came about but a story explained “in a language the people in that age could understand” concerning God’s relationship with them and the universe. What did they know then of the world around them? What sense would it have made to tell them that we are on a huge “ball of dirt and water with a molten core” held in space by energies we still don’t totally comprehend. That the lights in the sky are planets and stars that there children’s, children’s, children… would someday be attempting to go to.
At the time the story of creation was written it was not necessary, or beneficial, to divulge the “secrets of the universe”. Just as it is not necessary to tell a child of three the details of procreation when they ask, “where do babies come from? ” You speak to them in a language they will understand such as, “When a mommy and daddy love each other so much, a baby is created from that love.” This is acceptable to the child and not something that will not fit with what they learn later. Though they will also learn, unfortunately, that children are also born from “one night stands”, loose moral behavior, and rape or abuse. But this does not make the initial story they were told untrue; it just means there is more to it than what they were told then.
So why do people have a problem believing that they were given a story that told of God’s love for them, though it was not necessarily the detailed story. Why is it so difficult to believe that God’s plan evolved over millions of years and millions of changes? When you draw a picture you start by placing your pencil at one point on the paper, the picture doesn’t just all of sudden exist, you have to create it. When you write a story you begin with a one stroke of the pen, or touch of the keyboard and it comes together one letter, one word, one thought, at a time. All things have their cycles and their paths that they follow. Why is it so hard to believe that there was a larger plan, is a larger plan, one so large that we can not see it.
Do we stay blind? Because we cannot see the plan, do we discard that which we can see? Deny the obvious? Say it can’t be, because someone told us that to believe science you have to deny God? Has everyone forgotten what the church did to science in the middle ages? If science hadn’t prevailed where would we be now? Would Columbus have sailed across the ocean? Or would they have stayed close to shore for fear of sailing off the edge of the flat earth? To believe the earth was round was to deny God. To believe that the sun was the center of the universe was to deny God. It seems to me that we overcame these without loosing our faith.
I, personally, refuse to put limitations on what God is capable of doing. If science shows us that dinosaurs walked the earth millions of years ago and that man is a newcomer in these terms it only makes me more in awe of God’s powers. That at some point in man’s evolution God deemed them “fit” to call “His own” and infused them with souls, is not a problem in my mind. At that point we became distinct from all the other creature’s of the earth.
For some reason we, above other creatures, were given minds capable of being creative, capable of reason. Why? If God did not want us to think and learn, why did He give us the ability to do so? I think it was to better know Him and I don’t believe that denying science will enable us to do that.