Ok. So I don't know if you believe in God or not. It's really none of my business, and this little rant isn't about that, it's about something that puzzles me... Creationism.
I had a coffee a week or so back with an old friend... except that she's gone a little loopy, and has become a fundamentalist. I was telling her about our flagship product that matches a medication to a person's DNA. She wouldn't hear of it. Told me the whole DNA thing was just part of the evil godless evolutionist conspiracy, and that God created Adam and Eve on the 6th day.
Of course, there's no point arguing with someone's core belief.
But on the way home, I was still having the argument in my head. You know... when you don't get to say what you wanted to say at the time and you finish the argument with yourself later. (Usually, I just don't think of the really good arguments until later, but in this case, I was just being too polite.)
So somewhere between the South Pylon of the Harbour Bridge and the Artarmon exit of the Gore Hill Freeway, I started talking through the alternatives possible to my friend. This, by the way, is the true freedom the age of the mobile telephone delivers... you can sit in your car all alone, talking to yourself, and the person in the car next to you doesn't give it a second's thought. Sorry, I digress...
...She believes in a Divine hand in the creation of life, but she just can't bring herself to believe her ancestor may have been a monkey.
THIS is the bit that I can't understand in people like her...
Behind door number 1 is the Creationist version... life created by this being who designs each living organism, each animal, each vegetable, and places it on a created world as though it's a train set. It's a simplistic, child-like model, and if I was God, I think I'd be just a little insulted.
Or
Behind door number 2 is a different version that still involves a Divine hand (because that's a necessary part of her fundamental beliefs)... of life created by a being who makes a single celled organism, and creates within it, a learning. adapting self replicating programmable instruction set, so that this single celled organism can adapt to whatever conditions it finds, and can grow, multiply, mutate and evolve into whatever it's surroundings allow it to be.
Surely, of the two choices, it is the second that is truly magnificent, yet she chooses to believe in the first, a version that reduces her God to the status of an engineer.
I just don't get it, though she will tell you that this thinking only serves to confirm something she's believed about me for some time, which is that I will burn in hell for all eternity. Ah well. Never mind. At least most of my friends will be there.
Now before anyone thinks I'm suggesting that these are the ONLY alternatives, you're not paying attention. I was just arguing through the alternatives that would be acceptable to her.
There'd be no point canvassing the third option, where the whole thing develops by random chance, and I'm definitely not going into the fourth option... you know the one... involving aliens and experiments on cows...
5 comments:
What kinds of experiments???
The ones where the aliens leave mutilated cow carcasses in fields, but where the mutilations have been done with surgical precision by laser.
Don't you read tabloids?
aaaaah, yes. I recall those experiments.
I am a big believer in the News of the World - altho, I regret I have not read it of late. I've been sidetracked by the National Enquirer & the New York Post.
So Chester, I hear you.
I took a great Evolution and Diversity of Life class at the University of Utah last semester. Fascinating. I am probably as serious about my religious doctrine as your friend, but I really am with you on this one.
I believe that God created the earth to begin, to grow, to have a progression of mistakes and successes, just as he created His children to follow the same pattern.
To me it's a non-issue (religion-wise) HOW exactly He accomplished the creation of the human body and every other biological and geological element. I, for the time being, am still fascinated by the finesse of His work. And pretty grateful for it, too.
Michelle, I agree with you... it doesn't matter HOW... what matters is HOW MAGNIFICENT, and that applies whichever model you choose.
It doesn't matter whether someone thinks it was God, Gods, Natural Selection, Random Chance or even Aliens. THat life exists at all is just bloody stunning.
And CAW, you ought to be ashamed of yourself... forgetting to read NOTW. Especially in your line of work. Where else do you get your real news from?
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