I have heard so many people say – OK evolution claims to be a theory… that is all it is, a theory. Correct, however the term ‘theory’ in the world of science is used slightly more firmly than we might think. Data considered and weighed is then used to put together a ‘theory’ – something that best fits the data. A bit like a court case where there is no film footage of what took place, interrogations are made and then the jury have to come to a conclusion – we might term their decision is based on a ‘theory’.
I am not a scientist, far from it, and there are those who are scientists who are certainly very unhappy with the ‘theory of evolution’; I have no basis to enter into the debate. Perhaps though with a little bit of understanding of ancient myth stories and genre I would certainly be very negative about trying to defend a young earth / 6 day creation in any literal sense. Hence I am not opposed to evolution – as indeed are many Christian scientists, take for example the book The Language of God by Francis Collins. He being one of the main team of scientists who pushed the understanding of the gene code and as a result embraced both an evolutionary understanding of ‘creation’ and a firm belief in God the Creator.
What is at stake is not the theory of evolution vs. a theory of creation (a theory based on a rather pre-determined approach to an ancient text) but a belief in the God that is revealed in Jesus or a denial of that God.
So here is a thought that might well be going too far!!!
If God is the author of life – does the life that is released inevitably move toward an expression of that life as ‘the image of God’?
The Civil Rights movement used to say:
The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
Wow… that takes faith. A long arc, but bending always toward a future that is different to one around us, always bending toward justice. What if life (OK let me go too far, before I pull back) begins as a single cell, but there is evolution? Where will the ‘arc’ of life move to? Will it inevitably lead to ‘at last an expression of life (human) that we can say is ‘in our image, after our likeness”? I kinda like that. Death exists but life is stronger than death.
So pulling back into real life, and away from pretending to be some psuedo-scientist. I think I am on to something. Submit to the process, go with the life of God and there is an arc, even if it is a long one, of pulling humanity toward being the image of God. True at a personal level, could it be true at a universal level?
✨ Hello Martin,
Here I understood that you are writing about two types of evolution.
The idea of evolution where we are drawn towards becoming God’s image, the arc of justice.
Then you write about evolution, and our development versus God’s creation… They may not contradict each other.
God created us to be able to develop, and everything is in us, to do so.
Like the unborn child, it can be changed epigenetically by its surrounding environment, such as a lack of nutrition or a certain type of nutrition. Poisons etc., so we can develop epigenetically over generations… It is part of the theory of evolution in a very small scale version of it… Just as the brain can develop depending on our behavior, through strengthened synapses and plasticity, it can of course affect generations after…
My thoughts are;
God created us and everything is there, from start and was meant to be there for our development. Thus, we can develop beyond what we can even imagine, as God’s powers are infinite and His wisdom is beyond all understanding that we can muster.
We are created in His image and we have everything within us. On the other hand, we are hugely affected already in the fetal stage epigigenetically, and our chance of connecting with true love is so dependent on how someone connects with us…
We can always create new memories purely physiologically in our brains and I also fully believe in that we can create new ways to shape into the direction of the bow, all our lives we are shapeable.
It gives me such an incredibly happy feeling that everyone we meet, that we leave with a feeling inside after that person met us…
It forms engrams in the person’s brain, and we formed something there, which may never be erased and which passes on in generations both genetically and in the arc of justice.
We have even the ability to form. Thee Life and thee Faith within us, we can pass it on very easily with the help of God’s great power, wisdom and love.
We should be able to control evolution much more than we understand, and influence it in the direction we desire for our future generations.
As we remember a kind warmhearted person and it forms a greater synapses in our brains , and we pass it on to the next generation… That, if anything, is evolution!
Life is our cells which are the smallest unit that gives rise to life, and so incredibly malleable. Everything within us moves in an arc, like the cycle of currents. We know that if the bow comes off, if we stretch things too much, they break. We kind of can’t go outside the arc…
When we do, everything breaks.
Everything is calculated to the smallest detail and anything beyond that just makes the whole system fail… one way or another. Evolutionarily, we must follow the arc or it will fail… Personal and universal. It is when we are about to wipe ourselves out completely that the Lord returns… We are not following the arc at all anymore…
My response was long and perhaps difficult to follow.. But; it’s just my thoughts. Maybe I have too many synapses maybe ✨😉
Thanks Yalda… glad the post prompted you to reply (with or without too many synapses!). I am glad for the ‘fixed’ points and the possibility of allowing the elastic to stretch from there. I would love to think that the Gospel will impact us in a greater way so that a virus might really spread so that the arc can be followed.
These set of posts could well be ‘going too far’, but I know that we have to exercise faith (or at least optimism) that this world is the Lord’s and all that is in it, so until he comes (and a later post I will also stretch the elastic to consider what that might mean) we work toward sowing the seeds of good news that in Jesus we can connect to the ‘arc’ – being transformed into the image of Jesus, the firstborn of all creation.
✨ In epigenetics, we talk about ‘set points’, which means that the body adjusts to a certain level in the mother’s life. It is the same with love, hate and other experiences. We should/should never diminish the importance of showing God’s love, i.e. true love to people we meet, precisely because we have the possibility to change these “set points” to “fixed poiints”.
If a person gets used to hatred/contempt and his body and brain form “set points” and tune in… Then we have the opportunity to break these shackles. Give a person a new memory…. It pulls the individual towards the arc and into new fixed points.
One day many years ago there was a girl who was not accepted in the church she went to. The leaders wanted to apply and project “set points” of contempt… In the end, these set points of contempt were embedded in her entire system… She was used to being despised all the time and especially among Christians… One day she walked alone to a seminar on the prophetic. It was an invited pastor from another church who led the seminar. The leaders spoke highly of this pastor. What an anointed man he was. At lunch, the girl sat by herself. At the second part of the seminar, everyone would test the prophetic gift. The girl dared to step forward and prophesied with her back turned to a young man standing behind her. The pastor showed the girl so much respect and spoke to her afterward.
He told him that God showed him that she was favored among her own and also by the leaders, but that God loved her dearly and that she should be careful who she trusted in the future.
This girl got a brand new fixed point then and there… She understood that she was not despised but loved.
We can change the epigenetic code, deep down in a human being! As depth speaks to depth!
Set new “fixed points” just by a moment of giving love and deep respect to an individual! ✨
don’t think your going to far! a couple of quote I read today-‘the future must enter into you a long time before it happens’ and ‘what we cannot imagine cannot come into being’.
Young earth, 6 day creation seems to be allied to an equally quick end- not my thing. A long creation goes well with a long arc, humanity clearly doesn’t change quickly and life expressed as the image of God seems to be a long burn to me! I’m not a scientist either, but I have to say that science and discovery creates in me far greater awe and wonder than a 6 day instant roll out-the cosmos and so God is mind bendingly incredible and beautiful and continually revealing…