Creation Versus Evolution?

Why "versus"? In the richness of life, doesn't it take both? Are there not examples all around us of created things AND things that develop? Is the world not big enough for creation AND evolution?

The other day I was cyber-surfing a little bit, just trying to keep up with current events, and I clicked a link in the news window of my homepage to look at an article on LiveScience.com that had a title that was something like "Top Ten Missing Links". LiveScience is an entertaining site, full of all sorts of the type of pop-science that most internet users love to look at. I'm sure there must be some real science in there somewhere, but it's mostly "science-y stuff for the masses".

"Missing links" indeed.

I had already registered with LiveScience so I could comment on articles and so I could use their RSS feed on one of my other blog pages. My prior registration seems to have turned into a "missing link".

The article I'm referring to is a photo gallery of the "top ten" (their picks, not mine) pre-sapien hominids whose bones have been unearthed and looked at by archaeologists, including the famous "Lucy", an austalopithicene chick, a few Neanderthal and Cro Magnon dudes, etc.

I suppose the upshot is that LiveScience wants to show some "proof" of humanity's less-than-human origins.

Meanwhile the idea of "we evolved from monkeys" is still quite offensive to religious people, no matter how many "scientists" say things like "we didn't say we evolved from monkeys".

"Yes you did."

"No we didn't."

And so on.

Sure enough, the first comment on the article was from an intelligent-sounding guy who said (I'm paraphrasing from memory) "...still no compelling proof of evolution..."

Well none of us is ever truly compelled to believe what we don't want to believe, especially when the subject in question involves remote history (let's face it: we weren't there) or any other thing where direct observation is impossible. There IS NO objective, quantifiable observation of things like morality, the meaning of life, the existence of an afterlife, the edge of the universe or the beginning of time. It's all guesswork and we all believe what we want to believe. There are (and I believe that there always will be) exactly ZERO provable facts in these cases.

The funny thought that occurs to my tiny, possibly monkey-derived brain is that maybe we don't need to have big, bloody battles about things we can never prove. Maybe there's a lot of it--important though it may seem--where we should just realize that what we think we know is really nothing more than our personal beliefs.

I wrote another article about it. It's long and it's unfinished. I'm going to post it here today so I'll stop writing it, making it ever longer, making it ask more questions and leave more questions unanswered. It seems to me that the human mind has difficulty tolerating questions that can't be answered, so we keep pushing our minds to find the answers even when we know that we can't come up with a true and factual answer. We still want to think of what is possible, then choose the possibility that appeals to us the most.

Anyway, here's my article:

Evolution Versus Creation?

There are a few areas of discussion where I feel that I could make a valuable contribution, where the things that need to be said haven’t really been said. This is one.

My primary reason for thinking that I have a contribution to make is because of the polarization that exists regarding this debate. There are several such debates in our society of the sort where no resolution seems to be forthcoming. This polarization, partisanism, “taking of sides” or whatever you would like to call it keeps us from attaining the social agreements that we would need in order to be a cohesive society.

I’ve written about this before, but I haven’t written so well as to feel that I have said all that needs to be said or even all that I would want to say. So I’m trying again. I expect disagreements from both sides simply because there are two very separate sides and I’m not on either of them.

Or I’m on both of them. Confusing? Not really. I’m on neither side and on both sides. I’m a moderate because more than any other thing, I desire social healing. I want to live in A Society rather than living as I do now on the fringes of fragmented societies. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life straddling some crazy fence with one foot in one world and the other foot at the opposite end of the universe.

I’m an American. I don’t want to think of myself as belonging to some ethnically or religiously divided version of my society. I don’t want to feel any compulsion to think of myself (or worse—to have others identify me as) Euro-American, or theist/atheist, liberal/conservative, black/white. I’d like to think of myself as merely American: capable of agreeing on the important matters with any other American. The quest for agreement with my society seems to entail a few moments of seeming to disagree with everyone. In a world where all the people have divided themselves into A’s and B’s, I’m the sort of person who just wants to do the math that adds A and B and comes up with C because C is the group in which I belong. C is the set of nice people, some of whom are A’s and some of whom are B’s.

Maybe an X,Y, Z equation would be more PC. IDK. LOL.

So…I would like to ask both “evolutionists” and “creationists” to prepare to approach the fence that divides our society and for everyone to be ready to do some genuine healing of our shared world by removing the blinders of your own limited opinion. Don’t do it for me. Do it for the higher purpose, the greater good, unity, love, the collective consciousness, the world-soul or for God—whichever of those ideas (if any) seem worthy to you.

The sciences are in the domain of thought, while spirituality is in the domain of feeling. Humans are the beings who do both: we think and we feel. If thinking and feeling were always completely reconciled, we would probably never have the need to communicate. Arguments span the entire spectrum from communication with a view to reaching agreement all the way to out-and-out warfare. My recommendation is a simple one. Let’s communicate and disagree when we must, but until we declare communication to be at an end, we don’t need to beat each other up.

As a sworn moderate, I will trace the argument back to the last place we were before we decided we couldn’t communicate. I will attempt to begin with a tentative agreement: at some point in time, non-aware matter became something that is alive and knows it is alive, but also knows that it is in some ways separate from- and in other ways connected to-the rest of the universe. We’re individuals AND we’re connected, but the important realization is that we’re alive and aware. We’re aware of ourselves as living beings and we’re more-or-less aware that other living beings exist who are potentially connected with ourselves somehow.

The “somehow” seems to us to be largely a matter of our choice. We choose to connect ourselves with the parts of the outside world (including the people in that outside world) that we want to connect with and we try to choose to distance ourselves from the parts of the outside world with which we do not wish to be associated. In our hubris, we think that we can somehow exclude parts of the outside world from our concept of ourselves by shutting the undesirable bits (these “bits” are people not really so different from ourselves) out of our awareness. What we don’t like, we reject in the same way that a body rejects a transplanted organ. It matters not at all to us that acceptance might save our lives.

Somewhere between six thousand and four million years ago (depending on how you count and who keeps your calendar) a new sort of life appeared on Earth: humans. We’ve been arguing ever since. We’ve argued about which of us are “real humans”, about what “right thinking” is, about what should be important to us, about which real estate belongs to which group of humans, about who is included in which group and even about how to measure time. The basis of all of this arguing comes down to one simple point: we have questions about which of our fellow creatures we like and how much we should like them. We almost universally decide that we will like the ones with whom we have the most in common. We decide to like people who are like us in some significant way and we often decide to dislike those who are unlike us.

You could disagree with me at this point, but that wouldn’t do you much good. Your disagreement would merely be a case of you saying that you don’t like what I have to say because I’ve said something that is different from what you think; you’d be pointing out that your opinion on the subject of like and unlike is unlike my opinion and that you don’t like that.

Yes, I am using the term “like” in a funny way. I’m doing strange word-magic with it, but it’s justified word-magic because—at least in English—we have a word that points to the obvious fact that we feel an emotional connection to people who are similar to us; that we like those who are like us.

And we dislike those who are unlike us. Unless of course we don’t like ourselves, in which case we dislike others for being too much like us. Complicated? Yes. For something so simple, it IS very complicated.

Here’s how to solve any problem that is both simple AND complicated: keep the simple part in your mind as you work your way through the complicated part. Not many people solve problems that way, but that’s the way to do it. It’s just like division or multiplication without a calculator: figure the simplest part first, make a note of it, then calculate the next-simplest part and so on, making notes of the simplified parts as you go. Be the first one on your block to know the real method for solving problems!!! Start today!!! No extra charge!!! No hidden fees!!!

The simple part is that we all need the right to decide who and what we will like. That’s a basic survival right. We all need the confidence to trust our own judgment regarding anything and anyone we encounter; the absolute right to choose whether to fight or unite or flee or even to say “eh, seems okay” and choose not to fight, unite OR flee, but merely to ALLOW.

The simple part of the problem is that all your choices are yours. Always. Not every circumstance is completely in your control, but your choice about how to meet circumstances IS in your control. What you like or dislike, what you believe or disbelieve, what you include in or exclude from your mind is always a matter of personal choice, even though some “leaders” would prefer that you don’t know that. You are a conscious being. Consciousness comes with rights. Rights come with responsibilities. It is useless to try to separate any of these components from the others. If you try to rid yourself of responsibilities, you throw some rights away along with them and when you do that, you find yourself with fewer choices and fewer choices will be so offensive to your mind that you will be forced to become less aware. The reverse is also true: increasing your awareness maximizes your choices and gives you more rights and more responsibilities.

Now, if you look at this problem in a somewhat mathematical way, you can see that the basic choice that all aware beings face is in the level of awareness; in what you allow into your mind.

Here, religion agrees with science. The personal practice of religion is with the intent of bringing a person to wisdom. To be a scientifically-minded person is to seek knowledge. Wisdom and knowledge are each species of awareness. Both science and religion are ways of thinking that direct minds to an increase in awareness.

At this point, you could begin to disagree with me very strongly, but your only basis for disagreement would be in support of your own chosen position. If you are a believer in science, your disagreement might be that science directs your mind to awareness and religion doesn’t. And if you’re a religious person, you might say that religion makes you aware, but all those science-headed folks are not aware at all.

Thus we have one of the world’s oldest and most stubborn debates with the people on both sides pointing at the other side and saying, “those people just aren’t right!”

Am I laughing at you? Not really. I’m trying to get you to laugh with me. I’m trying to get you to see how ridiculous it is to continue disliking each other over something so subjective as the fact that we each take different paths to wisdom. Wisdom isn’t really a single destination after all. Wisdom is a process. If wisdom were something that just sits there doing nothing except saying, “Come to me, for I am Wisdom” then what good would it be? No, wisdom is a tool that a wise person uses for the many purposes involved in the living of a wise life.

The one thing that wisdom does not ask of you is that you become unaware.

Part of me is reluctant to appear to be holding your hand as I walk you through baby-steps to this important realization. It’s the part of me that is reluctant to insult your intelligence. I’m not smarter than you are. In fact there’s every possibility that you are smarter than I am. I am not writing this article in this way because I think I’m smarter than you are. I am writing this article in this way because of the type of specialist I am. Even though you may very well be much smarter than I, you also may have the need of my specialized professional services to do for you what you don’t know how to do for yourself.

I’m a mechanic.

I’m a specialty mechanic. In the current context, I am applying what I know as a specialty mechanic to a thought problem.

I know something that all mechanics know: there is no single tool that does every job. The next couple of paragraphs are going to illustrate and expand upon that point, eventually to tie that point in to the main topic of this entry. If you already know that one tool doesn’t do all jobs, you could skip a couple of paragraphs at this point—unless of course you enjoy reading as much as I enjoy writing.

I’m applying the idea of a tool to more than the common ideas of what tools are, but I believe the logic works in the same way and that it will be a useful thing to make an analogy between physical tools and thought-tools. Starting with common tools, a hammer doesn’t do what a screwdriver does, nor is a screwdriver a good hammer. You could use a screwdriver as a temporary hammer, but it won’t be a very good hammer. You can find a hybrid tool that is a hammer at one end and a screwdriver at the other end, but none of these is either a very good hammer OR a very good screwdriver. The best tools are highly specialized tools, made to do one thing well.

And the most accomplished humans are those who have the knowledge and the skill to do one thing very well. However, I’m not comparing a human to a tool. Each of us is a beautiful, unique, sensitive, loving, caring individual. It’s only the people who don’t know us well who tend to think of us as tools to be used for a certain purpose. If you are any type of specialist, you get used to having people think of you this way. You never really learn to enjoy having your human-ness undervalued in this way, but at the same time, it’s nice to be recognized for your skills. No one really likes being objectified, but being thought of as an object is better than not being thought of at all.

A hammer is a tool for pounding, a wrench is a tool for gripping and applying leverage, an automobile is a tool for transporting, a tuba is a tool for making a bass sound in a band that has a horn section. A pan is a tool for transferring heat in a controlled way from a fire to some substance that needs to be heated in a controlled fashion and all the various areas of learning are tools for thinking in a controlled fashion.

Now, even if (and it’s a very big if) science is the thought-tool that helps us better understand every aspect of our physical world, science still doesn’t do much to help us understand our own awareness and our own feelings. Science is a tool. There are many specialized sciences, each of them a good tool for one type of thought; each of them not much good outside of their own specialties.

A “new” science was created many years ago—called “philosophy”—to be an area of study that could link the other specialized sciences into a greater study of knowledge-in-general.

And verily, philosophy did go forth and yon in such ways that the thing designed to bring thinkers together became many things that keep thinkers apart, and behold there came to be realism and idealism and existentialism and antidisestablishmentarianism and (as John Lennon sang) ism, ism, ism, proving to us all that we could continue to disagree despite all attempts to unite.

Some systems of philosophy were somewhat successful at unifying sciences. But philosophy’s ego became swollen by its successes and philosophy began to suppose that it could treat spirituality as just another science. Spirituality IS NOT the same sort of science as logic, mathematics or chemistry, primarily because the variables in spirituality are too diverse and it is quite short-sighted to apply the spiritual “equations” that work for one person to another person. We each have our own sets of experiences and our own sets of observations and feelings about our experiences. If you look at it honestly (many people don’t) you understand that the primary concern of any person’s spiritual life has to do with “feeling right” toward one’s own existence.

Individual choice and aware self-management are essential in spirituality. Any “religion” that does not allow individual responsibility is not actually a spiritual benefit to the practitioner. Religions that attempt to tell people what to think—as opposed to offering guidance as to how to think—is actually just a political movement. I’m sorry if this sounds harsh or offensive, but this is what can save us from destructive versions of “religion”. If it doesn’t let you make your own choices and feel good about your choices, it’s not good for your soul. Religion-by-force is something to fight against.

Religious choices are spiritual choices are personal choices. Choice is not absolute. Neither is fate. Life is lived through a succession of moments wherein some events are inevitable and other events can be influenced by choices. An amoeba is a lower-level form of life that has few choices, and yet even an amoeba has SOME choices. The higher you go on the “food-chain”, the more choices you have, even if choice never really becomes absolute. If there is a God, perhaps God has absolute choice. Perhaps even God does not choose to exercise absolute choice even though God is the one being who could. The rest of us do the best we can. An important indicator of how well you’re doing in life is how many choices you have. Your ability to make choices is the most valuable thing you will ever own. This is the actual secret of the ages. This is the actual key to your life. Guard it wisely.

Even if (and it’s another very big if) religion is the spiritual tool that helps us feel right about every aspect of our spiritual lives, religion still doesn’t tell us much about our physical world.

There is no good tool that is religion at one end and science at the other. You could find a hybrid tool that seems to contain both, but it won’t be very good science OR very good religion.

In fact, you could find many different hybrid tools in the realm of philosophy that purport to do the jobs of both science and of religion and you could waste your life away exploring every one of them, witnessing first hand that each has its own advantages and disadvantages or you could simply come to realize that the tools of science are in a different kit from the tools of spirituality, whereupon you could have spiritual tools to do your spiritual work and scientific tools to do your science without ever being tempted to use one toolkit to smash the other.

A truly wise person reads more than one book and is able to have more than one thought.

Scriptures are not science, nor is science scripture.

Attempts to use one in place of the other are the same as trying to use a tuba to pound a nail. If you apply enough brute force, you might get the nail to go, but you’ll ruin your tuba.

Here is the big revelation at the end of the story: I just wrote over 2000 words about creation versus evolution without giving you the ability to call me either a creationist or an evolutionist.

It’s because I’m neither and both at the same time. It’s because I’m a mechanic doing my best to develop into being a wise mechanic with as many toolkits as it takes to get all my work done.

Be wise and well. Love enriches your life much more than hate does, but still all the choices are yours.

I merely recommend selecting the right tool for each job.