My Favorite Magazine

Today I received and began to thumb through my favorite magazine.  Monthly it thrills me with images and articles about the world around us (and by that I mean the universe).  It is, in my humble opinion, the King of magazines, having withstood the test of at least a hundred years of monthly publication and having not yet succumbed to the need to insert dozens of advertisements and 3x5 sized sales cards (gosh how I hate those things in magazines!).  This month the cover was compelling, maybe not any more so than any other month except for having in great big letters the single word which in the "Bible Belt" south I grew up and live in, evokes more passion and discussion than even "Liberal" or "Yankee" and probably even more than "Cowboys".  Evolution.  Actually it was not on the cover, but "Darwin" and "Evolution" are certainly almost interchangeable terms.  Automatically, and with some trepidation and anticipation of a good internal battle, I flipped to the article (yes in this magazine you can actually "flip" to an article without first stopping at a dozen "inserts").

As always, the article is exceptionally well written with wonderful supporting pictures, diagrams and charts.  I found myself reading the article despite having a distinct "opinion" about the whole subject.  I hope that means I am open-minded <grin>.  The body of evidence is overwhelming and has been for decades, and I believe any rational person, regardless of their "religious" or "scientific" bent, would agree that the physical universe changes.  I think that in the simplest of terms and explanations, this is the core of the "Theory of Evolution."   I will not try to recount the article, comment upon its merits and demerits or argue for or against its thesis.   It is after all an excellently written article and I am just an amateur writer.

As a rational person, I accept the "evidence" of change in our a universe.  As a "spiritual" person I accept the evidence of "faith" in God and His creation and His purpose and will.  Although pitted against each other from the mid-1800's until now, seemingly as black and white opposites, I am able to embrace both without fear of loss of rationality or spirituality.  Let me try to explain.

I believe God created this universe fully grown.  The "scriptural" account of creation, has God creating everything fully grown and mature,... plants, animals, man.  To me, that means that God also created the universe's "Scientific Laws" (thermodynamics, gravity, etc etc etc) fully grown and mature also.  Anything else would be irrational to "faith".  So the very fact that scientific laws and established, observable theories show the depth and complexity of our universe only contribute more to my faith in a creator.  To me it seems irrational and terribly unscientific to believe this universe and all that it contains are the result of random chance.   I am fond of a quotation made by one of my teachers in college which illustrates this thought.

On Wednesday afternoon, you discover a 10 inch glass container with 5 inches of water in it.  You decide to observe it over time.  On Thursday, you note the container has 4 inches of water; on Friday 3 inches of water; and on Saturday, 2 inches of water.  On Sunday, you conclude after these careful observations and measurements, purely scientific and detached, and under your best control circumstances that if you had observed the glass on the Sunday prior to Wednesday afternoon's discovery, that the glass would have contained 8 inches of water.  On the Friday prior, it would have been full which would of course lead to much speculation and theory about the origin of the glass, the method in which water accumulated in the glass, the origin of the glass, the conditions of the climate and its changes during and prior to the "non-observed" periods of time preceding your testing.  You also speculate about this Sunday's observations and the expected conditions of the glass of water in the days and weeks to come.  Will it stay empty on Tuesday coming, and if so, at what point in the future will it start to fill up again? 

It would never occur to you that Wednesday morning, before your "arrival" of observation and theorizing, that I put the 10 inch glass, with only 5 inches of water in it out for you to encounter and on Tuesday coming, I will remove the glass.  That is because you reject the notion of an agency outside of the laws of the "scientifically" observable, from interacting with that which is observable.  Therein is the essence of "faith".  The conviction of things not seen.

Although evolutionary theory is interesting, it seems to me to be quite shallow.  To be truly scientific, evolutionary theory should expand to examine how an "animal" becomes "human".  The distinction I am thinking about here is how the animal mind with animal instincts and needs evolves into the human soul which seeks out much more than its own physical survival through adaptability and survival of the fittest.   Evolutionary theory certainly proposed a view of WHAT I AM, but falls very short of being an encompassing theory of WHO I am.