Origin of Life

The Orgins of life

The riddle of the origin of man has been subject to many ponderings and theories for thousands of years. In America, two theories concerning this timeless question have driven a spike through the general populace. These two beliefs, Evolution and Christianity, have driven a riff through the American populace and fueled several debates and conflicts over which is the truer theory. Incidents such as the decision of the Kansas school board to ban schools from including the Evolution Theory from their curriculum are becoming a tragically frequent and threaten to escalate if not checked soon. However, there is a growing belief in America today in the possibility of believing that evolution is an inescapable fact while still prescribing to Christian faith as well. This radical theology, which seems to meld, distort and expand the theory of Evolution and traditional Christian beliefs, has been termed "Theistic Evolution" by its followers and has emerged as a very respectable alternative to choosing between Evolution and Christianity.

Much of the conflict between Traditional Christian and Evolutionary thought stems from the strict, literal interpretation of the Bible used by many individuals and Church groups. One of the fundamental beliefs that most branches of Christianity share is that God created the world and life as we know it in six days. "And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done (Genesis 2:2)." Following this chain of thought, many devout Christians go on to further speculate that according to the Bible, Earth and animal life have only existed for a few thousand years. Evolutionists have attacked this speculation relentlessly, arguing that scientific findings in the fields of astronomy, archaeology, geology and several other fields have shown that Earth and its life forms have existed for at least several hundred million years. Although this literal interpretation of the Bible does leave very little room for coexistence with evolutionary beliefs, practitioners of Theistic Evolution argue that several aspects of the Bible (or, more particularly, the Book of Genesis) cannot be taken literally. The primary reason for this theory is that the Book of Genesis has a major flaw: it states that God did not make the sun until the Fourth Day. The sun determines time because the sun is visible during daytime and not visible at night. The Christian theologian Augustine first called this shocking detail to widespread attention in the fifth century. Augustine also went on to theorize that God "made all things together, disposing them in an order based not on intervals of time but on causal connections." Both Augustine and modern practitioners of theistic evolution have pointed out that this minute flaw proves that time intervals in the Bible cannot be taken literally; which proves that Christianity and Evolution do not necessarily negate each other in regards to historical time spans. Augustine also pointed out the possibility that some things were made in fully developed form and others were made in "potential form" that developed over time to the condition in which they are seen today. Augustine may have been a Christian theologian of ancient times, but his opinions and viewpoints often coincide with those of twentieth century practitioners of Theistic Evolution.

Although this preface is a very convincing point of Theistic Evolution, it is not indisputable. Several individuals point out that God is omniscient, meaning that he could have already conceived the notion of time before he made the world, and that since the precise measurement people use for a day is 24 hours, there is still reason to believe in a literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis. This point, however, is only a possibility and not a fact and there are other reasons not to take the Bible literally. One such reason is that although the Bible is at times remarkably accurate, it is, in fact, based on texts written by Hebrew scribes thousands of years ago. This fact is an undeniably important detail in the Creation/Evolution debate because it shows that the English translation of the Bible [which is the most commonly used translation in the United States] is not an original document. Time and language barriers leave a lot of room in the English translations of the Bible for errors such as idiomatic expressions, proving that not only is it possible for the English Bible to be occasionally inaccurate, it is highly probable.

While the debate over the validity and interpretation of the Bible does leave a lot of room for opinion, Theistic Evolution has been gaining increasingly overwhelming archaeological and historical evidence as well. Historians and archaeologists have made several discoveries that have shown strong historical proof for both the theory of Evolution and several Christian beliefs derived from the Bible.

Critics of Theistic Evolution have cited Darwin's Origin of Species as frequently speculative and ungrounded and have used this point as an argument against evolution in general. This argument, however, is invalid for two reasons. The first reason is that Darwin's did not intend for his book to be considered as a universal truth; on the contrary, Darwin himself points out that his views are subject to opinion. "Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the view given in this volume under the form of an abstract, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine". Second, Darwin's original theory, although groundbreaking, is not very similar to the current opinions of scientists and anthropologists. One of the key points that most anthropologists and scientists agree about concerning evolution is that humans and apes are common descendants from one ancient primitive creature that existed millions of years ago. However, many arguments against evolution have arisen that do serious damage to the credibility all of the existing theories concerning Evolution, the most famous of which are the "missing links" in the chain of progression from ape to man suggested by Darwin. This argument has gotten progressively weaker, however, with the several recent discoveries of new hominid (a primitive, bipedal mammal closely related to humans) species. These discoveries have given rise to the opinion that the evolution of man was not a smooth progression of more and more advanced species of hominids. Instead, scientists and anthropologists suggest that the transition was a series of trial and error occurrences that resulted in several different hominid species competing and mating amongst each other, resulting in a textbook example of natural selection. Despite the discoveries of many different hominid species, skeptics of Evolution were very quick to point out that there have been no discoveries of hominids more than four million years old. This argument was devastating in light of the fact that the scientists who had recently conceived this new twisted view of human evolution believe that the common ancestor that humans and apes both descend from lived around this time. However, the discoveries of two new hominid species, Ardipithicus ramidus and Australopithecus anamensis, have both been concluded to be at least four million years old. Skeptics still argue about the integrity of carbon dating and cross-reference techniques that have been used to determine the age of the fossils, but their stance on the position has been severely weakened by the two discoveries.

Archaeological evidence has also been found that shows a great deal of support for the Bible as well. Recent findings include a battle commemoration to the House of David, which is the first such mentioning of King David outside of the Bible, and the 1968 discovery of a corpse very similar to the biblical depiction of Christ. These two discoveries have done much to rebut the two of the most predominant arguments against the validity of the Bible. The first argument is that outside information about several figures that are central to the Bible has never been found outside of biblical texts. One of these figures is David, the slayer of the giant Goliath and an important Israelite ruler. A recent excavation in Galilee uncovered a stone military shrine that was inscribed in ancient Hebrew characters, which read in English as "House of David." Before this discovery, most biblical scholars believed that David was one of many fabricated details etched into the Bible by Hebrew scribes around 500 years BCE. The stone inscription, which has been concluded to be ancient enough to have been carved by servants of the biblical King David, is only the most recent of several discoveries that have lent proof to the bible. The second aforementioned argument maintained by the skeptics is that the biblical account of Jesus must be at least partially false. These skeptics have argued that Romans would have broken the legs of Jesus' corpse and thrown him into a common grave with several other corpses of those who had also been crucified or left for animal consumption. However, in 1968 a corpse was discovered in a cave near Jerusalem very similar to the cave in the biblical depiction of Jesus' burial. The corpse was that of a male 25-30 years of age, was the only one found in the cave and had a large nail driven through the heel bones. These details coupled with the dating results which placed the man to have lived around the same time span as Jesus provide considerable proof towards concluding that Jesus' life was not mythical and might be accurately depicted by the Bible. Other such archaeological excavations might some day provide conclusive evidence to support Biblical events such as Exodus and the time of Abraham in the near future.

There is currently no proof to confirm Evolution or Christian theology as the true theory of the origin of life. Although there is a wealth of information and evidence that supports both beliefs, the real truth about the origin of man could be something completely different from anything in either of the theories. There is, however, no reason to choose one over the other at this point in time. The two theories both have strengths and weaknesses, but neither theory openly disproves the other. It is for this reason that alternatives such as Theistic Evolution are becoming more and more available. As Howard Van Till put it, "Christianity and Evolution are not contradictory. They provide different answers to a different set of questions".