Evolution - On Steroids

  On my previous post, My Problems with Evolutionary Theory, I complained about the unbelievability of the essential foundation of traditional evolution: natural selection.  In this post I am going to answer my own questions and satisfy my skepticism by describing what I think is the most sensible scenario for the origins of life.  This is all about what makes the most sense to me - and it has nothing to do with faith.

  My current belief in a supreme being is mostly based on logic.  In fact, it could be a product of my doubts about evolution.  The deal is that, as I explained earlier, I don't think natural selection is a powerful enough mechanism to produce the amazingly complex organisms that nature presents throughout the world.  It is incapable of even imagining the many intricate organs or systems or higher forms of life, let alone making them appear from the original protozoans - even with the generous time framework of billions of years and as many alleged chance mutations.

  The apparent impotence of natural selection makes some sort of miraculous intervention essential.  There had to be strategic upgrades between every major life form and the next most complex organism.  According to natural selection, these were the products of random mutations that allowed species to improve over time.  Darwin ventured that enough of these progressive adaptions would eventually accumulate to change a plant or animal so much that it could be classified as a new, different organism.

   But probability says that's a stretch.  That seems so improbable to me that I might as well call it what it is: impossible.  The only way these significant changes could have occurred is with the activity of some outside creative source.  Charles Darwin drew his hypotheses in part from his observation of different varieties of finches in the Galapagos Islands, saying that a long series of minor changes could add up to the next distinct species.  To say this happened two or three times would be daring, to maintain that it happened thousands of times is nothing short of outlandish.

Differing food sources result in beak adaptations.

  Just a cursory study of the human body or the wildlife in the tropical rain forest or the miracle of a newborn baby is enough to make one suspicious of the notion that these things could come to exist by chance.

  So natural selection isn't ultimately about chance.  Because so many coincidences would have to take place in such a fantastic sequence that the whole process ends up being nothing short of miraculous.  It's way beyond chance.  If I flip a coin and it comes up heads, I could call it chance.  But if I flip it a thousand times and it comes up heads every time, it is not chance, it is a miracle.

  My skepticism of natural selection is the if-then operative that makes me conclude there must be a creator.  This stuff could not have happened without some sort of intelligent help, and lots of it.

  But I don't subscribe to the young earth creationist stuff either.  I don't think God was in a hurry to get the entire universe and everything assembled in six earth days.  I understand that this theory comes out of the desire to interpret the Bible literally, but it is not necessary in my thinking.  (Actually, nobody interprets the whole Bible literally.)

  If the universe is at least 13 billion years old, as astronomers say, and if the earth is at least 4 billion years old, as geologists say, then the creator is at least that old.  Why would he wait until just 7000 years ago to start putting together the solar system and the plant and animal kingdoms on the earth?  This idea is man-centered and earth-centered.

  There are many creation theories, and my favorite is one called the Day-Age Theory.  The premise is that the six days of creation described in Genesis 1 are not actual earth days, they are long ages of time, epochs, when a lot of adaptation could have taken place.  I can keep my scientific integrity intact with this theory, because it allows for the universe to be billions of years old and the earth to be really old too - without dethroning God.  It even allows for the possibility of prehistoric ancestors of homo sapiens (mankind), since it introduces the possibility that the creation account set forth in Genesis was really a re-creation ("...the earth became without form and empty..." Gen.1:2).  Maybe the account has a huge gap after the creation of the universe and then picks up again at the end of the last ice age for the re-creation (creative upgrading) of mankind and the plant and animal kingdoms.

Man and dinosaurs co-exist in displays at the creation museum.

  The Day-Age Theory also allows for the literary nature of scripture, the possibility that Moses' creation account was figurative, more like legend or folklore and was not meant to be scientific - or even historical for that matter.  This helps me with the discrepancies in the account, like the fact that the sun was formed on day four of creation.  Tell me what kind of "days" were the first three?  Earth days can't happen without the sun.

  So the more practical scenario I have settled on is a hybrid: Bob's Creationist - Evolutionary Theory.  And it is mostly based on logic and science but not without regard for the Bible.
  Because evolution needs to be turbo charged to get the job done.  And because creation doesn't need to be rushed.

  If you haven't done so, you really need to read the previous post for more scientific explanation about my problems with evolution.