Creation or evolution? Bumper stickers and candidates and school boards hold forth on this topic. Creation, Genesis style, by God who specifically images each life form and species. Or evolution à la Darwin, purported to be a godless, scientific explanation for the vastly profuse effusion of life.
While Charles Darwin may not have been a regular church-goer, it should be noted that the one book Darwin took on his voyages was Milton’s Paradise Lost, the epic poem on based on the biblical story of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden.
The third edition of On the Origin of Species ended with a hymn of praise to God. Darwin was awed that “from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved. “ [Quoted in The Christian Century, 3/20/13, p. 8] Using today’s description, maybe we would say that Darwin was “spiritual but not religious.”
The design of an ever adaptive, changing natural world. Circumstances converging creating the “perfect storm” which resulted in a life-supporting habitat. A simple, almost unremarkable emergence of life gradually spreading and diversifying resulting in the current profusion of nature. To me there is nothing more awe-inspiring or miraculous than this incredible process. The theory of evolution is enough to prevent one from lapsing into agnosticism or atheism.
To look at the human species and the harm we have done to one another and the planet; that could drive you to agnosticism or atheism. But the examination of the natural world and affirming the system of evolution, it’s hard not to see a God of some kind at the heart of it all.
Creation or evolution? Yes! God creating evolution. That’s a God to which I will gladly give my love and trust.
Prayer: May we take delight in the glory of creation. May we see the hand of the divine in the natural world. May we celebrate that we are part of the amazing, awe-inspiring, miraculous creation. We hope to have hearts centered on the God of creation and to cherish and care for God’s miraculous gift. Amen.
Lakewood United Church of Christ 