Excerpt

EVOCREATISM

FOR CREATIONISTS to denigrate Evolutionists, who believe life accidentally evolved over billions of years from disintegrated rock, is as unproductive as Evolutionists ridiculing Creationists for insisting that an invisible, supernatural being deliberately created the entire universe in six twenty-four hour days from nothing.

Surely, the realization that Creationism and Evolutionism need not be mutually exclusive has occurred to more than one thinking person. With some intelligent--and unemotional--modification of viewpoint each could nicely complement the other, and become a peaceful blending of traditional religious belief with observable scientific fact.

That a Creator capable of intelligent design originated everything can be, even if reluctantly, conceded by accepting that it wasn’t done instantly or from nothing. Primordial Energy first had to be compressed into particulate matter, and from that made into hydrogen--the building block of the Universe. From hydrogen came sunlight, water, air and all of the elements making up rock.

Everything on this planet, living or manufactured, evolved or created, is made from those four ingredients: sunlight, water, air and rock--even me, even you, even hummingbirds and jumbo jet airliners.

No doubt an All Powerful Creator is capable of instantly getting done whatever It thinks It wants. But, more likely, “In the Beginning”, a Creator set up physical laws which would thenceforth cause matter to behave in a manner which we have come to regard as “natural” rather than supernatural. The result seems to have been the same and makes more sense to Science, which confidently has named this phenomenon the Laws of Physics.

Thus, in the Beginning, something (a Creator) crushed energy into solid particles, assembled them into hydrogen atoms and spewed them outward from a central point by means of an explosion named the Big Bang, thereby setting the material universe in motion. Then under the rule of (the Creator’s) physical laws the Universe began to revolve and evolve.

Gravity immediately proceeded to draw clouds of hydrogen into hot, dense, collapsing bodies of gas. Thermonuclear reactions flared; suns appeared; and, lo’, there was light! Waves of electromagnetic brilliance began to spread across The Deep at 186,000 plus miles per second.

Given the velocity of light and the fact that, emitting from outer space, it must travel enormous distances to be observed by human eyes, the notion that all the galaxies (billions and billions) in the universe appeared abruptly, rotating at full speed, producing light instantly visible everywhere, is difficult to assimilate.

Light, which has traveled one million light years to be visible on Earth, must have had a million years in which to travel.

In his 1984 book, The Biblical Basis for Modern Science, Henry M. Morris suggests that light may have traveled faster in the Beginning. He also avers that some scientists theorize a curved Universe, which allows shorter distances for light to travel. He concludes with, “In any case, this minor unresolved problem of light from distant stars should not cause us to reject the clear and unequivocal Biblical teaching of recent special creation.”

Just a minor problem for that mind set, perhaps, but still the key to the age of a Universe held by Creationists to be only 6,000 years old even though light traveling from galaxies millions of light years away is daily arriving for us to see.

Moreover, regarding the creation of the planet we call Earth as a singularly special act on the part of a Creator is far too self-indulgent.

In a Universe of a hundred billion galaxies, or more, each with a hundred billion suns, or more, there should be at least a few other planets inhabited by some form of intelligent life, whether created or evolved. If not, just what IS the point of it all?

Additionally, since Earthly species helplessly fade into extinction on a regular basis, we should be allowed to conclude that a Creator is experimenting to determine which species have qualities suited to Its divine standards for continued existence, or with luck, admission into Heaven.

That is probably why we are here, why we “evolved” as we did and why we are spiritually tested every day of our lives. We are in training for another plane of existence as different from this as graduate studies are from Pre-K.

In that view whether species came into existence fully formed or gradually evolved over multi-billenia in obedience to divine laws, which we as yet do not comprehend, hardly matters. Remember, after a long painful time, especially for dissenters, theologians finally conceded that the world is not flat and that we do not exist at the center of the Universe—tough pills for them to have to swallow.

Consequently, except to gain minor social advantage, professing unquestioning adherence to any religious dogma, or committing to one or another of the scientifically acceptable theories explaining our existence serves little useful purpose.

Personal growth is largely spiritual and derives no benefit from mandatory religious classification or vain intellectual name-tagging.

The important questions are:

Where did primordial Energy (from which everything was made) and endless empty Space (into which everything was placed) come from?

Then (cautiously assuming and tentatively accepting there is one):

What created the Creator?

The answers are:

Energy and Space have always existed, even preceding the Creator--who was the first accident of Evolution!