Deep Thoughts in the Shower

I was in the shower thinking about the THEORY of Evolution versus the Bible STORY of Creation, trying a comparative analysis for an internal debate. I came up with a kind of amalgam to answer endless questions. (You can imagine what my hot water bill must be.) A second question to consider would be the divinity of the Jesus Story.

I think these are the basic questions for many people’s acceptance or rejection of religion, and in my short-sighted way, I’ve generalized three spiritual types of people.

1. Atheists: Those who believe in “nothing,” generally those who think that “believers” are just too simple or too lazy to explore “reality.” It’s just too easy to accept whatever the ruling body (church) tells them to believe. On the other hand, if there is no God, there are no commandments, thus no judgment. Society, itself can determine what it means to be a “good person,” and that should be enough. They believe “science” can eventually answer all relevant questions and that the place to start is with Darwin’s Theory of Evolution as undisputed FACT.
2. Creationist Believers: Those who believe in strict Creationism generally think that atheists are too simple or lazy to read and understand the scriptures as written and that they default to simply believe whatever the ruling body (the government-sanctioned story du jour) tells them to believe. They believe that if you truly study the whole Bible, you will find that everything makes sense and points back to the story of Creation as FACT.
3. Agnostics: Then there are those who believe in the possibility of a polarity of spirit, the dark and light sides of “The Force” or however you want to define it. They are kind of open to many ideas and fluctuate a lot, but shy away from spiritual commitment. They might also believe in ghosts, alien visitors, time travel, mediums, spirit guides, many things.

Through Sunday School, I started as a believer in the Creator God, shifted in my teens to agnosticism, and have spent much of my adulthood wandering all over that expansive realm. I now lean more toward a Creator God than toward strict Evolutionism.

I really do envy those who can accept what they call “pure science” or those who can cling, without question, to what the Bible teaches. Life would be so much simpler without all of these mental and moral gymnastics.

The problem is that neither extreme answers every question. Neither asks all the relevant questions. In fact, if logic is your guide, you will NEVER reach the end of the questions, and therefore, never answer them completely. So, if logic is where you start, where do you stand and where do you go from there?

Get ready to disagree with me. It is your right and your duty to find better answers. I am still seeking better evidence, but I can comfortably espouse a belief that combines the Divine, Conscious Creator God with a severely modified version of Evolution, supported by science.

Problem 1, Biblical Timelines:

• Seven-Day Creation: Mother gave me a useful answer to this six decades ago. The 24-hour definition of a day did not exist before “creation” was finished. If God wanted to describe this in terms of “days” who is to say what one of God’s days is? Travel to any other known planet and a “day” is not 24-Earth hours long. And who can verify in court, under oath, when this “day” of dark and light settled into the current 24-hour period? We could easily ascribe a millennium to each of God’s days, and still not know if we are anywhere close.
• 6,000-year-old Earth: Bible scholars claim the Earth is 6,000 years old, but current scientific measurements dispute this out of hand. Of course, fifty years ago those same scientists also told us that Neanderthal Man went completely extinct and that Homo Sapiens completely replaced him. The science of modern DNA sequencing now tells us that many of us have trace percentages of Neanderthal in us, meaning that before he “went extinct” there was interbreeding, especially in regions now in northwestern Europe. Claims have even been made that this is where red hair comes from. Those scientists also told us that dinosaurs were long extinct before man walked the Earth, and yet practically all ancient cultures brought forward stories and depictions of “dragons.”  Recently, fossils have been found in sedentary rock of human footprints next to dinosaur fossils. Multiple anthropologic histories, as well as geologic finds, the world over do support the story of a global flood. And while recent archeological finds seem to have found the remains of Sodom and Gomorrah, other recent digs have found evidence of cultures pre-existing the rise of Egypt by more than 12,000 years! Göbekli Tepe has been found to have existed 9600 years BC (Hello that’s 12,000 years ago). And Boncuklu Tarla is thought to be 4500 years older than that! And there is the discovery of Blombost Cave in South Africa with its cave drawings estimated to be 70,000 to 100,000 years old! Then there are dinosaur remains calculated to be as old as 210 million years old.  
• So, it is clear that unless the current means of scientific time measurements are completely wrong, we have a problem rectifying the 6,000-year-old Earth. To save the Creation Story, I’ll just throw that back to the length of God’s Days and explain that when Moses wrote this down, humans could not possibly understand such huge time spans and so the information was related in understandable terms. At any rate, both the current methods of scientific aging AND the Old Testament Biblical timeline seem to be not completely accurate. Very recently I found an online post claiming that scientists have now completely duplicated the fossilization process in the lab, meaning that fossils do not have to be old, at all. (This, however, is a new concept to me and I’ve found only the one posting.)

I can also add my personal interpretation to help rectify these mismatched timelines. Let’s throw in the many advancing and receding ice ages and how they might have impacted the extinction of animals AND civilizations, possibly hitting the reset button several times. Maybe we are now simply following the most recent “reset.” Having said that, it looks to me that recent archeology is doing more to support rather than negate many of those Biblical stories, and even place them within documented historic periods.

Problem 2, Faulty Evolution.

• Making something out of nothing. Einstein found that matter can be turned to energy and energy to matter, but in either case, you are making SOMETHING out of SOMETHING. Without divine intervention, matter does not POOF out of nothing. The Big Bang Theory cannot POOF out of nothing. There had to be SOMETHING to go BANG in the first place.
• The missing link(s). It’s not just the missing link between ape and man. It’s the missing links between single-cell life to multi-system complex living organisms. There are no 2-celled, 3-celled, 5-celled plants or animals. That concept, without a creator, has absolutely no purchase in science or reality.
• Absolute versus modified evolution. While I can’t accept A or B as having any scientific substance, there is no problem accepting modifications within a species, different breeds of dogs or cats, hybridizing peas, tomatoes, etc. We even now have GMOs, genetically modified foods whose benefits versus harm have yet to be fully determined. I do not find Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection (within a given species) to be in contrast with God’s Creation Story. Who says God doesn’t have a hand in that as part of continuing creation?

Problem 3, the Jesus Story.

• There is too much documentation to claim that the man, Yeshua ben Joseph, did not live and did not have very real followers for very real reasons. We’ll leave the question of his divinity for now and take a quick look at what we might know about his life. There is more to his life than what has been included in the published books of the New Testament. About 18 years are missing between ages 12 to 30. Evidence found elsewhere places him traveling to Britain, India, and Persia during those years, which could account for some of the abilities and practices he brought back to the Holy Land during his final years. Please check out “The Lost Years of Jesus” by Elizabeth Clare Prophet, published in 1984.
• Research shows that the stories of the Bible do record actual histories of the children of Israel and their movements, wars, and establishments. In addition to the books of the Bible there are Rabbinic writings and archived calendars that include all kinds of events including which years were good or bad for crops, what celestial events occurred in the sky, who were the oppressors du jour, and how they tried to placate them without giving up their souls. Many things are documented, including social mores and cultural expectations of the times.
• Then, there is suppression of information by the Church of Rome, which could also impact a more inclusive story of who he was and what he did. There is a book “The Woman with the Alabaster Jar,” published in 1993 by Margaret Starbird, which examined the question of his relationship with Mary Magdalen. (Now, there’s a Pandora’s box, for you!) She wrote the book in response to a friend who claimed Jesus might have been married to Mary Magdalen. Starbird, a Roman Catholic, responded to this as blasphemy and began earnest research to prove her friend wrong. In the end, she discovered much about the Catholic Church, how it created, out of thin air, the narrative that Magdalin was a prostitute, how it was trying to quelch a matriarchal society and to supplant it with patriarchy by painting women of knowledge and prestige as witches or worse. In addition to Vatican archives, she accessed Rabbinic archives that implied a 30-year-old unmarried Jewish man would not have been credited as a leader among men, as Yeshua was, and that both Yeshua and Mary (Miriam) were of the House of David and the match would have been fated. Starbird could not state empirically that they were married, but based on what WAS written and the Jewish culture of that time, it was more likely that they were married than it would be that they were not.

So, in my opinion, God created the world, the solar system, the galaxy, and the universe in His own way and definition of time, all of which I cannot explain because it is beyond my experience and available research. This means He also created the underpinnings of Physics, Geometry, and other sciences. Darwin’s theory is fatally flawed, but not without some merit. The Bible represents real history although offering questionable timelines in the Old Testament and missing many details. But vital details can be found in other written sources. Its transcriber(s) related the information in terms understandable at the time. It was also later compiled and edited by men who likely had considerations of controlling the masses by controlling the information made available to them, just as is true in today’s society. Scientific study and research can help fill in the blanks but must be accompanied by an open mind that can accept altered interpretations as better science and data are discovered. The divinity of Yeshua bar Joseph is completely within the realm of belief if you can accept that the universe includes more than just matter and energy, that it has, at its heart, a metaphysical spirit, that the polarities of good and evil are real and that, for all we know, they may be able to assume physical form.

So, blahblahblah – it’s just my opinion – and it proves ONLY that I use my shower time for something more than soap and shampoo. Maybe that’s why I’m getting so wrinkly!