Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness around the world.

Beyond The Mirror – A Bill Allin Column

March 16, 2007

What Is The Truth? (Part 11)
by Bill Allin

[Caution: What follows may be offensive to some people because it is based on fact, reason and probability, not on an established belief set (religion). If you are offended by anything that does not support your belief set, you should choose to not read this article.]

Considering Creation and Evolution

Believers in the story of creation and the theory of evolution have both endured rough periods lately. For the purposes of most people who only want to have an answer they can understand, the beginning point should not be which is right. That choice is actually the end point of a debate. To make that choice without knowing the facts and fallacies of the two sides of the argument would not be wise.

Both the creation story (-ies) and the theory of evolution have their good points, but both also have severe weaknesses, enough to make a sincere seeker of truth want to look carefully at each. While this article will not attempt to persuade you toward one side or the other, it will show the weaknesses and inconsistencies of each so that you will have a better foundation on which base your understanding.

The reason for the conflict begins with a misperception of what each is and was intended to do, then continues with people taking their misinterpretations and embellishing them until they are no longer recognizable as anything that makes sense.

Combatants have chosen sides and lined up to punch holes in the beliefs of the other. This has become relatively easy because the embellishments to the original versions leave them full of weak spots and gaping holes.

Hundreds of creation stories exist on earth today. The followers of every one will assure you that theirs is the only true one. For those of us who have heard only one creation story, it’s important to understand that ours is only one among many. To us who have grown up with one creation story, ours sounds valid while the creation stories of other cultures and religions seem like fantasies. In turn, our creation story sound like fantisy to their believers.

Ours was written a very long time ago--before the invention of writing, it was an oral tradition--but then that is true of all the others. The fact that the authors of the many creation stories are all lost to history does not make them any more credible, nor any one better than another.

One school of thought claims that the older any story is, the more likely it is to be valid. Another school insists that the older a story is, the more likely it is to be myth. So age of our creation story should not be a factor in considering whether or not it is correct and true. Even the greatest authorities of archaeology, history and human nature can’t agree.

The fact that our creation story is peculiar to our culture or religion does not, by that virtue alone, make it any better or more valid than any other. Yet this is a factor that devout supporters of one story of creation depend on as critical to their belief. That is, a story or belief does not logically gain any more validity or truth because we believe it. Because it was taught to me by my mother does not make it true. My mother taught me about Santa Claus too.

Behind every creation story except two is a common element: the believers know that their creation story is myth. They know that their story may not be factually accurate, but it tells a truth about life that holds the culture together--that’s what a myth is. They believe in their story and support it wholeheartedly because it’s theirs, it’s part of who they are as a people.

Christianity was the first religion to maintain that their creation story was fact. Before there was Christianity, Jews accepted their creation story (which Christians adopted, or co-opted) as myth. Islam picked up on the Christian tradition and also maintained that the Jewish creation story of Genesis was fact.

The Jewish/Christian/Islamic creation story states that God created everything in six days. What none of them can explain is how long a God-day is, as it is highly unlikely that God would create the universe and everything in it from nothing using days that applied only to a previously non-existent small planet in a remote solar system in one of billions of galaxies in the universe.

Charles Darwin was not the first to notice that there seemed to be a progression among animals and plants, from simple to complex. But Darwin is the man who got the blame for it. Even Darwin feared that some people would take his ideas and twist them to make it seem as if God was not involved in any way. This is true, though apparently not widely known.

Briefly, Darwin said that mutations within cells of animals and plants could result in species that were slightly different from the ones from which each came. When the changes made life more successful for the new species, they were kept. When the changes made life harder, the new species disappeared.

Darwin did not say that the fittest would survive, but that the species that could adapt to changing conditions best would survive changes in environment (such as global warming).

Darwin did not say that the hundreds or thousands of simultaneous changes (mutations of specific genes) that would be necessary within the founding (original) cell of a new species would ever happen all at once. He said that he observed a progression. He observed order and progression in the natural world.

Where creation supporters and evolution supporters can never agree is that the Creator continued to create after the six days. For some inexplicable reason, creation supporters believe that God stopped creating after those six days. Even though humans were created in God’s image, as they believe, and human creators and inventors continue to create throughout their whole lives, creation supporters believe that God stopped creating. This does not make sense.

They also believe that this omnipotent and omniscient deity required a rest after six days of work. A rest which became permanent for eternity. Though this defies all logic, creation believers continue to maintain this apparent contradiction as if it makes sense. An omnipotent creator that was not made of biological cells would not require rest.

Can you imagine winning the biggest lottery you know every day for 100 years? Theoretically, it’s possible. That sums up the odds that the earth as we know it could have developed strictly through a series of evolutionary accidents. Remember, evolution is nothing more than accident upon accident upon accident.

If this theoretical possibility actually happened on earth, why did it not happen anywhere else in the known universe? Surely someone somewhere must have won another lottery on another planet.

The evolution purists maintain that after all the necessary mutations occurred, any species between the old one and the new one vanished. No reason given. They just all disappeared. This does not make sense.

Biologists will tell you that any species must have a reasonable level of genetic diversity to survive. Once any nearly extinct species of animal falls below 30 in number, the odds of that species surviving more than a few generations is tiny. Evolution purists maintain that one member of each new species happened at a time. What could it breed with? Without a diverse gene pool, even a twin-sexual species would die out within a few generations through degradation of the genes.

Do the arithmetic. If a minimum of genetic diversity dooms a species today, how could one single member of a new species survive? For that matter, how could one single member of a species that replicates itself sexually reproduce without a second member of the opposite sex around to join with?

A purely evolutionary scenario to describe what we have today is unsustainable as a belief if the arguments against it are considered. The laws of biology that we know today make it impossible. Something else must have participated in the process.

On the other hand, science has abundant proof that earth has existed longer than 6000 years (or 5800 years, or 6200 years, depending on which creationist you listen to). Creationists cannot explain evidence of existence older than 6200 years.

Not, not quite true. Some of them will maintain that the devil made stuff before God did His creation thing. That’s the same devil that the Church of Rome invented. It was convenient that the same devil they invented to threaten worshippers with hellfire and brimstone (burning sulfur) if they sinned could also be used to explain existence before creation. Who Satan might have made his creation to deceive is not clear.

Now the Church of Rome denies hellfire and brimstone, indeed is ambivalent about hell itself. Creationists no longer want to discuss existence before creation if their largest church withdrew its foundation claims about hell and the devil.

Why do supporters of various religions fight? As with any kind of war, they fight to demonstrate that they are the strongest-might is right in multiple ways to their way of thinking.

Religionists who fight claiming that their religion is best do not truly want peace, unless peace means that their flavour of religion would win the war of religions. As peace fundamentally means focussing on what we all have in common, not on our differences, religionists will never want peace in the sense that it is generally accepted.

No, it’s not pretty. Organized religion is not. It believes that it can create peace in the world by making war to defeat the heathens, pagans, atheists and agnostics.

We should each ask ourselves what God wants. War doesn’t seem likely to me. If organized religion did not exist in the world today, few if any of the 27 extant wars would have causes.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today’s Epidemic Social Problems,' a book about real and inexpensive solutions to community problems most people think are inevitable evils of modern society. They aren't. We just have to look in the right place.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Contact author Bill Allin at turningitaround@sympatico.ca