I disagreed with my Pastor today...

I disagreed with my Pastor today...

It's pretty normal, I'd say. No one agrees with another person 100% of the time. But this was a serious disagreement. One that I kept to myself. He said, "If you have a problem with this, then you have a problem with the entire Bible. If you don't believe this, you can't believe in Jesus."

Evolution. What a hot topic in the religious versus science debate. I've managed to stay away from it for the most part. This time, the whole sermon was on creationism...and how evolution is insane. It took every ounce of self restraint, and a little help from my husband, to keep from yelling out my disagreement...or walking out of service.

Of course I'm not saying everyone should believe exactly the same thing. But you cannot turn your nose up at hard evidence and facts simply because it is not what your ancestors believe. That's what the church did when science said the Earth was round, that the Earth rotated around the Sun and not the other way around, Dinosaurs existence...and now Evolution.

Before I tell you what it is exactly that I believe, I'm going to start with my pastors speech, and why it was wrong.

First, his main argument was that of the guy in the red hat in that video we all saw circulating on facebook not too long ago. Somehow it take more faith to believe in Evolution because that is somehow believing that things ended up the way they did "by accident"...that something came from nothing and accidentally organisms came into existence boom, culture happened.

Just, no. The only part of the Theory of Evolution that has no evidence in science is the Big Bang. (Which was an awful lot like someone just said, "let it be" and then it was...) From there, everything happened for a reason...a reason which can be explained both scientifically and religiously. Nothing was an accident. Planets formed as a result of gravitational pull, a phenomenon we can still see occurring in the universe. On our planet, we know the atmosphere was intense. It was full of electricity and energy. This environment has been replicated in the lab. There was a carbon based compound- the only thing that has no explanation (could this be "Adam"...or an atom?...just saying). With an explosion of energy, the first single celled organism came into being. This has been replicated in a lab. More than once. From that point on every single change has been selected for. Natural selection is also a process we can see in action still today.

The argument that almost made me cry out was that there are no fossils showing any transition between animals of any kind. What?? I mean...what?! Please, please educate yourself before you lecture the masses. There is ample fossil evidence supporting Evolution. We can literally watch the giraffe's neck stretch out over time through fossils. That is Evolution. We can watch the transition from tiny tree climbing rodent like creature to ape like animals to hominids to modern humans. There is no missing link. We can literally watch it happen. This is like telling me Evolution didn't happen because there are still monkeys. Of course there are still monkeys...they took a different path in Evolution. We share ancestors...every single organism on this planet has evolved from that first single celled organism. Everything. Sometimes things go extinct. That happens when the environment changes and the attributes that were selected for are no longer beneficial to the animal.

There have been flaws in the Theory of Evolution along the way. Things have been modified. Since the idea was first postulated we have been able to watch things change. We have found new fossils which are, in fact, evidence of Evolution.

I understand that the people who still think that Evolution is a lie are stubborn, hard-headed individuals and my blog post will more than likely not change their minds, but maybe a handful of them will be incited to do some research on their own. Or at least stop alienating those of us who have.

When I started college, it was the first time I really learned about Evolution. I was raised Catholic and had never really gone into depth with either idea of how things came to be. I had always kind of accepted creationism, because Evolution seemed so far fetched. Of course, this theory is the first thing I had to study in depth as a Biology major. The second Bio professor I had told us the first day that she was a devout Christian. Yet she stood before us teaching Evolution. My brain couldn't process this information. She told us that science and religion shouldn't be at odds. God gave us the desire to understand the things around us. It is inherently human nature to explore and investigate. Evolution is a beautiful and complicated process that should be appreciated for how complex, how intricate it truly is. To me, Evolution is quite possibly the truest evidence of God's hand. I stared at her blankly for a while. I didn't agree at all. But I was starting to buy into Evolution.

As college went on and I learned about religions of the world, origins of religions, the horrible things Christians have done in the name of God...I strayed. I referred to myself as Agnostic and my bestie was an avid Atheist. I studied science and Evolution. I studied world religions and theology. I developed my own beliefs. When I first started to make my way back to God I realized that I would not be accepted my most believers. Fellowship was an impossible thing for me, as an anthropology student, and then graduate, my work focuses on evolution, both biological and cultural. My colleagues provide validation for other world religions, and show the cultural evolution of Christianity. These ideas got me berated and screamed out. I was excited about them and wanted to share. I ended up getting scolded and, of course, threatened with burning in hell.

For the next few years I forged my own relationship with God. We spoke daily, he gave me peace when I needed it. I saw my blessings in everything, I was always thankful. The outdoors were my Church. I had my own version of communion and I prayed all the time. I felt closer to God than I ever had inside the judgmental doors of a small minded church.

One day, when things were truly horrible in my life, I asked God for help. He spoke to me, told me a name. That one name changed my life. I went to that person, he helped me straight out of the situation, healed my child and has raised both of my children as his own, married me and provided for me, given me everything I could possibly ask for in life. The one thing he asked of me was that we return to church. It has actually been fine up to this point, and it will be fine in the future. This is just something that I will have to deal with from Christians, I believe. I don't need my pastor to tell me I'm going to heaven. I know where I stand.

Now, for my belief on Evolution...

Have you heard of Intelligent Design? That's kind of what I believe. That God created everything through the Big Bang and orchestrated all of the following events. That he created environments and forces which caused everything to happen exactly as it has. Of course, I didn't always believe it was God, I believed it was a creator, though...or many creators. But if God controls everything, if the weather and the atmosphere culturally are all byproducts of Him and His will, isn't it reasonable to assume that perhaps things happened just the way he wanted them to happen? And to take this into Biblical context....let's talk about the 7 days in which God created the Universe. If you break those days down, each day corresponds to a different phase in Evolution.

Day 1: Light created and divided from darkness

It's obvious to me that this is the Big Bang. Before the Big Bang everything was only darkness. Then a flash of light and the Universe came to be.

Day 2: Atmosphere created and divided from oceans

This also happened. After the planets had formed and there were no further particles to be pulled in by gravity the atmosphere was formed. Water covered most of the Earth's surface. Science accepts these as facts as well.

Day 3: Land created and divided from water. Vegetation created.

This is shortly after life began. Evolution had started and progressed from a single celled organism to plant life. As time passed less of the Earth was covered by water and more was covered by land. I believe this was attributed to shifting in tectonic plates, but this is not my area of expertise. I only know that as time went on, this also happened.

Day 4: Sun, Moon and Stars created to fill the sky.

It would most likely take this long for these things to come into view, through the young atmosphere and across light years of time. (however, the sun existed before life began. Plants could not have survived without sunlight. There would have been no light without the sun. I never questioned that when God said "let there be light" and it was so, that the sun came into existence.)

Day 5: Creatures created to fill sky and water.

It is common knowledge that Evolution began in the sea. Organisms like plankton began to change into diatoms and other small organisms, and eventually into fish and so on. Amphibians and reptiles were next, which also lived in or near the water. These creatures first evolved into birds before anything else. It is here that the age of the dinosaurs begins. They began as birds and evolved from birds.

Day 6: Creatures created to fill land. Man created as pinnacle 

And this is when dinosaurs walked the Earth. Other land animals evolved. Evolution was actually in full swing. New creatures were being created all the time. And our ancestor, the tree shrew-type mammal, came into existence. Whatever happened, a mass extinction event occurred. All this evolution had happened already, and then a ton of it was wiped out. Our tiny ancestor survived. And with the extinction of the mega fauna, it was able to evolve. Hominoid evolution was complicated. I won't detail it here. But the end of this phase would occur as man became agricultural. As we settled down and developed families and towns. And this is when we first began our search for religion.

Day 7: God rested from his work

And allowed culture to form. Which is the fruit of the forbidden tree. As we explored our new thoughts and feelings, our curiosity took hold. That inherent desire to investigate took hold and God knew he must limit our minds. We could be in his image but could not be free of earthly desires.

If you are really interested I could go into further aspects of the Old Testament how I see them, through science, in future blog posts. But I'll stop here for now.

One final statement, this idea that I can't be a Christian at all if I believe in Evolution, that somehow education pushes us away from God and Heaven (another argument my pastor shared) is why I strayed from Christ. It's why Christians have a bad rap...why they are seen to be ignorant by many intellects. It's like the church just says you must accept everything I tell you without ever looking for your own explanation, evidence, correlating ideas, or anything else. Just, I said it and that's it. It's in this book that was written a couple thousand years ago by groups of people, comprised of "eye witness" accounts written decades after the events occurred and then picked through by political and religious councils over the years to determine which books were relevant to their government. The first thing science teaches us is to question everything. Do your own research. Be educated. That doesn't mean you set out to prove Christians wrong, or the Bible false. The Bible has shown us it is an historical document, we have found buried cities and other artifacts by reading the directions in the Bible. I'm just saying. If we could just keep learning about our world and incorporate it into our beliefs, there would be less segregation, less judgement, less of this feeling that it's either science or religion.

I am a scientist. I am a Christian. And the world just needs to come to terms with it.