Hi Andrew,

Though I appreciate the attempt you make in this post to offer an alternative approach, I think its rather simplistic to put the theory of Evolution in the same category with creatonism, ID, and other ‘stories’ of how life began. Surely it is also a story, especially when it is read through the lenses of philosophical naturalism, however the empirical evidence which you mention makes me think that even though the present theories surrounding it may be incomplete, we should try to work with what the ‘best’ of science is presenting us.

It may help Evangelicals fight less about the issue but I think this is an issue that expects a response and indeed many people are asking for this, as our theology seems not to be able to work with this. (see the section on ‘Consequences for Faith’ I cited in my previous post)

With blessings,

Daniel

Hi Andrew,

Good analysis. As one who is taking time to read up on the evolutionary science, I do have one fundamental theological question however. And it’s one the Creationists have been harping on for quite some time.

That is: death has a quite different place in the narrative of the evolutionary ‘tree of life’ than it does in the narrative of Eden (and its ‘tree of life’). Insofar as the rest of the biblical story presupposes that death and decay are not ‘designed’ / a result of the Creator’s intentions, how do we reconcile that with the evolutionary perspective that tells us death is essential to life as we know it?

Further, what do we make of the Christian hope of eternal (resurrected) life? The more I think about it, the less living forever and ever appeals to me. Or is this just a failure of my imagination to grasp the awesomeness of resurrection life?

In brief, the key issue for me is how to believe in the Eden story (as story) while perhaps taking a different view on death than it does. All due respect to N. T. Wright, death seems like a neutrally natural part of life to me (I admit that say, a 3-year-old’s death is tragic, and perhaps ‘evil’—but an 83-year-old’s?—no that’s all natural and even good). Am I straying from Christian orthodoxy to believe this?

Peace,
 -Daniel-

Getting to know the beasts in the forest would help. There are self-avowed Old Earth Creationists, some of whom like Hugh Ross find the Intelligent Design argument to be creepy.

Hi Andrew,

Can I suggest a re-imagining of Genesis.

But first, not all stories are created equal. It matters whether a story has a correlation with what happened. If it does not correlate with reality to some degree, it can not give meaning to that reality.

Rather than “narratives of purpose and design”, why not simply give in to narratives of birth with the unfolding of freedom and contingency dancing with universal necessity, and see what that does to theology. What would it be like if the universe were “designed” with freedom to create itself, and develop its own free dance, rather than with a God ordained purpose.

Throughout the days of creation, light undergoes a “differentiation” or “symmetry breaking” as it is separated into light and darkness. The same differentiation happened with the separation of land and water, and then day and night. Day dies to give night, out of which day emerges again, the heartbeat of our earth, echoing the cycle of star birth and death in the universe. During these days, the universe is differentiating to provide greater complexity and the cycle of death and rebirth is established.

This is also how a fetus develops, with a membrane separating the new life from darkness of the womb, the steps of cellular differentiation from the primal streak out of which develops the Central Nervous System, through to the differentiation for internal organs which give rise to their own rhythms such as the heartbeat and sleep cycles. Also at a cellular level, cells begin undergoing a birth/death cycle.

And it is most obviously seen in the development of a family, as children are first protected and nurtured within the family, then differentiate themselves from their parents, then form their own families and other webs of relationships before they die, making way for new children.

The “days of filling” (4-6) can be viewed as stages of increasing complexity as organisms interact with their environment and with each other, birthing new species by differentiating and then dying to give room for yet more species. There is no apparent purpose or design, it is the cycle, the flow of life on earth as in the whole universe, birth/death, creation/destruction, in freedom.

As an organism with the power to consciously change our world, ethics is created and we choose to control our birthing and destructive impulses. But that does not imply that creation was purposefully “designed” for us, or us for it. Instead, there is freedom to dance within the cycles of life and death that can be seen in Genesis 1, if you look.

As for Genesis 2 … Lets see what happens when mankind awakens to the terrifying responsibility of creating ethics and morality, our control over our procreative and destructive impulses. We can choose to be free and become part of the creative process, or choose to give up our freedom in the hope that God will let us back into the garden if we feign incapacity to make our own moral decisions.

————

I personally like to mix a couple of pan*en*theistic characters into the narrative. It gives the story more feeling. I’ve got a poetic-prose version that explains it all better but it’s also several times longer :-)

In the end all origins stories are just created by people to convey meanings that we want to share, usually with political or religious baggage as a hook. I personally can’t be bothered with them anymore as people get mixed up, trying to making reality conform to their new favourite story.

Better to forget the stories and try to live constructively in the world around us.