The Evolution of God

"Absolute power corrupts absolutely," so said English historian Lord Acton. Unfortunately for Christians, church leaders are men, too, and not beyond corruption. For hundreds of years, the Roman Catholic Church held absolute or near-absoulte power in Europe, and with its monarchy-like system, with its king-like pope, the power soon corrupted those in charge.

After the Age of Enlightenment in 18th century Europe, it was felt that reason should be used to determine truth (and I completely agree), as opposed to simply believing in what one is told by others. This would lead to an assumption that the Church's beliefs must be wrong, since they asked one to believe simply because "the Church" said so. The fact that many church leaders had shown themselves to be flawed didn't help Christianity's stance, either. This eventually led to the idea of secularism in the 1850s; the notion that knowledge dealing with reason, such as science, must be sepearted from religion.

This led to an issue, then. What was currently taught about the origin of man involved God, a big no-no for secularists. They needed an explanation that did not involve God. The answer, they believed, was all around them. In the 1850s, the idea that life could come from non-life was not just something thought of as theoretically possible; it was believed as an observable truth of law of nature. Since ancient Greece, the concept of "spontaneous generation" had been around. Anyone could observe fish or frogs "generating" from pond slime; rotting meat spontaneously generating flies was a common observance. Louis Pasteur would not start his research to disprove this until the 1860s, and even then, no one believed he would be able to disprove it. In fact, Pasteur, who is now known as one of the greatest biologists is history, and ironically, believed life must come from life due to his strong personal Catholic beliefs, had his work debated for many years after he disproved spontaneous generation. Nowadays, the idea is seen as, of course, ridiculous, but remember that in the 1850s this was seen as a naturally occuring event.

Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection was published in 1859, but the concept that God was not needed to explain the origin of man was already not a new one. This led to the next question, then: if not from God, then where did life come from? Darwin, being the good scientist that he was (and I truly mean that), did not jump to the assumption of spontaneous generation of all life as we know it. However, that certainly didn't stop his followers, especially Thomas Huxley, from doing just that. In 1870, Huxley proclaimed the ability of all life to have come from non-life, even while Pasteur was filing spontaneous generation right alongside flat-earh theory (interestingly enough, the Bible also indicated the Earth was round long before this was an accepted fact. Isaiah 40:22 says, "He sits enthroned above the circle of the Earth...", and Job 26:10, "He drew a circular horizon on the face of the waters, at the boundary of light and darkness."). When Pasteur's findings were seen as more credible, Huxley changed the name of his belief from "spontaneous generation" to "abiogenesis" (a [without] + bio [life] + genesis), pushing it into the remote past to avoid the inconvenience that this was no longer an observable process:

"...if it were given to me to look beyond the abyss of geologically recorded time to the still more remote period when the Earth was passing through physical and chemical conditions which it can no more see again than a man can recall his infancey [sic], I should expect to be a witness of the evolution of living protoplasm from non-living matter." (Biogenesis and Abiogenesis, in Huxley, Thomas, Critiques and addresses, Macmillan, London, 1873 [1890 printing])

As ridiculous as this should all seem (perhaps just to me), current "scientific" thought continues down the same road that started with the ancient Greek idea of spontaneous generation, built upon by Thomas Huxley. Modern-day evolutionists (note I didn't say "scientists", as there are creationist scientists) deny spontaneous generation, and recognize Pasteur's work as valid, yet in the same breath say life came to be spontaneously in the past, out of a "primodial soup", when we weren't around to observe it.

Ironically, as a Christian, I am accused of having "blind faith", of being unwilling to "face the facts". Yet, evolutionist scientists will believe in "abiogenesis" without any trouble. The problem is that Christianity claims God exists, and that He has set a standard for us. We all know that we (myself included) have fallen short of this standard. If we can prove God doesn't exist, then we don't have to worry about it. Our only worry, then, is the law of men (easily broken and punishment easily avoided), since mankind is at the top of the evolutionary chain. Only one problem: you can't prove that God doesn't exist.

First, you technically can't ever prove anything with science, you can only disprove something. Pasteur didn't actually prove that life only comes from life, he disproved the theory that life comes from non-life. To me (and the entire scientific community), this leaves only one possibility: life must come from life. Technically, from a scientific standpoint, there could be a third viewpoint we have not even imagined yet. So how did Pasteur disprove the theory? To disprove something, you first must assume it is true, then find a contradiction which that assumption causes.

So, Pasteur said, assuming flies spontaneously generate from meat, then if one was to put meat in a container where no fly could touch it, and allow it to rot, flies will spontaneously form from the meat anyway. Pasteur was obviously able to show that no flies ever spontaneously came from the meat, thus disproving the theory.

Then, to disprove the theory that God exists, we must start with the assumption that God does exist. And, now, using this assumption, find a contradiction. The problem is, to find a contradiction you would need to show that God would not do X, or if God existed, then he would not allow Y to happen. The problem is, in order to say that scientifically, you would have to know exactly what God would do, or what God would allow to happen. But, assuming the God of Christianity does exist, then he is far beyond any human scope of comprehension. Therefore, we can not say with 100% certainty what he would do or allow to happen, and, therefore, can not ever scientifically prove the God of Christianity does not exist.

The facts remain that evolutionism is based on a disproven concept, and, even if it weren't, you still can't scientifically disprove God's existence. These commonly held notions are based on our unwillingness to believe in the supernatural, plus the fear of the consequences if the creation of man by God is true. Fortunately, although we've all fallen short of God's standard for us, He has also provided a means of redemption. The Bible says that the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ. Although the Bible says we deserve death for our shortcomings, it also says that God came to Earth, in the form of Jesus of Nazareth, and died for us, so that if we place our faith and our lives in His hands, our debt is paid for.

If God exists, and He created us and our universe, then he also made the scientific laws that govern his creation. The fact that our world is describable in logical patterns points to intelligent creation, not random generation. Believing in this is not as scary as it may seem, as science actually does not point to evolution, and the Bible, although it points to the fall of man, also points to man's redemption through Jesus.