Evolution

I was thinking recently over a conversation I’d had with a Southern Baptist about the theory of evolution. She was upset that it denied her God, that it made her think people were “flotsam and jetsam”, that creation was all an accident, and everything that exists is therefore garbage. She said that was why she remained devoutly Baptist, because the alternative was unthinkable.

I simply listened to her at the time, mostly because that’s what she seemed to need. I was, after all, a random stranger standing in a check out line with her. (Yes, I know, I have the weirdest conversations with strangers in elevators and check-out lines and waiting rooms).

But when I got home, I thought about what she’d said, and if I could meet her again, I’d have something other than silence to offer. Since I will probably never see her again, I offer my thoughts here. I’m sure some of you will have rebuttals to what I’ll say, and maybe steer my thoughts into channels I didn’t even see.

Theory has several meanings: an unproved assumption, an analysis of a set of facts in their relation to one another, a plausible principle to explain a phenomenon, a belief as the basis of action, or a hypothesis assumed for the sake of argument. So, evolution is a theory. No one I know of has stated that evolution as proposed by Aristotle, Darwin, da Vinci, Agricola, Linneaus, St. Hilaire, Wallace, Anning, Huxley, et al is anything more than theory. Evolution has not been presented by science as a fact because we still don’t know the “why” of our existence, and not even the beginning “how”. Without those established, evolution can only ever be a theory.

This poor woman was probably being worked into a state of fright by her minister to keep her safely in the folds of the flock.

Part of what keeps me Pagan is that I can’t accept the fear-mongering that so many Christian ministers here in the south and midwest use to keep control of their congregations – and politicians to whip up the vote. Her words and attitude nagged at me. Why would a Christian feel threatened by any theory of evolution? How could they remove Deity from the process? Why would evolution make the world “garbage”?

Well, I can’t answer from her point of view, obviously. But after reflecting on this, and doing a spot of research (why do you think those names are still fresh enough I may have only misspelled one or two of them?), I can’t agree with her. Evolution may have occured in a fashion that appears random or accidental to us, but I’ve worked with patterns long enough to see longer term results from some of the things I’ve done, and I can see farther into the future what my actions will do. If I were the whole of Dea Nutrix, working on a cosmic scale, the tweak that resulted in the creation of life may have been accidental, or it could have been on purpose.

Who among us can say what patterns the Creating Force (CF) saw, and what changes the CF wanted to make? It could as easily have been planned on a scale unbelievably huge over an amount of time that boggles our minds. What we see as “accident” could be “planned”. And the changes evolution takes could simply be the maturation process. Does an infant always resemble the adult?

To make the leap that because life appears to have formed as an accident, it must therefore be garbage, is one I can’t follow. As a Numenist, a student of the patterns of life, I may not be able to discern the beginnings or the ends, but I have certainly seen a few middle sections. I’ve seen enough smaller patterns emerge to astonishing results that I can’t say a Divine Force (DF, which may be the same as the CF, but who knows for sure?) didn’t intervene at some point. Because of the way I believe, the theory of evolution makes a logical sense to me. As an herbalist, I’ve observed an evolution of plants, and given the interconnectedness of life on this planet, it’s a small leap to apply that to animals, and even to minerals (but it will take a much longer timeframe for minerals to show their evolutionary aspects).

How can the CF be absent from this process? It’s possible that the CF started it all, was deeply involved in the early stages, and has wandered off to other projects while this one “simmers”. Who knows when the CF will come back, check up on us, maybe do a bit more “tweaking”?

I can’t separate the CF from evolution because I believe that some creative, generative force set things into motion. For me, evolution is an affirmation that some sort of divinity is around. It makes everything that much more meaningful, that much more sacred, and it gives me an example for my own pattern-weavings.

If I were to encounter that woman today, I would share with her the belief I have that it doesn’t matter how creation began, or how it progresses, because divinity is inherent each step of the way.