In the Beginning...(Part One)

For the past few days, I’ve been reading Richard Dawkins’ book, The Magic of Reality. It’s an illustrated book meant for a younger – or less scientifically savvy – audience, subtitled: How We Know What’s Really True. At first I was afraid that if I read this book, I would be admitting my own scientific ignorance. After all, I’m a smart person; I have a Master’s Degree. But I’m not a science expert, so I quickly put my pride aside and dove into what has [so far] proven to be a truly eye opening experience.

I think most people (like me) already have a vague understanding of the evolutionary process. But unless someone really takes the time to study any major field of science, they will always be somewhat flummoxed by the complexity that is evolution.

According to Wikipedia, Evolution is “the change in the inherited characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organization, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.” In a nutshell, every bit of life on Earth descended from a universal ancestor that lived roughly 3.8 billion years ago, slowly evolving into each living species that exists today. Most people in the world accept the theory of evolution as the basis for how the world came into being.

The Christian community, however – especially fundamentalist Christians – has rejected the scientific evidence that supports evolution, and has instead adopted a literalist view of the bible to explain how life on Earth began. This literalist view is the Christian concept of ‘creationism’.

Creationism is the belief that the universe and all its living organisms originate from specific acts of divine creation. This belief often coincides with a literal reading of the biblical Book of Genesis and a rejection of scientific Evolution. Specifically, “Young Earth Creationism” encourages the belief that ‘god’ created the Earth within the last ten thousand years.

While sensible people – religious or non-religious – understand why theories of creationism are in fact ridiculous, those who were brought up to believe that Noah actually saved two of each species from a powerful flood and that dinosaurs existed side by side with human beings tend to rationalize their beliefs by quoting the bible. But their methods are actually far from rational because even if there was an all powerful ‘god’ somewhere in the universe, it’s highly unlikely that s/he would have been able to write such an elaborate series of stories ‘documenting’ his/her experiences as ruler of the world.

In my next post, I will explore some of the principles promoted by the Institute for Creation Research, followed by a series of evolutionary responses that can be found in Dawkins’ book.

Thanks for reading.

Heather

a.k.a. The Pretty Little Atheist