Added: 857 days ago by Keiper CM | Posted in: Religion | 20 Comments

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<div align='center'><a href='http://www.kontraband.com/blog/19851/Happy-Together-Evolution-Intelligent-Design/'>Happy Together: Evolution & Intelligent Design</a><br><div align='center'></div><br><a href='http://www.kontraband.com/blog'>See more like this on kontraband.com</a></div>

"Can't evolution be the answer to how and not why" a young, confused fourth-grader named Stan Marsh once asked. Ten simple words uttered by a crudely constructed cartoon character levelled a debate that has been shouted at me from both sides for as long as I can remember. On one hand, there were laughable drawings of 'crocaducks' and leaps of faith that the world was only as old as the Bible says. And on the other, a glaring failure to explain how the universe could be five billion years old without a single, plausible theory as to its beginnings. The Big Bang theory is as much a 'flying spaghetti monster' as any all-knowing and wholly unprovable deity.

Their mutual flaws aside, intelligent design and evolution seem to have little in common. Intelligent design is, simply put, a thinly veiled religious theory masquerading as science while evolution is little more than a naked emperor in that scholars and elite members of the 'intelligentsia' can dream up fantastical hypotheses about 'god' particles that are nothing more than a mile wide and an inch thick.

The alternative, of course, is intelligent design which quite scientifically states that God did it. Specifically, God did it in six days. Even God doesn't roll on Shabbas.

As is written in the original science journal from two thousand and some odd years ago, light was created on the first day, heaven and earth came next, then man, and later woman followed by a 'ta-da' and a bow. After that, man takes over and no more attention is paid to the matter of our origins for roughly eighteen hundred years.

For Stan Marsh's sake, let's briefly assume two things: that God did make the universe and that evolution, while proven, is actually the process by which God continues his ongoing work.

If these two things are true, what would be the benefit of including every detail of this painstaking process at the beginning of the Bible? Surely, the human authors wouldn't comprehend the gravity of what they were writing. That would be equivalent to expecting a toddler to run a marathon. Now toddlers do grow up and some do go on to run marathons, but it takes time and years of experience and even then most do not.

Clearly the main purpose of the Bible is to set a moral standard for society through stories of everyday hardships as lessons for how to live our lives. Cataloguing every last amoeba and missing link would only serve to confuse the greater message.

Say, for instance, you're living on your uncle's water farm where life is simple, if a little boring. Occasionally, you have to fend off a pack of Tusken raiders or repair a faulty droid. Mostly, though, you'd just like to go into Anchorhead with your buddies or shoot some womp rats. Sure, you have some lingering questions about your father and that weirdo in the hills, but your immediate concern is learning the family business.

When Ben Kenobi needs to convince Luke Skywalker to leave the farm and come with him to Alderaan, he doesn't go into unnecessary details about Padme or Palpatine. Shmi Skywalker never comes up. He simply tells Luke what he needs to know at the time: Darth Vader killed his father. It's not entirely true, but it'll do for now. Through young Luke's eyes, Darth Vader is to Anakin Skywalker as evolution is to the Bible.

Episodes one, two, and three of the Star Wars canon, bearing the trials of young Anakin from his humble beginnings to his inevitable turn to the dark side, have zero immediate value in convincing Luke to do anything or go anywhere after the princess's message is received. Ben Kenobi trusts that Luke will learn all of this on his own as he experiences life outside Tatooine. Inside the cave watching the princess plead for his help, the old Jedi does not have the luxury of a lengthy history lesson.

In Episode five, Yoda attempts to further enlighten an older, yet still immature Luke. Even after saving the princess, aiding the rebellion, and seeing Obi-Wan come back as an ethereal spirit, Luke does not fully understand his father's fall and the temptation he himself will have to overcome. Yoda warns the young Jedi not to face Darth Vader on Cloud City to no avail. In fact, it's not even until Luke stares past his own artificial hand at his father's severed, metal limb on the second Death Star that he fully realizes how Anakin had been deceived and what that implies for Luke's own path.

By seeing the twisted machine his father had become, Luke was able to avoid the same fate for himself. Evolution may be the road map for which we decide what direction to take in life in the short term and as a species in the long term. It is not necessarily the road itself nor even the means of travel.

This is ultimately what Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park, are suggesting when Stan Marsh redefines the question evolution attempts to answer.

Now let's say the Bible is written not by human vessels of God but by men alone. Even with all of our technology and generations of discovery and invention, we still cannot explain with absolute certainty from where and whence we came. Two thousand years ago, a mythical super-being reaching down from above blinking all life into existence within a week would have sufficed as a prologue to a larger purpose. Sometimes, a few over-generalized words can establish all the context and setting you need. After all, the greatest modern story ever told opens with 'A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...'

Added: 857 days ago by Keiper CM | Posted in: Religion | 20 Comments

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