Onward Christian Soldiers

Onward Christian Soldiers
Originally uploaded by Spatial Mongrel.

The bible tells us, in the book of Genesis, why we are here. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God furrowed His brow and made man in his own image, a male and a female. He set them down in a garden, where they slept. And he gave them power over every living thing, and on the seventh day, God rested.

Scientific theory tells us, in textbooks like this, how it happened. In the beginning, there was nothing. And then there was light, and with light came time. Laws began to assert themselves. Gravity. Conservation of energy. Momentum. Matter began to coalesce, smashing into one another with great force, creating stars and planets. Life evolved, died off, and evolved again. And the Universe began.

Why.

I would like you to think about two things. Why, and how. I will argue with you that these are two very different questions, with very different answers, and yet both are essential to the other.

I found a whale bone on a beach in Newfoundland, after being chased out of the water in my kayak by a big blue shark. The amazing thing about this whalebone is how closely it resembles my own shoulder blade. A shark doesn’t have a shoulder blade like this. A whale does, because at one time or another, whales, or whatever turned into whales, used to walk around on land with legs. They still have them, only the legs have turned to tails, and the arms to fins. The bones of a whale fin look just like the bones on your hand.

WHY did the whale return to the sea to become a whale, and a dolphin, and a porpoise and whatever else swims out there with hands like these? Why didn’t sharks ever climb out of the ocean and decide to hang at Starbucks?

Science doesn’t know why. Science only knows HOW. But to know WHY something happened, you need to know HOW.

Intelligent Design is a theory that tries to explain WHY and HOW these things occurred. Intelligent Design says that the Universe, and all of life in it, is far too complex and integrated to have arisen by chance, and that somewhere, with a calm and patient hand, there is an intelligent designer who has crafted these complex systems into what they are today. Is it God? Is it Zeus? Is it a Flying Spaghetti Monster? HOW does this Intelligent Designer do this? We don’t know. WHY does it do this? Unknown.

Evolution is a scientific theory that states that life has evolved, gradually, and sometimes in chaotic bursts, in a process of adaptation in response to various ecological pressures and environmental circumstances. Most life fails, but that which is best able to survive the circumstances passes along its gene pool to the next generation. HOW does it do this? Through DNA, and sexual mitosis, and constant and continuous mutation. WHY? Science doesn’t know.

Here we have two competing theories of life that aren’t in fact in competition! Science has hundreds of years of painstaking research behind it, slowly building up an argument for evolution by crawling through the geologic record, peering through microscopes at strange strains of bacteria, and producing libraries of irrefutable PROOF that evolution is all but fact. Science, and the scientific method can tell you, in infinite detail, how you came to be here reading this, from your long dead ancestor wallowing about in a simmering lava pool.

If you’re curious about the details of the evidence, I have a library card here to give you. You will learn all about Anton Van Leeuwenhoek, who peered at the little beasties that swam about under his peering gaze. You can read about James Watson and Francis Crick, who discovered DNA. You can read the mountains of evidence, piled on the shoulders of giants, piled higher than the tallest mountain on the earth, that tells you HOW life came to be. But none of it will tell you WHY.

Why not? Because the question “Why” is the ultimate question. The Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. “Why are we here?” “Why am I here?”

Science will never be able to answer that question, but faith can. Faith can provide you with your own personal answer to why you are here, and why the universe is the way it is. Faith can never be proved, faith can never be tested in a laboratory. Faith cannot be subjected to the rigors of scientific inquiry, but without the question of “Why?” we can never learn “How?”

The debate over teaching Intelligent Design in science classrooms at the same time as evolution is therefore a red herring. One is not equivalent to the other. They are worlds apart, and answer completely different things. To combine them together in the same setting is to make a mockery of science, and to make a mockery of faith. Faith is not science, and science is not faith. But one must have faith to do good science – to believe in the laws of physics, to believe that the search for truth is a just cause. By the same token, one must know and understand science to understand faith – to not confuse one for the other, and to be able to tell the difference between the WHY, and the HOW.

There is room for many views on how life began, and we must study them all, looking for evidence, collecting observations, building conclusions. Science does not destroy faith, but confusing faith for science is perilous for us all. Science provides a foundation for faith to rest upon, and as we learn more about HOW this great universe came to be, we begin to ask “Why”.