A Cosmic Primordial Accident

This past week I started reading Richard Dawkins' book A River Out of Eden. Which is Dawkins' break down of how basically evolution works, and how through evolution one could explain away the need for creationism, and the need for God. I am aware that this is a very shallow explanation of Dawkins' book however, I am only 2 chapters in. Once I finish the book I am sure I will have much more to say on the matter. However there were things in the first chapter that he said and through trying to follow his train of thought that really jumped out at me.

For those of you who don't know who this Richard Dawkins character that I am talking about is, I will give a brief bio. Mr. Dawkins was a professor of zoology at Cal Berkeley and Oxford, he has been the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford since 1995. Dawkins has written numerous works his most famous being The God Delusion. I would also like to say that Mr. Dawkins is a brilliant thinker and one could learn a lot by reading his work.

Now that you know a little more about the man we are discussing it is time to dive into what I have found to be a glaring problem in his logic which began to arise in the first chapter of A River Out of Eden. Dawkins starts off in the first chapter explaining the basic gist of how evolution works, comparing generations and genes to a sieve or a filter, the good, strong, genes make it through the sieve and the weak, faulty, genes get filtered out. He then goes on to explain how speciation (the origin of new species) occurs. "The feature that defines a species is that all members of one species have the same river of genes flowing through them, and all the genes in a species have to be prepared to be good companions to one another. A new Species comes into existence when an existing species divides into two." Then he says something that is in my opinion the achilles heel of his position on evolution. "Why would two species divide? What initiates the long goodbye of their genes? What provokes a river to split and the two branches to drift apart, never to meet again? ...accidental geographical separation." Now I would like to note here that Mr. Dawkins failed to answer the why, he did succeed however in answering the how. But take a minute to think about what he has said here. We, as human beings, are essentially nothing more than an accidental geographic separation from a distant ancestor whom of which we share in common with chimpanzee's and bonobos. 

He then goes on to explain some more about this accidental geographic separation in which he begins to explain the complexity of genetic code. "The odds of arriving at the same 64:21 mapping (this is the mapping of a genome 64 possibilities out of 21 amino acids) twice by chance are less than one in a million million million million million. Yet the genetic code is in fact literally identical in all animals, plants and bacteria that have ever been looked at." This is a point at which I start having my doubts about what Dawkins is trying to sell me. He states that species occur as accidents, and that the odds of all animals sharing traces of the same genome is extremely unlikely almost un-imaginable even, yet the fact that we are all made of essentially the same stuff means we are descended from a common ancestor through evolution. Even though human beings share more DNA with bananas than anything else...

Eventually after more explaining of this process through metaphor and parables he tells one parable which I believe to be the ultimate flaw in his reasoning. Dawkins tells the story of a scientist who is captured and charged with creating a biological weapon. Being that the scientist cannot communicate with the outside world he resorts to coding a message into the DNA of the virus he is charged with spreading. He begins his message with a flag sequence of prime numbers because he knows when scientists begin mapping the DNA of this virus they will see the prime numbers and know that this was not by accident because they could not occur naturally.

By now there is a major issue glaring you directly in the face, at least it was for me. How is it Mr. Dawkins, that you could say that a sequence of prime numbers encoded in DNA is not accidental then stare at the whole of creation and say that it is all an accident? I truly struggle to understand this. Even if evolution is true it doesn't hinder my belief in God nor should it hinder any of you reading this post. We do need to think critically about this theory though. First you want to say the universe started by accident, then life began by accident, then evolution began by accident, all of these incredibly unlikely events potentially even more unlikely than prime numbers occurring naturally in a sequence in DNA are accidents. Yet, this sequence of numbers could not have been an accident? Where is your logic? Where is your reason?

Perhaps this post came off as a rant, but I hope it goes to show you all that even in the face of great adversity, that we should keep a hold of our faith. So many at this very moment are beginning to attend university and you will be challenged greatly in your faith. I urge you to hold strong. There are several resources available to you. I would suggest researching Dr. William Lane Craig, and even going to his website reasonablefaith.com and even listen to some of his podcasts. "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good, acceptable, and perfect." Romans 12:2

Sources:

Dawkins, Richard. River Out of Eden: a Darwinian View of Life (Science Masters Series). Reprint ed. New York, NY: Basic Books, 1996.

Bad Tattoos and Bad Theology

"Only God can judge me." Surely if you live in the United States you have seen someone with this tattooed on their skin if not across their chest. The great banner and buffer for many nominal Christians that they use to hide behind and shield themselves from those other "judgmental" Christians. While it is true that, yes, only God can ultimately judge you, I wonder if they have ever stopped and actually thought about the fact that God will judge them. There can be no doubt that they, in fact, have not put any thought what-so-ever into the matter and before those of you reading begin pointing the finger and slinging the word judgmental around like girl scouts and boxes of cookies let's actually look at the issue at hand here.

During what is considered by many scholars Jesus' most profound and important teaching, The Sermon on the Mount, Jesus outlines exactly what it means to live out a Christian lifestyle. It is from this sermon that we derive the basis of most of our Christian ethic.  In Matthew 7:1 Jesus is addressing the crowds, but more particularly the group of Torah scholars known as the Pharisees. The passage reads like this: "Do not judge, so that you won't be judged. For with the judgment you use, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you..." I am sure most of you know how this passage continues on so, for the sake of brevity, I will not list the rest. What is key about this portion of the teaching is obviously judgment. The pharisees were casting judgment on people. They were condemning and ridiculing the Jewish people for not upholding the law, and not just the laws established by God, but also the laws that they had conceived themselves over the years. Now that that has been established, what we need to do now is underscore: what does it mean to actually cast judgment? I think it is important to note that for many of the laws that had been established the punishments would be considered extreme by today's standards; for example when Jesus stopped the stoning of the prostitute in the street, her punishment was going to be being stoned to death. It becomes clear quite quickly that judgment is not the act of telling someone that they are in the wrong, but it means telling someone they are in the wrong and then to pass sentence on them. This is what is meant by judgment.

So what then does it mean for Christians in the realm of accountability if someone claims to be a Christian but is doing things and living a lifestyle contradictory to what Jesus established as normative to be one of his disciples? Should we just tend to our proverbial knitting? Or should we be looking out for our brother's and sisters and try to help them out if we notice that they are getting into a tight spot? Paul actually addresses this issue multiple times.

1. Galatians 6:1 "Brothers, if someone is caught in any wrong doing, you who are spiritual should restore such a person with a gentle spirit.."
2. 1 Thesselonians 5:14 "And we exhort you brothers: warn those who are irresponsible, comfort the discouraged, help the weak, be patient with everyone." 
3. 2 Thesselonians 3:14 "And if anyone does not obey our instruction in this letter, take note of that person; don't associate with him, so that he may be ashamed. Yet don't treat him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother.
4. 2 Timothy 2:24-26 "The Lord's slave must not quarrel, but must be gentle to everyone, able to teach, and patient, instructing his opponents with gentleness. Perhaps God will grant them repentance leading them to the knowledge of the truth. Then they may come to their senses and escape the Devil's trap, having been captured by him to do his will."

One thing that becomes quite clear from Paul's teachings is that we as Christians should actively be correcting one another, and that when we do this we should endeavor to be as gentle as possible and showing love to the best of our abilities. 

Perhaps what is my largest pet-peeve is when people say that they are being judged when someone simply points out that they are making a mis-step. Have we really become so sensitive that we cannot handle being told we are in the wrong? The reason Paul teaches that we should correct one another in gentleness and love is so that we can endure together until the end, not to point fingers and make people feel inadequate and cast condemnation. What we have created for ourselves in western Christianity is what is referred to as "functional atheism." Functional atheism is a way of saying that you are a Christian yet living as if God doesn't really exist and that the actions and choices you make bear little to no consequence. This also ties into the commandment of not taking the Lord's name in vain. What is taking His name more in vain: using it in a derogatory fashion or slapping his name upon yourself yet living a life that is not honoring to Him? All one has to do is read through the sermon on the mount to realize that Christ expects at least some effort out of us. The reason that he died was so that when we make mistakes (note that I didn't say if) that his grace covers us. Yet many of us continue living our lives as if this grace is cheap, and we forget that it is in fact costly.

One of the worst things I think that we can do as Christians is take it upon ourselves to be the morality police for the rest of the world. No where in the New Testament do we see Jesus take on the role of the moral police officer. The majority of his efforts were focused on getting the Jewish people, the Pharisees, and the Sadducees, awake and back on track. Many of his encounters with sinners, we see him dining with them and frequently engaging them in a manner that seemingly drew them to him. But like the story of when we see Jesus interacting with the prostitute who is about to be stoned, and the end of the encounter He leaves her with a commandment "go and sin no more." Jesus shows her great undeserving grace, but he commands her to stop her sinful ways. Paul even echo's this in his letter to the Romans. "What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?." He continues explaining this and then says that we are to walk in the newness of life.

One thing we can never do as Christians is think that we have come to a place where we are incapable of sin, John says that if we say we are without sin that we lie and the truth is not in us (1 John 1:8). We also as Christians should never forget that we are human beings and where what is human is intermingled with the divine there is going to be some messiness. So we then should accept the messiness, spur one another along in grace and love, and share the good news of Christ.