Recently in Science...

Some of you may have been following the series "Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey" hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson (and interestingly, produced by Seth MacFarlane - yes the guy who created "Family Guy").  It's a very well put-together series of science topics, mixed with theories and imagination.

As a person of science, I really like this kind of stuff.  Since I have watched the first 4 shows (with 9 more to go, I think), it made me rethink a lot of things about science, especially evolution and how the universe was created.

The topic of evolution hasn't really been debated much recently, except for the recent web debate between Ken Ham (Christian who believes in Creationism) and Bill Nye (The Science Guy).  I guess if you have a country invading another country, an airplane disappearing into the ocean, earthquakes and mudslides, there's not much room to talk about much anything else.  

Let's start off with the solar system.  Why does this have anything to do with evolution?  Let me explain... Many years ago, people have thought the earth was flat.  Many scientists proved that this was wrong.  The earth was indeed round.  Then people thought everything revolved around the earth.  The earth is the center of the universe.  And if one was to say otherwise, you were considered a heretic.  You could get kicked out of church. Church people took it seriously.  But there were a few brave scientists that proved that the universe did not revolve around the earth.  And it took many many years and many theorems to be proven true.  Now we know the earth is round and the earth and planets revolved around the sun, and the solar system revolves around a central point in the Milky Way Galaxy.

The key to the last paragraph is that many folks in the church of that time (1600's) didn't not believe God would make the Earth go around the Sun.  Just like today, many people of the church do not believe in evolution.  

But what if I say, "God created Evolution."  What?

In the first two shows of "Cosmos," Dr. Tyson mentioned that being a part of the evolutionary history is somewhat of a spiritual experience.  (I'm not quoting his exact words but this is about the gist of it.)  He explained in many ways that all of life on earth shared a very similar genetic code in DNA and showed even how we can be related to a mushroom.  He even mentioned that even the start of life itself on earth is still a big mystery.  How do atoms and molecules come together and work together to form the lifeforms we have on Earth today?

While I am not an expert in biology and genetics, I am an engineer as well as a Christian.  Sometimes it takes imagination to realize and form a theorem of science that hasn't been thought of before.  And I believe there are many Christian scientists who probably think this way about evolution.

A few Bible verses come to mind, Psalm 90:4 and 2 Peter 3:8.  "With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day..." The content of these verses points out that our lives are very short and we must make use of it to the fullest.  God's days are not like our days.  If you expand that thought for a second, and put it in the content of the beginning of earth, you start to think, "If the 'day' in the Bible's creation story really mean thousands of days, maybe the earth is really 4.5 millions of years old, and not 6,000 years old."  Of course, call me a heretic and throw me out of church!  A "day" is 24 hours, right?

Theory of Relativity.  Now we're going into physics.  Albert Eistein is the grand master of explaining this.  Although my explanation will not do its justice, I will try to say it quite plainly that it's a theory of how space and time are mashed together into a web in the universe; planetary and star objects puts a dimple in this space-time continuum.  What appears to be light-years away, might be just several thousands, and vice versa.  So, how we perceive time may be different in space?  What if space-time was different back in the beginning of the start of the earth?  Was the many gravitational changes throughout the course of the solar system affect space and time and perception of time?

There are a lot of gaps in Evolution but there are also a lot of gaps in the Bible when it comes to Creation.  I think in the United States, people want to sway one way or the other.  Why can't it be both?  Why can't God create the Universe many billions of years ago and have it evolve to what we have now? 

I know the next argument: Where does Jesus fit in?  What about salvation?  Doesn't the story of God creating Evolution make humanity not so unique?  God could have easily made other universes or galaxies; planets and other beings with a similar salvation story.  And why not?  There were mentions in the Bible of odd being coming from the sky (Ezekiel 1 - check it out!  Aliens from space!).

So, I'm not saying anything is true here.  Just my random thought of things lately...