56 Evolution and bagels

As I was slicing an asagio cheese bagel to drop into the toaster so that its warmth would melt the margarine I planned to slather, I was struck by the fact that this bagel, about double the size of the bagels of the 1970s, also had no hole. Evolution. A fat, cheesy, supersized bagel with no hole.

And that’s about as far as I’ll go in support of evolutionary theory. I haven’t believed in evolution for over 30 years, and even in school where it was taught as “fact,“ knew it just well enough to make my way through my biology, physics and chemistry courses. Even so, I’ve only recently become a “six day creationist.” The reasons I never really accepted evolutionary theory were completely practical, not biblical--I didn’t believe there had been enough time, using any dating system, for all the complex changes to evolve, say, a horse from a lower, smaller 3 toed equine creature, let alone all the bees and the flowers to get on the same time cycle to ensure their continuation. Any changes I’d seen in animals and humans (and also in society and history) never showed development to a higher level, only entropy, deformity and decay.

Our church group (called SALT, Serving and Learning Together) had a guest, an engineer from my husband’s Wednesday morning church group, speak to us about his “conversion” from a conformist to a creationist. He pointed out various errors in the teaching of science, scientific facts that are never taught to school children, and presented a variety of ordinary things in his large basket of models ranging from a candle to a hard drive to a dried sunflower. With barely an hour to speak and many interruptions, he had little time to present his case, and even though speaking to conservative Christians, he wasn’t preaching to the choir.

This isn’t a Christian vs. non-believer disagreement, but “young earth” and “old earth” adherents among Christians. And it isn’t new. I have a 25 year old book on my shelf, “How to think about evolution and other Bible-science controversies,” by L. Duane Thurman (InterVarsity, 1977). The author examines not only evolution, but all the creationist theories--gap theory, flood theory, progressive creation and revelatory day theory. Obviously, people who believe in the saving work of Christ and the breaking through of the supernatural into this world, have honest, thoughtful differences in their interpretation of the Bible‘s account of creation.

As for me, I’m going to accept what the Bible says about it--that God created all the universe in six 24-hour days, that at the end of creation, he pronounced it good and complete and rested on the seventh literal day (i.e., didn‘t rest for eons). That in those six days, no death or sin had occurred. That whatever was created had the appearance of age, including the first man and woman, who were old enough to reason, had language, who had responsibilities and could procreate from their first day on earth. If you start messing with it in Genesis, it just gets more and more tangled as you go along, and you have to keep making excuses for God, and evolving some very basic theological concepts, like sin and grace.

Bagels can evolve. I’ll accept God’s way.