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Short pieces |
CREATION AND EVOLUTION ( Page 1 ) |
| Only a very brief survey of the theme is intended here,
just surfing on the top. Any one interested to dive deeper may find
the long pieces, - The beginning and the cosmic evolution, - evolution of life, - geomorphology and - Creation of man, in this site useful for the purpose. The article, ‘the end or the beginning?’ among the short pieces on the site is also relevant. |
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| By way of introduction I may state that I firmly believe that God created this universe and all that is seen and unseen and that nothing ever happens anywhere without His knowledge or against His design. I also believe that there was and is cosmic evolution, chemical evolution as well as biological evolution and that evolution is a continuing act of creation guided and directed by God and not masterminded by Darwin, Einstein or any scientist. But I do not believe that the human being is another type of monkey, that man evolved from the chimpanzee nor the dog from the cat. The being from which a certain plant or animal evolved does not exist anymore. It has changed into the new one. | ||||
| The first step towards a better understanding of creation and evolution is self- realization – understanding who I am, understanding the difference between the human being and other animals, the difference between living organisms and non-living matter. Towards this end let me invite you to join me on this imaginary picnic site by the side of a pool. Here we have before us many interesting objects. But let us focus our attention on the following four items. | ||||
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| Scientifically speaking, there is very little difference between the child and the chimp, and a very big difference between the chimp and the frog. This is so because the first two belong to the same family, that of primates in the highest class of animal kingdom, namely, mammals whereas the frog belongs to a much lower class of vertebrates- the amphibians- lower than all mammals like dog, lower than birds and even reptiles. But to me, a believer there is only a very small difference between the chimp and the frog but a great difference between the child and the chimp. This is so because the frog and the ape are both animals but the child is human and not an animal at all. I do not think of myself as an animal. That is the first step in self-realization. | ||||
| For arguments sake I may say that the frog and the piece of stone are very similar as they both are made of the same elementary particles – protons, neutrons and electrons - and nothing else, that they are both made of matter. But we all know that the frog has something that the stone does not have – life. This makes the gulf between the frog and the stone very wide. In the same way the child or human has something that the chimp or any other animal does not have. And that is the immortal soul. This soul is not one of our organs like heart or brain. Nor is the soul one of our faculties, like mind, intellect or consciousness. The soul or spirit is not something that I possess but that is what I am. It is even wrong to say ‘I have a soul’, rather one should say ‘I have a body’. Now we are getting closer to self-realization. | ||||
| Nor is this soul a product of evolution. Evolution has endowed man with a proportionately larger brain, an erect posture or bi-pedalism, even linguistic skills. But evolution cannot and did not supply us with a soul. By the process of mutation or otherwise, evolution can produce changes in existing structures or organs but cannot produce something that did not exist before. This calls for creation, and only God can create something out of nothing. Chemical evolution starting from quarks and gluons, fermions and bosons, evolved into the elementary particles, protons, neutrons and electrons during the initial stage of cosmic evolution – inflation. Later nuclei of elements were made in the stellar furnaces and molecules of compounds were made probably in the cold outer space. We can believe that even complex organic molecules were formed as a result of chemical evolution. But, if you have some idea of the composition of the DNA molecule or the complexity of life, we cannot for once believe that life evolved from inanimate matter by pure chance. Sir Arthur C Clarke wrote in an article in the Times magazine that the probability of the various organic particles joining together to form DNA molecule and become ‘alive’ is less than the probability of a tornado passing through a junk yard making all the junk in the yard to combine to form a jumbo jet ready to take off. What I am trying to state here is that life did not just appear on earth or anywhere else in the universe by mere chance but was the product of a deliberate act of creation by God. I believe the same thing about the creation of the human being - not the material body but the spiritual self. |