If you've been online today you've probably stumbled across—or have been bombarded with—the story of "Ida," a 95-percent complete, 47-million-year-old fossil of a nine-month-old Darwinius masillae.

Ida is a lemur-monkey that has been declared the fabled "missing link" that proves Darwin's theory of evolution as a biological bridge between higher primates and other, less advanced cousins.

The Scientific team's Revealing the Link web site attempts to provide some context for what is assuredly one of the most important scientific finds in recent memory.

The presentation and implications of the find have made atheists like Allahpundit giddy with the thought that a find proving the theory of evolution somehow negates the existence of God. That sentiment, of course, has sparked a predictable battle between the Biblical absolutists AP was no doubt intending to goad, and his fellow atheists. It has spurred an epic 600+ comment thread at Hot Air.

Charles has spurred a similar thread (700 comments as I write this) at Little Green Footballs written with a less combative tone.

I'm obviously missing something central to the wars being held in these comment threads, so someone please help me out—how does the existence of lemur fossil prove that God doesn't exist?

It's an absurd argument, of course, and a complete non sequitur.

While Charles Darwin fell away from the creationist view of the world espoused by Christianity as a result of his findings and contemporary works such as Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology, I see very little in his work that disproves God.

What Ida does is provide more support for a scientific theory, and in so doing, it erodes the absolutist view of the creation story told in the Book of Genesis. It doesn't disprove God. It simply once again highlights the failings of people.

If you believe that every single word in the King James/Good News/NIV Bible that you own is the absolute, undiluted and infallible utterance of God complete in every way and accurate in every detail without ambiguity or literary device, then frankly—and I mean this will all brotherly love—you're a bit touched in the head.

You're also historically illiterate.

We know for a fact that there were three separate views regarding the substance of Christ 325 years after his death among Christians and that the modern view of the godhead was only cemented by a series of vote during the first Council of Nicea, three centuries after his death, not as the result of a divine act.

We know of the apocrypha (which may or may not have been inspired, but are certainly excluded) and we know that Paul's first first letter to the Corinthians, dealing with sexual immorality, was lost to the sands of time.

The Bible, translated and mistranslated through various languages, edited in subtle ways and subject to a wide range of all-too-human failings, is the best of the Word of God we could retain. It is not perfect. It is full of allegory and allusion and prone to our misinterpretation of what it means in our all too finite and convoluted minds.

So Genesis says the Earth was created in seven days, and describes the creation of the universe and our way in it, and a fervent literal belief in that account is incompatible with the most commonly held theories of evolution.

We're left with the choice that the choice to interpret Genesis literally is wrong, that the very text of Genesis is wrong, or that the theory of evolution is wrong. At least, those are the choices most arguing the issue like to frame.

But I have a nagging doubt that like so many human arguments, that this is an argument of false choices and that the reality is probably both far more complex and infinitely more simple.

I believe in God unreservedly. I also believe in evolution and plate tectonics and the fossil record. I do not find these to be incompatible, simply because some of my fellow humans declare I must believe either/or.

As great as the Bible is, it isn't perfect, and it is sometimes contradictory, and while to believe as I do is self-serving, I want to make clear that I question the various stenographers, translators, and publishers, not the author.

As for evolution, I find it is a great theory to explain how species adapt and persevere and thrive, and utterly consistent with the world I can touch and feel.

But science, as wonderful as it is, is far from perfect and is as full of holes as any religious text.

The best scientific minds cannot begin to explain how randomly occurring minerals and elements found in the mud of the universe formed molecules and those molecules randomly formed themselves into nucleotides and then into RNA and DNA and then into even the most basic single-celled life.

We see no scientific evidence of life having ever simply erupted from rock or sand or mud or water, and yet all of biology hinges on the very very fact that at some point in history, such a transaction must of have occurred. Physics, chemistry, geology, and all other scientific fields similarly fail to explain our origins. Does this mean that science doesn't exist?

Science, as wonderful as it is, can tell us only that the universe we know is roughly 4.6 billion years old, and that it probably started with a big bang. But it cannot tell us what existed 4.61 billion years ago, and offers no workable hypothesis about where that matter was prior to it's dispersal or where it came from, or how it got there, any better than when God simply spoke:

L E T   T H E R E   B E   L I G H T

...and there was.

Science helps explain the world around us, and our place in it. So does religion, and the two are often at war as men seek to use one or the other to explain the world in a way that best advantages them.

That assuredly has no bearing on God, who must be terribly amused at all our theatrics. He must sometimes wonder about what his favored creation has done with the massive computational and emotional engines he gave it, to conjure the thought that He could be undone by the mere revelation of another of his creations.

How silly we must seem.

And roughly as consequential as a primate frozen in stone.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:00 PM | Comments (17) | Add Comment
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