Dave,
I share your feelings of separation (to a degree) from the Christians you know. You are one of the only people I feel that I can be completely open and honest with. I can be myself, and know that you won't debate me for it, or hate me for it.
A few weeks ago, in a worship service, I realized how the river of dialogue has been drying up in my life. Over the past six months, my thinking has changed so drastically, through my own study. I've engaged with ideas for the first time, such as evolution, microbiology, zoology, archeology, prehistory.... these studies are changing me. I'm taking broad sweeps, you know. I'm doing more DVD watching, and National Geographic programs than I am scholarly thesis and journal reading. But it's still changing me.
EVOLUTION: I guess I am not too surprised that many (if not most) serious scientists.. historians, archaeologists, paleontologists, bilogists, ... support Darwin's propositions in some form. And they are these:
1. Species over millions of years have evolved (through minor variations... and major changes- "speciation") to form our diverse fauna on earth. Most likely they came from the same source.
2. "Natural Selection" was the method for this evolutionary progression. Whatever animal was the best adapted to its environment was ultimately the one to survive and reproduce.
I don't have a hard time with #1. I feel like I can be a sound Christian and believe that Genesis 1 is not literal, and that God was the breath behind the evolutionary beginning.
#2 is what gets me. Humans are relatively new to the world scene. We've only been around a few seconds in comparison to the world's day. The logic follows that we exist because dinosaurs were destroyed.. and gave way to mammals (a more adaptive species to a changing environment)... and these mammals were diverse, adapting and changing to their environment for millions of years... until finally an intelligent human-like species evolved (homo erectus)... from the line of African monkeys... and then eventually spread throughout Africa and Asia, developing, and becoming fully human as we consider it now (homo sapien)... and learning how to use tools, manipulate the environment for our greater survival... hunt and gather... then plant and harvest... domesticate certain animals... start organized societies... work together to survive... throw in a little war and terror within those societies.. and some love and compassion... and here we are. The European/Fertile Crescent decendent people then multiplied their techonology faster than anybody else because of their geography... and, driven by greed, expanded their reign to other less developed nations (colonization) such as Africa, North and South America, Australia... a whole slew of islands... and now we live in the most prosperous nation in the world (economically... not spiritually... we're post-pagan in that area)...
what bothers me about that is that the whole process of natural selection, survival of the fittest, seems to go against the very heart of Christ's teachings. If the strongest, most intelligent species survived because they were faster, stronger, fiercer predators, ... and then we were "born" as a result of that... how can we now switch to a self-sacrificing modus operandi? Why would God put such a system in place that contradicts his ultimate plan. In my understanding of Jesus, it's not the strong or best adapted that survive. It's those who surrender their lives, give up what 'deserve', lay down their lives for others. But (other than familiar relationships between certain species), this has not been a pattern of other living things on earth. Evolution takes care of the best and brightest, the most well-adapted. Not the sick, the poor, the inprisoned, the hungry. These weaklings are the ones that die out first, and then the stronger ones live on and reproduce. Wolves kill the weak and the sick of the deer herd, which in turn helps keep the whole herd healthy (because it serves as a check and balance to the illness, and it allows space for the most healthy animals to reproduce). Yet Christ was highly concerned about the 'least of these.' What a contradiction. My heart tells me that Christ was absolutely right. If I was the sick or handicapped, I'd hope that someone believed Christ's message rather than Darwin's. But I have a hard time finding synthesis of the two.
(I'm taking a different tangent now...)
Before human intelligence on Earth, survival meant being fast, strong, fierce, cooperative... (picture a male lion, hunting with others, fighting for head position to mate with the best females... subduing other challengers through physical confrontation)...
Eventually, as intelligence came onto the scene (humans), survival depended more upon invention and ingenuity... and strength. (think in terms of a society... who can learn to raise the best crops.. who can figure out the weather cycles, who can learn to make steel first, and make the strongest swords and win wars... who can build the strongest national defenses, who can manipulate gun-powder to fight off the invader... who can find herbal or concocted cures for diseases).
Up until recently in human history, human survival was still intricately linked to the natural environment.
Now, many of us are very separated from the natural environment as a means of survival. I know very few people who could farm successfully. I know very few people who could survive for a year in a forest. Or ride a horse, or kill a cow and clean and process and preserve the meat.. or who can go outdoors to find a remedy for anything. Our survival depends now (in the U.s. at least, and mostly) on playing the economic game. We've built a structure above the ground.. so our feet don't have to touch the grass anymore. We have people below us who pick potatos out of the ground and send them up for us to eat. We just have to have the money to grab them.
Our economic system is still a survival of the fittest. The strongest survive and thrive, and get whatever they want. The weak and the uneducated tend to get left out, or die out, or get phased out. (except that we live in a world that has compassion, unlike many animals... because we have programs that keep these "unfit" people alive and reproducing, whereas normally they would have just eventually been marginalized and died out over time...) Thus we have huge slums in every major city... thousands and millions of people who can't play the economic game and are unproductive, and not thriving well. Thousands of people who are ill, and totally dependent on the good nature of others. And then there's the 1% who are billionaires. They're the fittest. They knew how to play the game, or their parents did.
Efficiency is the name of the game in our new "survival of the fittest" economy. We know enough about numbers and cause-effect to know that if Company A delivers ten packages a day (at $10 a package), they will be more successful than Company B who only delivers 8 packages a day. The weaker company gets eaten by the canibal bigger company (Wal-Mart is the best example I can think of for modern economic cannibalism).
We've stopped slave labor, and child labor, and the torturous confines of industrialism for the most part. Now it's a different slavery. Slavery to numbers. Stock market means survival for the masses. Beating your opponent's prices means survival. Inventing the latest and greatest means there's food on the table. Working harder, or marketing yourself better, or knowing the right person means that your family is not naturally selected out, and your lineage fails.
Same dinosaur-eat-dinosaur world. Different rules. Bigger teeth no longer win. You've gotta find a niche in the economic jungle to "thrive" (most people in the U.S. can 'live', but now it's getting ahead. Sadly, this is not the case in other countries such as Niger, Chad, Sudan, Iraq...)
So the most "efficient" survive. Those who can produce the most product with the least investment, in the shortest time, with the most effectiveness, SURVIVE.
So who will come out on top in our new game?
MACHINES. I don't know anyone who can think and calculate as fast as a simple hand-held calculator. I don't know anyone who can remember as much information as my out-of-date computer that I'm typing on right now.
I don't know anyone who can travel as far or as fast as my $10,000 Saturn. Machines are the super-species .. or so we're headed.
Why is this incredibly dangerous???
1. Using machines for human advancement is fine. But we aren't really in that much control. As Thoreau said, we've become tools for our tools. Is a scenario like "The Matrix" or "Terminator" really that unrealistic?
2. Machines deaden the soul. I've never gone to the refrigerator to be renewed. Inside the refrigerator is an apple, which gives me new life and vigor. But the apple came from a tree, which is planted in the ground, grows from sunlight. Machines can enhance, or preserve, but real life comes from the dirt. My soul is never awakened in a shopping mall. Everything there is dead. I don't share air with sweaters. I share air with trees... we're mutually sustaining. So I walk in the forest, where there are no machines, and my soul is alive again.
But the forest is not efficient. You can't make any money there, unless you cut it down and sell the lumber.
Would you sell your soul for the price of a tree?
I wouldn't. Unless maybe that's the only way to feed my family.
3. Machines multiply faster than we can sustain. Information doubles every... about 5 years. Who can learn it all? Nobody. Dave, in my heart I feel that my species is getting a little out of hand. Actually, a lot out of hand. We run too fast. Do too much. Push too hard.
But this is not heaven. This is still earth. The same earth where the brontosaurus with the longest neck survives because it can reach the highest trees. The same earth where the wooly mammoth with the thickest coat makes it through the winter. The same earth where the fastest mouse escapes the clutch of the hawk and makes it to spring, to mate with another mouse. The same world where the most elusive snow tiger lives another day because it has evaded the poachers. The world where the smartest, hardest working, richest people get to forge the wealthy life they want and be successful monetarily. Or even just get by.
My head spins, Dave. This is a journey of discovery that I am ever walking. I know that love means more than survival does. I know that, even if it kills me, and I never have children, and my family name ends, I'm going to look after the poor and the defenseless. I know that I will always be walking through the woods, even as I sit here in my office, I am walking through the woods.
Amen.
-Jarod
