Creationists versus Evolutionists or Fundamentalists versus Fundamentalists
by Lah-May
When I was a child of about 10 years old, my father—a man who
believed in God and occasionally went to church—explained to me
Darwin's concept of evolution, telling me that man evolved from
ape-like creatures. I enthusiastically shared this new-found knowledge
with some classmates. They went home and shared it with their parents.
The next morning I was teased and chided, “My dad says there's no way
he evolved from a monkey. Maybe you evolved from a monkey, but God
created me.” I took the teasing, all the while thinking to myself, “My
dad's smarter than your dad.”
I was always fascinated by the
concept of evolution. I enjoyed the scientific, but always
entertaining, writings of Harvard evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould. I
subscribed to scientific magazines (albeit the “lightweight” variety),
especially enjoying evolutionary findings (remember all the hoopla
about tracing mitochondria DNA back to “Eve”?)
I felt somewhat smug in believing my mindset was more or less in line
with the scientific community and found it incredulous that people
actually believed the biblical version of creation. (Actually, I still
feel that way). Yet I always had these nagging thoughts that maybe
there was a Creative Mind behind all this evolution and life itself.
Once I began reading and studying The URANTIA Book (the Fifth
Epochal Revelation1), I started looking at creation and
evolution in a whole new light. It taught me that evolution is
a part of God's creation plan for the worlds of time and space. But of
course—it seemed so logical. We are not evolutionary accidents, but
evolution allows not only for adjustments to the environment, but
destiny of mortal life. And, evolution isn't limited to the physical;
mind also evolves (albeit not just subject to physical conditions but
through conscious choices), which ultimately frees us to partake in the
eternal spiritual adventure.
The URANTIA Book
tells us that after a study of its ability to support life, this planet
was chosen by nonmortal spirit intelligences to host life. And it
didn't all come in one big splattering; it came as life plasma which
was planted in a hospitable watery environment. (You'll have to read
about “how” it came to this planet and “who” planted it in The
URANTIA Book.) But within that life plasma was held all the future
potential for all life on this planet.
The Satania Life Carriers [an order of nonmortal spirit intelligence] had projected a sodium chloride pattern of life; therefore no steps could be taken toward planting it until the ocean waters had become sufficiently briny. The Urantia [Earth] type of protoplasm can function only in a suitable salt solution. All ancestral life—vegetable and animal—evolved in a salt-solution habitat. And even the more highly organized land animals could not continue to live did not this same essential salt solution circulate throughout their bodies in the blood stream which freely bathes, literally submerses, every tiny living cell in this “briny deep.”2
It seems we are caught in a time where tradition-bound religious leaders are tempting to thwart scientific truths, while simultaneously, revolutionary spiritual leaders, enlightened by modern revelation, are challenging the materialistic scientific mindsets. While we hear much of Christian fundamentalism and its associate creationism and intelligent design beliefs, in a recent talk given to Aquarian Concepts Community, co-founder Niánn Emerson Chase described the fundamentalism on both sides—fundamentalism in the religious arena and fundamentalism in the scientific arena. Creationism wants to discount the theory of evolution and basically attribute life to biblical tradition or nonscientific suppositions, while the scientific community wants to discount the concept of a Creator and only believe in random mutations and natural selections. Those who subscribe to the Intelligent Design theory seem to have beliefs ranging from: God intervenes to create new species to God designs but evolution is the outworking mechanism.
And yet some of the less imaginative of your mortal mechanists insist on viewing material creation and human evolution as an accident. The Urantia midwayers [an order of intelligent beings midway between mortal and angelic] have assembled over fifty thousand facts of physics and chemistry which they deem to be incompatible with the laws of accidental chance, and which they contend unmistakably demonstrate the presence of intelligent purpose in the material creation. And all of this takes no account of their catalogue of more than one hundred thousand findings outside the domain of physics and chemistry which they maintain prove the presence of mind in the planning, creation, and maintenance of the material cosmos.3
The concept of relativity within absolutes has long been taught by the spiritual leaders of Aquarian Concepts Community, Gabriel of Urantia and Niánn Emerson Chase. In looking at the two opposing viewpoints, it seems the fundamental scientific community will only accept the relativity while the fundamental creationist community will only accept the absolute.
From era to era radically new species of animal life arise. They do not evolve as the result of the gradual accumulation of small variations; they appear as full-fledged and new orders of life, and they appear suddenly.4
The Old Testament account of creation dates from long after the time of Moses; he never taught the Hebrews such a distorted story.5
Scientific mindsets concede we have not witnessed any new species
emerge in the wild nor in domestic breeding. ...by the absence of
greater change, we also clearly see that the limits of variation appear
to be narrowly bounded, and often bounded within species.6
However, most evolutionary scientists are quick to point out God has
nothing to do with such evolutionary leaps—they just happen too quickly
for the evolutionary records: Steven Jay Gould believes the exact
transformation periods are removed from the sight of the fossil record
by their incredibly instantaneous (evolutionarily speaking) mode.7
The URANTIA Book describes evolution as being progressive
creation.
While humankind is physically an evolutionary product of the cosmos,
our evolution is not limited to the material. In fact, while we may see
ourselves as the highest on the evolutionary scale, in the
larger picture, as evolutionary mortals of time and space, we are
actually considered the lowest
form of will creature. Yet, despite our animal origins, we can “evolve”
spiritually and eventually “ascend” above the need for a material or
even semi-material body and exist in spirit form.
While some may find comfort in tradition and others may find comfort in
established theories, true progress demands that we expand our
consciousness. It takes faith to believe something more than religious
dogma; it also takes faith to believe beyond the “certainties” of
scientific fact. Is
faith—the supreme assertion of human thought—desirable? Then must the
mind of man find itself in that troublesome predicament where it ever
knows less than it can believe.8 If we are willing to
believe through faith, one thing we can rest assured in is that no
matter what the absolute facts of evolution may be, the absolute truth
is: we were created to love and be loved by a Universal Father/Mother
who knows us and loves us.
2 The URANTIA Book, p. 664
3 Ibid., p. 665
4 Ibid., p. 669
5 Ibid., p. 837
6 Kevin Kelly, founding editor of Wired magazine, from his book, Out of Control
7 Ibid.
8 The URANTIA Book, p. 51