MARCH 24, TUESDAY

EVOLUTION AND THE DIVINE

Evolution is the scientific explanation of how all life (and all non life) came into being. A giant explosion, from a point the size of a pinhead, led to life as we know it.

And yet that isn’t the world that I live in. I live in a world of human invented culture that gives meaning and purpose to life resulting in modes of communication and customs that allow us to live with each other and share with each other. And central to this world is the divine, apprehension of the sacred, in culture after culture which for a great number of people forms their identity, and for Christians is “the way, the truth and the life.” It is the reason that many Americans go to church on Sunday and communally worship their god. That is the reason I don’t bang my head on the concrete, because culture gives me meaning and purpose and identity, because this is a way of being connected to the divine.

Actually I live in both of these worlds, the scientific secular on one hand, and the cultural and religious centered on the divine, on the other. Yet one world seems to negate the other. I believe in evolution absolutely, and find meaning and purpose in the culture I was born in where the divine guides most people to a life that is fulfilling and meaningful. I live within conflicting realities.