How'd we get here?

The story of Noah and the Ark is one many children can recite forwards and backwards, upside down or sideways. It’s likely they’ll never doubt the story, nor any of the other stories found in the Bible, including the tale in Genesis about our creation. No one has concrete proof that the stories throughout actually happened the way they did. Perhaps Noah and the Ark was a parable, a fairy tale of sorts, to teach people then and now some lesson. Maybe the creation story is mythical to a degree; God’s day certainly wasn’t the 24 hour period that we have come to know. No matter if it really happened word for word or if the stories are made up with a lesson behind them, it is faith that leads people to believe that what’s written in the Bible is there for a reason. However, faith shouldn’t be a factor in disregarding the theory of evolution. Some religious figures discourage the Big Bang Theory when discussing the creation, but should evolution be completely ruled out as a key part of our existence?

Darwin had a great idea about the existence of life. The changes make sense – on a small scale. Bird beaks that change over the years or fish whose ‘arms’ become fins makes a lot of sense. It happens when the area around an animal changes: either they adapt or die. A bird that isn’t able to eat because his beak is too short finds other ways. This ability to adjust and adapt may not be so mysterious after all, but instead the work of a creator.

It is written in the Bible that God made all living things. That’s a lot of things to create considering the number of species of just one kind of animal. Did God’s hand create the 300 or more known species of spiders? Probably not. Did he create the spider? That makes more sense. It was his crafting of the spider that allowed it to evolve. If God was able to create the world or to know how many hairs are on a person’s head, it’s reasonable to believe God knew there would be a need for adapting.

However, it’s really hard to understand how humans might have evolve from an ape. It could be that when humans were first created they did not have the mentality they do now. As the human brain continues to develop, humans continue to evolve. Twenty years ago who would have thought of having a DVD player in a car? Two hundred years ago who would have thought of even driving a car? At one time, we weren’t able to create such luxurious, but through the expansion of our minds it’s gone from being a fantasy to reality.

Everything that we as humans are capable of, as well as animals, plants, and bacteria, are part of a plan. How could bacteria grow, multiply or mutate without something greater in its structure? For humans and animals to have such complex body parts that depend on each other, wasn’t an accident. Our organs were carefully thought through and strategically placed, which seems unlikely to have occurred from a big bang. The world had to come from somewhere. The Big Bang theory suggests the Earth was spun into orbit after a collision in space. Maybe that is how our planet was created, but it doesn’t answer any of the questions about how living beings were put here.

Life is beautiful, the earth is beautiful. Everything we see on a daily bases is part of a cycle that has been here for millions of years but what happened before we were part of the plan is still unknown. The earth as we know it today won’t be the same for the next several generations. Regardless of the origins of life, it is ever evolving and should be embraced by everyone, including those with strong faith in the Bible.