The creation and evolution of human
There is a popular meme titled, “Jesus rides a dinosaur.” In one meme, you see Christ on his Palm Sunday ride into Jerusalem. But instead of being on a donkey, Christ is riding on the back of a mini T-Rex. Another meme shows Christ riding a brontosaurus at the edge of a tropical jungle while he is holding a “child” dinosaur in his lap. The memes use humor to contrast the belief of creationism with the evidence of evolution, implying that if you believe that the world was made in six days, then dinosaurs would have been a natural part Christ’s life on Earth.
The concepts of creationism and evolution cover a wide spectrum of views but let’s just do simple. Creationism is the basic belief that all of the Universe, including life itself, originated from specific acts of the divine creator, God, as it is written in the Bible. The theory of evolution by natural selection stems from Charles Darwin’s observations written in his book, On the Origin of Species, published in 1859. Darwin postulated that all plants, animals, and fossils trace back to one or a few “original progenitors.” Darwin also stated that a species changes over time according to its ability to adapt and pass on better characteristics and traits.
The answer to the question of whether life forms were first created comes with the answer to the riddle, “Which came first? The chicken or the egg?” Scientists have discovered that the formation of egg shells relies on a protein that is only found in a chicken’s ovaries. This means that an egg can only exist if it has been inside the chicken. With this discovery, at least in the beginning, you had to have the chicken to make an egg.
On the other side of the debate, the formation of human life is an evolutionary process. Your human form began when an egg and sperm came together to form a single cell with two sets of chromosomes: one set from passed on by the sperm and one set by the egg. Immediately after this fertilization process, you as a single cell began dividing and growing and dividing and growing according to the instructions of your DNA. Your DNA is the inherited genetic code that lives inside the nucleus of each one of your chromosomes. Your DNA contains such things as your height, the color of your eyes, and even your personality.
Studies have shown that twins who are separated at birth and reunited later in life learn that they have many characteristics in common. For example, one set of twins, James ‘Jim’ and James ‘Jim’, were adopted by two different families when they were four weeks old. When the twins were reunited at the age of 39, they discovered that they both suffered from headaches, bit their nails, and smoked Salem cigarettes. They both drove the same kind of car and both named their pet dog “Toy.” They both even first married a woman named Linda, later divorced, and then married a woman named Betty. (As a side note, many twin souls share these twin-like similarities even though they are not from the same family or even the same country.) Your inherited genetic code, what Darwin called your common ancestry, largely determines what and who you will be.
If you believe that life begins at conception, then know you were once a single cell and that you evolved from that single cell. To deny that you came from a single cell or ever looked like a single cell is to deny that you are human. God knows that life had to start from somewhere and the beginning is always the best place. From these very simple beginnings, humans have evolved to become the species we are today. Evolution from a created beginning is simply a natural part of our development here on Earth.
How do you know if you have a dinosaur mentality or if you are evolving to become more like God? If you were offended in any way by the Christ on the dinosaur meme or if you felt any type of vindication over the message of the meme, know that you are stuck in your human evolution. Knowing Christ, I am sure he would have just laughed and probably thrown in a parable or two.
There is no question that Christ was ahead of his time with his message of love and acceptance. Otherwise he would not have been harassed, tortured, and crucified by the religious and political dinosaurs of his day for teaching that as we love we become God. The question now is will Christ have to deal with the same dinosaur mentality he had to deal with the first time he was incarnated as God in human form? This is up to your willingness to evolve and become less human in nature and more divine like God. The message for evolutionists is that all creation is divine. The message for creationists is that without evolution, we die on the vine.
Mother Owl
