For many religious people, evolution theory is a highly contentious issue. I am often asked by many people about how to make sense that a complex life on earth, as well as our very presence, could possibly be the result of successive and minor changes in other organisms. How is that possible that a noble and intelligent human being is somehow related to, say, a chimpanzee? Who could see a kindred spirit to that little ape?
Since the publication of the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin himself had to face a barrage of criticism and mockery, that he invented such nonsense imagination, which was affront to the long-held belief and established religious teaching. A lot of people, however, often overlook the reasoning and the arguments that he had presented and how he could reach such utterly shocking conclusion: we indeed share kinship ties with chimpanzees, and fishes, and even bacteria. How is that possible?
While I am not a biologist nor paleontologist, nor do I claim any authority in the evolution theory, I will do my best to explain it as it is one of my favourite subjects. What you need is a careful observation and clever deduction from your environment (that exactly what Darwin did during his momentous sea boat voyage to Galapagos Island). Let me share my simple understanding one by one:
- Discovery of fossils. Fossils of giant creatures have been discovered a long time ago during the Greek and Roman times, which give rise the legend of dragons and other giant monsters. It is clear to us now that these fossil specimens are actually the giant creatures that roamed the earth in the past. So the questions are: where did they come from? What happened to them? And where were we when these giants were around? Are they related to the present species? Is the sabre-tooth tiger in the past related to the present tiger? Is the mammoth in the past related to the present elephant? The oldest fossil known for modern human (i.e. homo sapiens sapiens) is 40.000 years. Older than that, we will find various old or archaic types of hominids similar to us, just like neanderthals or homo erectus. So are we related to these older humans, which are hundred-thousand years older than us? It is a fact that you will never find any hominids in the era of 100 million years ago, as most mammals just started to evolve and the world was ruled by dinosaurs. Similarly, it is also impossible to find any fossils of dinosaurs 1 billion years ago as there were only simple multicellular organisms existed back then!
- Similarity between species. We could easily spot the similarity between cats and tigers, or between dogs and wolves? Do they just happen to be similar, or there is a relation between them? We learn from the taxonomy of living creatures, on which they are grouped based on the similarity of physical characteristics, is it just a mere coincidence or there are more to it? Creationist (that is, those against the evolution theory) thinks that God created living creatures based on a model (so called archetype), such that there are many similarities between species. Darwin quickly pointed out that the `model species´ itself is actually the predecessor of the closely related species. Moreover, it is recently known that our DNA (that is, the building block of our body) is 98% similar to the chimpanzee, and 50% similar to bacteria (other animals and plants are in between). Certainly, our physical appearance is far from 98% similar to chimpanzee, or even 50% similar to bacteria. The difference in single gene (i.e. series of chemical bases in DNA that produce a singular trait in organism) is enough to make our body relatively hairless than other primates, or make our skin colour becomes lighter or darker than other human race. But a huge chunk of our DNA is similar to other species, which obviously tells us that we come from the same origin.
- Defects in species, or at least in our body. Check our body, we will find appendix and tailbone, which have no real use. Why would God create something in our body that has no real use to us? Or is it just we actually `transform´ from other `type´ and these defects are merely the record (or the left over) from our past `transformation´?
So you can deduce from the above-mentioned points that at least all living creatures, including us, must come from one source or one ancestor. So we must be related with other species at various degrees. It is now impossible to deny that.
So how species evolution works? Darwin argues that the nature selects the best traits among us, by removing the unfits and leaving the fittest to survive. Then how species could vary? We all know that mutation does occur to species, albeit at a very slow rate. If that mutation occurs to a single species, and that particular species produces offspring which carry that genetic change, it shall create a subset of population of different species. Such change is often accentuated by geographical isolation (we have a very large elephant in Africa, and smaller in Sumatra island, and even smaller in Sumba island, all of them are different species) and accumulated after a very long period of time.
Just imagine the following hypothetical scenario, which I think is probably the case: during the last ice age of 10.000 BC, mammoths still ruled the earth. Their thick wool ensured that they remained warm and thrived in the cold climates. However, there was a chance that in an isolated place under tropical climate, different type of mammoths survived with much less wool. These thin-wool mammoths were similar to the thick ones, only that they could survive in the hotter climate. However, as the ice age ended and the warm period started, the thick wool mammoths could no longer support themselves, while the thin wool ones were able to hold on and spread out from their isolated places. If the vegetation and other food source remained limited after that, the thin-wool mammoth might be replaced by its smaller and hairless `cousin´, which is the predecessor of our present elephant.
Similar combination of `genetic mutation´, `geographical isolation´and `natural selection´also work on other species. If I have the time, I will try to discuss the evolution of human.
Now, how can we relate such finding with our current religious understanding? God created Adam and Eve, but we have never been told how they were made. Was the creation instantaneous (as we might think before we knew evolution theory) or a gradual process that spanned billions of years, through the transformation of earlier species? Was Adam and Eve’s heaven actually on earth, a place that was so special and beautiful? The definition of Adam as the first man, does it actually refer him as the first person that received a divine guidance? Personally, I do not see any conflict with my current understanding of religion. I am very confident that our religiosity should remain intact and our moral codes will not be compromised nor threatened by the advances of science.
Just let me know what you think about this.
