evolution thought

file under teleosoterievolution:

having never taken much science or evolution in school (and my personal jury is out on evolution vs so-called creationism vs intelligent design vs. dude-we're-all-just-a-loopy-dream-in-andy-kauffman's-head) i recently wondered in my simplistic way so f God left the world to evolve on its own, only creating conditions for life -- yet not superintending species for example -- it stands that he did not preconceive mankind as the end or pinnacle of creation (despite scripture saying the opposite) indeed we cannot and should not conceive that mankind is the end of evolution either i mean something will evolve past us i mean it's hard for me to imagine an evolution as wild and beautiful and "jeff-goldbloom-life-will-find-a-way-ish" that would suddenly stop with clumsy, stupid mankind firing bombs into Iraq or is there a way that God had a hands-off role in evolution but somehow he guided it to end at mankind - that doesn't sound consistent, right, if he foreknew the end of his random creation but that only in his foreknowing did he provide for the incarnation i'm sittting here thinking this when my mind turns to this thought if i then hold a Christ-centered worldview and try to reconcile evolution with it (or vice versa), do I then believe God designed salvation (primarily) for humans who are one of the myriad stopgap species and will another higher-evolved species come along requiring additional salvation but my view of scripture holds a universal redemption of all creation, ergo all species and all matter will find redemption, BUT that mankind's sin caused (a) the need for a universal redemption (b) caused the world to go awry in the first place (c) man and his story to be the center of God's work in the world and mankind is the chief means through which God will acheive the redemption kind of like, if my daughter spilled some milk, she's gonna be the one to help me clean it up and if my mind can imagine no higher species evolving in reality but possible a devolution or microbial reversal or whatever does this mean we are the pinnacle as the scripture would lead me to believe and would the Holy Spirit come and inhabit me if i were a stopgap punctuation in the amoeba to tadpole to reptile to monkey to chimp to man to gamillothorp to werthingnicol to blailliabloth to quillerpia ad infinitum continuum?

brother erik shakes his head at my ignorance.

and i go to sleep.

my brain hurts.

Comments

[Shhhhh!]

Wonderful rant, full of good ramblings. I obviously can't give you the answers to your questions, but I can tell you how I envision them currently in my head:

-mankind is not the end of creation or the pinnacle of evolution. We are certainly something unique and different, wrt this planet. But there is no reason to suspect that we are alone in the universe at all. In fact, I think there is every reason to suspect that intelligence and consciousness equal to ours has existed in many worlds, probably even for billions of years prior to the advent of life on earth. In all probability, we will never have direct evidence of any of these other life forms for purely spatial-temporal reasons. But it is clear that planets are not rare, even in the few star systems we have examined. The probability of other life-compatible planets, past/present/future, is quite high.

-even on this planet, human evolution is not complete, nor is the evolution of any other species for that matter.

-so in a literal sense, I do not think we can think of ourselves as the crowning touch of creation.

-as far as the christocentricism of our faith or our cosmology, I have always seen christ as one potential manifestation of God in the flesh. Other planets/species would have their own such manifestation, or not. C.S. Lewis wrote some wonderful science fiction along these lines.

-all of the bible, written as it was by humans, will be imbued with an anthropocentrism that I think is appropriate but not the whole story.

-I see the primary work of christ not as redeeming us from our sin in a punitive sense, but redeeming us from our sin by making a tangible, irresistible expression of God's desire for unity with us. When viewed in this light, the idea of man's sin causing the need for redemption of the whole creation takes on a different meaning.

-I do not see the world as "awry" in the sense of fallen from some past perfection. I see it as incomplete, continuing to strive toward some future perfection. Again, this eliminates the anthropocentrism of the Fall. Man is wrapped up in the incompleteness, and has, in some unique ways, gone backwards. But man is not responsible for the universal incompleteness any more than God is.

So, I think the key to my evolutionary christology/soteriology is a temporal inversion of the Garden of Eden. By placing it solely in the future--as an ideal to which all morally conscious individuals feel drawn--we can eliminate the idea that humanity was ever anything godlike or terminal in the process of creation. At the same time, we retain the idea of our creation in God's image, because I think we can safely assume that moral consciousness places us in a position to feel the call of the potential future Eden in a way that no mere creature can. We also dethrone humans from their key role of culpability and power in overthrowing the perfect order of God--but do not eliminate our current responsibility to strive for and not against a future Eden.

This does of course require a very liberal (in the good, literary sense) interpretation of the biblical creation/fall narrative. But I think that narrative as written does a wonderful job of explaining the two key human emotions in this narrative: the feeling of a personal responsibility for the current sucky state of existence (guilt), and the longing for something more perfect (hope).

In my temporally inverted creation/redemption narrative, Christ plays no less of a central role in helping us resolve this guilt and directing us in how to strive for this hope.