Mount Rushmore & Evolution?
I fail to understand how someone can look at Mount Rushmore, and know instantly that somebody designed and created it, and instantly rule out millions of years of erosion. Yet, when they look at the complexity of the human body, they come up with the conclusion that no creator exists.
If you wanted to know where Mount Rushmore came from, you’d consult a history book, you certainly wouldn’t go and study the present facts and try to base your conclusion solely on that. You’d be wrong!
Likewise, if you wanted to know where humans came from, what point is there in studying only what you see today? If God exists, he was there, He should know! Did he write about it? YES, That’s why we study the Bible, and not “man-made” ideas that change every couple of years.
That’s all, comments welcome!
Well put. I’ll try to answer you as honestly as I can.
I don’t think anyone started out by looking at the complexity of human beings and concluding that no creator existed. Quite the opposite–I think that most people throughout human history felt that the complexity of humans implied a creator(s). Almost every society developed its own creation story, both for the world and for mankind.
The theory of evolution came later and much more slowly.
It’s kind of like how most people originally thought that the sun revolved around the earth. Makes sense, doesn’t it? Look up, and the sun certainly appears to be travelling across the sky. Of course, as the power of human observation and knowledge increased, man was able to see that, in fact, the earth was one of several bodies revolving around the sun. At first, this realization caused quite the stir, as it went against “common sense” and traditional knowledge. Groups that based their power on that sort of knowledge/wisdom, including the church, were very hostile to the new heliocentric model.
With evolution, Darwin’s theory (though of course Darwin wasn’t the first to preach evolution; his baby was evolution through natural selection) again caused quite the stir. Lots of negative reactions. The complexity-implies-creator argument is compelling. It’s something we can see, in front of us all the time. Evolution isn’t something readily observable. In fact, without quite a bit of study and paying attention, it’s invisible to man. This is why it took a build up of hundreds of years of science and data-collecting, etc., for the theory to be developed at all. Eventually, though, just as people with telescopes had to admit that Copernicus was on to something, biologists and other scientists in the position to know had to agree that Darwin’s ideas had a lot of merit to them. (Merit here meaning logic and supporting evidence.)
While few scientists disagree with evolution as such, some don’t think Darwin had it *exactly* right–many modern biologists modify his theories based on their own research. This is how the scientific community progresses. It isn’t that they all blindly agree with whatever the latest en vogue theory happens to be. Instead, they challenge and question and modify and try to prove others within the community wrong. It’s their contrarian natures which prompted them to overthrow the geocentric theory of the universe in the first place. Yeah–sometimes science is counter-intuitive. Sometimes, it takes a little bit of digging, and isn’t the obvious answer. But that isn’t the fault of the scientists–they’re just going where they believe the evidence is leading them.
If you were to make a serious inquiry into the science behind evolution, yourself, you might come to understand why these people are convinced that evolution is a fact. (What’s a “serious inquiry”? Good question–for myself, I studied both science as a general topic and then read several books on both sides of the evolution debate.)
Mount Rushmore is rather easier to trace the origins of, than man, per se. Yeah, history books claim that Mt. Rushmore was created by man… and all of our other evidence leads to that conclusion as well. With mankind, claims that man and the other creatures were simply created as they are now seem to fly in the face of the available evidence. That man is too complex for a process like evolution appeals to “common sense,” but “common sense” isn’t always right. Sometimes, we need to look a little deeper.
Hope that helps.
