Evolution's impact on Good and Evil

Science insists that evolution has happened and may, very well, continue to happen. If evolution is good science, how can you fit the conflict between good and evil into the big picture? Do you suspend belief in science and it's proofs for evolution, i.e., natural selection, the fossil record, etc., and affirm your faith in the Bible's creation account and its concurrent 6,000 year age for the Earth? If you accept that Adam and Eve existed, and the Bible makes their creation very important to the future history of the human race, how do you account for evolution's suggestion that death existed before Adam and Eve sinned? These are not easy questions, but they should be addressed lest they continue to hound us for years.

Recently a possible solution started to take shape. Evil and it's close cousin, sin, existed from the very beginning of cosmic time. I'm not suggesting that there was never a time that evil did not exist, although theoretically it has always existed as an essential opposite of good and its close cousin, righteousness. If evil and sin existed before the fall, then how could Adam and Eve be punished, as well as their once-perfect world, if evil already existed before they sinned? Was the Adam and Eve experiment, if you will, another opportunity to see if free will would choose good instead of evil? How many other Adam and Eve experiments have there been? The universe is pretty old; its age numbers in billions of years. Has this tug of war between good and evil been going on for as many years?

In a related line of thinking, if evil theoretically could always exist as an alternative to good, would it make sense to prevent the possibility of evil rising again, if at some golden future event, evil is vanquished by divine agencies? Wouldn't that be as unjust as never allowing evil to exist the first time around?

The best our universe can ever hope for--realistically speaking--is to keep evil at bay. There will always be evil--albeit in its quiescent state--in the same way that all of the complimentary opposites must always exist. Left is incomplete without its direct opposite, right. Up and down must ever exist. Dark and light, as well. Good and evil, by their very nature, must always exist in some form or another. To think otherwise is impractical and incomplete.

Intelligent beings have at their disposal the option to bring about a universe where good and righteousness by the grace of God, triumph time and time again, over evil and sin, ad infinitum.

The Evolution of God?

My God is not a God of death; he is a God of life. However, since the creators of sophisticated robotic medical equipment are responsible for faulty product if something disastrous should occur, can our God be held liable for the death we see all around us since time began?

Yes, it is true that our God created all things perfect, but since he allows--for a variety of complicated reasons--for things to go on as they do, then, in a way, he has to take responsibility for the imperfections of our otherwise perfect world.

Let's face it, if God wanted to stop all pain and death right now, he could. God's hands are not tied. There must be valid reasons why so many negative realities continue to exist. Let's try to analyze what some of them might be.

Some conservative Christians believe that God allows the controversy between good and evil to continue to protect man's free will. Conservatively speaking, you have to admit that 6,000 years is ample time to show that God offers humankind his way or the other fellow's way.

Progressively speaking, however, we are not talking about 6,000 but millions of years for this cosmic struggle between good and evil to have been resolved.

This brings us to the subject that the title hints at. Does God bring about life, humankind's life specifically, through the death that is essential for natural selection and the survival of the species? It is, after all, only the strong that survive to procreate and pass on their genes to the next generation. How can a God of love possibly be responsible for a system that uses death in order to bring about life and complex organisms?

The Bible account is very simple: God creates all of our reality in six days and rests on the seventh day. For those who have a problem with such simplicity, then the only other option is that God used evolution, and before that--the Big Bang--to create our world and the cosmos. Because this would make God the author of death--and life--such a paradigm is not consistent with a God of love.

The third possibility we will not focus on very much other than to state, for the occasional agnostic who may wander in by chance, that evolution, life, death, etc., have nothing whatsoever to do with God, only with humankind.

So where does that leave us? Perplexed? Frustrated? Despairing? Not at all; there is a fourth explanation. We all think this is all happening to us. This dream called life, death, rebirth. The incredible reality is that we are dreamers twisting and turning--sometimes smiling and laughing--through a long dreamlike state called life and death. One day we will awaken and learn who God really is and why all this death and life and rebirth were necessary.

Until then, look to God and worship him for the hour of his judgment has come.

The End of Time

This is a phrase that comes to mind without any thought on my part. It doesn't help that often when I open the bible it opens to Ezekiel 7. The New International Version editor has titled this chapter "The End Has Come." I can't tell you how often my bible has opened as if automatically to this very page. I've often thought that perhaps it is the very center of the binding and therefore the page finds me instead of me finding it. That can't be quite right as it took me several tries just now to find this chapter. I had not remembered that it was the seventh chapter. There are, however, 48 chapters to skim through, yet it took about a minute or three to find this End Page.

I've read this chapter several times, especially every time it just happens to find me. I've thought that God guides me to this page and yet it's historical specifics don't resonate with me. My end of time obsession is far in the future. When I don't automatically think of these words, "the end of time" I often think of the following phrase: "a million years from now."

I meditate on what life or the universe will be like within a million years. Sometimes I associate both of these automatic mind phrases and imagine that life as we know it, or the universe, will end a million years from now.

It is nothing but a suspicion. It is not a wish I want to come true.

Today I stopped to think what meaning the cessation of time, as one of the four dimensions of existence, would possibly have. It sounds nonsensical that the other three dimension, height, depth, width could possibly go on and yet, the most important one, time, come to an end.

I once read in a scientific article that it is thought by some that time was the first dimension to come into being before the others could possibly exist. It makes sense since whether you believe in God or not, the universe started out as nothing, or close to nothing, an imperceptible original point of matter-energy. Since time was the first to come into existence, why couldn't it be the first to cease existing, after which the other dimensions would follow its lead.

The good news is that our universe might very well be a cyclical one. If time ends a million years from now, it can begin again a million years later. Or perhaps after time ends, it automatically begins again, racing faster and faster to its next End Game.

Future of God

Alternate title: Future of God and Humanity

When God said let us create humankind in our own image, did we or did we not inherit emotions or states of mind such as wonder, surprise, excitement, awe, hope, optimism, and other positive human qualities? What I'm getting at is that these good qualities had to come from God; we did not develop them ourselves. Therefore, what is so illogical about a God who also gives himself the luxury of experiencing awe, wonder, surprise and hope? Or is our God a being that has always been devoid of surprise, wonder, and exploration? I realize I'm seeing the man in God and not vice-versa, but are we not created just a little bit lower than the angels?

This may sound shocking to some, but it reassures me, in a way. Why do you suppose God created--had to create so many of us--at such a great cost? Think of the impossible although, of course, when you think of it, nothing is ever really impossible. What if we all are God's insurance of perpetuity in the same way that parents' offspring are insurance should they somehow never live out their full life span?

Why did God give so much in Christ to save us, mere flesh and blood? Might he not have more at stake then just some wayward children who needed rescuing at any cost? If you really believe that humans are children of God, then like human children eventually becoming like their parents at some future time, might we also not have been designed with the potential--perhaps millennia from now--to become as perfect as our creator through the self-actualizing gift he stored in our very DNA? It's not easy to even write these words. Nevertheless, the very idea gives me a strange hope and sense of well-being for the future of humanity on planet Earth, as well as any non-terrestrial colonies humans may yet develop in worlds beyond our own.

Finally, and this takes lots of faith and courage, what if, we are now, or may one day come to be, all that's left of the perfect and self-sacrificing being we commonly refer to as God? We not only owe it to ourselves to take care of each other and of our home planet, but we also owe it to him, our creator, God.

The Self-Creating God

Can one say that God creates Himself? His very being would then be a causal loop personified. Perhaps that's what He meant when He said that He is the beginning and the end.

In sending Jesus Christ to our world with the possibility of failure, could God have endangered his own being in the process?

Since God is all-powerful, could He also, if he chose to, cease to be? Since the universe has self-actualizing laws that He set in motion, does He have to continue existing for the laws He set in motion to continue functioning?

Once He ceased to be, could He recreate Himself again, and again? Out of nothing? Might eternity itself be an endless cycle of creation and recreation out of nothing? Might it be just that instead of it being one long, ceaseless reality without any beginning or any end?

If you accept this premise, then, conceivably, when Jesus Christ died and rose after three days as He said he would, in a sense, God ceased to be and recreated Himself by His own ability. Jesus said, "I have the power to lay down my life and to take it up again."

If He was able to live again by his own power, did he cease to be in the traditional sense of ceasing to be. Is death, or cessation of life, for an all-powerful being, drastically different from mortal and limited beings such as ourselves who were created?

Is heaven outside of the time-space continuum? If that were the case then normal entropy would cease to operate, as well as the carbon cycle. There would be no problem for beings to be eternal if time and cause and effect were suspended in a timeless reality.

Jesus Christ is Coming Back in My Lifetime

He may come back in yours, as well. However, he may not come back if you don't expect him to do so in your lifetime. Let me explain.


30 years ago a high school buddy visited me during my senior year in college. He told me with such intensity that he believed that Jesus was coming back soon and in his lifetime. I told him that I believed that Jesus was coming back but that it would be in the distant future. The look of disappointment because of my words affects me to this day.


Now this is the peculiar thing. As much as I've tried to locate this friend, it's as if he never existed although he's in my high school yearbook and there are people who remember him. He believed that Jesus was coming back soon and, I believe Jesus did come back soon.


This is how it happened. Quantum mechanics, as well as String/M Theory, postulate that there are an infinite amount of realities coexisting side by side. For those who believe that Jesus will come back some day in the distant future, they will continue living in a reality that is in agreement with their belief. For those who believe, as my friend did, that Jesus was coming soon, in that reality, Jesus did come soon. I am not talking about my friend dying.


Now this is the real conundrum. Even though my friend has experienced Christ's second coming in his reality, in my reality, I'm still waiting for Jesus' Second Coming. Additionally, my friend my well exist somewhere in this same reality I live in, but completely oblivious of my existence or I of his. Yes, in each of these infinite variations--or parallel universes--each of us has an identical twin, with slight variations depending on the choices we made in those distinct realities.


This can account for the seemingly mysterious disappearances of people that should continue to exist in my reality, but that have apparently disappeared.


Now more than ever, believing that Jesus is coming soon is crucial. Only those that really believe and internalize that belief will diverge from this reality in which Jesus delays into another reality where he, in fact, will come soon.


Since the word of God is one, all the different realities or parallel universes share the same Sacred text. This is as good an explanation, as any, as to why the New Testament states over and over again that Jesus is coming soon. He comes soon to those who want him to. To those who don't want him to come soon, he simply does not.


I am not talking about a secret rapture. Christ comes back only once within each separate reality.


Envision Christ returning soon and in your lifetime. Hope and wait for it with something greater than faith. Hope for it with absolute certainty not just a half-hearted wish. Pray without ceasing that Christ returns in your lifetime. He will return soon if you want it badly enough.

Reflections of God

If you really knew me, you would know my Father [and the Holy Spirit] as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him." John 14:7 (NIV)

Today as I prayed before I studied a chapter from Hebrews, I heard myself talking to God in my mind. It dawned on me, as it sometimes does, that in addition to God being out there where ever "out there" is, he also must exist to some degree inside my mind. Otherwise the metaphysics gets too exotic. I'm not saying we are God as some here and there have suggested, but that He must have a localized presence closer to us than some distant sphere millions of light years from our reality. Additionally, when you read the Bible, God is in His word. I feel closer to a perception of God like the one I've described than to a loving, though cosmically removed, being that lives in a physical heaven, again, millions or billions of miles from this, our present reality.

The Bible speaks of being filled with the Holy Spirit. Christ speaks of the Father being in him and he being in the the Father. A Christian who daily asks for the Holy Spirit to live in him and to dwell in him may sometimes come up with the following line of thought. At any rate it occurred to me many months ago. If the Holy Spirit comes to dwell inside of you and since the Holy Spirit is God himself, the thought occurred to me that to a certain extent when you daily commune with God you are communing with the Holy Spirit that has come to you each day as you invite him in. I'm not saying you're praying to yourself or that you yourself are God, but rather that somewhere in your mind the Spirit resides. You are are in effect praying to an intelligent presence, person, and being who exists in some compartment of your mind. The thought is both pleasant and perplexing at the same time.

Why was the truth about the trinity withheld for thousands of years? Of course, there are hints in the Old Testament of the possibility of a triune God, e.g., the Angel of the Lord, the Spirit of God moving over the face of the waters, etc., but how could something as vital as the triune nature of the One God be withheld for millennia? Perhaps one reason is that until Christ was manifested in the flesh, there was no need to confuse us with talk of three-in-One, where just the One Person could suffice. This delayed revelation of God's triune nature makes me wonder if there are other important aspects of God that for good reasons are kept from us.

I remember reading Richard Rice's book the Open View of God during the 80s and being shocked by its main premise. The vague recollection of it is that God knows everything that can possibly be known. What can't possibly be known, God, of course, cannot know. Is there no end to the surprises in store theologically as the centuries become millennia since Christ left us? Of course, in his place he left us his abiding Spirit. What better companion than the Spirit could he have left us?

Suddenly, a really big matter that we're told by traditionalists we're not supposed to think about suggests itself. To say we're not supposed to think about certain spiritual mysteries seems like an intellectually lazy way of saying, "if it were important we'd know about it already." What if because it really is mind-boggling and perhaps too much for us to bear, we're being kept in the dark (sorry about the use of that word in this context) about God's beginnings or, more correctly, lack of beginnings.

It's only natural to think that all intelligent beings must have a beginning, some kind of beginning, anyway. Perhaps the simplest explanation is to think of God creating himself. In that way, even God has a creator, himself. It's somewhat comforting to think of this explanation which then suggests the possibility of God growing and becoming more complex as eternity stretched into eons and eons of time. Of course, it's a difficult thought to think of a perfect being creating himself in an already perfect state. But at least there is the possibility for growth and wonder like every intelligent living being. I've often wondered how long God existed before starting to create any part of the known universe. Science tells us the approximate age of the universe based on the delayed light of stars that reach us. But how much time before that cosmic beginning did our non-existent universe have to wait before it came into being? How long was the universe in its non-existent state? Did God create other universes before he created ours? Did he begin creating us as soon as his perfection required us?

No doubt there are things about God's nature that we cannot know or aren't supposed to know in the here and now. What we need to know most, that he loves us immensely, has already been told to us in the person of Jesus Christ.

But there's always that hidden dimension about God that keeps me awake at night. It sometimes seems to me that we're missing certain pieces of the puzzle and that there are vital bits of information about God, eternity, and creation that are unknown to us, but that are, nevertheless, important, if we could only figure out what they are or analyze what light we have presently and see what we don't see now. In other words, we need to be enlightened. Perhaps that accounts for the mysterious disappearance of holy men throughout history. They knew too much or became too enlightened and "God took them." (The story of Enoch being the best example, or Elijah.) Was God rewarding them for realizing something so astounding about him, that he had to have them join him as soon as possible?

Years ago a Christian friend mentioned that nobody has the exact same conception of God. That was news to me at the time. I had always thought that the we both shared the same God since we both read the same Bible. I never asked if it was something he read or if he himself had come up with that idea. Now, of course, it goes without saying.

I must confess that for years I chose to think of God only in the person of Jesus Christ. I found God the Father too authoritative, but found Jesus very approachable. I once read about a young Catholic man who had difficulty relating to any male figure, especially in religion. He was unable to pray to God, but thankfully, he was able to pray to the virgin Mary and to St. Joan of Arc. It has taken me years as well, to equate God the Father, in my mind, to Jesus (God the Son). Only in the last 2 1/2 years have I been able to equate God the Spirit with Jesus. Previously, I never thought or spoke much of the Spirit out of fear that I'd offend him by thinking something erroneous. Now I warm up any time I read or hear anything pertaining to the Holy Spirit. I love to hear old hymns that I sang as a young man that mention the Holy Spirit but never even really understood who the Holy Spirit was at the time, and what he was like. He was and is like Jesus Christ, my lord and savior.

Dark Energy, Dark Matter and God

"Clouds and thick darkness surround him; righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne." Psalm 97:2 (NIV)

Dark energy and dark matter are beyond the electromagnetic spectrum. They have to be inferred by their effects on visible objects and cannot be detected directly. It is possible that they may never be detected directly.

How similar this is to God himself. We cannot see him directly nor perhaps, will ever be able to do so, for God is invisible. [Rom. 1:20, Col. 1:15, 1 Tim. 1:17] Nevertheless, we infer his existence from what we perceive in ourselves when we have a positive reaction to him. We perceive him indirectly as we contemplate his creation. We perceive him indirectly as we read the bible, as well.

Scientists accept the possible existence of dark energy and dark matter on faith, in a way. It is quite possibly the only explanation to explain why the visible universe doesn't fall apart or fly apart. Something we cannot see is holding the visible universe together. In the same way we accept God's existence on faith, so our world, and our place in it, doesn't fall apart or fly apart.

It is said that the .04 percent of the visible universe is truly inconsequential when compared with the remaining .96 percent of the "invisible" dark energy and dark matter components of the universe. It is also said that, potentially, dark energy and dark matter particles are bombarding our bodies constantly and we are oblivious to their reality.

Whether we choose to believe in God's existence or not, his sustaining power is also constantly bombarding our bodies and minds and our visible world with his perfect essence.

Instead of evolution: faith

“… Have faith in the LORD your God and you will be upheld; have faith in his prophets and you will be successful." 2 Chronicles 20:20 (New International Version)

I pray daily that God strengthen my faith in the inspiration of the Bible, especially the book of Genesis. I have to choose consciously to continue believing that God exists, that the Bible is the Word of God and not the Word of wise men. I have to want to continue believing. Sometimes the only proof that God exists is how he’s changed my life and continues to change my life from the self-centered and vain existence I’ve lived on and off for most of my post-childhood experience.

Sometimes in my moments of doubt, or low-brow intellectual posturing, I have to fight against the nagging suggestion that Moses is the only one responsible for the entire book of Genesis. What I mean is, in weaker moments I’ve wondered if this ancient genius, who was a byproduct of an advanced civilization, Egypt, didn’t himself synthesize much or all of Genesis from his great education, as well as his original mind.

If this were the case, it explains much of the supposed problems with the two creation accounts, the beginning of sin, and why we are here. It also, of course, creates other problems: if we’re alone in the universe, then it’s up to us and no one else to solve all or some of the problems we’ve inherited and which we’ve created. If humankind fails and blows up planet earth some day, and if it turns out, we were the only intelligent life in the universe to begin with, then how pointless it all would have been. We evolved from single-celled organisms. We lived, we loved, and we died as a species. Perhaps somewhere else in the universe, the miracle of life would come into miraculous existence again. Or perhaps, after the Big Crunch, there would be a new Big Bang and the entire miracle of life just might happen again? Or perhaps we’re only one in an infinite number of universes. Perhaps somewhere in one or more of those other universes there are intelligent beings or will someday be intelligent beings who will ask the same questions we’re asking now.

I personally hope and pray that Moses didn’t originate the Torah all by himself and in effect --because of a need to create a new system of thought and culture-- the entire Judaeo-Christian belief system that has been handed down to us. I hope instead that God gave Moses all or the more essential elements of the Torah. Perhaps faith is really about not believing what you'd like to believe, but what you need to believe in order to live a meaningful life.