Do I believe in evolution?

            Whenever anyone asks if I believe in evolution, I don’t know how to respond. Not because I’m not sure what I believe, just that I don’t know what they mean. Do they want to know whether or not I accept the observations of Charles Darwin, when he noticed that animals can adapt to unique and changing environments. I absolutely believe that animals can and do adapt, often resulting in speciation, the creation of a new and separate species. But when most people ask if I believe in evolution, they really mean, do I believe that the diversity of life on Earth can be wholly and entirely explained as a product of random and spontaneous evolutionary processes. If that’s the question then no, I don’t believe in it. 

           You'll notice I added two key words: random and spontaneous. Random means by pure chance, like rolling a set of five dice and coming up with yahtzee each and every time. That’s not going to happen. Spontaneous means occurring on it’s own, with nothing to initiate or guide it, like when my wallet gets up and walks to the other side of the room to hide under my jacket, all on its own.

            There’s nothing that Darwin observed that would indicate spontaneity. In fact, it was only after something in the environment triggered a change that speciation occurred, like an earthquake splitting an island in two, or London’s soot turning the trees a few shades of grey darker. (Don‘t worry; it was only about fifteen shades of grey, not fifty.) And nothing that he described would indicate randomness either. The ability to adapt in response to change is actually strong evidence for a Creator. If my Wizards and Dragons videogame gets harder as my character gains experience points, I attribute it to good programming, by whoever wrote the code years before I ever became a level seven elven ranger, not to random glitches in the software. All kinds of things “evolve” over time: cars, TVs, cell phones, and refrigerators. With phones, it seems like new versions appear every few months, each one just a little more developed than the last. Does anyone believe that’s random, or happening on its own? Of course not; we all know it’s carefully orchestrated by greedy corporate bigwigs who like to steal children’s candy while rubbing their hands together and saying, “Ehhhx-cellent” in a thin, reedy voice.

            So yes, I do believe in the principle of evolution, the observed process of adaptability in species, programmed and guided by God. Do I believe in the Theory of Evolution, wherein all life randomly and spontaneously grew out of electrostatically charged amino acids? Not so much. 

Baby Bear Planet

            There is a term used by some in physics to describe how everything in our world is set up perfectly for life to exist. Based on the children’s story of Goldilocks and the three bears, the expression “Goldilocks planet” sums up how everything that makes life possible on Earth is “just right.”

            From the moment of the Big Bang, when the very laws of physics were written, the strength of attraction between subatomic particles had to be exact–too strong and the universe wouldn’t expand, too weak and matter couldn’t form.

            The uniqueness of the water molecule is another example of just right properties. Every other element and molecule–I know of only one rare exception–shrinks as it cools, becoming denser. Water molecules form a unique structure as they freeze, spreading out. Because of this, ice floats. That might not seem like a big deal, but if the water on top of a lake or river became denser as it froze, it would sink, and the warmer water underneath would rise to the surface. This warm water would cool, freeze, and sink, and the process would repeat until the lake were entirely frozen, killing everything in it. Because of water’s unique freezing properties, life on Earth can exist.

            There are countless more examples of “just right” principles. Some think that like Goldilocks, we just sort of stumbled into a place that happened to be ideal, like some big, happy accident. How convenient for Goldilocks that everything was just right. The fact is, everything was just right for Goldilocks, not by some random happenstance, but because Mama Bear and Papa Bear worked very hard to make everything just right for Baby Bear. The temperature of the porridge, the height of the chair, and the softness of the bed were designed and created for Baby Bear by loving parents.

            We are not Goldilockses, who just happened to stumble upon this universe. We have a caring Heavenly Father who planned and worked things out for us. This is not a Goldilocks planet, but a Baby Bear Planet, where everything, by divine design, is just right.