I see a clear cut conflict between the science of Evolution and the lore of Genesis. The evidence that scientists have gathered “from scarped cliff and quarried stone,” besides just showing that “a thousand types are gone,” has also clearly shown that humans weren’t created in seven days and that the Earth is billions of years old. (p. 54) This obvious contradiction is not going to be resolved any time soon.
While reading this assignment we were also supposed to consider the conflict between evolution and a spiritual approach to nature. Here, I see no inherent conflict. Of course, if a person only chooses to approach nature with a fundamentalist Christmas spiritual perspective, there will be conflict. Spirituality encompasses much more than just fundamentalism, and in fact, much more than just Christianity. In many instances, I believe that a general awareness of evolution increases a person’s ability to experience and approach nature spiritually.
All that is required for a spiritual approach to nature is a sense of wonder and amazement about the world. To look at the world with a spiritual approach, a person does not necessarily need to be amazed that God created such a world, but instead that the world simply exists.
When approaching nature from the latter perspective, it’s been my experience that an understanding of evolution and science increases my awe of nature. With knowledge of the “complex code such as that found in the DNA molecule” (p. 63) I can look at an animal or person and be utterly amazed that such complex beings “have been created by chance mutations and evolution.” (p. 61) I see these random occurrences that Christian fundamentalists believe impossible as miraculous strokes of random luck in nature. To me, the awe I experience when I realize that all animals exist today “driven by nothing but instinct to survive” (p. 61) is deeply spiritual.
I think many amazing aspects of nature would be diminished if it was proven that everything was created by an omnipotent God. For example, there is this rock in Utah which is the namesake for a town aptly called “Mexican Hat.” The rock is shaped uncannily like a sombrero and perched in a perpetual balancing act on another pillar of sandstone. The shape of the rock is so similar to a sombrero that it made me laugh out loud when I first saw it. When I think about the rock though, I find it to be much more amazing to consider the random nature of erosion forming such a perfect sombrero. The belief in such random luck is far more awesome, and far more spiritually enhancing, than simply writing off the shape of the Mexican hat to divine sculpture.
I don’t know how post pictures on the discussion board but here is the address for my photo of the Mexican hat. Its awesome.
https://webspace.utexas.edu/wem237/mxhat.JPG
While you are at it, here is a picture of another rock that I found. This one is only about 4 inches tall but it is not a sculpture, its erosion.
https://webspace.utexas.edu/wem237/dog.JPG
