Evolution


The California Academy of Sciences recently opened a rain forest in San Francisco. You can walk through it on an upward-spiraling ramp and see everything from bats to butterflies to boas and barracudas. I know the evidence is there for evolution but more than half the population of the United States doesn’t believe it — and I can see why. Such a diversity is, strictly speaking, unbelievable. The people who don’t believe in evolution are believers, but to believe in the real world is asking way too much of anyone.

What I have to keep telling myself is that the missing ingredient is time. I can’t imagine this diversity of life because I can’t imagine a billion years. It took time for all this to happen, and more time than I can imagine. Not even God could have created all this in a week.

As we walked ever upward with two grandsons, ages 6 and 3, in tow, I was struck with another evolutionary thought. It took a zillion years for all this diversity, but in the next twenty years these small people will also evolve into a still more incredible diversity of possibilities: a musician, an artist, a banker, a lawyer, a research paleontologist, a theologian, an organic farmer – possibly even a baker or candlestick maker.

The first time a primeval cell divided no one could have foreseen star fish and dinosaurs, nor would anyone have been able to stick around to see it happen. But we see evolution taking place before our eyes and are not amazed. We are so used to seeing what God can do, we seldom notice.

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