I became a member of the Worldwide Church of God in late 1966. Two or three years later I read a book titled Why We Believe in Creation, Not in Evolution by Fred John Meldau. In those days, we church members were encouraged to read books like this because they strengthened our faith; i.e., they reinforced what we already believed. When I left this church-cult in 1996, I stopped reading things to reinforce what I already believed. I now read virtually everything with an open mind, trying to learn new things rather than just more of the same.
About a year ago, I began an email conversation with an ardently anti-religious, atheist friend of mine. I asked him to explain how nothing could suddenly turn itself into something without being acted upon by some outside force. He couldn’t do this, at least not to my satisfaction. He told me about the concept in logic called “the fallacy of the excluded middle.” This is where you assume that there must be only two possible explanations for something, you then prove that one of the two explanations is not possible, and therefore you think you have proven that the other explanation must be true. The fallacy lies in ignoring the possibility that there may be other explanations that you have not thought of. Since we were discussing two competing theories for creation – namely evolution vs. intelligent design – and since I thought I understood both of these two theories pretty well, I asked him to point me to some online references where I could learn more about all the other possible theories that try to explain the existence of the universe. In other words, what is the middle that I have fallaciously excluded? He admitted he had never seen any other theories to explain our universal origin. So there is nothing excluded in the middle of this logical debate, and everything we see either evolved somehow or was created somehow.
I am still looking for more theories to explain our existence. If any reader should know of one, please let me know and I will read about it. What middle has been excluded? Somebody please tell me.
Meanwhile, I proceed under the assumption that there are only two theories possible to choose from that might explain our existence. Either we evolved or we were created.
Both of these theories break down if you proceed far enough into the unknown past and assume the same processes were in force forever. Evolution assumes you already have a universe filled with stars, hydrogen atoms, and the laws of physics operating. Given those vast assumptions, then you can speculate that the sun’s shining on the earth added sufficient energy into a primordial watery soup of complex molecules and somehow some of the molecules were turned into DNA. Then the DNA became more and more complex over the millions and billions of years that elapsed. Maybe so. But I wanted to know where the stars, hydrogen atoms, and laws of physics came from. Evolutionary theory has no answer for this. Creation also breaks down if you ask where did the Creator come from? Who or what created it or him? There is no answer for this one, either. If the universe was started from a big bang, what caused the big bang? Where did the energy come from for the initial explosion, if that’s what happened at the moment of “singularity”, as some physicists call it?
My position is that we cannot possibly know what happened at any beginning, if there was such a thing, 15 or more billion years ago, so I conclude I don’t care about the ultimate beginning. I am only interested in what is happening now, what we can prove from what we now know rather than speculating on the distant past.
Today on the earth I see no evidence of anything’s evolving all by itself. I see massive evidence all around me for things’ being created through the process of intelligent design.
For example, I live in a nice house on a lot that used to be a huge cornfield in Illinois . My house did not suddenly rise up out of the cornfield. It was created through the process of intelligent design. Multiple human beings, each far more intelligent than the individual pieces of lumber, shingles, nails, blocks of concrete, or pieces of electrical wire began with a detailed written plan, used tools to help them do the work of building, added energy to the raw materials (lumber, shingles, nails, concrete, etc.), rearranged the already existing raw materials, and created a house where there was no house before. Similarly automobiles do not produce themselves out of the dirt in the ground, but rather intelligent humans dig holes in the ground, extract dirt from certain holes in the ground, act on the dirt to turn it into almost pure iron, add energy to the iron to cause it to melt and be able to be shaped into small pieces of steel, make a detailed written design for an automobile, fasten many pieces of steel together, and … ba-da-bing … produce a fully functional automobile.
I am now going to make a faith-based prediction: I predict that 20 billion years from now there will still never have been a house or automobile anywhere on earth, or anywhere else in the universe, that produces itself out of the dirt underneath it.
Ah, you say, the theory of evolution only pertains to living organisms. Okay. I still see no evidence today of any living being reproducing itself into anything other than an almost exact copy of the living being that reproduced itself. With almost 7 billion humans alive now, you would think that sooner or later one of them would produce a child that is almost, but not quite, human, that has some advantage over its parents, and this evolved organism will be able to reproduce and pass on to its progeny this new evolved advantageous feature that did not previously exist. Then over enough time enough such advantages will have been spontaneously evolved that we will have a brand new species, perhaps something that looks like a biped but has three arms instead of two, or two heads instead of one, or a brain twice as large. And this adaptation will allow the new species to survive because the environment will be fatal to bipeds with only two arms or only one head. Humans still produce only baby humans, black widow spiders still produce only baby black widow spiders, amoebas still divide in two and produce only two new amoebas. No new life forms are being created or evolved that I have heard of. We keep discovering new life forms that have always existed, but we don’t see any new life forms being born of parents that were of a different life form.
I will now make another faith-based prediction: I predict that 20 billion years from now there will still never have been a human biped born with three arms or two heads that is also able to reproduce itself and able to survive better because of its third arm or second head.
Ah! you say these evolutionary processes are no longer in force because the environment is stable now. All the species we see around us evolved millions of years ago, but nothing new has needed to evolve in a very long time. This sounds to me like the sappy explanation that Biblical creationists give to explain why rocks are found that radiocarbondating shows are more than 6,000 years old. They say that the speed at which Carbon 14 atoms decay has not been constant. A second speculative theory is used to explain why the first speculative theory yields an unexplainable result. Why not admit that the original theory may be wrong?
Since I believe there is no empirical current proof for evolution but plenty of empirical current proof for creation by already existing beings of much higher intelligence, I choose to believe that everything we see around us was created somehow by someone or something at some time in the past for some reason. And it was all created out of things that already existed by the addition of outside energy using some kind of tools to help in the process. I conclude that because I don’t see any other way that humans have yet devised to create anything, and I am unwilling to extrapolate any other methods of creation onto the creative entities I theorize have created us. Maybe he, she, it, or they have other methods and maybe not. Maybe they do indeed know how to create matter and energy out of absolutely nothing, even though all our research into physics so far tells us that matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed, that matter and energy are really the same thing just in different forms, and one can change into the other or vice versa, but neither can ever be destroyed completely.
I purposely rule out the question of where did the already existing things come from, because this leads back to the ultimate questions which I have already concluded can never be answered, and therefore I don’t care.
My parents created me, not out of nothing, but out of a sperm and egg cell that already existed. I was created by a greater intelligence, yet my parents were not divine, infinite, or immortal. My house was created by an intelligence greater than the house, and that intelligent creative entity also was not divine, infinite, or immortal. Just because somebody is able to create something does not mean that that somebody must therefore be God.
I think this may even be a possible theory for the excluded middle – i.e., what we see was created by something much more intelligent than the raw materials it had to work with and much more intelligent than the end product (us), but that creative something was not divine, infinite, or immortal. Whatever created all the life forms on earth was necessarily far more intelligent than the primordial soup it had to work with, but it was not an infinitely knowing, wise, benevolent God. It was some intelligent force with creative powers that I will call the great unknown WHATEVER. It may have created our DNA for benevolent reasons, and maybe it didn’t. It may have even been a shipful of space aliens, for all I know. But whatever it was, it was smarter than the molecules of ammonia, water, or salt in the huge ocean on the surface of the earth. Maybe it used the energy of the sun to cause chemical reactions to take place. I don’t know, don’t care how, and can’t prove if this were the case. I only know that now I believe even more firmly than ever before that I was designed and created and that my life form – the homo sapiens variety of DNA – did not evolve out of any other form of DNA.
So next you ask what even higher intelligence created the great unknown WHATEVER? And what created whatever created the WHATEVER, etc. ad infinitum? I don’t know. The fact that this line of logic has no logical end does not eliminate the fact that we see intelligent design happening today but do not see evolution happening. We sometimes use the term “evolution” to mean a continuous improvement in some invention, such as aircraft or computers, but in all cases each new version of an airplane or computer was intelligently designed.
Religious creationists get into trouble because once they have posited that we were all created by something, therefore that something must be God, and next we must determine why God created us. This usually results in only a small number of powerful experts’ knowing what God’s will is, and they demand that the masses obey God’s revealed will (which really means to obey them, since it was only revealed to them). I also don’t care about why my DNA was created, not because I am not intellectually curious but rather, once again, because we can never possibly know or prove why, so any answer we come up with is pure speculation. Therefore I don’t care, just as I don’t really care very much why the Sphinx was intelligently designed about 4,000 years before Biblical creationists claim that Adam and Eve were created. I don’t care about the Sphinx because we can’t possibly know. If we had definite proof, I would probably be very interested in the origin of the Sphinx.
Another reason why I choose not to care is because I can now see the end results of religious beliefs. I used to believe religiously in a particular God-based religious belief system known as Christianity and thought that the end result of Christianity was going to be a peaceful kingdom of God ruling the whole world for 1,000 years. Now I see all around me the results of that failed belief system as well as Islam: misguided zeal, intolerance, self-delusion, lust for power, crusades, inquisitions, torture, mass murder, conversions forced at swordpoint, rape, plunder, and any and all evils done in the name of a benevolent and merciful God. As Bill Maher said, “I’m opposed to religion because it leads to stupid shit.” I don’t want to speculate on why we were created because it’s too hard to separate our human desires from the answer. We created God in our own image, and we created the reason for our creation by that God out of our own human desires as well. We fantasized that God created us to be the pinnacle of his creation. That may be the case, but we have no proof for it, so we should not believe it.
We’re here. Let’s make the most of our world while we still can. Let’s learn to live in peace and tolerance with each other. Let’s stop raping and plundering the earth and each other before we accidentally commit species suicide.
Bill Fairchild
Plainfield , Illinois
17 JAN 2005
