Magical Words

A cool April breeze caresses my skin as I listen to the song of an unseen bird. An old rotted tree stump, barely visible above the dirt, catches the heel of my boot as I pass over it. My irrelevant thoughts are interrupted when I stumble slightly. A piece of the old stump has been dislodged and something moves within. I push the rotting wood aside to investigate the source of the movement. A little green frog adjusts itself in a small hollow that I have inadvertently uncovered. I study the frog for a moment until I notice several ants coming from another portion of the rotting stump. I walk a few feet away and take a seat to absorb my surroundings. The sun is warm on my back and the breeze is cool on my arms as I ponder the beginning of everything around me. It seems strange that the bird, the frog, the ant, the tree, and I all evolved from the same micro-organism. A micro-organism which resulted from a big bang that occurred billions of years ago. This is what we are taught in school. The brightest minds in the academic world tell us this is fact. You, and I, and every living and nonliving thing on this planet have a common ancestor. A big bang. Everything that was not created in the moments after the "big bang" evolved into what it is today through a process of natural selection. After all, it is ridiculous and completely unbelievable that God created everything that exists.

It is much more feasible to believe that we evolved. We evolved into something better than what we were. Every living thing in the world today decays and becomes less than it was previously. However if we throw in millions or billions of years, somehow it becomes possible for living things to improve with the passage of time, rather than to degrade. Millions of years make it possible for us to age like fine bottles of wine, getting better with each passing year. Millions of years seems to be the magic formula that casts all common sense aside. Millions of years makes the impossible, possible. Millions of years appears to be the academic equivalent of abracadabra.

Millions of years make it possible for a plant to evolve into an insect, or a fish into a bird, or a monkey into a human. Millions of years make all of this possible not only once, but twice. Have you ever thought of that? Let us say I am the first of a species to evolve. Just for the sake of this illustration, let us pretend for a moment that I am the first sexually reproducing organism to ever evolve. How do I reproduce? I must have an organism of the same species, but of the opposite sex to mate with or my species will die. What to do, what to do? The answer to my predicament is easy. I must have evolved at the same time as another member of my species who is of the opposite sex. That is pretty remarkable. Not only did we evolve into the same species at the same time, but we evolved into the same species but of the opposite sex at exactly the same time. That in itself is remarkable, but consider how many times this had to occur throughout the evolutionary process. The ant had to evolve, male and female at the same time. The dragonfly had to evolve, male and female at the same time. The earthworm had to evolve, male and female at the same time. The perch had to evolve, male and female at the same time. The wolf had to evolve, male and female at the same time. The ape had to evolve, male and female at the same time. How many sexually reproducing creatures are on this planet? How many plants require a male and female to produce fruit? This miraculous occurrence must have happened countless times. Is it really easier to believe that this miraculous event happened over and over than it is to believe that God simply created each of these creatures male and female?

Millions of years make these things possible, but surely we should see some sort of little evolutionary change in at least one species in the thousands of years of recorded human history. Has evolution stopped? Did everything evolve all at once over millions of years and then suddenly stop? Why is nothing still in the process of evolving? Surely if everything is constantly evolving, we should be able to show that at least one species has made a transformation into another new species in the last few thousand years. I understand that evolution is a slow process, but surely we should at least see one species grow a third ear or an additional horn or perhaps change from having claws to toe nails? Something? Anything? Well we did not say the magic words "millions of years." Therefore, how can we expect such change? I am just being silly of course. We cannot have even the tiniest amount of evolution without those magic words: millions of years.

Alright, enough with the silliness. We will move on. Let us pretend for a moment that I am the first animal with an eye. What did my eye evolve from? Nothing had ever seen before. The eye is made up of many different parts, any of which are useless without all of the other parts of the eye. What good is a retina without a cornea? What good is the lens without the iris? What good is the eye without an optic nerve? Alas, I must conclude that all of the components of the eye must have evolved at the same time, but over millions of years. Again this is pretty remarkable. But wait there's more. There are many species with different types of eyes having different parts. Did the different parts of the eyes of all of these different species evolve at the same time? Why are the eyes of all of these species found at the same general location on all insects and animals? If evolution is determined by natural selection, it would make sense for some of the prey animals to have a couple of eyes on their rear ends also.

There are other such things that boggle my mind when it comes to evolution. We have all heard the age old debate: "which came first, the chicken or the egg." I wonder what evolved first, the tooth or the mouth, the leg or the foot, the wing or the leg. How could a bee cover enough ground to gather the pollen needed to survive without being able to fly? If the wing came first, then how could a bee takeoff without legs? How could anything walk without a leg and at least one moveable joint such as the hip joint? What good would a hip joint be without a leg or what good is a leg without a hip joint? Again, I must use those magic words "millions of years" and then all is right with the world again.

Simply put, I cannot wrap my head around the fact that I evolved from the same primordial sludge as a pine cone and the moon. It seems much easier to believe that it happened just the way the book of Genesis tells us it did. I cannot comprehend what would have caused the "big bang" if it was not the booming voice of God Almighty. I cannot conceive of a way to pack everything on this earth and in this universe back into a space smaller than the head of a pin. It surely seems impossible. But for a moment, let us say the scientific world has it correct and all of the billions of stars were once contained in a tiny little particle floating in a vacuum. Where did that particle come from, and how did that vacuum form? My natural instinct is to say that God must have created both. I suppose if I had millions of years to ponder these questions, I could possibly come to some other sort of conclusion. After all everything is possible when one says those magic words: "millions of years."