Turtles Do

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Turtles Do
By Foy Valentine, Founding Editor

A certain reptilian somnolence engulfs me, body and soul, in the warm sunshine of a mid-winter afternoon. My study is on the west side of our house; and a wall of glass, twelve feet by eight feet, provides the greatest possible exposure to the output of the sun, the smallish nuclear furnace which sustains all the life there is on this third rock out from the fire. Delicious. Simply delicious.

Turtles, which crave this very same warmth, will crowd themselves onto a floating log and there, side by side, soak up this wonderful sunshine. They are responding to the same prurient yearning for warmth and light that compels me to keep returning to this marvelous place in my study. For all the tea in China, however, I wouldn`t tump myself off into the cold water like the turtles do when startled. I just want to be left alone on my special log, soaking up the sunshine.

Are we kin to turtles? Why are our nervous systems extraordinarily similar to those of frogs? Why do placental creatures like female humans have 28-day cycles of ovulation, corresponding precisely to the waxing and waning of the moon, the moon with its magic light, the moon with its magic spells, the moon with its magic tides? Why must a human being stay very, very close to the norm of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit in body temperature in order to stay alive? Why must we humans adhere very closely to our natural circadian rhythms of 24 hours, the time it takes our globe to rotate, or be seriously maladjusted and ultimately unable to function? Why have the human genome projects determined that human beings and chimpanzees have some 98 percent of the very same DNA? Why, indeed? Hm-m-m-m-m-m.

In recent times considerable amounts of energy, time, and money have been expended in pressing for what is generally called Creationism on the one hand or what is generally called Darwinian evolution on the other hand. Creationism has many faces and a wide variety of followers but may be generally understood to mean a world-view based on a literal interpretation of the method thought to have been used by God to create the world and all that is in it, the universe and all that is in it. Creationists and Intelligent Design adherents distinguish themselves from atheistic rationalists who pooh-pooh the notion of "intelligent design" and are adamant in refusing to allow God a place in their scheme of things. They want natural selection without God to be the explanation of creation and are just as rigid and pridefully arrogant in pressing for their "without God" beliefs as Creationists and Intelligent Design people can be in pressing for their "with God" doctrines.

Well, I just don`t think I have a dog in this fight. I think I choose not to get caught up in this either-or debate where each side despises the other, denigrates the other, castigates the other, and treats the other with vitriolic contempt if not genuine hatred.

Come, let us reason together.

If God chose to use the slow method of evolution for the creating of the world and the universe, I cannot understand why it should confound the Creationists or the Intelligent Design people. Is God`s arm shortened so that He can not reach across eons of time and infinite space? Is His work schedule strictured so that He is required to behave Himself according to our puny definitions and formulations and charts and diagrams and calendars? Are we to think that He must have acted in creation so as to protect the empires or enterprises or theses of either naturalistic rationalists or rationalistic supernaturalists whose special turfs both seem quite prepared to fight and die for?

I think not.

Must God Almighty`s "day" mentioned in Genesis be defined by our dime store watches?

Give me a break.

If God chose to use natural selection as one of His tools in His work of creation, what atheist can prove scientifically that He did not do so? Who knows what the finger of God stirring around in the primordial ooze could have started?

It is a faith-based conviction for me that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth; and I don`t care a fig if He used natural selection across eons of time to do it. It is an anti-faith-based conviction for the no-God naturalist that God did not do it. I like my faith better than his anti-faith. He likes his anti-faith better than my faith. I like my acceptance of Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning God . . . " better than his plaintive "In the beginning . . . ."

Why fuss about it? We are disagreed. It is neither productive nor profitable for us to keep beating this horse.

When God said, "Let there be light," it is unlikely that He said it in English with an East Texas accent as I would. Most scientific theorists now seem to be inclined to think that time and space and the universe and all that is in it started with a "Big Bang" some 13.5 to 15 billion years ago. Exactly how God did this, I have to tell you I just do not know; and exactly how He struck the match that kindled the fire in the sun and started the light to burning, I do not know. But I am remembering the wise words of my old theology professor, Dr. W.T. Conner, "It`s better not to know so much than to know so much that isn`t so."

If I see "intelligent design" in the marvels of the human eye and accept the possibility that God used billions of years of natural selection to perfect this incredibly complex and altogether marvelous work, then who is the atheistic naturalist to put me down and gainsay what I see or who is the Creationist to put me down or gainsay my willing acceptance of the idea that God`s method of creation could be the method of natural selection?

Many, many books have been written about all of this. Even more articles have flooded learned journals about it, especially in recent years. The Public Broadcasting System recently presented a seven-part series entitled "Evolution" with a final section on "What about God?" Furthermore, the New York Review of Books recently carried a long two-part essay, "Saving Us from Darwin," by Frederick Crews, a literary scholar from the University of California at Berkeley, in which he intemperately attacks Christians and Christianity while haughtily displaying an indefensible bias toward a Godless creation and a Godless world-view. The Christian Century responded by carrying a substantive article by Boston College professor Stephen J. Pope on "Christ and Darwin" in which he countered much of the PBS material and refuted the Crews essay`s "emotionally driven materialistic ideology to steamroll distinctions, to propound grossly inaccurate historical generalizations, to mistake nuance and subtlety for evasion and rationalization, to introduce ad hominem accusations in place of reasoned arguments, to equate Sunday School catechism with systematic theology, and to beguile people into thinking they face a forced choice between two simplistically formulated and mutually exclusive options-Christ or Darwin."

I think it would be better if the whole lot would bask in the winter sunshine "while it is day, ere the night cometh."

Turtles do.

Now, if I`ve disturbed you a little, I`m glad.

I`m too old to mess around with things that aren`t controversial.