Evolution

The popular explanation of how the world came into being is the theory of evolution which says that life began as two simple cells uniting and forming more cells. Somehow, random mutations took place. These mutant cells united and formed more complex organisms that in turn had mutants that united, and they formed even more complex organisms. In this way the world evolved from simple bacteria and algae or amoebas to plants and animals and finally man from ape-like creatures.

This is not how the earth was created. God created the world in an evolutionary manner by creating in a normal progression of simple to complex. From God's energy, particles were formed. From particles, atoms were formed which in turn formed molecules. Molecules form minerals, and minerals serve plants, plants serve animals, and animals serve mankind.

 

 

 


DIVINE GUIDANCE

We have to include divine guidance to the theory of evolution. God created the world by plan, not blind chance. God created each organism specially. He created the first amoeba, the first fish, the first deer, the first ape, the first man. Every organism has an original parent.

 

Charles Darwin wrote one of the most influential books in history in the late 19th century called The Origin of Species. It was a best seller that shook the foundation of many people's faith. Unfortunatley, most scientists today believe Darwin was basically correct and reject the idea that the universe was planned by a creator and that He has guided the history of the world. One encyclopedia says, "Darwin's theory states that all species evolved from a few common ancestors by means of natural selection." Natural selection is also called "survival of the fittest." It also says, "human beings, chimpanzees, and gorillas evolved from a common ancestor that lived between 4 million and 10 millionDarwin years ago. This is false. Man is not descended from an ape-like creature. But Evolutionists are correct in that there have been changes within species. One of the most famous cases is that of a moth in England that was black so it could blend in with the soot from the factories that had air pollution during the industrial revolution. When the air was cleaned up, then the moths evolved into a light color that protected them. If they had stayed black they would have been more vulnerable to their enemies.

Those who oppose Darwin's theory are called Creationists who "believe that each species has remained relatively unchanged since the Creation and that no species has evolved from another." This is true. Creationists go down a wrong road when they think that the earth was created between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago.

 

The Principle combines the best of both sides. God created each species millions of years ago and there has been evolution in that species.

 

SCOPES MONKEY TRIAL

In 1925 the Tennessee State legislature enacted a law that barred any public school teacher from teaching the theory of evolution. A high school teacher, John Scopes, was arrested for teaching evolution in a biology class.

 

TRIAL OF THE CENTURY

The most famous trial lawyer in America (and some think of all time) defended him. He called himself an agnostic, but most people believed he was atheist. On the other side was William Jennings Bryan, a legend in American politics. This was a classic Cain/Abel confrontation. Bryan was Abel, but as usual in history, Abel is not perfect and often makes so many mistakes that it is easy for Satan to get the Cain side to look better in the eyes of people. Bryan was "the most fervent voice in the nation against Darwin's theories. He saw 'apeism,' as he termed evolution theory, as a unparalleled threat to the sanctity of the human condition."

 

During that intensely hot summer in the small town of Dayton, one of the greatest trials in history took place. Many books have been written about this debate between a Darwinian evolutionist and a fundamental Christian Creationist. A famous play, Inherit the Wind, is often performed and has been made into several movies.

 

This debate is still raging on. Only the Principle will bring unity to this deep division between people.

MISSING LINKS

If the theory of evolution were scientific fact then there would have to be "intermediates or transitional forms to bridge the enormous gaps which separate existing species" (Evolution -- A Theory In Crisis p. 58). Scientists have never found even one of these so called "missing links" and they never will. Our minds did not come from animals. Our minds came from our parent God. God created a first man and a first woman. We call them Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve were not born the son and daughter of an amoeba or ape; they were the son and daughter of God.

We all have parents -- a father and a mother. Our parents had parents. If we continue back in time we find the original parents of mankind were two people. Adam and Eve were real people. They are not fictitious or fairy tale creations. We are not descended from various sets of ancestors. If we were, then the various races might be of different quality or even be different species with different value. We all have one common origin -- a first man and a first woman. God always works from a central point. And by having the same original parents each of us is a brother and sister to each other living as one family on earth.

 

CREATIONISTS

The Bible, if read literally, shows Adam and Eve lived only a few thousand years ago. There are two views of when the earth was formed. Evolutionists say it was billions of years ago. Creationists read the Bible literally and believe the earth was formed just a few thousand years ago. The Creationists are wrong. On May 3, 1996 Rev. Moon said in a speech, "... the earth came into being 4.5 billion years ago and man was created 250 million years ago." The Creationists are right in that God was involved at every step of creation. Seven thousand years ago mankind had finally progressed to the point of creating the written word. Since then mankind has progressively grown intellectually. Today people are sophisticated enough to understand the Divine Principle.

6,000 Years

In the seventeenth century a prominent Anglican Archbishop and theologian, James Ussher, compiled a chronology of events in the Bible which became famous because they were widely printed in the margin of the King James Version of the Bible for nearly three centuries. Archbishop Ussher placed the creation of the world at 4004 B.C.

These 4000 years are comprised of the 2000 years from Adam to Jacob and the 2000 years from Jacob to Jesus. Of course, there have been 2000 years since Jesus to today. So, if we take the Bible literally, God created Adam and Eve 6000 years ago. The Divine Principle explains that we should read these numbers symbolically, not literally. The first man and woman lived longer than 6000 years ago. They lived hundreds of thousands of years ago.

Recently, the world of science has made discoveries in genetic research that prove we have a common ancestor mother and a common ancestor father. Scientists are using the names Adam and Eve for the founding father and mother of mankind.

 

EVE

In a cover story on this breakthrough Newsweek magazine in 1988 wrote, "When scientists announced their discovery of Eve last year, they rekindled perhaps the oldest human debate: where did we come from?"

"The veteran excavator Richard Leakey declared in 1977: 'There is no single center where modern man was born.' But now geneticists are inclined to believe otherwise....'If it's correct, and I'd put money on it, this idea is tremendously important,' says Steven Jay Gould, the Harvard paleontologist and essayist. 'It makes us realize that all human beings, despite differences in external appearance, are members of a single entity that had a very recent origin in one place. There is a kind of biological brotherhood that's much more profound than we ever realized."

In 1997, Jonathan Wells presented a paper at a science conference.  He wrote that evolution is by design.  He says that many biologists today, "Darwin's modern followers", do not see the hand of God in creation: "In 1967, paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson wrote: 'Man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind' (The Meaning of Evolution,  revised edition). In 1970, molecular biologist and Nobel laureate Jacques Monod announced that 'the mechanism of Darwinism is at last securely founded,' and thus 'man has to understand that he is a mere accident' (quoted in H.F. Judson's The Eighth Day of Creation, 1979). And in 1986, zoologist Richard Dawkins wrote a best-selling book titled The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design."

DARWIN IS WRONG

But Dawkins can't show any "evidence" even though he confidently writes in the book's opening chapter, "Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist." Dr. Wells goes on to explain that Darwinism is wrong: "Evidence has been accumulating for decades, however, that Darwin's mechanism fails to account for major features of evolution. The fossil record (especially where it is most complete) lacks the innumerable transitional forms that Darwin's theory predicts; ... According to molecular biologist Michael Denton (Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, 1986), not "one single empirical discovery or scientific advance since 1859" has validated Darwin's theory that large-scale evolution is caused by natural selection acting on random variations."

Wells goes on to explain that how the proper environment for humans took billions of years to evolve and each step was planned. He writes: "In other words, primitive organisms had to pave the way for the stable ecosystemswe see today. A barren planet had to become a garden; soils containing organic nutrients for land plants had to be produced. To use current biological terminology, ecological niches were filled by organisms adapted to survive under local conditions. Those organisms then transformed their conditions, and other living things took over."

"Producing a congenial environment with nutritious foods, while necessary, would not have been sufficient. Some people believe that the first human beings were created fully grown. But even if we ignore psychological considerations and restrict ourselves to physical ones, birth and growth are essential aspects of human beings as we know them. A creature that begins life without passing through birth and childhood would be so unlike us that we could not regard it as truly human, regardless of how great the superficial resemblance. And because human babies are totally dependent on other creatures for their survival during early development, animals capable of raising the first human babies must have been a necessary part of the original plan.

He explains that Adam and Eve were born in the womb of an ape-like creature that God had planned from the beginning: "Human babies need milk to survive and grow, so mammals had to exist before humans appeared. And not just any mammal. The first human baby presumably had to be nurtured by a creature very much like itself -- a humanlike primate. This creature, in turn, could only have been nurtured by a creature intermediate in some respects between it and a more primitive mammal. In other words, a plan for the emergence of human beings must have included something like the succession of prehistoric forms we find in the fossil record."

"Similar reasoning could be applied to earlier episodes in the history of life. For example, just as mammals were necessary predecessors of the first humans, mammallike reptiles were presumably needed to precede the first mammals, and so on. The emergence of humans thus depended on a progression of creatures that increasingly resembled us."

Dr. Wells explains that mankind is not related to the animals that birthed Adam and Eve.  God gave them a soul.  They were his children and had no connection to the creatures that birthed them.

"Although this process is superficially similar to the Darwinian notion of common descent, design theory differs from the latter in maintaining that predecessors need not be biological ancestors but only providers of essential nourishment and protection. Successive organisms are 'related' in the sense that they represent planned stages in the history of life, but they are not genetically related as ancestors and descendants. A planned succession would not require the innumerable transitional forms that Darwin predicted. Design theory is thus more compatible than Darwinism with the discontinuities found in the fossil record." To read the entire text of Dr. Well's paper, click here. Also, if you would like to see more images on evolution, click here.

We have learned in this first chapter of the Divine Principle that God's plan was for Adam and Eve to create the first perfect family and from them the world would be populated with morally pure people living in luxurious splendor experiencing true love every moment of their lives. In the next chapter you will discover why the world is not an ideal world.


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