some thoughts on evolution

It's true that evolution's account of the nature of the world contradicts the traditional Evangelical interpretation of the Bible's account of creation. Many Christians devote incredible resources to rally against it. I, personally, think our time and money would be better spent elsewhere.

The creation story tells us more about the character of God than the character of the world. The point of the account is not to tell us about the nature of the earth. It is to tell us about God's ultimate love, power, and authority in relation to all created things. Evolutionary theory doesn't necessarily challenge that truth.

Imagine you're in the Garden of Eden. You see Adam and Eve as God created them. They're adults, not babies. Imagine all the trees. They're not seeds or saplings. They're full grown too. Now imagine the ground under your feet. The rocks aren't brand new. Neither is the dirt. The Bible is silent about the actual age of these things, and I choose to believe, then, that God created a mature world filled with mature things. Adam and Eve would have had fused growth plates in their bones, reflecting their adulthood. Trees would have had growth rings, reflecting their status as fully formed plants. Most importantly for this discussion, the rocks and mountains would have been full of old carbon and, I'm guessing, a truck load of fossils. The whole world reflects its maturity.

This are exactly what we find when we examine God's creation. There are fossils. There are super old rocks. There is a record of things that no longer exist. There is evidence of old age. Could all this evidence be fake and part of a giant conspiracy to destroy God's authority. Sure. And that's exactly how it would have to look if we relied solely on our traditional interpretation of the creation stories of Genesis 1 and 2.

But there is no biblical mandate to stick to this traditional interpretation. So we can choose to continue to reject the claims of evolutionary theorists and other scientists outright. We can say that they are doing their sciences wrong, that the rocks really aren't that old and that the fossils were created during the flood. But anyone who has read the biblical text in even the most cursory way will observe that the creation accounts are silent about the age of the objects in the universe. So when some of the smartest people in the world, people who have devoted their lives to their sciences, speak, I choose to listen. And I choose to believe their evidence because the Bible doesn't preclude me from doing so. My science, my faith, and my life are all enriched as a result.

Every semester the faculty get together to discuss the progress of the graduate students along a number of domains like teaching, department citizenship, coursework, and research. I was expecting a particularly good evaluation in the research domain, given that they changed some policies because I was doing much more than my 'fair' share.

The section about my research did include some nice comments from my adviser, but it concluded with a strange recommendation: "The faculty agreed with this assessment and recommended that you increase your commitment to research as you continue in the Ph.D. program."

Given that I was basically chastised a few weeks ago for being too committed to research, I wasn't particularly thrilled with this. So I went back and compared last semester's evaluation with this one. Aside from the comments by my adviser and the professor I TA'd for, the evaluations were the same. Word for word. Identical. Never mind how I actually followed the advice the first time.

Oh well. I'm learning a lot about how not to treat my future students.

According to the U.S. Coast Guard, tar balls thought to be from the BP oil 'spill' are now washing up on the shores of one of my favorite places. I say 'spill' because when you slosh a little milk out of a glass, you say that you've spilled milk. You really shouldn't use the same word for when you've 'spilled' more than 1,000,000 gallons of milk every day for 15 days.

I'd like to blame someone, but we probably wouldn't need offshore oil drilling if I (and everyone else) didn't use oil and its byproducts to (a) make everything we use and own (plastic is made from oil) and (b) power all of those things (electricity comes from oil).

So I guess it's mostly our fault.

A brief series of unfortunate events:

1. Drove 45 minutes to school this morning on a day off to have breakfast with my lab and adviser.
2. Checked my email when I arrived and saw that my adviser was sick and rescheduled the breakfast for Tuesday.
3. Returned to my new car and saw that someone had hit it, resulting in a series of 12-inch gashes in the paint and body in the lower driver's door.
4. Drove 45 minutes home obsessing about the car in silence.
5. Got home and re-assessed the damage: Not quite as bad as I kept imagining it, but still pretty ugly.

I have literally only driven the car 4 times since we bought it. And it's not one of those, "oh well, at least now you don't have to worry about it getting dinged up" moments. There were already two dings on the back bumper. Those were the "don't worry about it" dings. These gashes are ugly and deep, and I'm going to see them every single time I get in the car. At least it wasn't worse--but if it was, it probably would have been worth it to file the insurance claim and get it fixed. I'm pretty bummed out.

And I just got bitten by two mosquitoes.

We just got a letter from the county about our property value. The bad news: we're going to owe about $700 more in property taxes this year. The good news: we're going to owe more in taxes because our property value went up 18% since last year's appraisal. That's a lot.