Creation vs. Evolution

About creation vs. evolution, I feel the Bahá'í approach resolves the debate. First, however, it is important to know that Bahá'u'lláh states that the creation of the world was not a one-time event as a literalistic interpretation of the Bible would imply, but is rather a never-ending process that has been going on ever since God was Creator. And since God by definition is Unchanging, the creative process is just as eternal as God is.

Now the missing link between creation and evolution is this: the means through which God produces the never-ending creative process is the natural law of evolution. Remember that according to Baha'u'llah all natural laws, including evolution, were created by God and are thus an expression of His Will. (By the way, Muslim scholars discovered this law long before Darwin was even a twinkle in his father's eye, thus adding weight to the thesis that religion is not by definition anti-scientific). Marc said: "Could someday science cross path with religion and all would make sense? That would certainly be an ideal." I have found that the Bahá'í Teachings make it possible to achieve that ideal.

For Bahá'ís, then, the creation vs. evolution debate is anathema. Just as a new-born child evolved from a single-celled organism in a liquid environment through various stages during which it took on different forms that were apparently anything but human, and yet was always human from the start and is termed a "new creation" when born, so the human species (actually, kingdom) has similarly evolved through different stages and forms (like Paul's "reasonable amoebae"?) in the process of its creation. In fact, we are still evolving -- from our collective adolescence to maturity as one people.

Another issue is whether the different species had to evolve from each other, as Darwin suggested, or each species could evolve within itself as a separate tree, as Bahá'u'lláh sustains. This depends largely, I believe, on whether the appearance of life is seen as a one-time, probabilistically "impossible" or "abnormal" accident from which all life forms must then necessarily branch out, or as a "normal" phenomenon that is an essential part of nature and will therefore appear in infinite variety whenever and wherever the conditions are right. I would go for the latter, the implications of which I find absolutely dumbfounding!

It has been said -- quite rightly, I believe -- that while other beings possess different degrees of awareness, the exclusively human rational capacity empowers us to detach ourselves from and transcend our own condition, enabling us to look back upon ourselves from the outside and become aware of our own awareness. Now, if we accept the "Gaia" worldview of the planet Earth as a single living organism and the role of the human kingdom (as opposed to the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms) as the "global brain" of that organism, then we, as an essential susbsystem of that greater overall system, provide Mother Earth with the capacity to detach herself from and transcend her own condition, look back upon herself from the outside and become aware of her own awareness.

This would make us the Earth's self-awareness, putting us above nature in that sense, although not in the sense of being able to do without her, nor of not arising from her womb, but rather of providing nature with a way to rise above herself. Why? What for? First of all, because without such self-awareness she would be incomplete, and according to Systems Theory, all things strive towards a fuller expression of their latent potential. Through us, Mother Earth can cut and polish into luminous brilliance her rough gems, cultivate into luscious splendor her wild fruits, train into usefulness and companionship her wily dogs and horses, untangle into magnificent gardens her gnarled thickets, and then look back upon herself in the mirror of our eyes and be pleased.

Finally, because Earth's self-regulatory functions can only achieve so much, she suffers from diseases such as desertification and extinction of species, as well as potential outer threats such as burning meteorites and melting ice masses from space, which only the awareness we bring can prevent or heal. Granted, during the long gestation and infancy of humankind we took more than we gave back, and during our collective adolescence we are acting in wantonly destructive and downright self-destructive ways, but our mother has patiently, tolerantly taken all this in stride, for as we cross the threshold towards our maturity as a system, we are/will be coming into our own and taking greater responsibility for our true role.