Do you sometimes envy those with deep and unwavering faith in God? And in Jesus Christ?
I have separated God and Jesus Christ here because most faiths appear to believe in God or in a Supreme Being, but it is the Christian that believes that no one can get to the Father - God, except through His Son - Jesus Christ. The dictionary meaning of "god" is: "any of various beings conceived of as supernatural and immortal......" So I would call the Supreme Being: GOD.
Anyway, my envy of the faithful and unwavering believer is because of the many questions and speculations in my mind about the origin of mankind, religion, the mysteries of life and death, the incomprehensible wonders of the earth, sky and the universe, and the depravity of mankind. As a Christian, I have these thoughts which make me question my standing as a true believer. Why don't I have the unquestioning faith in the writings of the Bible? Will God forgive me for having such thoughts and doubts?
I start today with the origin of mankind for example........ the eternal question: where did we come from? Should we take the scientific theories or believe the scriptures and holy books?
The Christian's holy book of instruction - the Bible (comprising the Old and New Testaments), teaches that God created the world and created man and woman as the first human beings to inhabit the Garden of Eden on earth till they got thrown out. I questioned how they were able to procreate and populate the world until I read Genesis Chapter 5 verse 4: "And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were 800 years; and he begot sons and daughters". Which can mean that Seth married one of his sisters and had Enosh (verse 6), and Enosh must have had cousins as well as brothers and sisters......
Then I read Darwin's Origin of Species about the evolution of man by natural selection in the form of one straight human tree. So over 7 million years ago, there was this ape located somewhere in Africa whose offspring "gave birth" to humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, orang-utans and gibbons. In fact, Yuval Noah Harari's gripping book 'Sapiens',tells us that 6 million years ago, a single female ape had 2 daughters - one was the grandmother of all chimpanzees, and the other was our own grandmother (presumably the root of that human tree). My question about procreation is still relevant here - that root of the human tree must have mated with members of the other species, or with a brother.......
Between 5 and 7 million years ago, ancestors supposedly began to walk habitually on 2 legs, and evolved into humans about 2.5 million years ago and began to migrate from East Africa to other parts of Africa, and to Europe and Asia. That raised the question - WAS THE GARDEN OF EDEN IN EAST AFRICA????
In the past years, discovery of "human" fossils have repeatedly punched holes in the theory of a nice clear human family tree, and as Meredith Small elucidated, the human family tree is now a tangled messy bush with several separate evolution branches. Yuval Harari states that the earth of long ago had at least 6 different species of man, and considers it an indictment on us that we are the only species left - but the extinction of the other species is subject for another day.
Now, apart from the original theory of evolution as incremental mutation, there is horizontal gene transfer that is being considered to be an important mechanism in the evolution of new species, and may have played a role in human evolution. With my limited understanding of what this is all about, what I get is that humans are a composite of other creatures, having thousands of bacteria in our bodies - in our bellies and intestines, in our cells... , and that the probability that horizontal gene transfer in bacteria that are in our cells may account for some human DNA changes not directly inherited but that can now be passed on to descendants, leading to eventual development of a new species...... and so on and so forth.
So WAS OUR ANCIENT GREAT APE GRANDMOTHER THE "EVE" OF THE GARDEN OF EDEN, or what? Or can it be that God set things in motion by creating the world and human beings starting with a microscopic Adam and Eve? The human body is so complicated and precise and yet unimaginably adaptable. How could it come from nothing?
On occasion, I get preoccupied by the theory that mankind is descended from some aliens that came to earth from another planet to colonise this earth. There are all those conspiracy theories about the construction of the pyramids by architecturally gifted aliens, etc, by those who doubt that the ancient Egyptians were capable of building those massive and impressive structures. What about the "crop circles" being the landing ground for unidentified flying objects?
Should a good Christian have such mental thoughts and debates? In the New Testament, Thomas did not believe the other disciples when they told him that they has seen the risen Jesus. When Jesus came to them subsequently, He did not denigrate Thomas or fire him from the disciple group, but showed him the evidence that He was indeed risen. So I believe that nobody would be "fired" from the Christian family for such thoughts and mental speculations. That would include me...
Comments