Looking for meaning and purpose in life? Consider the debate between creation and evolution!

The following is a script of the podcast that was published on the 19 May 2021

Mark: Hello and welcome to God’s Gym, the podcast where we consider how we can reach our full potential as human beings, physically, mentally, and spiritually. Jesus said he had come that we might have life in abundance, and we ask, what is abundant life and how can we live it?

I am Mark, an Army Chaplain and with me is Paul, an Army Scripture reader and today we are talking about creation and evolution.

Paul: That is a challenging and very controversial subject and I get that it might be interesting but what has that got to do with reaching our full potential? It isn’t really a practical or motivational topic... is it?

Mark: Well, that’s where you are mistaken, my friend. As we shall see it is a bit deep as subjects go, but hey, why not go a bit deep sometimes? But it also has a lot to say about you and how important you are as a person, it is a really personal and motivational issue.

Paul: Some frame this as a clash between science and religion and science always trumps religion in the real world!

Mark: To which as someone trained as a scientist and a religious leader, I say is rubbish and a smoke screen to avoid some challenging discussion on this really important topic.

Paul: it is true, isn’t it, that much of science and mathematics has been driven by religious belief, belief that the universe has order and structure.

Mark: the fundamental question in this whole debate is this: Do you believe in God?

If the answer is no, then you need a way for everything to exist. How are you here?

Paul: How are you here? Don’t you mean why are you here?

Mark: The question is not necessarily why are you here because why involves a reason and a plan and therefore implies some guiding force or principle.

Without a God then there is nothing guiding anything, so how is everything the way it is?

If the answer is yes, I believe there may be a God, then creation is entirely possible. God can do absolutely anything, otherwise he/she/it wouldn’t be god. And therefore the world can be created in six days, six seconds or instantly. Or he may have used evolutionary processed to shape things.

But that is our fundamental choice: did God make everything, or did it all happen by random chance with no guidance?

Paul: Why do you think there is a God?

Mark: I think there is so much order and beauty but more importantly information in the universe that there has to be a designer.

We are all made through the code written on our DNA – like really sophisticated computer software – it is very detailed and complicated that tells those two cells from the man and woman to multiply and make a human and then maintain that human for up to a 120 years constantly replicating and adjusting. That doesn’t just appear or happen by accident.

And that is the big thing for me. In the theory of evolution, everything happens by random events, by accident. There is no purpose, no plan, no future and eventually we all disappear into nothing.

With creation there is a plan, a purpose – you are not here by accident but God made you, you are unique and planned. I think that is really important, you have purpose, you are not here by accident.

Paul: and that is tied up with the idea of hope as well?

Mark: yes, exactly, because the world around us is full of beauty and order, God must be loving and kind, he must be good and therefore life is more than just chemistry and physics, there is a spiritual dimension and therefore there is hope – even death is not the end.

Paul: Mark, you’ll have to explain this...what do you mean the world has order?

Mark: this world is an amazing place

• The distance from the sun is perfect and we sit in what scientists call the goldilocks zone, not too hot or too cold.

• The size is perfect for the right amount of gravity

• The atmosphere exists

• There is water

• The moon controls the tides and therefore there is a circulation which feeds the world

• The moon protects us by sweeping up meteorites, most of them!

• The rotation of the earth is the right speed and the days not too long or too short and the seasons perfect, so not too hot or too cold but allow crops and forests and so on.

Again, all this did not happen by accident: there is statistically impossible. This world has been designed for us!

Paul: designed for us!!!!...So we should look after it?

Mark: Absolutely.

Paul: so Mark, I am getting a picture of a God who is good, caring, clever and made us as the pinnacle of creation.

Mark: Rght. So before we get all caught up in worrying about six day creation and dinosaurs and lost civilizations and so on, you should start at this point. If there is no god this is all by billions of random coincidences. Trillions of billions of accidents.

But there is so much order and beauty and more importantly precise instructions written into life that there has to be someone who designed and made it!

The complexity of everything from subatomic particles to your dna to the ecosystem that makes this planet the perfect biosphere just shouts out that there is a God.

Paul: someone with a plan?

Mark: where did your DNA come from? Evolution says that the vast complexity of this world all comes about by a massive, incalculable number of random unconnected accidents. Enough accidents and you appear.

Imagine a tornado rips through a scrapyard and when all the debris falls back to earth, there is a fully functioning passenger airplane, with air crew and drinks trolley. Impossible?

Well, what if there is an infinite number of tornadoes ripping through an infinite number of scrapyards – you might begin to think, eventually, you will get a fully functioning jet airliner – wouldn’t you?

It is a bit like your DNA. There is such intricate computer code written into your very DNA that tells our bodies not only how to build from two cells but function and replicate and maintain. It is astonishing detail. Where does all that information come from?

Someone has suggested that an infinite number of chimpanzees in a room with an infinite number of typewriters for long enough will eventually produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. Do you think that is possible?

Paul: Not likely but go on, you’ve got me interested.

Mark: there is something in our brains that is a bit lazy and fills in the gaps of any information we have so it looks at these scenarios and say, ok, enough time and maybe it could happen. And then we get bored and move on. But in reality, it is all rubbish. There is no amount of tornadoes that are ever going to produce a jet airliner. There is a rule in physics that says everything eventually falls apart. You will just have an infinite mess.

No amount of chimpanzees will produce anything, they will just get bored and hungry and make a big mess, then die and then turn to dust. That is the second law of thermodynamics. Everything falls apart.

Charles Darwin, when he came up with the theory of evolution said that over the next hundred years geologists will find the evidence. Now over a hundred years later we see no evidence. No steady change from amoeba to humans. Just an explosion of life and diversity. But more importantly today with all our understanding of genetics and physics, no mechanism for an amoeba to become a human. Or for an amoeba to appear in the first place. Complexity doesn’t just happen.

If I throw lego bricks in the air, they don’t fall down as a castle!

Paul: So that raises the question...how did we get here?

Mark: But there is a movement that is called the intelligent design movement that argues differently. Intelligent design is much more honest and says stuff doesn’t just happen. Nor do we see it happening today despite looking for hundreds of years. But design does happen. Complex things have origins, a builder and a purpose.

Intelligent design doesn’t say it is necessarily God, but that someone did make life as we see it.

Paul: Well...Maybe aliens?

Mark: maybe but then who made the aliens? You are back to the same problem as evolution.

For me, the bible says God existed before and beyond everything. now that is a concept beyond my understanding and so I have to just accept it. I can speculate but I literally have no further information.so I focus on what I do see and I see clear design in everything, as well as purpose, and beauty and hope.

Paul: not everything in this world seems good though. Like malaria or melanoma. And sometimes the DNA goes wrong.

Mark: I think that the world as it is now has moved a long way from where it was when it was first made, and in part that is down to us and how we have lived in it. For instance, pollution is known to damage DNA and that affects everything from obesity to cancer. Cutting down ecosystems as we see in the Amazon rainforest for instance also causes huge problems. Did you know that the movement of whales and dolphins through the sea churns the sea and mixes various levels to ensure healthy ecosystems? And when we devastated the populations for whales, we affected this circulation which has an impact on fish stocks and biodiversity. The problem with the current setup doesn’t have to be a design fault but usually has a more simple answer, and it is usually how we have managed things.

Paul: So now we have made such a mess of things what hope do we have?

Mark: let me tell you about Victor Frankl. Frankl was a sober realist, he wasn’t religious but as a Jew he ended up in the horrors of Auschwitz and he saw and wrote about the moral corruption of those who worked there. He describes how holding onto hope was literally a life-or-death choice. Those who lost hope, he said, developed a certain look in their eye, a fatalism that inevitably ended in death. They experienced an “existential vacuum” — his term for a complete loss of meaning, a loss of hope, a sense that nothing really mattered any more. He writes:

“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.”

This is really important because if evolution is true, what hope is there? If everything is just a product of random chance accidents with no plan and no future, what hope is there?

But if there is a spiritual dimension to life, and a designer that is good, who made us to enjoy life and flourish and have a future then there is great hope, not just in this life but into eternity, whatever that may look like.

Paul: The interesting thing is that psychologists and nurses and chaplains and anyone who works with people all say that without hope we do not flourish. People recover from injury much better with a hopeful perspective. People achieve more in life when they have some hope. Without hope we struggle, and that lack of hope can inhibit and crush us.

Mark: So this isn’t some dry academic subject is it? It affects you and me deeply. There is evidence that someone made the universe and made you and me. And that means there is purpose and a plan for life. It means that someone beyond us cares for us and it means there is hope, even when everything seems very dark, there is always hope!

Don’t get me wrong, I am not religious because I need hope, or I need some kind of crutch, but I look at the evidence and the evidence gives me huge confidence, huge assurance God exists and therefore I have a very real hope!

Paul: Well, there is so much more we could say about this and all the subjects we discuss. If you are listening and want to let us know what you think then do get in contact either via twitter or Instagram, or our new website: Godsgym.co.uk. On the new website you can read the transcript of this talk, mark our spelling and leave comments anytime you like. But please be gentle. Overtime we will be adding more content and our aim as always, is to be helpful and encouraging. Your comments are always welcome, and if there are topics or issues you would like us to address, we are always open to suggestions.

Until next time, thank you for listening and remember that you are capable of so much, God tells us so, so keep striving to reach your full potential as God made you.