For the past several weeks, I have been sharing with you excerpts from a book called The Mystery of God by Fr. Desmond Forristal. In chapter five of the book there is a section called The Coming of Life, Fr. Forristal writes:

The creation story in the first chapter of Genesis reaches its climax in the description of the creation of man.

God said, "Let us make man in our own image, in
the likeness of ourselves, and let them be masters
of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven, the
cattle, all the wild beasts and all the reptiles that
crawl upon the earth."
God created man in the image of himself,
in the image of God he created them,
male and female he created them (Gen 1:26-27).

Modern science describes the origin of human beings in terms of evolution. The theory of evolution was put forward by the English naturalist, Charles Darwin (1809-1882), in his book The Origin of Species, published in 1859. Others before Darwin had spoken about the evolution of life but Darwin was the first to present it in a scientific and convincing manner, supporting it by many examples drawn from his experience as a naturalist in South America.

According to Darwin, the different species of plants and animals did not come into existence fully formed and distinct from one another. Instead, they gradually evolved over a period of many thousands of years, beginning with the simplest forms of life and developing into higher and more complex forms of plants and animals until eventually man appeared in the world.

How did this evolution take place? Darwin said it must have taken place by natural selection. In the struggle for survival, the animals which were best able to fend for themselves were the ones which survived and propagated their species. For instance, the giraffe's long neck could be explained by the fact that animals with longer necks were able to reach higher into the trees in search of leaves to eat: so in times of famine, the animals with shorter necks died first.

As an explanation of evolution, natural selection leaves many questions unanswered. Why should some animals develop long necks and not others? Why should long-necked animals evolve in one area and not in another? Darwin said some of these questions were simply unanswerable.

Why in other quarters of the world, various animals belonging to the same order have not acquired either an elongated neck or a proboscis, cannot be distinctly answered; but it is as unreasonable to expect a distinct answer to such a question, as why some event in the history of mankind did not occur in one country, while it did in another.

It is now admitted by scientists that natural selection does not fully account for evolution. They say that from time to time there must have been "mutations", that is, sudden big changes in the forms of plants and animals. But there is no real evidence for these mutations and no real explanation why they should happen. Still, in spite of these difficulties, the theory fits in so well with the remains of ancient plants and animals found in old rocks that it is accepted by almost all scientists. They agree that evolution happened, even if they do not know how or why it happened.

When Darwin first published his theory he was attacked by many Christian thinkers, especially among the Anglican clergy. They said that, firstly, he was going against the Bible which taught that God created the different species separately and did so in six days. Secondly, they said he was undermining the argument from design, by making evolution and not God the author of the wonders of nature. Thirdly, they said he was taking away man's spiritual nature by making him a descendant of monkeys.

These objections were not well founded. Darwin himself pointed out that we do not take anything away from God's greatness when we say that he gave to his creation the power to evolve into ever newer and higher forms. He ended his book with these words:

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its
several forms, having been originally breathed by the
Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst
this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed
law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless
forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been,
and are being evolved.

Most modern scientists and theologians agree with Darwin's view. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), a French Jesuit priest who was also a noted anthropologist, wrote a famous book called The Phenomenon of Man. In this book he tried to describe the how and the why of the evolution of life. He said that created things evolve into higher forms because God is the Goal to which they are moving as well as the source from which they came. The whole of creation is being drawn all the time by the love of God. As it rises higher, from plants to animals and from animals to humans, it becomes closer to God and more like him.

The same thought was beautifully put by the Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis (1883-1957), who pictured God as a great cry that echoes inside every being, urging it onwards and upwards.

Blowing through heaven and earth, and in our hearts and the heart of every living thing, is a gigantic breath-a Great Cry-which we call God. Plant life wished to continue its motionless sleep next to stagnant waters, but the Cry leaped up within it and violently shook its roots; "Away, let go of the earth, walk!" Had the tree been able to think and judge, it would have cried, "I don't want to. What are you urging me to do? You are demanding the impossible!" But the Cry, without pity, kept shaking its roots and shouting, "Away, let go of the earth, walk!" It shouted in this way for thousands of eons; and lo! As a result of desire and struggle, life escaped the motionless tree and was liberated.

Animals appeared-worms-making themselves at home in water and mud. "We're just fine here," they said, "We have peace and security; we're not budging!"

But the terrible Cry hammered itself pitilessly into their loins. "Leave the mud, stand up; give birth to your betters!"

"We don't want to! We can't!"

"You can't, but I can. Stand up!"

And lo! After thousands of eons, man emerged trembling on his still unsolid legs.

The human being is a centaur; his equine hooves are planted in the ground, but his body from breast to head is worked on and tormented by the merciless Cry. He has been fighting, again for thousands of eons, to draw himself, like a sword, out of his animalistic scabbard. He is also fighting-this is his new struggle-to draw himself out of his human scabbard. Man calls in despair, "Where can I go? I have reached the pinnacle, beyond is the abyss." And the Cry answers, "I am beyond. Stand up!"

God's creative love is at work everywhere in time and space but it reaches its highest point in our own souls. When we recognize love and respond to it, we fulfill our destiny as the supreme master work of the created universe.

Summary

The creation story in the Bible tells us that God made the world and everything in it. It is not meant to be a scientific description of the origin of the universe. Failure to understand this has caused conflicts between science and religion.

Scientists are also at fault when they use God to fill up gaps in their scientific knowledge, as Newton and others did. But the question of where the universe came from is not a matter for science at all and cannot be answered by scientific methods. Only religion can give us the answer: it came from God.

Regarding the origin of life, it is now generally accepted that humans evolved from lower forms of animal life over a period of millions of years. This does not mean that humans are no more than an animal. Humans have a spiritual Love soul and are made in the image and likeness of God.