Science vs. Religion, Part 3: Creation and Evolution

Before delving into the issue of evolution and how it matches up with the scriptural accounts of the Creation, let’s discuss a more fundamental philosophical question:

Specifically, what is time?

Put simply, time is movement. Any definition of time increment A has at its base how long it takes for some object B to get from point C to point D.

Examples: A day equals the time it takes for the earth to rotate completely around.
A year is the time it takes for the earth to revolve completely around the sun.
A month is the time it takes for the phases of the moon to complete a full cycle.
An atomic second is the time it takes for a cesium-133 atom to complete exactly 9,192,631,770 oscillations.

Personal concepts such as ‘how old we are’ are also based on movement; not necessarily through complete revolutions around the sun as it is commonly figured, but through the constant flux of the cells of our body first developing in early life and then decaying until our inevitable deaths.

Without movement, though, time has no meaning. Moving or completing a task ‘quickly’ or ‘slowly’ requires an outside reference point--something to compare against. (i.e. the time it takes you to do task A is the same time it took for some other object B to move X number of times) But imagine if everything in the universe started going twice as fast as it does now: the earth went around the sun faster, the solar system moved faster through the galaxy, people could think and move twice as fast, so on… Would you be able to tell the difference? What about if everything moved twice as slow?

The fact is: as long as everything in the universe changed speeds together, you would never be able to tell the difference—the same as two parked cars sitting right next to each other and two cars travelling the exact same speed going down the highway side by side look to each other to be the same. In fact, even using the words ‘faster’ and ‘slower’ requires a reference point outside the universe—something to which to compare. The universe may be constantly going faster and slower from an outside vantage point, but we’d never know it because we’re inside the closed system.

Here’s an example of this concept:
Two households rent the same two-hour movie on videotape from Blockbuster one evening. (Yes, I know everyone rents DVDs nowadays, but bear with me…) One family starts the movie at 7:00 and finishes at 9:00. The other family watches the first ten minutes and decides the movie is boring. They had heard there is a big action scene at the end though, so they spend five minutes fast forwarding, and then watch the last ten minutes of the movie. The next day, both tapes are returned to the store.

Now, let’s discuss the ‘state’ or ‘age’ of the two videotapes. From the tapes' standpoint, they are both two hours ‘old’—that is their state is such that two hours have passed since the ‘beginning’. Yet, only one of the tapes reached that ‘two-hours old’ state in two hours--the other one only took 25 minutes thanks to the miracle of ‘fast-forwarding’. Now suppose we took those two tapes to a scientific laboratory and asked them to figure out which one reached the ‘end state’ in two hours and which one took 25 minutes. It’s an impossible task--no matter how you tested the two tapes, you wouldn’t be able to say for sure which one was fast forwarded because there is absolutely no difference between them—they are exactly the same in every way.

Imagine you were a character in the movie. Would you be able to tell that you had been ‘fast-forwarded’? No, because everything in the movie would have been fast-forwarded also and you would still seem to be going at the same speed relative to everything else. Inside a closed system like a videotape, the concept of ‘speed’ is meaningless--the end result is always exactly the same. It is only from a perspective outside the system (such as those watching the movie) that the change in speeds makes any difference.

Okay…now that we’ve settled that, how does this apply to the science vs. religion debate? Well, put simply, many of the key conflicts between the two sides in regards to the creation and development of the earth concern time. The creation side says God created the earth in seven ‘days’ and that creation of the land, plants, animals, and mankind happened relatively quickly within each individual day. The evolution side says the creation of the earth and everything on it from land features to living forms was a gradual process that took millions of years. The evolution side says the creation argument is wrong because it contradicts established scientific facts. The creation side says the evolution argument is wrong because it contradicts scripture. Isn’t it possible, though, that both sides are right—that the two arguments don’t actually contradict each other at all?

The inherent problem in the debate is that the two time frames are different. God is outside the system (the universe), and thus the concept of ‘time’ is totally different than it is to those of us within the system. There no reason to think that the concept of a ‘day’ in the creation sense is an exact 24 hour period—in fact, to an eternal being, the passage of time is meaningless. Suppose in each ‘day’, God creates a basic system, hits ‘fast-forward’ in essence, moving forward millions of years and then voila--the creation is completed!

Evolution: Mountains, valleys and other land features were caused by the movement of water, wind, glaciers and plate tectonics over millions of years.
Creation: Mountains, valleys and other land features were created instantly by God on the second day.
Answer (?): On the second day, God created the basic systems such as water and air flow and plate movement, fast-forwarded several million years, and mountains, valleys and the like were created automatically.

Evolution: Life forms evolved from primitive life forms which were created from simple building blocks in the primordial ooze through a long process taking millions of years.
Creation: Life forms were created instantly by God on the fifth day.
Answer (?): On the fifth day, God created some basic life forms, fast-forwarded several million years until the systems of adaptation and natural selection created the great multitude of creatures that exist today. (Note the interesting phrase in Genesis 1:20—“Let the waters bring forth the moving creature that hath life…”)

Now, do I know the “Answer” is what actually happened? Of course not. But it’s one of many possible solutions that complies with the principles of both creation and evolution, showing they are not mutually exclusive theories. (You could probably think of others…) Whether the creation process took hundreds of millions of years (from the Earth’s perspective) or not, the creation accounts in the Bible are from God’s perspective and thus comparing the ‘time’ involved is like comparing apples and oranges. It’s not ‘blasphemous’ to suggest that evolution had a hand in the creation considering the creation accounts in the scriptures aren’t exactly rife with details. There’s an awful lot we don’t know (nor probably could we comprehend it) about the creation of the universe and everything in it, but for people on both sides of the debate, it’s dangerous to make assumptions about how things were (and how things were not) and blind ourselves to facts and ideas from the other side which could help us understand more about who we are and where we come from.

Next: Multi-dimensionality and the Joseph Smith story...