GSSO Forum

Government Secondary School Owerri Online Forum => Religion & Morality => Topic started by: festus on July 12, 2006, 06:33:58 PM

Title: On Okey\'s Origin of Life
Post by: festus on July 12, 2006, 06:33:58 PM
Dear all,

The question of the origin of man, the universe or life is not a question you can understand by quoting a bible whose original version you have not seen. If you believe that this is a question that can be resolved by ?heaping up empty phrases? about the wisdom of God and all what not (that Nigerians who have regular conversation with God in infinite space should know about? ? nizzle please!). One might as well embrace Bishop Lightfoot?s theory of the origin of life hook line and sinker (which most Christians blandly repeat but which has no basis in fact).

I am not responding to this post to remind anybody of what they should know (after all some people believe in Santa or father Christmas) but because nobody bothered (as usual) to properly read Okey?s question.

First of all Okey outlined the usual interpretation of Darwin?s theory (it is a theory of explanation) and then he wrote ?There are other theories out there. Which one do you believe and what are your thoughts??

There are a few issues to consider here ?

1.   Darwin?s theory of evolution is not a theory about the origins of life but about the origin of ?Species?. He was inspired by the variety among Parrots.
2.   Darwin was a Christian but perhaps not the ?speaking in tongues type?.
3.   Many people tend to confuse Darwin?s theories with what is called ?Social Darwinism? attributed to people like Herbert Spencer. In fact what passes for Darwin?s theory in many cases is a lazy interpretation of Spencerian teleological Darwinism.
4.   Most of what passes for ?Creationism? and ?intelligent design? are basically ?empty phrases? but this is not to say there is only one way of looking at the cosmos.

The danger here is collapsing the cosmos into sectarian ideologies like Christian belief or even ?science? (Science meaning the Newtonian/Cartesian science we are all familiar with). The cosmos is bigger, older and more complex than any religion or scientific explanation trying to interpret it. But this does not mean that all explanations are all of equal value or equally convincing? For a small child, the tale of coming from mommy?s tommy may be enough but we all know that things are more complicated than that (that is for those of us ?grown ass? that know the cosmic joy and pain of sexuality). When you look at the world of animals, plants, bacteria, humans do you see creation? Do you see things appearing from nowhere that is analogous to ?and God said let there be light?? What you see is a complex and slow process of reproduction not creation (unless of course you believe the ?coming from the tommy version?).

My point is simple, if people cannot read Okey\'s question well, (won?t even bother to clarify what his point is), how in the hell can they grasp complexities like the origin of life? The place to start is the basics not the Da Vinci code movie version. Get your facts right! Words of the wise recognize!