Evolution and Gravity and Half NAAked Thursday

I am always shocked when people I think of as being intelligent turn out to reject evolution in favor of intelligent design(ID). I have to remember though that for an amateur I have a background steeped in evolutionary knowledge and very few other people who are not biologists have spent as much time as I have considering the subject. Another factor may be that I have not been as exposed to the anti-evolution propaganda as some other folks. It should be noted though that I am not evolution's best or most eloquent defender and even though I have read a great deal about it, I am not an expert.

My personal feelings, and these have nothing to do with science, about evolution and my religious faith are simple. Evolution is one of the primary reasons I believe in a Creator. A brief survey of the theory of evolution reveals something extraordinary. Where our universe is dominated by the Second Law of Thermodynamics which simply states that entropy increases; that is to say everything is decaying, falling apart. Evolution is absolutely counter to that; instead of complex systems breaking down into simpler processes we see the reverse going on (an irony of this post is that supporters of ID also cite the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics).

I simply don't see a conflict between the Biblical accounts of creation and evolution except the time frame. The plants and animals appear in more or less the same order that evolution produced them. The description of the creation of the cosmos has to be one of the most badass descriptions ever written:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
BibleGateway.com: King James Bible, Genesis 1:1-3

I don't even sweat the timeframe. You're talking God's time here. Who is to say what a day is to God? Not me.

And who is to say that the Creator, however one envisions that Creator, did not form a single cell of archean bacteria and set it loose upon the world and from that simple beginning has flowed everything else? Evolution is nothing if not beautiful and poetic in the way it has unfolded. Like a shy seductress (or a cruel tease) She has unveiled herself to us (chicks feel free to manipulate the genders in any way that makes this metaphor work for you) a tiny piece at a time; and rather like a bikini, what has been revealed is not nearly as important as what remains concealed.

I know I still have to finish my series on evil, but it looks like this will be a series of its own. I simply don't have time to address the science here. Let me finish up with a photo for Half NAAked Thursday and a link to a funny story about Biblical literalists challenging the theory of gravity. By the way, that is a parody.

My wife and I.