[Part 8 in a multi-part series on Science & Religion from an LDS perspective.  Previous entries in the series: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7]

Before hitting ‘evolution’ proper, we should first define and discuss some additional terms that are relevant to the debate.

(1) “Creation”

What does it mean to be ‘created’, or for something to have a ‘creator’?

Returning to an example mentioned earlier in the series:  Suppose you discover a painting that looks like a bunch of color blotches where paint appeared to drop and splatter on the canvas.   Was this painting ‘created’ by an intelligent artist, or simply a product of random chance when paint happened to fall and the canvas was there to catch it?  Would you be able to prove one way or the other?

Without an eyewitness to the actual creation of the painting (which we don’t have), it is difficult if not impossible to prove that the painting could not have had an intelligent artist behind it.  Certainly an analysis of the painting may conclude that all physical evidence points to paint simply having dropped onto the canvas from a height, and splattered according to the natural laws of gravity without requiring the interdiction of an intelligent artist.   That’s still several steps away, though, from proving that an intelligent artist could not have created the same painting by purposefully putting each iota of paint in exactly the same position it is now.

Without anything conclusive, we are left to speculate about probabilities--how likely it would be that an intelligent artist would have chosen to create a painting by hand that looks exactly like random splotches on a canvas in the first place?  (After all, an intelligent artist surely would have chosen to paint something more, you know, intelligent--like perfect squares or circles, right?)

However, this train of analysis oversimplifies the possible explanations.  Our definition of ‘create’ in this context seems to assume ‘painting by hand’ is the only option, as opposed to ‘randomly’ forming by drops of paint falling on a canvas.

Let’s take a broader view of what it means to ‘create’:  suppose the painting was, in fact, genuinely formed by dropping blotches of paint onto a canvas and letting them splatter—exactly as the physical evidence suggests--but there was still an intelligent artist who chose the amount of paint (as well as color) and the exact location from where to drop it onto the canvas.  The painting was ‘created’ by gravity and natural laws, in a sense, but also ‘created’ by our intelligent artist who still played a vital role in how the finished product turned out.  Despite using the natural process of gravity as an aid, could we not say our artist is still fundamentally the “creator” of this painting?

Likewise, the idea that God might work within natural processes does not invalidate the use of the word “Creator”.  Using science to identify the processes by which the universe works (including gravity and natural selection) doesn’t inherently contradict the idea of a ‘creation’, since there’s still plenty of conceptual room for an intelligent ‘creator’ who arranges the natural processes in the first place.  (And, of course, if this were true, we would not expect to see any proof outside of science, since the natural processes in both cases are the same…) 

The alternate LDS account of the creation of the Earth outlined in the Pearl of Great Price has one significant change from the text in Genesis:  the use of the word “organize” instead of “create”—a substitution that provides many implications about how to view the actual creative process.

We should note that even an artist who paints by hand, brushstroke by brushstroke, does not actually “create” anything—all the matter that composes the paint and the canvas already existed and the artist’s role (and others such as the paint manufacturer) has merely been to ‘organize’ existing matter in a deliberate way to create the work of art.  And yet, we still reasonably use the word ‘create’ when it comes to painters (or architects, or sculptors, etc…), even though we could also use the word ‘organize’ as an applicable (and arguably more accurate) substitute instead.

The LDS idea of ‘creation by organization’ instead of a pure ex nihilo (out of nothing) creation suggests that God can ‘organize’ existing matter, even through existing natural processes, to create the final product…yet is still fundamentally the “Creator” by our expanded definition.  Understanding that “creation” does not preclude using existing resources or natural processes, is a key step in setting the stage for a reconciliation of religion and evolution.

(2) “Time”

Next, let’s ask the philosophical question: what is “time”?

Put simply, time is movement.  All current definitions of time rely entirely on the movement of some body of matter as a reference point.

• A “day” equals the time it takes for the earth to rotate around its axis.
• 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.

Concepts of time such as how old we are, how long it takes to drive to work every morning, how long it takes for beams of light to get from Alpha Centauri to Earth; all of these are based on movement.  Without movement, time has no meaning…

Using movement to define time means concepts of time are entirely relative to those objects that are used as a reference point.  Completing a task or movement “quickly” or “slowly” depends upon having some other object in motion to compare against.  (The time it takes someone to do X, is the same time it takes some object Y to move Z times--then comparing against actions with values less than Z and greater than Z)

But—here’s the key question--what if *everything* in the universe started going twice as fast (or slow) as it does now, though?   The earth went around the sun faster, the solar system moved faster through the galaxy, people could think and move twice as fast, etc… How would we tell the difference?
 
The fact is: as long as everything in the universe changed speeds together, you would never be able to tell the difference--the same way that two parked cars sitting side by side look to each other to be exactly the same as two cars travelling the exact same speed down the highway side by side.

Even using the comparative words ‘faster’ and ‘slower’ in this context requires a reference point to compare against that’s NOT moving faster or slower (which in this case would have to be outside the known universe).  Inside a closed system, it is impossible to determine relative speeds and times based on a reference point that lies outside the system.

Here’s an example to illustrate this principle:  Suppose you have two families who rent the same two-hour movie on videotape one evening. (Yes, of course, everyone rents DVDs now, 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 video store.

There are now two videotapes, which from a ‘state’ or ‘age’ standpoint are both two hours ‘old’ (i.e. within the context of the tape itself, two hours have passed since the ‘beginning’ to its current state). 

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.  Could they do it?  In reality, no, this would be an impossible task as there is literally no difference between the two.

Imagine you were a character in the movie. Would you be able to tell that you had been ‘fast-forwarded’ by someone watching from the outside?   Not at all, because everything else 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.

How do you calculate ‘time’, then, from either inside or outside the system?  Inside the movie, two hours have passed.  Outside the movie, it depends…and someone inside the movie has absolutely no reference point for making a determination what the outside concept of time would be.

(3) Putting it together

Let’s use the Voyager spacecraft as an example, (as suggested by comments earlier in the series).

If an alien race encountered Voyager travelling through the cosmos, they would probably conclude that it was ‘created’ by intelligent designers.  Not necessarily because it was less complex than, say, a rhinoceros hurtling through space, but because it is markedly different than the other (natural) objects they’ve either created themselves, or encountered naturally in their area of the universe. 

Voyager is a complicated machine, to be sure.  Imagine, though, we created a newer version of Voyager, that in addition to its normal capabilities, was capable of creating a copy of itself based on raw materials it happens to find in the cosmos as it travels.  This is an exponential step up in complexity from the original version, of course—would this make it more or less likely to be considered ‘intelligently designed’, rather than occurring naturally, by our alien explorers?

Imagine, again, we’ve created an even more complex version of Voyager, one that not only could create a copy of itself through raw materials, but where those copies could also create copies of themselves in the same way, for as long as they were functional.  Not only that, but let’s suppose it could analyze existing conditions and create copies that were not just functional equivalent, but functionally superior based on the availability of better materials, and/or with better adapted features to their surroundings.

Suppose in this case, Voyager reaches a distant barren world with lots of raw materials, and starts creating copies of itself.  Those copies also start creating copies of themselves that were functionally superior to the original over time, and so on, for millions of years.  Suppose that alien race now encounters this world full of advanced Voyager clones flying around, where the original Voyager has long since disappeared from existence.

The key questions: are those Voyager clones still recognizable as ‘intelligently designed’?  Furthermore, do those Voyager ‘descendants’ still count as ‘creations’ of those intelligent designers (humans) in the first place?

I might ask: why not?  It is those Earth scientists who created the original Voyager who set in motion the processes which allowed it to create those descendants over time, even if the process was not necessarily supervised and micro-managed by them every step of the way. 

Creating a ‘robot’ is quite a feat of engineering, creating a robot that creates other robots would be even more so.  Creating a robot that creates other robots that are better than the originals, and could continue to create other robots better than themselves would be an unbelievably amazing accomplishment.  The process by which the latter descendants were created does not invalidate the idea that all robots fundamentally still share a common 'creator'.  Likewise—making the obvious parallel—there’s nothing inherently contradictory about the idea that God can create the Earth and all life on it through natural processes rather than a ‘brushstroke by brushstroke’ version of hand-crafting.

In this way, evolution doesn’t conflict with creation in principle: how about in the details?

The problem of ‘time’ comes into play here:  Many specific complaints raised by science regarding religion involve time (the age of the Earth, most notably).

But remember, we calculate ‘age’ based purely on movement—the current state of radioactive elements which decay over time, and/or natural processes of erosion or natural selection.  Those elements of time or age are relative, though—they’re based entirely on some other body of matter which moves X times in the interim.

This relativity of time makes it fundamentally impossible to use time to adequately judge the value of any religious claim.  Saying the Earth is “too old” for current ideas about the creation to be true, depends entirely on a relative concept of “old” and “young”.  We say this rock or fossil was formed in the past in the same amount of time it took the Earth to revolve around the sun X million times.  From an outside perspective, though, that would be like telling time based on revolutions of a car tire.  Stepping on the gas makes the tire spin faster or slower, therefore calculations of time based on tire revolutions will also be faster or slower if that's our only reference point.

The creation account as interpreted literally doesn’t seem to take much time…but time is relative from God’s perspective.  Using the video analogy from above, suppose God creates the basic framework for the Earth and life, then “fast-forwards” several million years to create the final product.  The amount of time it takes from His perspective is meaningless—whether it is ‘millions of years’ from OUR perspective depends entirely on how fast or slow the reference points which create our perception of time are moving to Him.  Without the reference point on the outside, that answer could be just about anything!

As such, I don’t believe ‘time’ can fundamentally be used as evidence against religious claims, because time is meaningless to use as a metric from an eternal perspective.  In certain cases where we have a specific reference point in time (from *our* perspective), such as a universal flood--where all existing Earth life would have needed to be created/evolved in a brief period of time after the flood--can we use ‘time’ as solid evidence against a religious interpretation.  (Another reason against accepting Noah’s flood as universal)

In terms of the creation of Earth and all life on it, how long it took from our perspective doesn’t matter in the end.  The idea of God creating the Earth does not rely on a ‘young Earth’ idea to be true, thus one can still accepted evolution as a correct theory in regards to Earth’s development, and the creation accounts in scripture as correct as well.

Clearly, the debate about evolution and creation will continue for the foreseeable future, but I believe there is still more than enough room to reconcile the two together without serious conflict.  Traditional religious views of the creation suffer because we tend to graft our own (human) views of 'time' and what it means to 'create' onto the (brief and undetailed) accounts in scripture.  But I believe there is more flexibility in our understanding of how the earth was created in relation to natural processes than what is traditionally used in literal Bible interpretations.   I don't have a problem accepting evolution and creation together, and don't believe scientific evidence about evolution nor the age of the Earth provides any sort of 'silver bullet' which sends the concept of God and the Creation back to the stone age...

Next: Adam and the Fall