Response to Jerry

Evan Gillick
Undergraduate/Spanish

Thank you for taking the time to reply. I’m only allotted 500 words so I can’t address everything you said. Your honesty in your views is appreciated, but I feel that they are nevertheless incorrect and misleading. My article pointed out a critical issue in Christian theology—a chronological one. If humans were not magically created one day but rather evolved—as is the case factually—this does not disprove God, but it calls into question the doctrine of original sin. You can certainly view evolution as the means through which God designed, however, this leaves no room for sin bringing death into the world because millions of years of predation occurred before we even existed. The conclusion then is that God created flawed human beings into an imperfect world where death and disease were already a simple fact of life, and thusly any salvation we would need is because God fucked up in the first place, not Man. But this is an entirely irrelevant issue given the simple absurdity of two people in a garden with a talking snake. View it as a metaphor if you wish, but to view Genesis as the literal truth of our origin and nature is nothing short of laughable.

You mentioned intelligent design (Creationism or ID) as providing evidence of a creator. ID is not a scientific position because it is untestable, unfalsifiable, and provides not one single benefit to humanity. It is quite frequently a God-of-the-gaps argument that relies on misinformation and lies about evolution to attempt to shed doubt on what is already known, empirically, to be rather evident. There is no debate, none whatsoever, among credible people who actually know what they are talking about as to whether or not evolution has occurred and is occurring. Themes of debate in evolutionary science may include the extent to which certain mechanisms drove the process, ie: natural selection, punctuated equilibrium, sudden as opposed to gradual morphological changes through varying types of mutation, horizontal gene transfer, etc.—but the fact of evolution is widely accepted, except for here in the U.S. where our science literacy is abysmal.

There are many examples of “unintelligent design” found throughout nature as well. Why would God create whales that have hind leg bones, and some even with feet bones complete with digits? Evidence indicates these bones are traces of the whale’s evolutionary ancestry to days when its ancestors were semi-aquatic land animals such as Ambulocetus. Google that shit, I’m not talking out of my ass here.

There is not one single shred of evidence for the existence of God, and that is what makes your worldview irrational. You say, “We have to remember that our sins are very personal offenses to God.” And for this reason we should be tormented for eternity? I submit to you that both you and I are more forgiving and loving than such a monster. I am better than your imaginary God and I dare say you are as well. Thank you.