Another Explanation

My key concern in writing about creation as God's means to bear witness to him - to his glorious presence and his amazing nurture of all he has made - is to help us begin to understand that the God who so baffles us established this world as a place that he would bless.

But there is another explanation - simply that God was never in the picture and that the natural processes of evolution created a self-perpetuating world. With this explanation, the earth is a closed system, self-generated and governed by its own laws.

What I find so baffling about this explanation is that it is not science but a reconstruction based on artifacts - fossils, species relationships, and so on. To be sure, we can observe small changes in species over time, but a lot more time would be needed to observe major changes. And the direction of those changes would always have to be positive or the die-off rate would be enormous.

All of this is beside the point, however, because my lack of faith in the other explanation is really based on the magic and beauty of any animal or plant you would want to show me. There is simply too much complexity, too much enchantment, even if we don't go into the amazing things we can't see like instincts, immune systems, cell self-repair, and so on.

Given that magic and beauty exist, it's easier for me to believe in a Creator than in the mindless processes of mutation.