Proof #25 - Understand evolution and abiogenesis

Recently there has been a remarkable change in the Christian community: Many members of the Christian faith are embracing evolution. For example, there is this article:

    At Churches Nationwide, Good Words for Evolution: "On the 197th birthday of Charles Darwin, ministers at several hundred churches around the country preached yesterday against recent efforts to undermine the theory of evolution, asserting that the opposition many Christians say exists between science and faith is false. At St. Dunstan's Episcopal Church, a small contemporary structure among the pricey homes of north Atlanta, the Rev. Patricia Templeton told the 85 worshipers gathered yesterday, 'A faith that requires you to close your mind in order to believe is not much of a faith at all....' At the Evanston Mennonite Church, Susan Fisher Miller, 48, an editor and English professor, said, 'I completely accept and affirm the view of God as creator, but I accommodate evolution within that.'"
And this letter, signed by more than 10,000 clergy members:
    An Open Letter Concerning Religion and Science: "...We the undersigned, Christian clergy from many different traditions, believe that the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist. We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests. To reject this truth or to treat it as “one theory among others” is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children..."
The interesting thing to understand is that when you accept evolution, what you are automatically doing is rejecting the concept of a soul. Here is why: As soon as you accept that evolution is true, you also accept that the creation story in the Bible is false. It is pure mythology. The concept of the "soul", which comes from the same book, is exactly the same sort of mythology.

Simply think through the logic. What the theory of evolution says is that every living thing on this planet has evolved through a completely natural process. Every species that we see today is derived from simple, single-cell organisms over the course of hundreds of millions of years. In other words, there was no supernatural creation process for humans as described in the Bible's book of Genesis.

As you think about this, what you will realize is that evolved beings have no souls. Human beings are no different from any other animal, insect, plant or bacteria in the way that we have evolved. In the same way that every other living thing on planet Earth is soul-less, humans are soul-less. The whole notion of a soul is a figment of human imagination.

This makes complete sense. The biochemistry of life powers evolution. That biochemistry is amazing and complex, but it is nothing more than a set of soul-less chemical reactions. When the chemical reactions cease, you die. There is no "soul" mixed in with the chemicals.

Where did the first cell come from? Many believers will argue that God magically created the first living cell. This, of course, is silly. The scientific principle that describes the origin of life is called abiogenesis. In the same way that there is no supernatural being involved in evolution, there is no supernatural being involved in abiogenesis. Both the creation of life and the evolution of species are completely natural processes.

There is no "supreme being" in heaven who reached down to create life on Earth or human beings. Nor is that being answering prayers. There is no soul. There is no everlasting life. Science tells us all of these things with complete clarity. God is imaginary.

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Understanding the Rationalizations

Many believers will say, "This is simply untrue. Even though humans are the product of evolution, humans are still special in God's eyes. God manipulated the evolutionary process in some magical way to divinely create human beings, and God magically gives each human being a soul at conception."

In order to see the truth, you need to understand that all explanations involving "magic" are false. The fact is, God had absolutely nothing to do with the creation of life on this planet nor with any part of the evolutionary process. As soon as you accept this fact, you realize that you have no soul. God is imaginary and the biblical concept of everlasting life is a fairy tale.

The fact that we exist as a conscious, intelligent, rational species is an accident of nature that involved no supernatural intervention. There is no part of the scientific explanation of evolution that says, "a mythical supernatural being reaches in right here and guides it." Evolution, by its very nature, is a supernatural-free process.

There is no way to simultaneously "accept evolution" and "believe in an everlasting soul as described in the Bible." If evolution is true, then the Bible describes a creation process that is a complete myth. The concept of a soul is myth in exactly the same way.

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by Marshall Brain

Coverage in the New York Times

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