In and Out of God - God and Evolution

Just a theory

The only encounter that I had in my religious past with the theory of evolution was in Biology class. The teacher stood in front of the class and monotonously droned about black butterflies eventually outnumbering the white butterflies because they were the same colour of tree trunks and that natural selection was the vehicle for this occurrence and that this is what we meant by evolution. Did you feel as bored reading the last sentence as I felt writing it?

I did have a secondary encounter with the theory though, and surely enough it was in a Religious Knowledge class. I usually had docile, risk averse,  Religious Knowledge teachers as far as I can remember, but in Form 5, our teacher was very much involved in his faith. I remember him telling us that evolution was 'just a theory' and that it had recently been disproved. And just like that I was convinced. After all, he was a teacher, and I had much better things to worry about - like getting all 1's in 'CXC' (CSEC). How I got a 1 in Biology baffles me to this day.

It's not until I was 20 years old that the theory reared its head again like an atavism. What better a place to do this than in a group of young Catholic males, motivated from within and burning with passion for intellectual evangelisation. We wanted to save Catholicism from immature theology among the laity and defend Catholicism from creeping atheism. One in our bunch was fond of evolution and I would bounce my skepticism off of him. He dealt with them like a professional. Thanks to his responses, and that wonderful book by Jerry Coyne that he lent me, I now see that evolution is the best explanation for the diversity of life we see on earth.

Get this book.

My acknowledging the truth of evolution did have its accompanying problems, unfortunately. But first, let me give a simple explanation of evolution for those who misunderstand it. Then I will refocus on my struggle with accepting it alongside my faith.

"Life on earth evolved gradually beginning with one primitive species - perhaps a self-replicating molecule - that lived more than 3.5 billion years ago; it then branched out over time, throwing off many new and diverse species; and the mechanism for most (but not all) of evolutionary change is natural selection". 


Take a deep breath. First of all, the theory of evolution does not say anything about the origin of life on earth. That's an entirely different question. Hopefully the following example would help to understand the theory better -

In and Out of God - God and prayer

One Unanswered Prayer

Even though I wasn’t as close to him as everyone else was, his passion for life impacted me enough to suck tears from my eyes when I heard about his passing. He was the first and only person I have ever cried for at a funeral. That probably says something.

I was sitting on a chair in my room one night. The memory is a bit hazy so I can’t say exactly what I was doing, unfortunately. What I do remember, was fearfully answering the phone at 3am in the morning only to have my fear hyperbolically realised. He was in a car accident and was now in the Intensive Care Unit of San Fernando General Hospital. The sleepy voice on the phone advised me, “Pray boy, pray. Jus’ pray.”

The next day, a large group of us were gathered in the prayer room, on our knees, wailing before the Blessed Sacrament. We sang, we danced, and we beat the life out of the goat skin drums in some infantile, ironic hope that it would be transferred to him. We literally begged God, with tears in our eyes and bruised knees as the modern replacements for sackcloth and ashes, to save him. He died that day. Quicker than a thought.

In and Out of God - God and the Bible

These Golden-Brown Pages

Ever since that fateful Saturday morning when the Holy Spirit arrested me and laid me prostrate in his presence, my love for the Bible has never waned. Even today, though I don’t believe in God, I still appreciate the Bible for its wisdom and interesting stories, just not as a holy book. There are some parts of it, however, that could be done away with.

The Bible was the first thing I fell in love with after my conversion experience. I remember rushing home to tell my mother that I had gotten ‘slain’ in the prayer meeting I went to and that I needed to get a Bible of my own. She ridiculed me, saying that I was just playing the fool, but gave me an old, golden-brown paged Bible never the less. I guess it made her happy to see her son actually interested in things holy.

The pages were well oiled, so to speak, and one of them was sticking out of the middle as though trying to get out. It was the beloved Psalm 23 - “Yahweh is my shepherd, I lack nothing.” Half of itself was missing, sadly. An old wives’ tradition was to place a copy of the Word of God at the foot of a child’s crib to ward off any uninvited spiritual guests – emphasis on the word ‘foot.’ The Psalm was unceremoniously ripped across its centre by my own baby-feet, probably while crying for ‘tea-tea’.  

I love that story for its irony. The same feet that were used to tear the Bible apart, were the same feet I would use to “Go forth and preach.” “How lovely on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news!” Isaiah 52:7. My feet were made lovely, thank goodness.

In and Out of God - God and Morality

God is good all the time and all the time God is good.


It is a central tenet of traditional Christianity that God is omnibenevolent or all-good. This very complicated philosophical claim has been neatly packaged into a popular opening line used by many preachers for their homilies/sermons. I am not certain of this, but I think it is a uniquely Caribbean refrain, a testament to our creativity.


Priest/Pastor/Brother/Sister - God is good!
Congregation - All the time!
Priest/Pastor/Brother/Sister - And all the time!
Congregation - God is good!
AMEN!


For about two years of my life as an active Christian, I would join wholeheartedly in this back and forth, call and answer ritual between leader and led. The feeling that one gleans doing something in unison with a large crowd is like no other. You become part of something larger than yourself, so large that you actually lose yourself entirely after being subsumed into the crowd; you're at the mercy of the preacher.



If you remember well from the introduction of this series, I related to you that I had become somewhat of a preacher myself. Being part of the prayer group in a Catholic school, the Principal was more than willing to give some of us the opportunity to lead the school's morning prayers once or twice each week. I also helped other, more experienced preachers, with their own ministries around the country. Eventually I started getting calls to do ministry on my own. I couldn't resist using the refrain to start many of my talks because it gave me a sense of power over the audience. It brought excitement and centered everyone around what I was about to say when the excitement subsided. 

Me giving a talk in my old parish. 

In and Out of God - God and Suffering.

This marks the beginning of a most uncomfortable story. I will be sharing my journey through life, a journey where I moved 'In and Out of God'. Most people know me as a devout Catholic. I was a leader in a prayer group, preached at many retreats, defended the faith publicly without shame, seriously considered becoming a priest, did missionary work, and I became the editor of Vision, the youth supplement of the Catholic News in Trinidad and Tobago. 


I was hoping to save this bit for the end but I realised that some people can't read between the lines very well, and I prefer to be understood than anything else. My journey took me from agnosticism to Catholicism to a hippie-type Catholicism to pantheism back to agnosticism and finally, today I'm an atheist. To be clear, I am an agnostic atheist. I do not think that the existence of God is knowable, at least not currently, but I do not believe in the God I once did or any proposed for me to believe in thus far. 


The journey was not as linear as it would appear to be in the series but it was written this way for clarity and so that a greater number of people would find themselves within the pieces. The titles in the series all take the form 'God and....' because I have noticed that throughout life, we always find ourselves trying painstakingly hard to reconcile our ideas of God with some element of our experience of reality. It results either in a redefining of God, a new perspective on our experiences, or blocking out reality all together and having eyes only for heaven. I experienced all three. And so with that, we begin...

Topics
1) Frosted Flakes and Bloated Bellies - God and suffering.
2) God is good all the time! - God and morality

3) These Golden-Brown Pages - God and the Bible 

4) One unanswered prayer - God and prayer 
5) Just a theory - God and evolution
6) The Final Frontier - God and religious experiences
7) How I try to live my life now