Refining My Understanding: Origin of Variation, Origin of Life, and Origin of Matter

Through the helpful interactions on Why I do not believe in macro-evolution, I have learned that I have conflated three notions of origins. With this post, I begin to unscramble the egg.

Origin of Variation

• Looks at the genetic variation among living things, specifically the ultimate and continuing source of this variation
• Science-under-the-canopy (SciUTC*) offers a purely material origin: biological evolution.
• Christian theology offers a divine and material origin: God created the initial types and kinds of living things (Gen 1) and the continuing processes of adaptation by genetic variation. I hold that these continuing processes occur within type and kind, rather than between type and kind.

Origin of Life

• Looks at the beginnings of what we know as life
• One SciUTC explanation is abiogenesis (“spontaneous generation”), but Pasteur (Benton 15) refuted this.
• Another is the Oparin-Haldric model, which theorizes that life arose from chemical reactions in the earth’s early atmosphere (Benton 24).
• A third set of theories offer that “RNA was the first genetic molecule” (Benton 26).
• Christian theology** claims that God created life (Gen 1) by fiat, speaking it into existence.

Origin of Matter

• Looks at the beginnings of matter, space, and time
• SciUTC offers the various versions of the Big Bang theory and the Steady State model as possible explanations.
• Christian theology offers that God created matter, space, and time by fiat; the specific mechanisms are less clear.

Next week: Origin of Variation: basic concepts and theological significance.

Resources
Evolution: A Very Short Introduction, by Brian and Deborah Charlesworth (Oxford University Press, USA (2003), Edition: 1, Paperback, 168 pages)
Cosmology: A Very Short Introduction, by Peter Coles (Oxford University Press, USA (December 6, 2001), 152 pages)
The History of Life: A Very Short Introduction, by Michael J. Benton (Oxford University Press, USA; 1 edition (December 15, 2008), 144 pages)
Genesis 1-2

NOTE:
If I have misunderstood or misrepresented an SciUTC position, please kindly leave a correction in the comments.

*SciUTC: looks at the substance and processes of the material universe without reference to immaterial (AKA “divine”) inputs.
**The Christian Theology perspectives in this post are my own. Dialogue welcome.


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Tag(s): ecclesiology church christian theology