The first one I read (well, "read", I suppose) was called Committed, and was written by Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, Love. It's her most recent book, and it chronicles her journey from never wanting to remarry, to now being married again. I found it to be very interesting, and I learned a lot about various cultural views on marriage, the history of marriage, and the like.
I then tried to read CS Lewis' Mere Christianity. After battling for a while with the combination of a skipping CD player and scratched CDs, I gave up on that one.
The third audiobook I'd gotten from the library was Charles Darwin's Origin of Species. That became the only option I had left. So I started in on it.
Yes, Darwin.
Yes, Origin of Species.
Here's why:
I love debating and intelligent discussion. It seems to me that Origin of Species is a frequently discussed and debated book, although my experience has been that very few people who discuss it have actually read the book. [much like the Bible, which, for the record, I'm also in the process of reading the whole way through.]
Before I started reading Origin of Species, I had some strong (albeit uninformed) opinions about it.
The bottom line was that I hated Darwin. He was an ignorant fool who made outrageous claims solely to upset people. In my mind, he was the Hitler of Christianity.
So when I started the book, I was ready for my beliefs to be challenged, and for my core to be shaken.
What I found instead was that Darwin was a very calculated, methodical, and scientific man. His claims make sense, and not only that, but they also strengthened my largely Creationist beliefs.
The book's format was pretty formulaic: it was essentially, "I did these experiments, found these results, and therefore came to these conclusions." Darwin didn't come across as a know-it-all like I expected; instead, the book read like a friend telling a friend about some interesting new things they'd been learning. Overall, it's a very exploratory retelling of "this is what I've been researching, and here's what I've found," rather than an in-your-face, "this is what is true."
I agree with 95% of what Darwin says in Origin of Species. All the conclusions he reaches align with my beliefs, with the exception of the infamously controversial way he interprets the way all his evidence works together to prove that all species come from a common ancestor.
The evidence he uses to back up that claim boils down to his observances that species change gradually over time, rather than changing all at once. He implies that this new theory should supersede the creation story as told in Genesis. What Darwin fails to take into account, though, is that a day on Earth is a different length than a day on Jupiter, for instance. Why should we necessarily limit the story of creation to Earth's norms when it's a recounting of the creation of the universe? When the Bible states that fish and birds were made on the fifth day and that God created humans on day six, I don't believe that those events occurred 24 hours apart. In fact, I believe that they didn't occur 24 hours apart.
Darwin's theory doesn't disprove Genesis 1; instead, it reminded me that God is bigger than this finite world that I know.
Darwin dedicates much of the book to his argument for survival of the fittest. His premise is essentially what I'd always heard: that the most healthy/beautiful/fast/whatever of any given species is the most likely to outlast other members of the same species. What I didn't know about Darwin's concept of survival of the fittest, however, was that species are often modified (over the course of several generations, of course) in a way that causes beneficial behavioral change.
If the new beneficial behaviors don't start until after modification has occurred, why do these adaptations occur? While Darwin doesn't answer this question in his book, I can't see any reason aside from a higher power dictating these changes because He knows they will benefit the species. Bottom line: God has a steady hand in evolution.
From the outset of the book Darwin is clear that he uses the term "create" loosely. He advises his reader to take the term with a grain of salt, saying that he is unsure of whether or not a higher power has created the world.
Boom.
Darwin ≠ Hitler of Christianity.
{well, not necessarily. but his clause about creation is definitely a point in his favor.}
While I don't know anything specific firsthand, I've heard that Darwin eventually renounced his claim that all species stem from a common ancestor. So perhaps this entire post is in vain and is a repeat of what Darwin said toward the end of his life. For whatever reason, though, Darwin's stance in Origin of Species is what he's most remembered for, and that's the Darwin that I had in my mind before I started the book.
Regardless, I learned quite a bit from reading (..."reading") Origin of Species, and it really caused me to think. Overall, it reaffirmed my belief that God oversees everything, wants what is best for us, and has a constant hand in our lives.
