Did God create evolution?

One of the most pressing concerns in the interaction between science and religion is the way God acts, and if God acts at all.

Most of my fellow atheists question God’s intervention in the world because it seems rather absent, especially when we look into the deaths resulting from natural catastrophes or incurable diseases. Why doesn’t God save that child that family… where is He?

I’ve always thought about this. As a Christian, I believe in a God who is Love, but when I look at the wrongs and evils in the world, I understand the pertinence of the question.

The world doesn’t stop. It keeps evolving no matter what we think of it. If the tectonic plates “need” to release stress, they’ll move and generate a tsunami. We’re bombarded every day by cosmic rays, and if one “decides” to change a bit (0 into 1, or 1 into 0) in an airplane system, a plane might fall.

Whenever contingent events result in the death of someone, we realize the world has a life on its own and there’s nothing we can do about it. However, from the tectonic movement of the plates, land emerged on this planet. Enough to open the possibility of animals evolve. A supposedly asteroid hit the Earth 65 million years ago, enabling the evolution of life until we arrived. If you think it through, bad or good things are part of what evolution means. It’s just how the world is and it is quite beyond our control.

It is difficult to be part of this world because it involves the risk of experiencing bad things happening, but also good things. The excitement in the life on this planet includes pain, suffering, death, surprise, pleasure, beauty, wonder, all in a random mix we only understand after history unfolds and we reflect upon it.

So, if God created this world, and evolution is the way the universe unfolds in time by itself - and I say by itself because we’re able to explain it through science-, we could argue that God created evolution and it is God’s way of intervening in the world.

The word “intervening” is anthropomorphic. We question God’s intervention because that’s our way of being in the world. Looking at the ecological crisis, I ask myself where did that led.

We need to change our mindset. For God to be God mean He is an all-determining-reality. Because there is something rather than nothing is a sign of God “interacting” with the world. Also, the wonder and surprise we often experience in our lives is a sign that God “participates” in the world. Thinking about the deeper meaning of the cosmos makes me wonder how a sunset can silence my mind and I “somehow” listen in that moment an inner voice leading me to contemplation.

We question God’s intervention, but seem to forget his interaction and participation through the evolution driver he created. I think this results from the lack of interaction and participation (being part of) in the world. We are a species capable of transforming the land in ways a tectonic pressure release never would, but we lack the humility in recognising how young we are in the history of the universe. How little we know about its hidden truths. How small we are in the vastness of the cosmos. We should keep questioning God’s action, but I sense we’ll only understand it when we accept being part of a history we cannot control, but navigate through the seas of time.