It remains a fact that to reduce** all **human behaviour to physical evolution is unChristian and atheistic because it implies that we lack free will and moral responsibility…
. . . God creates by wisdom and love . . .
Some thoughts on the above:
We exist in the present. It is in the moment, that we perceive think and act, and because what is happening is not disconnected from what was and will be, we can come to know where we are and where we were, and be able to predict with a certain accuracy what will happen in the future. This happens because, in an ever-changing now, we have a view of the past through its remnants: our memories, books, photographs, artifacts, bones, and going further back, fossils. We have some idea as to how things work within the timeframe of our search. The assumption is that there exist constant relationships between things that are just that - constant, irrespective of time. An example is the speed of light; we cannot know but it seems reasonable to believe it was always so. Some things change, and they do so as a result of factors which underlie the change and are outside the change. In terms of nature, they can be said to be eternal, albeit not transcendent to it; they are nature.
We know the universe was different at the time of the Big Bang because we know something of the basic structure of matter and we can follow its history back in the sky. We surmise that at some point at the beginning of the universe, space did not exist, nor did the sub-atomic, but all this did start and grow. And, it did so in a step-wise fashion: atoms, stars and galaxies, molecules, living beings and finally us.
As an atom is more than the light of which it is formed, so too is a living soul from its material base. An atom is one, an amoeba is one, we are one being able to see, feel, think and act, made of many parts but one being. The point of contention here has been about how it is that we as persons emerged on earth.
A biochemical understanding approaches life in terms of the properties of molecules containing Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, and Oxygen atoms. Within that field of study, we examine the ways that simple to very, very complex molecules interact to form living cells, tissues and organisms, structurally and physiologically. Applying this knowledge to ourselves and our origins sheds light on our participation within the material world. If we exclude any other influences but the physical of which we are aware, life cannot be but a fluke, a random occurrence of substances coming together in very unique and extraordinarily unlikely ways. Some people are satisfied with this response, believing this is how it works. But, there is another issue with that approach, and that is the beingness of creatures. Why your dog a dog, something more and different than a mere vast collection of swirling organic processes? And, if that in fact that were its true reality, where does the illusion of dog exist? In which realm, if the physical world were all there is.
We can posit the existence (if that word applies) of a nonmaterial external primordial cause bringing into existence at the beginning of the universe, the constants of nature that are necessary for the possibility of all the diverse forms of life. But, we are faced with the improbability of and no way to explain the growing complexity that we see in the progression of organisms from unicellular, to plants, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, and us, here discussing the matter of our being. The idea of a supreme clockmaker, offering the initial push that set the universe in motion, having somehow, through no known process, most definitely not randomness, planned for this unlikeliest of happenings and remaining totally transcendent is not rational.
There are other possibilities; perhaps it is the universe which creates itself in every moment. The supreme identity and eternal mind flowers as the growing complexity of evolution, being and not being.
It is not quite clear how the least connected to the realities of personal existence, the driest, purely intellectual approach to life that is the Theory of Evolution has captured and shackled the modern imagination. It is quite odd that this understanding of our origins, which has nothing to say about personal being or the mind, was heavily influenced by Descartes’ argument that began with and rests on a statement connecting thinking and the awareness of one’s own being.
In the end, we are left to contemplate the revealed truth which puts together all the illusory half responses above, into a true vision of a loving God, as a Trinity, who brings all creation, all time and all space and all beings into existence within His ocean of infinite compassion. He did so as is clearly stated in Genesis, to be understood through the grace of the Holy Spirit who guides us in our relationship with God, along the Way that is Jesus Christ.
TLDNR: What those two guys say in the quotes above.
