moving, data progress, and evolution vs creations

My husband has found us an apartment! Actually, a townhome. We can get a townhome in Jakkur (N Bangalore) for the same price as our apt in Maryland. 2400 sq feet, even! Amazing. As soon as I give the final okay (I want to know if there’s a playground nearby), we’ll have a future address! I’m thrilled! Then I can ship our stuff over there. It’ll take about 2mo to get there, yikes. So we’ll be living out of a suitcase for 2mo? Sigh. Better to do that here, though, where we are living in someone else’s house, then to try to do it over there, with nothing.

On the data side of life, my former undergraduate’s data is finally cleaned up, I hope. I ran some STRUCTURE analyses on it and it looks really really cool! Populations that are near each other are often quite different, which is interesting. It looks like various source populations can give rise to a new population, whose resulting genetic structure is strongly influenced by the founders, probably until enough other seeds come along to influence the genetic makeup. Very exciting! Now we’ll just be running analyses, putting tables together, and stuff like that. I may actually make my deadline on this paper!

Speaking of deadlines, I’m meeting with my committee in 2wks. I think I’ll have a nice story to tell for the above stuff, but for the overall Oregon data, well, that’s another story. It’s a mess. I won’t even talk about it, ‘cause it’ll depress me.

I took about 2.5 hrs away from work time this morning to pack up various things that are cluttering our small room here in my aunt and uncle’s house. I took them to our storage unit an hour away, in San Bernardino. I hated to use work time for that, but I really can’t take TM with me. Sigh. And my Aunt was getting distressed at the clutter in our room. And I wanted to take pictures for the moving people. Excuses, excuses. At least we have a little more room here! And maybe less of a fire hazard.

On the way to the storage unit, my mom called me, frustrated about various political problems. Eventually we got on the topic of evolution. I’d like to vent a little if I can, though she and I already vented together…

Just because you might have an explanation for a miracle doesn’t mean it didn’t occur. I mean, if you’re praying for help because you have no food in the house, and your neighbor stops by with dinner, do you then figure that your prayer went unanswered, and that God doesn’t exist? I hope not (unless you really don’t want to believe in God in the first place, which is fine with me).

If you find out that the sun only appears to rise in the east and set in the west, but that the earth is actually rotating, does that make it less miraculous?

If you find out that a flint and steel make sparks because of a specific chemical reaction that is reproducible, is it less of a miracle?

With the people thing again – let’s say you’re really really depressed. You get down on your knees and say, Heavenly Father, I can’t take it anymore. My life stinks, and I absolutely hate myself. Please help me! Then you get a phone call from a loving friend who lifts you up. Just because you know what happened doesn’t mean it wasn’t an answer to prayer.

Now, I’m not saying that evolution as we understand it is perfect. That’s ridiculous. Science is inherently a field of discovery, invention, and learning. Just like our understanding of biology, of chemistry, of sociology, or art is always changing, our understanding of creation is also changing. That’s okay. Our personalities change, too. So do our understandings of faith and hope, as we grow or regress in various aspects of our lives. Life is about change and adapting to change and always striving to learn and be better people. But just because our understanding of things is not perfect, there’s no need to say that the premise of our understanding is completely false. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, as it were.

And though even the word evolution seems to be associated with pure evil incarnate to many of my friends, I’d like to suggest that it’s merely an attempt to explain what we see in the world, and not threatening to God in any way, shape or form. God really doesn’t mind if we try to explain things that He does. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t, anyway. I hope he doesn’t abhor learning and growth. That wouldn’t make much sense to me.

And so far as I understand things, He works through natural laws Himself, doesn’t He? So maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to try to be more like Him by understanding everything we can about what He has given us.

And by the way, religion is NOT science. I love the various creation stories in the Bible. But they are not science. They corroborate and support science, or rather, science corroborates and supports them, but they are religious texts, not scientific arguments. Religious texts, so far as I understand, are made to try to communicate to people spiritual ideas. They take real events (though some would argue with me on that one) and attempt to portray the spiritual importance of those events.

If the creation story in the Bible is to be taught in schools, it should be taught in religion classes, as it is an attempt to explain the miracle of creation to anyone who reads the book. It’s kind of like a CD of the Messiah – what a beautiful piece of work! Anyone can listen to it and appreciate it. That is the final product. But if you want to scientifically analyze it, you’ll find wavelengths, chords, overtones, and all kinds of things… you could do all kinds of analyses with the numbers you could generate from that one work of music alone. But the analyses and the science behind them are NOT the music.

The creation story and evolution are two sides of the same coin. There is no inherent conflict. Who decided there was? Whoever it was, they did a good job. All they had to do was stand up on their soapbox and say “Evolutionists Say There Is No God They Are Evil” and voila, evolution is evil. Now, that’s power for you. It’s also a lie. I believe very strongly in God, and I don’t think that trying to figure out how things happen will diminish my faith. That would be sad, now, wouldn’t it?

Okay, I’m not really done, but what can I do. That’s how I feel. I wish we could all just get along. And by the way, if you happen to not believe in God at all, I’m fine with that, too.