This letter is a response to a reply I wrote to a previous letter from the same author.  Here is a link to the previous letter.

11.16.2001 A reader declares that I am evil and is certain that I perform evil in my personal life.  He writes that without God there is no love and no morality, only chaos.  

Received 12.10.2001

It really kills me how you people use so loosely the word evolved. But neither you nor any scientist can explain how is it that one atom becomes a molecule and keeps on changing to become a living organism. I will tell u again, "matter" that is atoms CAN NOT THINK, FEEL, CREATE THOUGHT, LET ALONE WANT TO SURVIVE.

Atoms don't think, they don't say, oh, we must survive or we will dye or perish. Survival of the fittest doesn't apply to humans or animals, humans and animals were design to follow a set of rules, with the exceptions of human, who have free will.

If there was no God, there would be nothing, and if by any infinitley remote chance that something would really had evolved, it would only be on very stupid cell or maybe not even a cell, that's too complex, probably just some stupid chemical, and believe me, it wouldn't have evolved into anything else, because it is just stupid matter, nothing else.

You people talk about evolution, as if it had a conscious mind. That is why scientist can't even explain conciousness.

There is no logical explanation or reason in the universe, why an atom would one to survice and create a race, if an atom doesn't know anything, it's just energy or liveless matter. I could go on and on about this.

Life can only come from life, consciouness can only come from consciouness, and both of them come from God, he is the source of all life, and that's just the way it is. We were design to believe in God, that's why we seek and look for him.

Why don't you read the bible and ask God to enlighten you. If you truly are a person that knows how to love. Because remember that true love is not a feeling, it is a act, a action, not a reaction.

Jesus said, if the dead don't rise, then eat, drink and be happy, because tomorrow you will die.

"The fool had said in his heart, there is no God."

My Reply:

Actually, probably anyone who has taken a college course in organic chemistry can explain how molecules "survive or perish," but let me start with a very simple example.

Suppose you have a cupboard at home filled with assorted mismatched coffee cups. If there were an earthquake and half of the coffee cups broke, most likely the sturdiest cups would be in the remaining half. If you re-stocked the cupboard and there were another earthquake and the same thing happened, you would again be eliminating the "weaker" cups, leaving the strongest cups in the population in the cupboard. It is survival of the fittest.

Let me use a much bigger example of non-living "survival." Imagine a young universe, one of fiercely expanding fiery chaos and violent celestial collisions. As it expanded and cooled, masses of gas and liquid began to aggregate into spheres, large ones holding smaller ones in their gravity, creating infant solar systems. The asteroid belt and the many craters on the bodies in our current solar system are evidence that there were clearly more masses orbiting the sun than we have today. What we see today, in neatly spaced out orbits that never cross paths, is clearly what is left. The stellar masses that were on collision courses have collided and our current balanced solar system is filled with the survivors.

Molecules are different because they are volatile and react with each other. While you are right that molecules and non-living things have no will to survive, there are some combinations of atoms that are more stable than others. Some molecules, in the presence of other component molecules will produce copies of themselves. They are called replicators. These self-replicating organic molecules may well be the origin of life. Replicators competed for the same resources (other atoms and molecules) and the most stable and most effective at producing copies of themselves dominated the primordial soup. If a copying error produced a replicator that was incrementally more effective at replicating than its predecessor, its population would grow faster and monopolized more resources. And if one replicator produced a component required by another replicator, a pairing of the two would make them even more effective. Or one replicator might react with other molecules breaking them down into components another replicator required, which is analogous to the way living things break down food into components they need to survive.

DNA, which is present in every living thing on Earth, is likely to have been one of the most successful of these replicators. The most primitive cells today, prokaryotes which have no nucleus to regulate their activity, may just be symbiotic combinations of highly adapted replicators.

I realize that I won't convince you of anything, but I hope to impart the idea that there are answers to the issues you raise.  Many people fear evolution because they feel it threatens humanity's exclusive role in the universe, but I don't think evolution and Christianity are incompatible.  In fact I would wager that most Christians accept evolution as fact.

More generally, if things do not evolve, why would God create some creatures with vestigial organs that serve no purpose for their species, but did for a predecessor?  There are blind cave fish with eyes that are useless, men have nipples, marine mammals such as dolphins and whales still have pelvic girdles, which land mammals use to attach their femurs (the thigh bone) to their bodies.   Why would God bother?

Take care and thanks for writing.