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| The Story of Evolution
"Bobby doesn't believe
in God," said Chris with a frown. "He said that everything just happened for no
reason, and all the smart people know that."
"Bobby doesn't know everything," Mom smiled. "He
must have heard that in school. Would you get the door please?"
"It's Bobby," Chris groaned as he slowly walked to the
door. "Maybe he wants to tell me how dumb I am again."
"That's OK." Mom laughed. "Bring him in and we'll
talk about it."
"Hi Bobby," said Chris. "Mom wants to talk to you.
I told her what you said about God." The warm smell of chocolate chip cookies
filled the room.
Bobby's face turned red as
he stumbled into the living room. "I didn't say, uh, that is, Mr. Short, he's my
earth science teacher, said that everything evolved over billions of years and there is
really no reason for it. It just happened."
"Would you like some cookies?" Mom offered, they are
hot out of the oven."
"Sure," both boys said at once making their way into
the kitchen. They relaxed around the table with warm cookies and cold milk.
"In the beginning, the world was very different than it is
now," said Mom as she pulled her own chair up to the table. "There were no
freezing climates or desert regions, and a canopy of moisture protected new life on the
earth from the sun's harsh rays." Bobby and Chris were content to be quiet and listen
as Mom continued. "The earth was one great land mass, with some rivers and seas, that
later divided into continents by floods, earthquakes, and other natural disasters.
Dinosaurs and mammoths roamed the land, and some of their bones have been uncovered
alongside the bones of people and animals that probably lived at the same time."
"What happened to the dinosaurs?" Chris interrupted.
"No one knows for sure," Bobby answered,
"Maybe people killed
them off the same way that some modern animals have become extinct." said Mom.
"We do know that their remains, some with food in their mouths, were found frozen in
the arctic regions, as though there was a sudden drastic change in the weather. But
last week, I saw a special on the Discovery Channel. They said that there have been
actual dinosaur sightings in Australia recently."
"No way!"
Bobby objected. "Mr. Short said the dinosaurs died in the ice ages billions of
years before there were people."
"That's just Mr.
Short's opinion," Mom teased. "No one can prove it. Where does your Mr. Short
gets his ideas anyway?"
"It's all in the books," said Bobby. "A man named
Charles Darwin wrote a book called The Origin of Species by Natural Selection in
1859. It says that matter has always existed and changed in time. The earth was formed out
of a cosmic dust cloud billions of years ago. Then some chemicals in the sea came together
and formed the first living cell, and all living things came from that one cell."
"Can you believe that?" asked Chris, amazed. "Why
would anyone think something like that?"
Mom interrupted, "Well, they reason that because living
things have a lot in common and nature is changing all the time, by natural selection of
course, they must have all come from the same ancestor. Also, fossils seem to show the
changes in living things over the ages."
"What are fossils?" Chris asked.
"I know," said Bobby, "fossils are images of
once-living things saved in stone, and "natural selection" is the survival of
the fittest."
"But evolution has a missing link," Chris chuckled.
"No one has been able to find an animal that is half evolved into a man, or even a
horse that's half evolved into a cow."
"What about the cave men?" Bobby interrupted.
"Some people thought that the early cave dwellers were the
missing links between apes and men, but modern scientists are rethinking that idea with
the help of new methods and archeologists," Mom continued.
"Scientists who dig up things to learn about history are
called archeologists," Bobby volunteered. "They learn things about ancient
cultures, people, animals, and plants, from fossils, bones, tools, and other artifacts.
"The Neanderthal Man was the first of the possible missing
links," said Mom. "A whole group of Neanderthals were uncovered in Germany,
France, Iraq and Israel. The bones were stronger and the brain bigger than people today.
Some people think the Neanderthals were the sons of an alien race of Nephalim, mighty men,
mentioned in early writings, and they died in the flood. Modern scientists consider the
Neanderthal a normal human being."
Bobby's eyes widened. "There was another early cave tribe
found in France called the Cro-Magnon Man," he argued.
"The Cro-Magnon is now
considered a normal human being much like people today," said Mom, "and the Java
Man, Peking Man, and Piltdown Man were only combinations of human and animal bones put
together, like a puzzle that doesn't fit, by over-zealous evolutionists. Maybe your books
are not up-to-date with the latest discoveries."
"Mr. Short said that
modern archeologists found some bones in Africa that they think are missing links between
men and apes." argued Bobby. "He reads a lot."
"Did Mr. Short tell you
that those bones were later said to be extinct animals unrelated to either man or ape?
Could it be that people, for more than a hundred years, have been looking for proof that
doesn't exist because they don't want to know what really happened?"
"Why wouldn't they want to know?" asked Chris.
"Maybe because if there is a God, who went to the trouble of
making everything, don't you think He would care how we treat each other and the rest of
his creation? People don't want to believe in a God who is big enough the make the
universe, but still involved in their lives. And if they do believe, many people are mad
at God for all the pain in the world." Mom answered.
"I've got to go," said Bobby, and he hurried out the
door.
"That should give him something to think about for
awhile," Chris shrugged, and went to his room.
 
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