Where did we come from? - Where are we doing?

As someone brought up and nurtured with Chrisitian principles, it is quite challenging to embark on an inevitable path to discover the theory of evolution and its counterintuitive claims that shake that very foundation of our christian belief, “God created everything and we all have an ultimate destiny”.

Here, I would like to do a comparative analysis based on my point of view on the bible and on the novel, Origin.

Dan Brown’s book on origin explains the continuum in evolution since Charles Darwin’s origin of life. In his book, he pointed out that evolution can have significant effects over a long span of time. For example, man evolved from Australopithecines over a time span of 3.2 million years, which is provable with some of the oldest bones such as Lucy's, which by far the oldest and dates back to 3.2 million years.

Lucy’s cranial structure proves that evolution did occur, such as:

1. The cranial capacity is smaller than that of modern humans.

2. The brow ridges are prominent, which are bony protrusions above the eyes. In modern humans, brow ridges are much less pronounced.

3. The overall shape of Lucy’s skull is more elongated from front to back compared to the rounder, globular shape of modern human skulls.

This effect is a total sum of results over some millions of years!

He also made some indispensable claims on where we are going.

Basically his book was focused on answering two of the most fundamental questions that linger since the dawn of civilization, “Where did we come from?” and “Where are we going?”.

Now, let's take a stance of comparison between the two different sources: the biblical perspective and the viewpoint presented in 'Origin'.

From biblical perspective, these two questions are answered as follows:

1) Where did we come from?

"Then God said, 'Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.' So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them." Genesis 1:26-27

2) Where are we going?

"Then I saw 'a new heaven and a new earth,' for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Look! God's dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.' He who was seated on the throne said, 'I am making everything new!' Then he said, 'Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.'" Revelation 21:1-5

The bible tells us that we are God’s creation and God promises us of paradise, our ultimate destiny.

From the Origins perspective, this two questions are answered as follows:

1) Where did we come from?

According to the Origin, humans evolved through the natural process known as abiogenesis. Abiogenesis is the idea that life emerged from non-living matter through a series of chemical reactions. One of the key experiments supporting this theory is the Miller-Urey experiment, which demonstrated that amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, could spontaneously form under conditions simulating the early Earth's atmosphere. However, one can always argue with Louis Pasteur experiment, “living organisms cannot originate from inanimate objects”.

2) Where are we going?

In Origin, Dan Brown, through his imaginary character Edmond Kirsch, proposed a future where rapid technological progress continues to shape human society. He discusses the accelerating pace of innovation in areas like artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, and quantum computing, which are expected to have a profound impact on various aspects of human life. He proposed that AI will eventually be the next highly intelligent and adaptable creatures that will have a profound impact on the ecosystem. That raises some of the questions regarding the dark side of AI and its future.

Origin tells us that life has a beginning, independent of God’s intervention. It also tells us of an endless cycle of evolutionary process, that is the dying of one dominant species and the birth of the next dominant species, just like once in history, bacteria ruled over the face of the earth because of their ability to live in hostile conditions. After bacteria began the era of dinosaurs because of their sheer strength and size. Then came the human era where men reign because of their high cognitive ability.

From this analysis, I firmly would like to propose that the human mind is structured in a way that it is always inclined to find answers to every possible question that arises. Different cultures always have their own legends and myths that answer anomalies found within their experiences. Different cultures have their own religious beliefs about nature and their existence. As ideas and knowledge were improved and enhanced, mankind came up with more advanced ways of answering those ever existing questions, where such scientific and mathematical models were built around, with a more satisfactory approach towards answering these questions.

The Bible was written with a similar mindset, “To answer those ever existing questions”, but with a more philosophical approach. Then begin the scientific method of answering those questions.
After all, I guess the Bible and sciencefd are trying to accomplish the same objective but with different approaches, therefore both should be appreciated and should be applied where necessary.