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About the Author:
Ralph D. Winter is a senior mission thinker who has been actively involved from the beginning of the massive mission transition from simply thinking in terms of countries or individuals to thinking in terms of peoples. He is founder of the
U.S. Center for World Mission,
and is currently chancellor of
William Carey
International University. |
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The concept of a worldview ranges from the very comprehensive to the fairly narrow, from ideas about the origin of the entire universe to merely the complex of cultural norms which seem to urge children to do things differently from mainstream society.
There are limits also to what I will fly here as a trial balloon. I don’t have any interest at the moment in the idea that the universe once sprang from a tiny speck of concentrated matter. I would rather concentrate merely on a worldview which would explain at least hypothetically the origin and development of life on this planet from the simplest and earliest forms of life to the most complex, whether large or small. (Complexity and size do not seem to be related. For example, the eyes of a housefly are said to be much more complex than the eyes of human beings.)
Furthermore, I would like for the moment to try to avoid “accepted” religious terminology about a supreme being. The current English word God derives from the forests of northern Europe not from the Bible. It might be possible to proceed here with this exercise without using any traditional religious terms. Concepts yes. Terms no.
I will not limit myself by the need to talk only of the proven existence of this or that. Although I am unaware of anything which could be called an infallible proof of the Big Bang origin of the universe the concept is talked about freely. So it is with the so-called “Record of the Rocks.” I am aware of various ways of interpreting that evidence. However, for this experiment in worldview I will address those who accept it at face-value. I will not try to validate it. At the same time, I don’t feel it necessary or helpful to yield to a blanket assumption that there are not or cannot be intelligent beings other than the forms of life seen on earth, nor that such beings cannot be more than spectators of what goes on.
Also, I do not feel obligated to assign any special meaning to the two words evolution and creation, both of which are widely used quite casually with a vast range of differing definitions. I, thus, have no trouble calling the 20th Century development of the automobile either the “evolution of the automobile or the creation of the automobile,” since neither phrase in itself requires or excludes a Darwinian mechanism of selection—even though it would be preposterous to propose that the development of the automobile came about without intelligent guidance at every point.
Evolution can imply, for at least some people, many different things. Creation can imply instant original creation, sporadic intervention, or continuous or “progressive” creation. However, since both terms are often heavily loaded, I would prefer simply to speak of development.
Finally, I don’t wish to be bothered by a distinction between a natural explanation and a theological explanation. Even Darwin was thinking theologically, apparently, when he felt moved to protect the idea of a good God by postulating a purely automatic hands-off process of evolution to account for the evil in nature:
There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the [parasitic wasp] with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that the cat should play with mice (Hunter 2001, 12).
I would prefer to be as free (as Darwin seemed to be) to live with the idea of an intelligent supreme being existing outside of the sphere of life on earth. That seems to me to be as intelligent an assumption as, for example, the seemingly arbitrary insistence on there being no such a thing.
With these terminological qualifications behind us, then let us speculate with as much evidence as possible and be willing to go beyond present evidence where it seems necessary.
Thus, we begin with a roughly five-billion-year-old planet and a roughly four-billion-year record of life. Two things are curious about this record (in case it happened that way!). |
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