If evolution is true, then we all have a living distant relative that is an eggplant.
And a living seahorse, a living milkweed, a living scorpion, a living fungus, a living skunk, living poison ivy and on and on. If evolution is true all existing life forms branch from the same family tree and those that still exist are all directly related. You can trace your ancestry back directly down one path and then forward directly up another path to that living eggplant somewhere alive on planet earth today.
Like the descendants of your grandparents’ other kids, your relatives include descendants from other common ancestors, and there is a common ancestor between you and every other current living thing. That’s evolution, and if you really believe that you must imagine dinner time very differently: plant or animal, isn’t it relatives eating distant relatives?
We can almost believe we have a common ancestor with apes. Apes kind of look like us, a bit less attractive and a lot more furry, but the resemblance is not totally lost. When evolutionary thinking is limited to considering that common ancestor it is not totally unbelievable.
But what about the idea that we have a common ancestor with an eggplant living somewhere in the world today? Is that believable? Is it really plausible that sometime in the distant past there was a living organism like a bacterium with DNA building instructions for that bacterium and that bacterium replicated such that the DNA of one line of its offspring was randomly re-programmed to create a human while another line was randomly re-programmed to create an eggplant? That is what must be true if evolution of all existing life forms from a first living organism is true. And that’s what the theory of evolution maintains.
Truth does not need to be believable. Certainly the idea that God made humans in His image can be unbelievable. But our hearts and minds instinctively resonate to the ring of truth. We can deny truth, mask truth, close our eyes and ears to truth, but the ring can be felt through it all, relentlessly reverberating through our entire being and deep into our heart and mind despite our defenses against it.
Does it ring true to your heart and mind that somewhere in the distant past you have a great, great, …, great grandparent that is also a great, great, …, great grandparent to an eggplant? Does it ring true that you and that eggplant living now somewhere in the world were created equally blindly for no reason whatsoever and therefore exist today with an equal claim to purpose, dignity, and worth in the world?
Or does it ring true to your heart and mind that you are created by God for a purpose, you have a special dignity, and you have intrinsic worth in the world?
Trust your heart and mind on this one.
Think about it.
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