If evolution is true, then we were created by one of only two modes of creation.
What do we know of how anything on earth is created? Forget evolution for a moment; in general, how is anything on earth created by anything or anyone?
For example, consider the complex pattern created by shards of glass strewn on the floor from a shattered mirror. The various pieces come to rest to create an arrangement of shapes in a specific spatial arrangement in what we would call a random pattern.
Consider also the creation of a crystal. A crystal is created when certain kinds of atoms are acted on under certain conditions to create what we can call a highly ordered solid lattice pattern.
Finally, consider an anonymous painting of an individual who is recognizable in the finished picture. The placement of the various shapes and colors, brush strokes, lighting and shading all combine to create what we would call a portrait.
How can we think about the origin of the various creations described above? If we were to speak in terms of “modes” of creation, how many can we identify?
We might be tempted to identify three modes of creation: (1) random order as the chance result of a physical stimulus event (the pattern of shattered glass); (2) necessary (or contingent) order as a result of natural laws (the crystal lattice); and (3) directed (or noncontingent) order (the portrait).
Certainly our human experience finds the three modes of creation identified above scientifically sound.
But a bit of further scientific thought reveals that we we experience only two modes of creation on earth: necessary (or nature-dependent) and directed (nature-independent).
The first two examples above both are examples of order in nature that is necessary, sometimes referred to as contingent. Such patterns or order arise by necessity based on the laws of nature. The shards of broken glass appear in the pattern they do because natural laws such as gravity acted in accordance with Newtons laws of motion to constrain each shard to fall into place precisely as natural laws dictated. Likewise, crystals are found in their ordered state because their constituent atoms simply obey the natural laws imposed on them as they are constrained into place.
In each of the first two examples, the resulting creations arose in nature merely as atoms in motion constrained by natural laws that they necessarily obey. For energy nerds, both of the first two examples are merely results of the Second Law of Thermodynamics: the order evident in each was created by matter in nature necessarily reduced to its lowest entropy where it remains constrained.
But what about the third example?
How are we to characterize the third example of creation? Did the portrait arise on Earth as the result of actions constrained by natural forces to necessarily obey natural laws? If we did not know the artist and did not see the artist in action, how would we know?
We know because we have a lived history of human existence in which all such creations never arise as mere atoms in motion dependent on and constrained by natural laws. Everything in the sensory-populated database of our mind informs us that a portrait did not arise naturally.
Portraits, we know, are examples of creations on Earth that arise in nature, but against nature, in a sense. Like seeing water running uphill or hot air settling down in cold, observing such creations force us to confront the spectacle of a creation that arose by something working against nature to facilitate in nature something that nature alone cannot do.
Thus, we see in all the creations on Earth two modes of creation: dependent creations caused by nature acting alone according to its laws; and non-dependent creations caused by something acting against nature to create something nature alone cannot.
We humans are creations on Earth.
What mode of creation is responsible for us?
Think about it.
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