Misunderstandings Part 1: Evolution and the Image of God

Ok so our first two common misconceptions are that all Christians (this is the key part) believe that:

* Evolution is a lie / in some way false
and that
* We, being created in God's Image, are somehow superior, all-powerful, in charge of our own destiny or in some way better.

Firstly, I'd like to emphasise this point about it being all Christians. There are Christians (especially in the US for some reason) who are Creationists (i.e. believe that Genesis is the literal description of how the world was created) and who believe us to be God's steward within it. However, as a general rule they are a minority. A significant, and vocal minority: but a minority none-the-less.

Interestingly, the idea of Creationism is a relatively new one. While I wouldn't wish to state the example that Darwin was a Christian (as I understand this was more cultural than spiritual), creationism did not become a popular thesis until well into the latter part of the 20th century. As a general rule Christians didn't necessarily doubt the validity of Genesis but the absence of any alternative meant there was no reason to try and explain the slightly-hazy understanding of it that they had. The truth is that plenty of scientists throughout the world are Christians, and plenty of Christians see no reason why the theory of evolution and Genesis should be in conflict with this. Unfortunately, we tend not to be the ones who jump up and down and make a great deal of noise about this, meaning that the world as a whole seems far less aware that we exist.

There are obviously a number of reasons for this:

• Genesis is often seen as being poetic, or a metaphor
• The series of events within Genesis corresponds to an astonishing degree with the series of events known to have occurred in the birth of our world, and the evolution of life. (Down to my latest and most exciting discovery, that it even puts plants with seeds (that is to say conifers etc) before plants with fruits with seeds inside them (or flowering plants). What is so miraculous about it is that all of this was written a long time before we knew these things.
• Not all Christians think of God as an "interventionist" God. Many are happy with the idea that he started the ball rolling, while knowing the end result, and then sat back for a while.

Likewise the idea that man created God "in His own image", while universally accepted does not give us a great deal of indication as to what that means. What is it that sets us apart from the other animals? And how did God "create" us? There are several options available:

Firstly, God may have (in the way that Creationists believe) have created us from scratch, knowing the end result. This is often referred to as Intelligent Design.

Alternatively, God may have known at our inception what evolution would create, and then just sat back and watched it happen. (Not a big fan of this one myself - seeing as God is so intimately involved in our lives I can't see him taking a back seat for 4 billion years...

A final hypothesis is that at some point God chose the race of humans to be special. At some point he gave us a consciousness, a record of actions: a soul if you like. The awareness that we so often hear about in the Garden of Eden, following "Original Sin" (although that's a whole different ball game!). Our knowledge of our own actions gives us the potential to be Christ-like. This gives both the chance for God to make us in His own image (because at a specific point we became human, and His) and for evolution to have proceeded quite happily until this point.

Of course there's also the option that even our conscience is a part of evolution and that we were simply chosen because God likes us best.

That's all a bit rambly and waffly and I shall probably redraft this, but I suppose that is chapter 1.