A few weeks ago I was babysitting my friend's kids when I overheard Debbie and her son having this conversation at dinner...
B (The neighbor boy): "Did you know humans came from apes?"
Debbie: [Seriously appalled] "Ummm, no we didn't."
B: "Yes, we came from apes."
D: "I DID NOT come from an ape."
B: "But that's how humans were made."
D: "No it's not. GOD made us. We came from Adam and Eve."
B: "But we came from apes."
D: "How do you know? Did you see it happen?"
B: "Uh... I saw pictures."
D: "But did you SEE it happen???"
B: "Well no... but I've seen pictures."
D: "Then how do you know that's how it happened?"
Haha, I love it! He couldn't back up his arguments after that and I kinda felt bad for the kid but I couldn't be more proud of her, totally sounds like a response I would give. She was very confident and calm. It was fun to listen to and it gave Chad and I an opportunity to talk with the kids about what we believe and explain that they're going to learn about evolution in school but know that we believe something different. I find it interesting that her gut reaction to the basics of evolution was repulsion. Honestly that's my reaction too and while I have other reasons for believing how I do I also feel that the Holy Ghost verifies truth and I feel that we can often judge truth by our initial reaction, that first feeling we get when we hear something, and it's just so interesting to me that a child who has no reason whatsoever to believe one way or another would have such a strong reaction to evolution.
1 comment:
When I read your post, I thought of the following story that Boyd K. Packer once told in general conference:
-------------- quote --------------
Some years ago I returned home to find our little children were waiting in the driveway. They had discovered some newly hatched chicks under the manger in the barn. When they reached for them, a protective hen rebuffed them. So they came for reinforcements.
I soon gathered a handful of little chicks for them to see and touch.
As our little girl held one of them, I said in a teasing way, "That will make a nice watchdog when it grows up, won't it?" She looked at me quizzically, as if I didn't know much.
So I changed my approach: "It won't be a watchdog, will it?" She shook her head, "No, Daddy." Then I added, "It will be a nice riding horse."
She wrinkled up her nose and gave me that "Oh, Dad!" look. For even a four-year-old knows that a chick will not be a dog, nor a horse, nor even a turkey. It will be a chicken. It will follow the pattern of its parentage. She knew that without having had a course in genetics, without a lesson or a lecture.
No lesson is more manifest in nature than that all living things do as the Lord commanded in the Creation. They reproduce "after their own kind." (See Moses 2:12, 24.) They follow the pattern of their parentage. Everyone knows that; every four-year-old knows that! A bird will not become an animal nor a fish. A mammal will not beget reptiles, nor "do men gather … figs of thistles." (Matt. 7:16.)
In the countless billions of opportunities in the reproduction of living things, one kind does not beget another. If a species ever does cross, the offspring cannot reproduce. The pattern for all life is the pattern of the parentage.
This is demonstrated in so many obvious ways, even an ordinary mind should understand it. Surely no one with reverence for God could believe that His children evolved from slime or from reptiles. (Although one can easily imagine that those who accept the theory of evolution don't show much enthusiasm for genealogical research!) The theory of evolution, and it is a theory, will have an entirely different dimension when the workings of God in creation are fully revealed.
Since every living thing follows the pattern of its parentage, are we to suppose that God had some other strange pattern in mind for His offspring? Surely we, His children, are not, in the language of science, a different species than He is?
-------------- end quote --------------
Post a Comment