“Imperfection” in evolution’s process:

Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan, in their book, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, write: “…every part of the body, every aspect of life, is instructed by a particular DNA sequence. Every sequence is vulnerable to mutation. … Most [mutations] are harmful, a few are helpful, and even the helpful ones may–like the sickle cell mutation–represent a tradeoff, a compromise. This is a principal means by which life evolves–exploiting imperfections in copying despite the cost. It is not how we would do it. It does not seem to be how a Deity intent on special creation would do it. The mutations have no plan, no direction behind them; their randomness seems chilling; progress, if any is agonizingly slow. The process sacrifices all those beings who are now less fit to perform their life tasks because of the new mutation…” [p.84]

Comment: The authors point to the imperfection, even the cruelty perhaps, of the evolution process. They aver that this is not the way “we” (i.e., humans) would do it. However, can we be so sure that our conception of the best way to do something, our idea of beauty or excellence in design, is better? What if a presumed “Deity intent on special creation” were to have made the process the way we think it should better have been made? What if there were no imperfections in the process, every step predetermined and carried out according to a “perfect” plan? Then would not this process in time evolve upward to the complete human being, a being having no power of choice? Every thought, every action carried out according to the plan of Someone else.

Yet we hold that humans DO have the power of choice. It is the one thing we do have that enables us to take advantage of opportunity or save us from calamity, if such should strike. That is, in the event of circumstances or events that hurt us or others we have the power to choose our response: inner peace or outward retaliation. Moreover our individual maturity is aided by the lessons we learn when we make the wrong response and must deal with the consequences. Learning by mistake, by imperfections. Or make the right response and garner the benefit for ourselves or others.

The power of choice is also the power to respond to the actions of the Deity who has allowed life, all life, to come into existence and then be driven by random, seemingly mindless alterations in its mechanisms, from the chemical behavior of the precursors to our DNA all the way up to the process of human maturation. The power to choose to believe in this Deity. To believe that despite appearances things will work out in accordance with a Divine plan, inscrutable as that plan may be. At least in an ultimate sense, acknowledging that many things that happen to us are out of our control. Except how we respond. That, and perhaps that alone is what WE control, what we CAN control. Our power to love instead of hate, to trust instead striking back, to believe instead of despair.