Charles Darwin lived from 1809 to 1882. He was born the same year as Abraham Lincoln.

Darwin certainly had a fruitful mentality. He lived in a time, however, when we still had a limited understanding of the world as we have come to know it today through modern science. It was only probably 50 years or so before Darwin’s birth that Ben Franklin was fooling with a kite in wonderment of the lightning.

Thomas Edison, who made some of the first uses of electricity, like the light bulb, was born just 38 years after Darwin was. So our industrial revolution, and other newfound electrical solutions are really quite new. The 19th century was a century of growth in many ways, including the Civil War, but people knew little about the modern world, and where it’s progress was taking humanity. They laid foundations and experimented with many things, which brought about modern science, but dreamed very little where it would lead us.

I finished high school before television was invented. Since I was born, knowledge has virtually exploded. We now realize that impersonal, fixed, unchanging, laws govern everything. The question is not only where did life come from, but where did these laws which control everything, including life, come from. That is the question we must answer to understand our existence. We must understand more fully the authority that controls our world and our lives. Our salvation is our ability to understand.

Darwin’s theory of evolution does not start with a beginning. Science cannot give an explanation for the actual creation of anything. Science teaches that you cannot create something from nothing, or make something disappear into nothingness. So they start with a very small orb that explodes to create the universe. I often wonder, as the universe is so big, why they didn’t start with a much bigger orb? Of course if there was nothing else to compare it to, its size would be meaningless. Big or small are only comparative measurements. If the theory of evolution is precisely true, and I suppose it may be, it was the inevitable result of the controlling laws, which govern the behavior of everything.

I don’t believe the theory of evolution ever happened. One thing that seems obvious is that nothing can be made from nothing, unless it is possible to have been created. Then the question becomes, who or what created the creator? The obvious answer can only be that something always existed, and everything will never suddenly disappear. That to me is truly the only possible answer.

The greatest thing which modern science has brought to the modern world is that everything is governed and controlled by laws that cannot be changed or modified. What we need now is some new aged Darwin to explain where all of these controlling, laws come from. Certainly no one would say that there was once a day when 2 x 2 was not 4, or that some day it will not be.

The laws that control everything, like laws of mathematics, chemistry, electricity and physics, certainly didn’t crawl out from under a bed of slime. The most fascinating thing about them is that they all operate in concert, to produce a well regulated universe; just as a large variety of musical instruments, properly directed and tuned, produce a unity of sound in the celebration of a great symphony by a master composer.

Law is simply reality, the indisputable fact of creation and existence. Without the cooperating, predictable, action of laws, everything would be mayhem, and nothing could be predictable, or understandable. I cannot understand how educated people who work with these laws, can overlook this fact. I suppose we see what we look for. Sometimes to get what we want, we try to twist reality a bit.

The uneducated, undisciplined, human mind is the only thing on this earth that is not predictable. That in a nutshell, is why we have so much trouble. May God bless America.

Richard Westlund is a Collins resident. Send comments to editorial@observertoday.com