Eternity, A Billion Years, and Evolution

The NYTimes is in on the talk about evolution and intelligent design. I think that intelligent design, if it's just an attempt to introduce creationism into the school system, is probably not a very good idea. But on the other hand, I've thought for a long time that evolution could be one way that God works in the world.

This op-ed piece from the NY Times makes you stop to think about how long, really, the planet has been around, and how long, really, evolution has had to work itself out. It suggests to me that God is indeed very patient.

In the Brian McLaren book I just finished (A Generous Orthodoxy) he points out that for Christians living 100,000 years after Christ, we will appear to have been very close to the origins of the faith. For me, that amount of time is hard to imagine, much less 1 million or 1 billion years. Wow.