Questions people ask about awareness, ego, and kindness
These are short answers to common questions. If the ideas resonate, the clearest next step is the ebook.
Is there a way to think about science, sacred story, nature, and human consciousness as part of one larger picture?
In Evolving Awareness, Brian Joel Jolley argues that science, sacred story, nature, and human consciousness are parts of one larger picture — not separate domains that politely avoid each other. Science describes patterns and processes in the natural world. Sacred story expresses relationship, symbolism, and meaning. Evolving Awareness explores how these are descriptions of the same underlying reality at different resolutions.
How can I accept science without rejecting the creation story in Genesis?
The tension between accepting science and reading Genesis seriously dissolves once you stop treating Genesis as a competing account of physical events. In Evolving Awareness, Brian Joel Jolley argues that the days of creation describe an ordered progression — each stage of awareness building on the one before, the way steps in a process depend on each other. The sequence is real and the order matters. What the days are not is a calendar.
How can I talk about the creation story with someone who accepts evolution?
For someone who accepts evolution, it can help to frame the creation story as stages of unfolding development rather than as a literal 7-day account of events. In that view, the sequence of creation still matters. What changes is the assumption that each “day” refers to a 24-hour period. The days of creation can then be understood as broad phases in the development of life, awareness, and consciousness, unfolding in an order that may be more consistent with science than many people realize. In Evolving Awareness, Brian Joel Jolley argues that the creation story in Genesis can be understood as the progression and evolution of consciousness, bringing the scientific and sacred worldviews into closer alignment.
Is creationism necessarily incompatible with evolution?
The conflict between creationism and evolution depends on how Genesis is read. Read it as a literal account of physical events and the tension with evolutionary biology is obvious. Read it as an ordered, sequential progression of awareness emerging through nature — each stage building on the one before — and Evolving Awareness argues the conflict dissolves: Genesis and evolutionary biology are describing the same underlying process from different vantage points.
Are humans truly separate from nature, or is that a cultural illusion?
The separation is felt, not real — an orca in captivity still belongs to the sea. In Evolving Awareness, Brian Joel Jolley argues that modern civilization creates the conditions for feeling separate from nature: food appears without contact with soil, temperature is regulated, shelter is sealed from the living systems outside. But that experience of distance doesn't change what humans actually are — part of one interconnected living system that was never not there.
I feel disconnected from nature. How can I reconnect with it?
Reconnection begins with two shifts: one in mindset, one in practice. The mindset shift is recognizing that human beings are not separate from the rest of life — they are part of one interconnected living system. The further back you look, the clearer that connection becomes: first among families, then among species, ultimately among all living things.
The practical shift is to spend time being present with nature — not just passing through it, but noticing it, studying it, caring for it. Modern life insulates people from the living systems that sustain them, but the connection remains. In Evolving Awareness, Brian Joel Jolley explores how a deeper awareness of that connection can restore a sense of belonging and responsibility.
What is the point of self-awareness?
If self-awareness emerged from nature, then it may be one of nature’s own ways of becoming visible to itself. For hundreds of millions of years, life has been solving the practical problems of survival through adaptation, experimentation, and interdependence. With self-awareness comes something new: the ability not only to survive, but to recognize the beauty, intelligence, and interconnectedness of the living world. In that sense, self-awareness may be nature’s way of making wonder possible. In Evolving Awareness, Brian Joel Jolley explores self-awareness as both an evolutionary development and an invitation to deeper reverence, responsibility, and belonging.
Can you believe in evolution and still be a Latter-day Saint?
The LDS church has never officially required members to accept a literal six-day creation. Evolution as a scientific description of how life developed is not formally incompatible with LDS doctrine. The deeper question — how to hold evolution alongside the Genesis account and the temple ceremony — is one many thoughtful members carry quietly. Evolving Awareness offers a reading of the Genesis narrative that makes the creation account coherent alongside evolution, without requiring each day to be a calendar event.
Is it okay to read Genesis as allegory as a Latter-day Saint?
Many Latter-day Saint scholars and leaders have noted that Genesis need not be read as a literal scientific account. The more useful question is: allegory of what, exactly? Simply calling it allegory without explaining what it means leaves the story empty. In Evolving Awareness, Brian Joel Jolley argues that Genesis is a map of how awareness evolved in living things — a claim that is both symbolic and grounded in something observably true about life on Earth. That reading doesn’t require leaving the faith. It requires asking what the story is pointing at.
Do other Latter-day Saints struggle with reconciling the Genesis creation account and evolution?
Yes — more than most people say out loud. Many believing, temple-attending members accept evolution as settled science and have never found a framing that lets them hold it alongside the Genesis narrative and the temple ceremony without friction. The standard responses — the days are just periods of time, it’s symbolic, science and religion ask different questions — tend to feel like agreements to stop asking rather than actual answers. The question is legitimate. It just doesn’t often get asked where anyone can see it.
Can you accept evolutionary biology and still take the Torah’s creation account seriously?
Yes — but it requires being precise about what the Torah’s creation account is actually doing. If Bereshit is read as a competing scientific account of physical chronology, evolution creates obvious problems. But if it’s read as a developmental sequence — tracking the emergence of awareness through nature in the order awareness actually emerged — then the biology and the text are describing the same process at different resolutions. In Evolving Awareness, Brian Joel Jolley argues this reading holds the Hebrew and the science at equal rigor, without either one condescending to the other.
Maimonides said Genesis isn’t meant to be read literally — but why hasn’t anyone explained what it is meant to say?
Rambam stopped where he had to stop. In the Guide he signals that the creation account is esoteric and warns the reader not to expect a full unveiling — the philosophical vocabulary available in the twelfth century couldn’t carry the load. What’s changed is that we now have a precise vocabulary for describing how consciousness and awareness emerge through nature. Evolving Awareness treats Rambam’s instruction seriously — the text isn’t literal — and then attempts to finish the sentence using the descriptive tools he didn’t have.
Why doesn’t Schroeder’s day-age model feel satisfying even though it’s trying to be rigorous?
Because it accepts a premise that may be wrong. Schroeder and Aviezer both assume Bereshit is making a chronological claim, then work hard to align the sequence with cosmology — Schroeder using relativistic time dilation, Aviezer matching days to geological epochs. The fit is forced because the premise is forced. Evolving Awareness reads the days of creation as a sequential, event-based progression — each stage of awareness depending on the one before it, the way steps in a process can’t be skipped — not a timeline of physical events. The sequence is real and the order matters. What the days are not is a calendar.