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February 07, 2006
Creationism
Reading a passage from Genesis at a service recently, I was again struck by the fact that there was nothing in what I was reading which in any way conflicts with the scientific explanantion of how the Solar System, the Sun, the planets and, indeed, the universe was formed. Genesis is, after all, a poetic version of an event so vast and so magnificent in its execution that it is, even now, almost incomprehensible to anyone who has not had the opportunity to look through a telescope or study any of the "Earth Sciences", geology, geography and so on. Written probably from an oral tradition sometime around 600 - 500 BC, it is a fairly good explanation for nomads and country folk whose lives revolved around food production and the daily needs of the community. Science hardly came into it.
Another version of this story, a more scientific one, is to be found in the Apocryphal books of Enoch. It is these that St John quotes in his Gospel, particularly the opening lines of Chapter 1, "In the beginning was the Word .... (In some translations more accurately "the Deed" ...). Many minds across the ages have wrestled with the problem of reconciling the Scriptural version and the observations they were making regarding the movement of stars, planets and even the changes in the sun or the moon. The Earth itself is constantly changing so the origins of science lie in our attempts to make sense of these. Why does one side of a mountain get better rain than the other is a question which affects crop growth, and consequently why one agricultural community may thrive and another starve!
As we have learned more about our environment we have come to realise - several unsuccessful experiments in creating "Ecospheres" have certainly helped - that the world we live in is filled with symbiotic relationships, as is the entire universe. Remove any one of the pillars of any given ecosystem, and it all rapidly begins to unravel! Certain plants depend on bees for pollination, other on birds, you simply cannot remove these aspects from the system and expect it to continue in the same form. Even the dreaded and irritating mosquito has a place in the ecosphere and removing it upsets the food chain in an escalating cascade until suddenly the higher order animals are starving.
A good example is Australia's Koala Bear (incidently not a member of the Ursus or Bear family at all!) which is so specialised an eater that it eats only some of the Euchalypts and not others. In fact, with regional variation, the Koala population in one area cannot readily move to another because the Euchalypts in the new area may not provide the diet they need. We simply do not, at this stage, understand the interrelationships of all the creatures who populate this planet with us.
For me, Darwin's great work on Evolution is as much a revelation of God's work in the ongoing act of creation as is the poetry of Genesis. For it is in Darwin that we begin to see the infinite slowness and the infinite patience that is the "work in progress" of Creation as a whole. Homo Sapiens is currently the pinnacle (as far as we know - some would say it is dolphins or the orca family who are simply too intelligent to let us know it) of the creation here on this planet, but are we the final product, or a "work in progress" destined to adapt and change (as the dinosaurs have done as the ecosystem changed with the climate, ice ages and comet impacts, becoming alligators, rhinocerii, lizards and snakes) as the work progresses. I rather hope and think the latter, that we are in the process even now of evolving a higher species who may take us that one step closer to God than we are now.
The current debate among those who favour "Creationism" or "Intelligent Design" I think misses several points, the most important being that God has at His disposal infinite resources, time and space. We can only know that nothing is impossible to Him however improbable it may seem and however unlikely it may appear. He may use any method he desires to achieve His ineffable plan - and evolution is as much one of His tools as is gravity, the air and water - even the food we eat. Homo Erectus, Homo Habilis and Homo Neanderthalis have all had their place in our ascent, the next stage may already be underway and it is really exciting to think that they may even be among us now.
The poetry of Genesis expresses the understanding of creation as received by a nomadic people - a people, moreover, who understood the world to be a sphere as witnessed by the writings of ancient Egypt from whom the Israelites drew a great deal of their traditions. Our understanding of the mechanics of creation has since been expanded and we have access to sights and tools the writers of Genesis could not have dreamed of. Does this degrade any part of our faith?
Not unless you have so narrow a view and so shallow a faith, that it cannot stand up to scrutiny and review. That is a terrible shame and an indictment of our refusal to allow God to reveal Himself in anyway but those we choose. Ultimately, that path leads to dissappointment and stagnation in faith, perhaps even to loss and separation from God. Embrace all means to understanding creation and we embrace the fact that God is trying to show us the full majesty of what it all means, reject the science that enlightens and expands our knowledge and we are very much the poorer for it.
The choice is ours.
Posted by The Gray Monk at February 7, 2006 11:58 AM
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Comments
Before I start, I want to be very careful not to promote one's opinion about neo-Darwinian evolution to a test of salvation. Your view of Genesis 1 is less critical than your view of The Question: Do you believe that Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior? It's best to be plain up front. :)
"I was again struck by the fact that there was nothing in what I was reading which in any way conflicts with the scientific explanantion of how the Solar System, the Sun, the planets and, indeed, the universe was formed."
* The Earth is formed on day 1, the Sun and Moon on Day 4.
* Plants are created ahead of the Sun and Moon on day 3.
* Birds are created with the fish on day 5, before land animals on day 6.
I have to respectfully disagree with you. Genesis is not reconcilable with the current Big Bang theory and neo-Darwinian evolution. If God had desired that Genesis be consistent, it is a minor task. Just reorder the events, and change the Hebrew word yom (day) for one that clearly meant age within the context(2). If Genesis is inspired scripture, then Genesis 1 was made deliberately inconsistent with our current concensus understanding of the events of creation.
I do think there is a danger. The Torah is presented as a consistent piece of history. There is no point in the texts where one can say, "Oh, here's where the cute story ends, and the real stuff starts." It's easy to subconciously start going "Oh, that flood bit isn't really real", and "That Jonah bit is a cute myth", and then it's just a matter of degree until one is at "He's just a really good man who didn't really say that he was the only way to God, if God even exists at all".
The Torah is one piece of history, written basically by one human being (1). There is no evidence from the manuscript that the author of the text considered Genesis 1 any less "real" than Genesis 21, or Exodus 1, or any other portion of the history within the text. The push to make Genesis 1-11 "parable" cannot be tied to Moses, or whomever you wish to claim as the author of the Torah.
Therefore, we are stuck with a fundamental problem: the text claims what it is saying is true. If the text is God-inspired, then that implies that God claims its true. Certainly there are enough references back to Genesis in later parts of Hebrew Scripture and the Christian New Testament that if one believes that later scripture is inspired, then earlier Scripture is too.
As I've mentioned before on my own blog, the more I've kept up with current science, the more silly humanist neo-Darwinism has become. Look at the research being published through groups like the Institute for Creation Research and Answers in Genesis. Yes, I mean research. People like Humphreys are putting out a lot better stuff concerning variable light-speed, the made-up dark matter, etc. than anyone else in the scientific community. IMHO, Creationist scientists are doing a better job of presenting a rigorously researched, consistent viewpoint of the origins of our universe and us based on the foundation of Genesis 1 than are non-Creationist scientists trying to use the Big Bang cosmology and neo-Darwinian biology.
I would turn around your point: There is no reason inside of Scripture to believe that Genesis 1 is inaccurate. With all of the evidence currently being posed by non-Darwinian scientists, why should I desire to push God into a science system designed deliberately to exclude the need to have a Creator in the first place?
(1) I won't re-argue the JEDP hypothesis here, except to state that there are very good rebuttals of it elsewhere.
(2) This is a huge debate for Hebrew speakers, but basically yom when used with a ordinal number (i.e. first, second, etc.) means a 24 hour period everywhere else its used. Given that the Bible is otherwise self-consistent in refering to that week as literal, the text gives us little room to think that yom there means anything but a 24 hour period.
Posted by: Kentucky Packrat at February 7, 2006 11:10 AM
Regardless of whether humanity truly evolved from blobs of jelly and monkeys, Creationists cannot prevail in the ongoing debate about our origins. Their position is fatally flawed. You see, the Creationist position fundamentally relies upon the premise that the Judeo-Christian Bible is the Word of God. If it’s not; if the Bible is just a book, then there is no Creationist position. Recently, a lawyer embarked upon a mission to become the greatest Christian on the planet. In his quest he made a profound discovery. He discovered that the Bible is unequivocally not the Word of God. His argument is compelling. After reading his thesis, I am both shocked and embarrassed that I spent my whole life as a Christian and a Creationist. And while his thesis does not invalidate the so-called theory of “Intelligent Design,” it absolutely dismantles the theory of Biblical Creationism. You can read his Thesis at http://www.InDefenseOfGod.com/
Posted by: Gil Stone at February 8, 2006 01:20 AM
"Reading a passage from Genesis at a service recently, I was again struck by the fact that there was nothing in what I was reading which in any way conflicts with the scientific explanantion of how the Solar System, the Sun, the planets and, indeed, the universe was formed."
The problem is that you are assuming that "science" is (a) a static entity, and (b) that it is incompatible with creationism. There are indeed many scientists who disagree with creationism (the majority, actually), but science does not run on a majority vote.
Anyway, for the other side of the issue, you might take a look at my Creationism Research Blog at http://baraminology.blogspot.com/ .
Posted by: Jonathan Bartlett at February 18, 2006 05:44 AM