Evolution Is Fun (and makes Christians think again)
[Originally published on August 31, 2008. Last revised on Feb 15, 2009.]
Why is it that the Genesis 1 account makes so many believers feel like they should reject evolution? That is the key question in this article, and I will suggest to stop doing this. Do not instantly fear as if I would necessarily feel uncomfortable with the idea of creation. I believe in the creation as described in Genesis 1. Yet I think evolution is conform to what happened besides the Genesis 1 story. It is my wish that at the end of this series of blogs on creation and evolution, some Christians may become less scared about the whole evolution thing. And I don't mean less scared as in "I'm not scared! God is in control!!"... (which sounds to me like scared anyway). I mean less scared as in "I'm not scared because I see that there's no conflict between science and religion".
We may need to rethink our understanding of some key issues. Basically, there can be no real reason to reject scientific data, nor should the idea of 'creation' be considered impossible just because a majority of scientists seems to think so. Some 40% of scientists believes in a God of some kind - that was not supposed to happen if creation would be such a foolish idea.
In my opinion, the picture is not that bleak for Christians - not at all. Provided that we can at least see the difference between what was written in Genesis, and how it is interpreted by some, or many, of us.
Science itself is on nobody's side. Science is a means of gathering data, categorizing this data, increase our knowledge about the world, the universe, and everything in it. Science is not a panacea against the diseases of mankind, or against religion, or against atheism. Science has its limits, and so has evolution, especially evolution as a theory.
Facts vs. Theories
It is important to understand the difference between facts and theories. As Stephen J. Gould pointed out long ago: besides the existing evolution theories, which will always remain hypotheses, there is also evolution as a 'fact'. The 'facts' of evolution are not identical with the theories of, say, an atheist, about how evolution happened. "Facts are the world's data" (Stephen Jay Gould, 1994, Evolution as Fact and Theory).
Evolution, like science itself, is neutral. There may be some problem with the term evolution (I'll get to it further on) but we should start from the rule of simplicity: evolution is the name for the kind of pattern we can discover from the scientific data. That is: it really looks like the human being has development through stages of evolution. The data reads like the traces of a very diverse past, as they are typically found in hard sciences that study the traces of living beings (biology, genetics) and their immediate environment (geology, paleontology). These traces are less prevalent in domains such as anthropology or psychology - and that is to be expected of course, if evolution was merely a physical development, also in terms of brains etc. - but not, and never, capable of determining something about the spiritual character of the human being. For that reason, evolution is an issue limited to the biology of life. The capacities of the human being may be much greater because we have brains and these brains are far more evolved - yet, by no means does evolution say anything beyond the physical level of these capacities. Humans are much more than the required physical preconditions for exploiting their own capacities. Humans are more than brains and brainwaves. Religion always knew that of course, always realized this.
So why then have we arrived at such a conflict model, a war between evolution and the position of faith? Mostly because of the pre-theoretical positions such as materialism, naturalism, determinism, relativism, which are are part of someone's world view - and in most cases this has been a non-religious world view, not to say an atheistic one. The same is also true for astronomy - a scientific discipline where no traces of earthlings can be studied, yet we witness the same tendency to explain the existence of the universe from a naturalistic viewpoint - at least that is the dominant viewpoint for atheists. These underlaying views have little to do with the scientific data on evolution itself. It is not so much evolution that colors the atheist interpretation of the facts, but atheism that colors the evolutionary data so that it becomes something supposedly hostile to Christian (and other) faith. However, all of that does not affect the simplicity of what evolution - that is the traces of relationships between living beings - means, nor does evolution require any specific world view. Atheism has no particular priority or advantage in it - whatever their claims may be.
Evolution may seem to impose a naturalistic world view upon us, but this is only the case if you already adhere to a naturalistic world view to begin with.
Evolution as a terminology
Now, as already said, it may be true that the term 'evolution' does not sound very neutral. But what is neutral? Rejecting evolution in favor of something we call 'creation' is not neutral either, and not acceptible in science. Science must not be rejected in the name of religion that soon, because it may well turn out that the confllict was only raised because of some specific human interpretations, not because there is a real conflict. I believe in creation, but creation is not a scientific theory - and that is clearly what's wrong with 'creationism': it attempts to mix up language of faith with the language of science. But Genesis 1 was clearly never intend to offer the readers a 20th century scientific theory. 'Science' as we know it today is a relatively modern phenomenon, so much has changed, so many new discoveries were made over the last 200 years.
The other side of the story is, that although this type of science can only 'read' what was already there (supposedly created), it doesn't follow that when science starts to unravel a great deal of the 'mysteries' surrounding nature (and the cosmos), monotheists should suddenly start to complain that the data would be in conflict with how we read Genesis 1. Because that is totally ignoring the possibility of mistakes in our own interpretation of Genesis 1. Christians are no little gods who have unfailing power to read it all perfectly. Examples of mistakes can be found throughout the entire Christian history.
So let us take an initiative from Christian side: I say we should accept the term evolution, as long as we can understand the term in the very first place as the documentation of the kinship, or proximity, between the living species. So the word evolution, as we will use it here, is about the 'factual data'. In that significance evolution reflects a pattern, a development path of some kind, which we happen to call evolution. This is a quite natural way of describing the findings. But this data tells nothing about the question whether or not there was a God who created our world and mankind. The latter issues do not belong to the domain of science at all.
I would admit that, if I could decide what word should have been used, it would probably opt for something more neutral - for instance hierarchy of species. But today, we Christians are coming over a century too late for proposals on redefining such terminology. We (some of us) preferred to throw in 'creationism' and we lost that battle. We have, in many ways, given the impression that we reject science itself - something Christianism traditionally didn't do. Christians could consider the word evolution the price they have to pay for those of us who played the clown for too long. But for me, I'm not even sure if the term can be considered a misnomer. Maybe it is a subtle misnomer because it has too often and too soon been hijacked and used 'as if' evolution resists the creation idea. The word carries a burden. Yet, evolution is a word that reflecs some things way better than the word creation. The word 'creation' does little to reflect the aforementioned patterns and similarities among all creatures. And creation, I repeat, is a term that belongs to the language of faith - it was never meant to reflect a scientific viewpoint, hence should never have been twisted into 'creationism'.
But what exactly must we make of creation?
Gap Creationism / Age of the Universe
The idea of creation exists as 'data' (facts) as well, that is, as a written record (Genesis 1 and some other places) in a book which is at the very least partially a book with the characteristics of a historical record. We cannot elaborate now on the exact character of the many Bible books (that will be for another time), but Genesis 1 is certainly true from a faithful viewpoint, and also worth to be considered a true record from a historical viewpoint. However, Genesis does not elaborate on theories whatsoever. Judaism in general was never 'theoretical' to begin with (that would be an insult). Let alone scientific theory. This is why the theory called creationism did emerge only since the evolution data (and hypotheses) came abroad. Creationism is many different theories and options. There are many variants between the most basic creation theory (say: Young Earth Creationism) and those who are much more 'open' to debate and testing against the scientific data.
Actually, before Young Earth creationism there was something even more radical, a 'Young Universe creationism' if you want, although virtually no believer holds to that idea anymore. But only some 50 years ago it was still thought by many more Christians that the entire universe was just about 6,000 years old.
Basically, what happened was, that by reading Genesis 1 in a literalistic way, a self-made problem was introduced with regard to the Christian receptivity of scientific data. I'll come back to this important issue a couple of times, but basically we started from suspicion, and that attitude is no guarantee for staying close to the Lord our God. It may rather reveal fear, in stead of courage and realism and faith.
Then, a gap theory was added to solve our embarrassment. This is often called Gap Creationism, or the Ruin-Reconstruction interpretation of Genesis 1. The idea was that a huge gap existed between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, and this gap was used to 'generate' the millions of years that science (evolution) was digging out of the universe and pouring out upon the faithful communities.
Note: This gap actually was thought to occur more precisely in the midst of Gen.1:2. The second part of that verse reads: "And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters". This is an indication of the beginning of a work of creation, and can be seen as opposite to "the earth was without form, and void" in the first part of the verse. The actual reading of this passage would than be that in 1:1 the universe is created, but 1:2a explains that it was only as raw matter; 1:2b introduces the notion of the Spirit moving around preparing for something, and 1:3 starts to form a real environment from this matter. In itself, there is nothing wrong with this reading, but the implementation of a gap in there is a product of the imagination rather than solid theology.
What the gap did was, first of all, allow the universe to be more than 6,000 years old (according to the current consensus among scientists: 13,7 billion years). Later on, it also allowed the earth to be more than 6,000 years old (by assuming that the creation of the earth, as raw matter, happened before Genesis 1:3 just the same).
So, as you can see, the gap proved to be useful in different ways. This is, of course, suspicious - we suspected 'science' but we did not always suspect those who thought they had somehow to fight against what science was showing to mankind.
So what we have been doing is, first of all declaring Genesis 1 somehow compliant with scientific research (which is entirely against the spirit of the Scriptures), then we had to find a gap in Genesis 1, in order to solve the problem we had introduced. The gap was acting like a time machine, basically beaming the universe into a far more distant past, then beaming the earth (as raw matter) into a distant past as well, so that we could still feel somehow in accordance with science, without 'giving in on faith'. But giving in on faith was, in reality, already begun with the idea that science would possibly be incompatible with God's creation. Today, it is tempting just the same, to beam the original (pre-Homo sapiens) being also into a distant past, through the same time machine, the gap in Genesis 1:2. The result, in all cases, is that Genesis 1 remains readable as 'creation' within a timeframe of some 6,000 (or maybe 10,000) years.
But there's reason to believe that we've been approaching this completely wrong from the very start. We've been subjecting Genesis 1 to literalism, as we will see.
Virtually nobody holds on to the vision that the universe would be 6,000 years old. The Young Earth theory has still followers, by the way.
One of the extreme responses from Christianism with regard to the age of the universe is the idea that all traces of evolution are sort of 'implanted' in the world and the universe. When the light of some stars is said to have traveled many light years, and our universe would be only 6,000 years old (a viewpoint seldom heard anymore today), than it was suggested that when God created these far away stars, He also created the whole light bundle of it 'towards the earth', so that we could see the star. It shows us how people initially tried to deal with new data as it came available to us while we were locked into a literal reading of Genesis 1.
More ridicule assumptions have been given as well. For instance the idea that the 'light' belongs to satan (the 'angel of light'), so satan deceives us by tricking us into believing in these long distances of stars - in reality they would not be that far away. This is one stap from the idea that we are living in a 'hollow earth', with all the starts inside...
It is remarkable however, that the great Church fathers (such as St. Augustine) and also more recent great figures of Christianity (like C.S. Lewis) were much more reluctant to read Genesis 1 as if it was meant to reflect scientific insights. They were way more prudent with interpreting the Biblical account of Genesis 1 in an all too literal way - even though they were absolutely firm believers in God. It seems that they realized that science is an activity preoccupied with facts about and observation of the material world, and that this was simply a different kind of business. Lewis did not feel that much 'attacked' by science. Many Christians have never felt that much attacked.
We should understand that this problem is not particularly due to the Genesis text. No one had any idea about the age of the universe before science started to generate theories based on the data they gathered through modern techniques such as used in infrared astronomy. This is important to understand, unless you really want to misunderstand the facts as they occurred. Admitted, there may be some truth in the suggestion (also proposed by atheists like Dawkins) that religion impedes the ability of (many) people to discover things. What he means is: by thinking 'creation', people may tend to be frightened away from 'evolution', hence science. But this is only true in a very limited sense: it is due to a particular interpretation (one most Christian scientists have always suspected) on how to read Genesis 1. This is a far cry from claiming that religion itself is the problem. There can be little doubt that many people, who rejected evolution, have lived a lot more useful lives than many theorists who, besides reading their research data, also felt entitled to propagate evolution as 'essential' to the kind of lives we live. Nothing could be farther from reality as we will see. Evolution may be a beautiful thing for those who understand it, but its importance with regard to real life is easily overestimated.
A similar mistake is also found among Christians, who make their interpretation of Genesis 1 a breaking point of faith. Why on earth did some Christians start to believe they had the right to evaluate someone's faith based on how they read the 6 days in Genesis? I insist: the Church Fathers didn't hold such narrow views.
Age of the earth: 4,5 billion ears
As we already said: once age of the universe was accepted to be much older, it was only a matter of time before we would accept an older age for the earth as well. The current consensus in science is that the age of the earth is estimated to be 4,5 billion years. Just like the age of the universe (13,7 billion years), these are incredibly large time spans and one might be tempted to suggest their first purpose to be wide enough to be capable of replacing a really great God! Nevertheless, these numbers are based on data gathered through scientific research. No matter what kind of pre-scientific reasons might have been operative behind the scenes, the outcome is data that passed the tests, based on currently held scientific requirements. Christian scientists in general do not contest these data, and there is in fact no reason to contest it - except for the fact that one must always remain sceptic with regard to where data ends and interpretation starts.
Christian scientists often have a more open view on these things - because for them, evolution does not function like a 'free pass' to get rid of the God idea. So the reasoning of Dawkins can be inversed: Christians who believe in evolution today, are not tempted to cling on to evolution theory for reasons related to anti-religious feelings.
It is self evident that the outcome of a quest for the equivalent of the power of creation could hardly be anything less than another unimaginable kind of thing, or numbers. Compare it to the parallel universes theory (today believed by Dawkins as well). Nobody can see other universes than the ones we can observe through our best instruments. There are valid scientific reasonings (if you want a comprehensible book on it, you could read Lisa Randall's Warped Passages - this is one of my favorite authors). However, when problems are detected and Christians answer with the suggestion that this could be God, scientists are quick to express faith in such hypothesis like invisible parallel universes. But, be that as it may, science measures data and must classify it according to the rules of the game. This game is in many ways a mathematical game, because it is the only possibility option to 'reach out' where we cannot possibly have any physical access to. And science is not philosophy: it does not search for the right questions, it just questions. Science is not religion either: it does not search for the right answers, it just formulates answers as logically as possible. That is the beauty of science, even while this beauty has been underestimated by Christians in more recent decades, and abused by non-believers as a tool against religion (which by definition it cannot be). The mathematics in scientific theory are not by definition advantageous for atheists, they also serve in many ways the vision that there is a lot of intelligence in the system (although that must not be turned into an 'intelligent design' theory because that is repeating the same error as when we turned creation into creationism).
The Embarrassment Factor of Christianity
We can learn something from the gap theory, which might be helpful. I found the following nice statement on the subject:
"Thomas Chalmers [the theologian often credited for having started to preach the gap theory], to his credit, refused to accept that the Scriptures had been broken by the growing body of geological truth of his time. He did not lose his faith in the accuracy of the Holy Bible, nor did he go into denial of the forensic geologic facts." (Beyond Gap Theory Interpretation of Genesis).
Two interesting observations: 1) Christians often seem to be pushed into defense by science, and 2) Christians - or at least Christians like Chalmers - don't have to turn into some kind of denial modus when confronted with 'disturbing' scientific data.
But why did it nevertheless no good to us? That is because the solution was not the right one - in spite of the good intensions.
Our embarrassment factor is not so much related to the new 'facts' of science; it is much related to the way we get to this acceptance. The same article reveals this mistake in my opinion, when it adds the following comment:
"That gap has always been in the Scriptures since the day Moses penned the book of Genesis. However, only in post New Testament times, and only after man's knowledge about Earth's natural history increased greatly, has the Spirit opened people's eyes to its existence. And only by rightly-dividing, and gaining true knowledge through the Lord Jesus Christ, can the reader start to comprehend the doctrinal significance." (Italics added)
However, did the Spirit also open our eyes to discover modern cooking in the Bible? This is 'poking' the scriptures until something comes out that can 'prove' Genesis to speak science. You can find more sophisticated 'explanations' of how to make the Bible support a gap theory on The Gap Theory Page (and elsewhere). The important point however is to realize that the only reason why we have been tempted into thinking that evolution should somehow fit between Genesis 1:1 en 1:2b, is because we have read Genesis 1 as if it was talking science. The assumption that the gap 'has always been' there in Genesis 1 is an attempt to retroactively tracing back our new knowledge into the Bible. That is by definition suspicious. And even while a book may contain some secrets that are only understood later on - this is true for an intelligently written novel for instance - there are limits to what you can achieve by retroactive interpretation.
The danger is also that this approach simply eliminates the need to watch out for (and correct) our own misunderstanding of scripture in many ways. Believers can get away with any kind of 'beliefs' this way - there's nothing to correct them, there's always some verse that may 'explain' your particular views no matter how flawed they are. A correct learning process would result in showing a more careful approach of 'theory building' upon Biblical data (especially in cases where the language seems to be more allegorical, as in Genesis 1, 2).
Considering our interpretations of the Bible as provisional seems to scare many Christians. Part of the problem is certainly that believers are not always fully aware that reconsidering interpretations of this kind is something totally different from reconsidering the very fundamentals of the Gospel. Of course, some Christians seem to have made the literal interpretation of Genesis 1 core to Christian faith. That, in my opinion, is a very serious mistake. Christians have also argued about things like the head cover for woman, during prayer (1Cor 1:5) and while many Christians see this as an instruction embedded within the cultural situation of that time, others have argued that 'the Word of God is clear about this' and 'nobody can restrict the Word of God' etc. Those are the people who usually think they 'do not interpret' the Bible - they just 'read it as it is' - yet suggesting that is already interpretation: they treat the Bible as if it were a military handbook, or The Little Red Book of Mao Zedong. Reading the Bible this way must be a slap in the face of God. It's pretty much Pharisaic. It means that Christians have (again) lost the basic understanding that while God is great, his creatures are not always that great, and certainly not automatically. We often need the insights and wisdom of other people, to begin with.
However, I do understand that rejecting Genesis 1 may look to some Christians like rejecting the whole Bible. The Bible is a historical document (even though the standards of history writing were different from what we are used to today). So rejecting Genesis 1 would have serious implications. And didn't Jesus cite from the book of Genesis? All of that is true and valid. However, nowhere did I say that I reject Genesis 1. And a 'historical book' does not mean that its style is always that of history writing. I do believe every word of Genesis 1, but I may not share your ideas about what exactly it is telling me, how these words should be read and interpreted.
The Genesis 1 'species' and Theistic Evolution
Expressed in terms of theory building (although lining the Biblical record with scientific theory directly is a mistake in my opinion, as I said), where are we now? We find that we renounced Young Earth Creationism in favor of Gap Creationism so to speak (because of the apparent very old age of the earth). What would be our next 'creationist' model, which would relieve us from our new problem - given the fact that we consider atheistic evolution as the least probable option?
Some models are unacceptable for most Christians whatsoever, such as Pantheistic evolution (we do not believe that God evolved - that is more the Karen Armstrong kind of pseudo-Christian stuff).
Christians seem to be drawn more and more towards exploring Theistic Evolution (God as the directing force behind the evolution process, in one way or another). I must admit that I do not like this name, I don't feel comfortable
with, it does not properly explain my own position. I will explain my position later on.
Theistic Evolution may overlap with Gap Creationism in so far that the emergence of the first living species (plants, animals) can be put before the gap. It then follows a similar assumption, that is: the first living things were the 'raw materials', while from Genesis 1:3 on these materials become composed as the environment for the human being. However, all of this begins to feel way over the top. Gap theory 'solved' raw materials rather easily, but life is a little more sensitive - this starts to feel ugly.
But the origin of the problem is still the same: it was self-made.
Theistic Evolution gets rid of any gap theory in Genesis 1. We have come to a point where creationism and ID have been given up as mistakes. While scientific data may suggest the first appearance of life on earth(abiogenesis) to have happened some 4 billion years ago, and we feel not entitled to put that as 'raw materials' in Genesis 1:1, we take a new fresh leap towards science by accepting abiogenesis to be a part of what is called creation, that is: Genesis 1:3 and further. By consequence, creation and evolution melt together in one act of divine creation, which is usually called Theistic Evolution. And although this concept still means that we are somehow 'poking' Genesis 1 until it delivers scientific or pseudo-scientific speak, it certainly does this in much better ways than creationism or ID did. It explains things way better, and it is not anti-science.
The move from 'creationism' towards 'Intelligent Design' was already a first sign of this new development: the attention goes to 'design' because it had become clear to most of us that evolution is a fact.
But ID did not really solve the problem. ID largely remained an empty, or at least very static concept, it hardly improved over time. Of course, Christians assume an Intelligent Being who created us, but the problem with ID is that it tries to inject this Intelligent God into the sciences. That won't work. That battle has been lost already.
The feelings of many Christians today with regard to Theistic Evolution is that it seems to reduce Genesis 1 to an allegory with no historical foundation anymore. But that I believe is a matter of understanding the true nature of the scriptures (I will cover that after my series on creation / evolution). Just think about this: Jesus also taught his audience many times through an allegory (there's nothing strange about that style), but at multiple occasions we feel these stories are derived from some real event. It does not matter that we cannot always be sure about that - the common thought is that allegorical lessons were usually derived from real events, but told in a way which emphasizes the true relevancy of it. Today, even non-believers who are serious historians would oppose to the idea that allegories are fairytales. We know all too well that every story has some reality at its origin. Historians discovered this much to their own embarrassment - with regard to Homer's Iliad en Odyssea for instance, formerly considered almost like fairytales but not anymore so today.
There are parts of the Bible indeed, where the writing style is arguably not characteristic for a historic account. The first chapters of Genesis certainly look much like falling into that category, as does the Book of Job for instance. But allegory does not imply that the story was just 'invented'. The creation of Adam and Eve can be read as the beginning of a new era, introducing a new awareness of the divine, of God. Creation in this case would be a process of creativity and a new beginning - and from God's viewpoint, this is the Creation of a mankind in a much more spiritual significance and totally separate from the scientific view on how the human species evolved physically. This creation concept has apparently been described as an intelligently designed process of course, the modeling or shaping of the human being. That is, in my opinion, an approach which makes much sense, and totally avoids the idea of incorporating scientific thought in the story.
This human being, in the description of Genesis 1, 2, to me, still ROCKS if I may say so. Adam and Eve much look like the 'modern human being' we are (sometimes) so proud of. Most people are not particularly proud about The Big Apes, the way an ordinary 'evolutionist' is (particularly with some Christians around, who in his opinion always need a lesson or two in science). It is questionable if 'The Big Apes' would have occured in Genesis even if the Jews would have known what scientists know today - I don't think they would have told us explicitly that Noah put two of these Big Apes in his ark, because these apes are not relevant whatsoever with regard to what religion is heading for. Those interested in a better future usually don't expect too much from apes.
Some provisional conclusions
The purpose of this article was to separate the models of evolution and creation, without canceling one of these. This, of course, inevitably leads to the question what's left from the Genesis 1 report. We did not explain Genesis 1, we just said: this is not what evolution is talking about. I also antecipated a little, for the sake of those who have much trouble with grasping this evaluation. For instance, I pointed out that evolution, while an interesting field of study, is not the domain of immediate interest of religion. Religion is not against science at all - it comprises the means to support scientific inquiry, and especially the sense of wonder that drives so many scientists. Religion however targets a different faculty of the human being, it represents a different kind of human inquiry. Science is only a tool, be it an important tool in
service of mankind, especially in medical care for instance (genetics is a perfect example of potential useful application of such knowledge).
This position does, in my opinion, not inevitably lead to 'theistic evolutionism' (the position supported by Francis Collins and, I think, most Christian scientists today). Creation may remain creation, not mixed with evolution. But that we will have to explain, and we will have to get rid of some traditional baggage which tends to make it impossible to understand Genesis 1 in a more natural way.
It is certainly important that believers come to realize that they should not be all too impressed by the triumphant, disdain-emitting grimace of an arrogant denier of everything beyond physics or biology. Most people who talk about science in general and evolution in particular are rather 'gatherers of data', who usually present their bits of data in ways that please them, not doing any effort to set out the data and their idea of it against a broader context of thought - because they limited the scope already to what scientists call methodological naturalism, which is an operation modus for doing scientific research. Many scientists however, and non-scientists as well, have clearly been promoting ontological naturalism. Naturalism is more than just a temporary operation modus for them, it is their view on the world, on life itself. That is a vision which is by no means required by science.
Some of them make it even worse: they also 'gather' bits of data from religious sources, especially the Bible, and play the same game at that level. Even scientists do that - Richard Dawkins for instance. In many cases (including aforementioned), their writings on that topic reveal little serious interest in the tenets of what religion really is for believers. But we have talked enough about the 'new atheists' by now (see previous articles).
However, on the religious side of the amphitheater, Christians too have a great deal of homework to do. Being frustrated with Genesis 1 and waging your little war against science however is not part of that homework. Handling the Genesis account with respect and doing an attempt to think in a less Western manner about these chapters, thereby focusing more on the 'real estate' of your faith - the fact that God can change people for instance - could be a much brighter idea, and a lot more useful for the human species in general.
Much of what is suggested here is about being creative with creation. t is ALSO about being real. The entire idea that Genesis 1 would teach us that the earth is 6,000 years old is, in itself, not realistic - nut only because of what we know today, but also because no one's life or thoughts have ever been improved by 'knowing' that the earth is 6,000 years old. This whole idea lacks essentiality. It may have been comprehensible that this idea was held 100 years ago. Today, we should feel the weight of this lack of essentiality. The Bible does not prevent the adaptation of our own thoughts to new situations, new times. After all, our human ideas are temporal.
For evolution too it is true that the little wars of atheists lacks essentiality in just the same way - it's all about denial, not science. Genesis 1 talks about the sun the moon, our visible world. Still today, these planets are 99% more important to us, to life. Without the sun, we're all dead people. The remaining 1% of stars and planets represents beauty to most people. The milky way will just increase our sense of beauty and awe - fair enough. Knowledge of the universe may also, probably, help us in other domains. Insight in the movement of celestial bodies, or the noise of the universe, may lead to scientific interesting discoveries for instance. Or, more spectacularly, it could help us to avoid an asteroid to crash into planet earth. Still, without the Sun, it would not matter to us whether such a collision would happen or not... So there still is something bizarre about crying holy over the stunning achievements of science and poke fun at Genesis 1 from that viewpoint, when you realize that Genesis 1 still has the more important facts in the picture that scientists can cough up even today. Even the probably most useful domain of science - medicine - is present in the first chapters of Genesis under the form of the Tree of Life.
The Jews knew what they were doing.
So be real, to begin with. Then, it may turn out, if you return to Genesis 1 and read it again, you may discover the beauty of it, without falling into the unrealities we have faced for over a century now.
To be continued ...
Some references
Why is it that the Genesis 1 account makes so many believers feel like they should reject evolution? That is the key question in this article, and I will suggest to stop doing this. Do not instantly fear as if I would necessarily feel uncomfortable with the idea of creation. I believe in the creation as described in Genesis 1. Yet I think evolution is conform to what happened besides the Genesis 1 story. It is my wish that at the end of this series of blogs on creation and evolution, some Christians may become less scared about the whole evolution thing. And I don't mean less scared as in "I'm not scared! God is in control!!"... (which sounds to me like scared anyway). I mean less scared as in "I'm not scared because I see that there's no conflict between science and religion".
We may need to rethink our understanding of some key issues. Basically, there can be no real reason to reject scientific data, nor should the idea of 'creation' be considered impossible just because a majority of scientists seems to think so. Some 40% of scientists believes in a God of some kind - that was not supposed to happen if creation would be such a foolish idea.
In my opinion, the picture is not that bleak for Christians - not at all. Provided that we can at least see the difference between what was written in Genesis, and how it is interpreted by some, or many, of us.
Science itself is on nobody's side. Science is a means of gathering data, categorizing this data, increase our knowledge about the world, the universe, and everything in it. Science is not a panacea against the diseases of mankind, or against religion, or against atheism. Science has its limits, and so has evolution, especially evolution as a theory.
Facts vs. Theories
It is important to understand the difference between facts and theories. As Stephen J. Gould pointed out long ago: besides the existing evolution theories, which will always remain hypotheses, there is also evolution as a 'fact'. The 'facts' of evolution are not identical with the theories of, say, an atheist, about how evolution happened. "Facts are the world's data" (Stephen Jay Gould, 1994, Evolution as Fact and Theory).
Evolution, like science itself, is neutral. There may be some problem with the term evolution (I'll get to it further on) but we should start from the rule of simplicity: evolution is the name for the kind of pattern we can discover from the scientific data. That is: it really looks like the human being has development through stages of evolution. The data reads like the traces of a very diverse past, as they are typically found in hard sciences that study the traces of living beings (biology, genetics) and their immediate environment (geology, paleontology). These traces are less prevalent in domains such as anthropology or psychology - and that is to be expected of course, if evolution was merely a physical development, also in terms of brains etc. - but not, and never, capable of determining something about the spiritual character of the human being. For that reason, evolution is an issue limited to the biology of life. The capacities of the human being may be much greater because we have brains and these brains are far more evolved - yet, by no means does evolution say anything beyond the physical level of these capacities. Humans are much more than the required physical preconditions for exploiting their own capacities. Humans are more than brains and brainwaves. Religion always knew that of course, always realized this.
So why then have we arrived at such a conflict model, a war between evolution and the position of faith? Mostly because of the pre-theoretical positions such as materialism, naturalism, determinism, relativism, which are are part of someone's world view - and in most cases this has been a non-religious world view, not to say an atheistic one. The same is also true for astronomy - a scientific discipline where no traces of earthlings can be studied, yet we witness the same tendency to explain the existence of the universe from a naturalistic viewpoint - at least that is the dominant viewpoint for atheists. These underlaying views have little to do with the scientific data on evolution itself. It is not so much evolution that colors the atheist interpretation of the facts, but atheism that colors the evolutionary data so that it becomes something supposedly hostile to Christian (and other) faith. However, all of that does not affect the simplicity of what evolution - that is the traces of relationships between living beings - means, nor does evolution require any specific world view. Atheism has no particular priority or advantage in it - whatever their claims may be.
Evolution may seem to impose a naturalistic world view upon us, but this is only the case if you already adhere to a naturalistic world view to begin with.
Evolution as a terminology
Now, as already said, it may be true that the term 'evolution' does not sound very neutral. But what is neutral? Rejecting evolution in favor of something we call 'creation' is not neutral either, and not acceptible in science. Science must not be rejected in the name of religion that soon, because it may well turn out that the confllict was only raised because of some specific human interpretations, not because there is a real conflict. I believe in creation, but creation is not a scientific theory - and that is clearly what's wrong with 'creationism': it attempts to mix up language of faith with the language of science. But Genesis 1 was clearly never intend to offer the readers a 20th century scientific theory. 'Science' as we know it today is a relatively modern phenomenon, so much has changed, so many new discoveries were made over the last 200 years.
The other side of the story is, that although this type of science can only 'read' what was already there (supposedly created), it doesn't follow that when science starts to unravel a great deal of the 'mysteries' surrounding nature (and the cosmos), monotheists should suddenly start to complain that the data would be in conflict with how we read Genesis 1. Because that is totally ignoring the possibility of mistakes in our own interpretation of Genesis 1. Christians are no little gods who have unfailing power to read it all perfectly. Examples of mistakes can be found throughout the entire Christian history.
So let us take an initiative from Christian side: I say we should accept the term evolution, as long as we can understand the term in the very first place as the documentation of the kinship, or proximity, between the living species. So the word evolution, as we will use it here, is about the 'factual data'. In that significance evolution reflects a pattern, a development path of some kind, which we happen to call evolution. This is a quite natural way of describing the findings. But this data tells nothing about the question whether or not there was a God who created our world and mankind. The latter issues do not belong to the domain of science at all.
I would admit that, if I could decide what word should have been used, it would probably opt for something more neutral - for instance hierarchy of species. But today, we Christians are coming over a century too late for proposals on redefining such terminology. We (some of us) preferred to throw in 'creationism' and we lost that battle. We have, in many ways, given the impression that we reject science itself - something Christianism traditionally didn't do. Christians could consider the word evolution the price they have to pay for those of us who played the clown for too long. But for me, I'm not even sure if the term can be considered a misnomer. Maybe it is a subtle misnomer because it has too often and too soon been hijacked and used 'as if' evolution resists the creation idea. The word carries a burden. Yet, evolution is a word that reflecs some things way better than the word creation. The word 'creation' does little to reflect the aforementioned patterns and similarities among all creatures. And creation, I repeat, is a term that belongs to the language of faith - it was never meant to reflect a scientific viewpoint, hence should never have been twisted into 'creationism'.
But what exactly must we make of creation?
Gap Creationism / Age of the Universe
The idea of creation exists as 'data' (facts) as well, that is, as a written record (Genesis 1 and some other places) in a book which is at the very least partially a book with the characteristics of a historical record. We cannot elaborate now on the exact character of the many Bible books (that will be for another time), but Genesis 1 is certainly true from a faithful viewpoint, and also worth to be considered a true record from a historical viewpoint. However, Genesis does not elaborate on theories whatsoever. Judaism in general was never 'theoretical' to begin with (that would be an insult). Let alone scientific theory. This is why the theory called creationism did emerge only since the evolution data (and hypotheses) came abroad. Creationism is many different theories and options. There are many variants between the most basic creation theory (say: Young Earth Creationism) and those who are much more 'open' to debate and testing against the scientific data.
Actually, before Young Earth creationism there was something even more radical, a 'Young Universe creationism' if you want, although virtually no believer holds to that idea anymore. But only some 50 years ago it was still thought by many more Christians that the entire universe was just about 6,000 years old.
Basically, what happened was, that by reading Genesis 1 in a literalistic way, a self-made problem was introduced with regard to the Christian receptivity of scientific data. I'll come back to this important issue a couple of times, but basically we started from suspicion, and that attitude is no guarantee for staying close to the Lord our God. It may rather reveal fear, in stead of courage and realism and faith.
Then, a gap theory was added to solve our embarrassment. This is often called Gap Creationism, or the Ruin-Reconstruction interpretation of Genesis 1. The idea was that a huge gap existed between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, and this gap was used to 'generate' the millions of years that science (evolution) was digging out of the universe and pouring out upon the faithful communities.
Note: This gap actually was thought to occur more precisely in the midst of Gen.1:2. The second part of that verse reads: "And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters". This is an indication of the beginning of a work of creation, and can be seen as opposite to "the earth was without form, and void" in the first part of the verse. The actual reading of this passage would than be that in 1:1 the universe is created, but 1:2a explains that it was only as raw matter; 1:2b introduces the notion of the Spirit moving around preparing for something, and 1:3 starts to form a real environment from this matter. In itself, there is nothing wrong with this reading, but the implementation of a gap in there is a product of the imagination rather than solid theology.
What the gap did was, first of all, allow the universe to be more than 6,000 years old (according to the current consensus among scientists: 13,7 billion years). Later on, it also allowed the earth to be more than 6,000 years old (by assuming that the creation of the earth, as raw matter, happened before Genesis 1:3 just the same).
So, as you can see, the gap proved to be useful in different ways. This is, of course, suspicious - we suspected 'science' but we did not always suspect those who thought they had somehow to fight against what science was showing to mankind.
So what we have been doing is, first of all declaring Genesis 1 somehow compliant with scientific research (which is entirely against the spirit of the Scriptures), then we had to find a gap in Genesis 1, in order to solve the problem we had introduced. The gap was acting like a time machine, basically beaming the universe into a far more distant past, then beaming the earth (as raw matter) into a distant past as well, so that we could still feel somehow in accordance with science, without 'giving in on faith'. But giving in on faith was, in reality, already begun with the idea that science would possibly be incompatible with God's creation. Today, it is tempting just the same, to beam the original (pre-Homo sapiens) being also into a distant past, through the same time machine, the gap in Genesis 1:2. The result, in all cases, is that Genesis 1 remains readable as 'creation' within a timeframe of some 6,000 (or maybe 10,000) years.
But there's reason to believe that we've been approaching this completely wrong from the very start. We've been subjecting Genesis 1 to literalism, as we will see.
Virtually nobody holds on to the vision that the universe would be 6,000 years old. The Young Earth theory has still followers, by the way.
One of the extreme responses from Christianism with regard to the age of the universe is the idea that all traces of evolution are sort of 'implanted' in the world and the universe. When the light of some stars is said to have traveled many light years, and our universe would be only 6,000 years old (a viewpoint seldom heard anymore today), than it was suggested that when God created these far away stars, He also created the whole light bundle of it 'towards the earth', so that we could see the star. It shows us how people initially tried to deal with new data as it came available to us while we were locked into a literal reading of Genesis 1.
More ridicule assumptions have been given as well. For instance the idea that the 'light' belongs to satan (the 'angel of light'), so satan deceives us by tricking us into believing in these long distances of stars - in reality they would not be that far away. This is one stap from the idea that we are living in a 'hollow earth', with all the starts inside...
It is remarkable however, that the great Church fathers (such as St. Augustine) and also more recent great figures of Christianity (like C.S. Lewis) were much more reluctant to read Genesis 1 as if it was meant to reflect scientific insights. They were way more prudent with interpreting the Biblical account of Genesis 1 in an all too literal way - even though they were absolutely firm believers in God. It seems that they realized that science is an activity preoccupied with facts about and observation of the material world, and that this was simply a different kind of business. Lewis did not feel that much 'attacked' by science. Many Christians have never felt that much attacked.
We should understand that this problem is not particularly due to the Genesis text. No one had any idea about the age of the universe before science started to generate theories based on the data they gathered through modern techniques such as used in infrared astronomy. This is important to understand, unless you really want to misunderstand the facts as they occurred. Admitted, there may be some truth in the suggestion (also proposed by atheists like Dawkins) that religion impedes the ability of (many) people to discover things. What he means is: by thinking 'creation', people may tend to be frightened away from 'evolution', hence science. But this is only true in a very limited sense: it is due to a particular interpretation (one most Christian scientists have always suspected) on how to read Genesis 1. This is a far cry from claiming that religion itself is the problem. There can be little doubt that many people, who rejected evolution, have lived a lot more useful lives than many theorists who, besides reading their research data, also felt entitled to propagate evolution as 'essential' to the kind of lives we live. Nothing could be farther from reality as we will see. Evolution may be a beautiful thing for those who understand it, but its importance with regard to real life is easily overestimated.
A similar mistake is also found among Christians, who make their interpretation of Genesis 1 a breaking point of faith. Why on earth did some Christians start to believe they had the right to evaluate someone's faith based on how they read the 6 days in Genesis? I insist: the Church Fathers didn't hold such narrow views.
Age of the earth: 4,5 billion ears
As we already said: once age of the universe was accepted to be much older, it was only a matter of time before we would accept an older age for the earth as well. The current consensus in science is that the age of the earth is estimated to be 4,5 billion years. Just like the age of the universe (13,7 billion years), these are incredibly large time spans and one might be tempted to suggest their first purpose to be wide enough to be capable of replacing a really great God! Nevertheless, these numbers are based on data gathered through scientific research. No matter what kind of pre-scientific reasons might have been operative behind the scenes, the outcome is data that passed the tests, based on currently held scientific requirements. Christian scientists in general do not contest these data, and there is in fact no reason to contest it - except for the fact that one must always remain sceptic with regard to where data ends and interpretation starts.
Christian scientists often have a more open view on these things - because for them, evolution does not function like a 'free pass' to get rid of the God idea. So the reasoning of Dawkins can be inversed: Christians who believe in evolution today, are not tempted to cling on to evolution theory for reasons related to anti-religious feelings.
It is self evident that the outcome of a quest for the equivalent of the power of creation could hardly be anything less than another unimaginable kind of thing, or numbers. Compare it to the parallel universes theory (today believed by Dawkins as well). Nobody can see other universes than the ones we can observe through our best instruments. There are valid scientific reasonings (if you want a comprehensible book on it, you could read Lisa Randall's Warped Passages - this is one of my favorite authors). However, when problems are detected and Christians answer with the suggestion that this could be God, scientists are quick to express faith in such hypothesis like invisible parallel universes. But, be that as it may, science measures data and must classify it according to the rules of the game. This game is in many ways a mathematical game, because it is the only possibility option to 'reach out' where we cannot possibly have any physical access to. And science is not philosophy: it does not search for the right questions, it just questions. Science is not religion either: it does not search for the right answers, it just formulates answers as logically as possible. That is the beauty of science, even while this beauty has been underestimated by Christians in more recent decades, and abused by non-believers as a tool against religion (which by definition it cannot be). The mathematics in scientific theory are not by definition advantageous for atheists, they also serve in many ways the vision that there is a lot of intelligence in the system (although that must not be turned into an 'intelligent design' theory because that is repeating the same error as when we turned creation into creationism).
The Embarrassment Factor of Christianity
We can learn something from the gap theory, which might be helpful. I found the following nice statement on the subject:
"Thomas Chalmers [the theologian often credited for having started to preach the gap theory], to his credit, refused to accept that the Scriptures had been broken by the growing body of geological truth of his time. He did not lose his faith in the accuracy of the Holy Bible, nor did he go into denial of the forensic geologic facts." (Beyond Gap Theory Interpretation of Genesis).
Two interesting observations: 1) Christians often seem to be pushed into defense by science, and 2) Christians - or at least Christians like Chalmers - don't have to turn into some kind of denial modus when confronted with 'disturbing' scientific data.
But why did it nevertheless no good to us? That is because the solution was not the right one - in spite of the good intensions.
Our embarrassment factor is not so much related to the new 'facts' of science; it is much related to the way we get to this acceptance. The same article reveals this mistake in my opinion, when it adds the following comment:
"That gap has always been in the Scriptures since the day Moses penned the book of Genesis. However, only in post New Testament times, and only after man's knowledge about Earth's natural history increased greatly, has the Spirit opened people's eyes to its existence. And only by rightly-dividing, and gaining true knowledge through the Lord Jesus Christ, can the reader start to comprehend the doctrinal significance." (Italics added)
However, did the Spirit also open our eyes to discover modern cooking in the Bible? This is 'poking' the scriptures until something comes out that can 'prove' Genesis to speak science. You can find more sophisticated 'explanations' of how to make the Bible support a gap theory on The Gap Theory Page (and elsewhere). The important point however is to realize that the only reason why we have been tempted into thinking that evolution should somehow fit between Genesis 1:1 en 1:2b, is because we have read Genesis 1 as if it was talking science. The assumption that the gap 'has always been' there in Genesis 1 is an attempt to retroactively tracing back our new knowledge into the Bible. That is by definition suspicious. And even while a book may contain some secrets that are only understood later on - this is true for an intelligently written novel for instance - there are limits to what you can achieve by retroactive interpretation.
The danger is also that this approach simply eliminates the need to watch out for (and correct) our own misunderstanding of scripture in many ways. Believers can get away with any kind of 'beliefs' this way - there's nothing to correct them, there's always some verse that may 'explain' your particular views no matter how flawed they are. A correct learning process would result in showing a more careful approach of 'theory building' upon Biblical data (especially in cases where the language seems to be more allegorical, as in Genesis 1, 2).
Considering our interpretations of the Bible as provisional seems to scare many Christians. Part of the problem is certainly that believers are not always fully aware that reconsidering interpretations of this kind is something totally different from reconsidering the very fundamentals of the Gospel. Of course, some Christians seem to have made the literal interpretation of Genesis 1 core to Christian faith. That, in my opinion, is a very serious mistake. Christians have also argued about things like the head cover for woman, during prayer (1Cor 1:5) and while many Christians see this as an instruction embedded within the cultural situation of that time, others have argued that 'the Word of God is clear about this' and 'nobody can restrict the Word of God' etc. Those are the people who usually think they 'do not interpret' the Bible - they just 'read it as it is' - yet suggesting that is already interpretation: they treat the Bible as if it were a military handbook, or The Little Red Book of Mao Zedong. Reading the Bible this way must be a slap in the face of God. It's pretty much Pharisaic. It means that Christians have (again) lost the basic understanding that while God is great, his creatures are not always that great, and certainly not automatically. We often need the insights and wisdom of other people, to begin with.
However, I do understand that rejecting Genesis 1 may look to some Christians like rejecting the whole Bible. The Bible is a historical document (even though the standards of history writing were different from what we are used to today). So rejecting Genesis 1 would have serious implications. And didn't Jesus cite from the book of Genesis? All of that is true and valid. However, nowhere did I say that I reject Genesis 1. And a 'historical book' does not mean that its style is always that of history writing. I do believe every word of Genesis 1, but I may not share your ideas about what exactly it is telling me, how these words should be read and interpreted.
The Genesis 1 'species' and Theistic Evolution
Expressed in terms of theory building (although lining the Biblical record with scientific theory directly is a mistake in my opinion, as I said), where are we now? We find that we renounced Young Earth Creationism in favor of Gap Creationism so to speak (because of the apparent very old age of the earth). What would be our next 'creationist' model, which would relieve us from our new problem - given the fact that we consider atheistic evolution as the least probable option?
Some models are unacceptable for most Christians whatsoever, such as Pantheistic evolution (we do not believe that God evolved - that is more the Karen Armstrong kind of pseudo-Christian stuff).
Christians seem to be drawn more and more towards exploring Theistic Evolution (God as the directing force behind the evolution process, in one way or another). I must admit that I do not like this name, I don't feel comfortable
with, it does not properly explain my own position. I will explain my position later on.
Theistic Evolution may overlap with Gap Creationism in so far that the emergence of the first living species (plants, animals) can be put before the gap. It then follows a similar assumption, that is: the first living things were the 'raw materials', while from Genesis 1:3 on these materials become composed as the environment for the human being. However, all of this begins to feel way over the top. Gap theory 'solved' raw materials rather easily, but life is a little more sensitive - this starts to feel ugly.
But the origin of the problem is still the same: it was self-made.
Theistic Evolution gets rid of any gap theory in Genesis 1. We have come to a point where creationism and ID have been given up as mistakes. While scientific data may suggest the first appearance of life on earth(abiogenesis) to have happened some 4 billion years ago, and we feel not entitled to put that as 'raw materials' in Genesis 1:1, we take a new fresh leap towards science by accepting abiogenesis to be a part of what is called creation, that is: Genesis 1:3 and further. By consequence, creation and evolution melt together in one act of divine creation, which is usually called Theistic Evolution. And although this concept still means that we are somehow 'poking' Genesis 1 until it delivers scientific or pseudo-scientific speak, it certainly does this in much better ways than creationism or ID did. It explains things way better, and it is not anti-science.
The move from 'creationism' towards 'Intelligent Design' was already a first sign of this new development: the attention goes to 'design' because it had become clear to most of us that evolution is a fact.
But ID did not really solve the problem. ID largely remained an empty, or at least very static concept, it hardly improved over time. Of course, Christians assume an Intelligent Being who created us, but the problem with ID is that it tries to inject this Intelligent God into the sciences. That won't work. That battle has been lost already.
The feelings of many Christians today with regard to Theistic Evolution is that it seems to reduce Genesis 1 to an allegory with no historical foundation anymore. But that I believe is a matter of understanding the true nature of the scriptures (I will cover that after my series on creation / evolution). Just think about this: Jesus also taught his audience many times through an allegory (there's nothing strange about that style), but at multiple occasions we feel these stories are derived from some real event. It does not matter that we cannot always be sure about that - the common thought is that allegorical lessons were usually derived from real events, but told in a way which emphasizes the true relevancy of it. Today, even non-believers who are serious historians would oppose to the idea that allegories are fairytales. We know all too well that every story has some reality at its origin. Historians discovered this much to their own embarrassment - with regard to Homer's Iliad en Odyssea for instance, formerly considered almost like fairytales but not anymore so today.
There are parts of the Bible indeed, where the writing style is arguably not characteristic for a historic account. The first chapters of Genesis certainly look much like falling into that category, as does the Book of Job for instance. But allegory does not imply that the story was just 'invented'. The creation of Adam and Eve can be read as the beginning of a new era, introducing a new awareness of the divine, of God. Creation in this case would be a process of creativity and a new beginning - and from God's viewpoint, this is the Creation of a mankind in a much more spiritual significance and totally separate from the scientific view on how the human species evolved physically. This creation concept has apparently been described as an intelligently designed process of course, the modeling or shaping of the human being. That is, in my opinion, an approach which makes much sense, and totally avoids the idea of incorporating scientific thought in the story.
This human being, in the description of Genesis 1, 2, to me, still ROCKS if I may say so. Adam and Eve much look like the 'modern human being' we are (sometimes) so proud of. Most people are not particularly proud about The Big Apes, the way an ordinary 'evolutionist' is (particularly with some Christians around, who in his opinion always need a lesson or two in science). It is questionable if 'The Big Apes' would have occured in Genesis even if the Jews would have known what scientists know today - I don't think they would have told us explicitly that Noah put two of these Big Apes in his ark, because these apes are not relevant whatsoever with regard to what religion is heading for. Those interested in a better future usually don't expect too much from apes.
Some provisional conclusions
The purpose of this article was to separate the models of evolution and creation, without canceling one of these. This, of course, inevitably leads to the question what's left from the Genesis 1 report. We did not explain Genesis 1, we just said: this is not what evolution is talking about. I also antecipated a little, for the sake of those who have much trouble with grasping this evaluation. For instance, I pointed out that evolution, while an interesting field of study, is not the domain of immediate interest of religion. Religion is not against science at all - it comprises the means to support scientific inquiry, and especially the sense of wonder that drives so many scientists. Religion however targets a different faculty of the human being, it represents a different kind of human inquiry. Science is only a tool, be it an important tool in
service of mankind, especially in medical care for instance (genetics is a perfect example of potential useful application of such knowledge).
This position does, in my opinion, not inevitably lead to 'theistic evolutionism' (the position supported by Francis Collins and, I think, most Christian scientists today). Creation may remain creation, not mixed with evolution. But that we will have to explain, and we will have to get rid of some traditional baggage which tends to make it impossible to understand Genesis 1 in a more natural way.
It is certainly important that believers come to realize that they should not be all too impressed by the triumphant, disdain-emitting grimace of an arrogant denier of everything beyond physics or biology. Most people who talk about science in general and evolution in particular are rather 'gatherers of data', who usually present their bits of data in ways that please them, not doing any effort to set out the data and their idea of it against a broader context of thought - because they limited the scope already to what scientists call methodological naturalism, which is an operation modus for doing scientific research. Many scientists however, and non-scientists as well, have clearly been promoting ontological naturalism. Naturalism is more than just a temporary operation modus for them, it is their view on the world, on life itself. That is a vision which is by no means required by science.
Some of them make it even worse: they also 'gather' bits of data from religious sources, especially the Bible, and play the same game at that level. Even scientists do that - Richard Dawkins for instance. In many cases (including aforementioned), their writings on that topic reveal little serious interest in the tenets of what religion really is for believers. But we have talked enough about the 'new atheists' by now (see previous articles).
However, on the religious side of the amphitheater, Christians too have a great deal of homework to do. Being frustrated with Genesis 1 and waging your little war against science however is not part of that homework. Handling the Genesis account with respect and doing an attempt to think in a less Western manner about these chapters, thereby focusing more on the 'real estate' of your faith - the fact that God can change people for instance - could be a much brighter idea, and a lot more useful for the human species in general.
Much of what is suggested here is about being creative with creation. t is ALSO about being real. The entire idea that Genesis 1 would teach us that the earth is 6,000 years old is, in itself, not realistic - nut only because of what we know today, but also because no one's life or thoughts have ever been improved by 'knowing' that the earth is 6,000 years old. This whole idea lacks essentiality. It may have been comprehensible that this idea was held 100 years ago. Today, we should feel the weight of this lack of essentiality. The Bible does not prevent the adaptation of our own thoughts to new situations, new times. After all, our human ideas are temporal.
For evolution too it is true that the little wars of atheists lacks essentiality in just the same way - it's all about denial, not science. Genesis 1 talks about the sun the moon, our visible world. Still today, these planets are 99% more important to us, to life. Without the sun, we're all dead people. The remaining 1% of stars and planets represents beauty to most people. The milky way will just increase our sense of beauty and awe - fair enough. Knowledge of the universe may also, probably, help us in other domains. Insight in the movement of celestial bodies, or the noise of the universe, may lead to scientific interesting discoveries for instance. Or, more spectacularly, it could help us to avoid an asteroid to crash into planet earth. Still, without the Sun, it would not matter to us whether such a collision would happen or not... So there still is something bizarre about crying holy over the stunning achievements of science and poke fun at Genesis 1 from that viewpoint, when you realize that Genesis 1 still has the more important facts in the picture that scientists can cough up even today. Even the probably most useful domain of science - medicine - is present in the first chapters of Genesis under the form of the Tree of Life.
The Jews knew what they were doing.
So be real, to begin with. Then, it may turn out, if you return to Genesis 1 and read it again, you may discover the beauty of it, without falling into the unrealities we have faced for over a century now.
To be continued ...
Some references
- Evolution as Fact and Theory, 1994, Stephen Jay Gould
- God and the Genome, and The Language of God, by Christian Geneticist Dr. Francis Collins [videos]
- God vs. Science, 2006, F. Collins vs. R. Dawkins