Former Christian fundamentalist: Science robbed me of my faith: Author Ed Suominen explains how evolutionary biology forced him to abandon creationism -- and the church
An interesting article.
In my own religious background, I felt the debate over literal creationism versus theistic evolution was largely framed as an offshoot of the errancy/inerrancy debate. That is, the debate was just over whether the Bible had to be literally true in every detail, or whether some parts of it could be metaphorical.
Or in other words, it was considered pedantic to waste any time wondering whether there was literally a garden of Eden and a literal Adam and Eve, or whether it was all some sort of metaphor.
Partly this may be because most of my teachers were sympathetic to theistic evolution, and framed the debate in this way.
What never really occurred to me at the time (or only occurred to me in the back of my mind) was that if the creation story is not literally true, then this affects more then the inerrantist position. The whole theology of Christianity falls apart.
The Christian theology is based on the idea that God originally created a perfect world, but humans were the ones who brought in pain and death with original sin. Therefore a redeemer was necessary to redeem the sin humans had brought into God's perfect world. Jesus's death on the cross was the only thing that could redeem us, because only someone born without sin could redeem original sin.
With theistic evolution, however, there is now an acknowledgement that death (and presumably pain) were an established part of nature millions of years before humans first appeared on the earth. Even after the age of the dinosaurs, our humanoid ancestors were killing each other, and dying of malnutrition and starvation and diseases, long before the modern human race even made an appearance.
So pain and death can not then be the result of original sin, but must have been the way God originally created the world.
And then how does Jesus fit into all of this?
And to that question, add this other observation:
One of my first memories of seriously questioning the Christian faith as a young adolescent comes from reading about dinosaurs, and looking at a graphic that showed the comparative time periods of how long pre-historic life had been on the earth compared to human beings. The graphic showed time spiralling for millions of years into the past to show how long dinosaurs had been on the earth (and before dinosaurs other forms of pre-historic life) compared with just the short fraction of time humans have existed.
Christian theology teachers that Jesus is going to return sometime soon to bring this world to an end. If he were to return tomorrow, then why is there are there are these millions of years of evolution for just a short time of human existence? Even assuming Jesus isn't going to return for another 1,000 years, or 10,000 years, or 100,000 years, the sense of time proportion still wouldn't make any sense.
And furthermore, what is the point of all this? If theistic evolution is to be believed, then God went through all the trouble of creating life and controlling evolution during the Triassic period, only to wipe out almost all the life forms [article on mass extinction at the end of the Triassic Period here] and then start evolution all over with the Jurassic period and the age of the dinosaurs, only to then eventually wipe out all the dinosaurs. What sort of divine plan is that?
And this is only talking about life on earth. The sense of disproportionate time becomes even stranger when we consider the age of the Universe.
Carl Sagan's analogy of the Cosmic Calender is informative (W). If the 13.8 billion years the universe has been in existence were mapped into a single calender year, then modern humans wouldn't appear until December 31st, at 23:52 (W). This makes it even stranger the idea that God created the Universe with humans in mind.
To all this, finally, I add the standard critique against theistic evolution. Namely, if God inspired the Bible, and if God presumably knew, for example, that the stars were created before the earth and not vice-versa, then why didn't God just say that? I know theistic evolutionists argue that the Bible is not supposed to be a science textbook, which is why they argue God chose to use metaphors to describe the creation of the world, but to my mind there's a difference between simplifying the facts and getting the facts wrong.
The other thing I don't understand about theistic evolutionists: if the first 11 chapters of Genesis are verifiable wrong, then on what basis do we trust the rest of Genesis? Outside the Bible we have no other sources for figures like Abraham or Moses, so why do we believe in them?
3 comments:
Theistic Evolution is a theory that really nettles me. I mean, I suppose it's tenable, but not from a "Christian" POV -- especially where Paul is concerned -- and exactly for the reasons you state. Efforts at Theistic Evolutionary Theology strike me very much as the sort of Heavenly Spheres model that Copernicus worked so hard on, trying to keep the Earth in the centre of the universe
Oh yeah, good point. I completely forgot about the writings of Paul, but that's another reason why theistic evolution doesn't work-- All the New Testament writing assumes a literal view of the creation story. For example when Paul says in 1 Timothy:
But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet.
For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve.
And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression.
So, if we accept that the creation story is just a metaphor, than why aren't woman allowed to teach? The whole thing doesn't make any sense with theistic evolution.
The whole book of Romans, too, for that matter: Just as by one man sin entered the world, etc.
Paul was nothing if not an interesting thinker and ... I don't really know what he is here -- theologian, I suppose. There's a lot of mythical cross-pollination going on in Romans, though: pagan-Roman, Hellenist thought, late-Temple Judaism, plus some of the weird Assumption stuff that was being bandied about among the fringes. Systematic types do their damnedest to iron out what he's up to, but ... it's just way too weird a book.
Post a Comment