June 30, 2009
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It’s Evolution…
Now it would seem good old Xanga has become a “network” of sites including Datingish, Mancouch, Autisable, and Revelife, the last of which is Christian-themed. Revelife recently featured the provocative question “Do you believe in evolution?” and this of course led to a banter of comments debating evolution versus creationism.
I started thinking, “Hmmm, I’m sure this topic has been debated before on Xanga, and more particularly, I’m sure that I had something to say about it before.” And so I did… as early as January 22, 2001 in this post. I’ve always been fascinated by this topic, and experienced difficulty reconciling all my beliefs, but at the same time, I’ve often been disgusted by how polarized people become with their opinions. There is middle ground, I believe. Anyhow, I’m kind of at a block on anything else to write about at the moment, so I thought I’d share my “answer” to the abovementioned question:
I consider myself both Christian and a believer in evolution– in fact, I believe in all development of the natural universe as presently described by rational science, from the Big Bang on. Furthermore, I believe that science is the revelation of God’s truth to us. What we now consider science would have once been thought of as magic (or its darker counterparts); the progress continues.
I think GabrielPeter’s issue is that he’s ultimately a fundamentalist. If you want to ascribe the existence of sin and death to Adam & Eve and their Fall, well then, you do have to take Genesis literally and you can’t believe in the old Earth/scientific view. In the scientific view, there were no two human beings from whom all present living humans descended.
If you can take the Genesis account figuratively, then you can fit in sin and death. And if you’re believing that the Creation account is figurative, not literal (which must be done if you are to reconcile evolution and a 4.5 billion year old Earth with it), then you can follow that the Garden of Eden story is also figurative, not literal.
If you figure that the tale of Adam & Eve is a parable, just as Jesus told about the prodigal son, et. al., then it works. There doesn’t have to be a literal prodigal son; the point was in the moral of the story. So, the Hebrews told a story about Adam & Eve that was essentially the same story that the Greeks told about Pandora, and countless other cultures doubtlessly tell similar stories: Mankind was created essentially perfect, free of death, disease, and all suffering. But someone– Eve, Pandora, (we could have a separate discussion about why it’s so often a woman– likely because these were/are partriarchal cultures!) decides that this idyllic existence isn’t quite enough because they get curious about what god(s) know that they don’t. Once they indulge that curiosity– eat the apple, open the box– boom! all humanity is doomed to suffer forevermore for it.
Does it matter why suffering (which Christians will equate with sin) came into the world? Fundamentalist Christians will insist it will, that there is a direct connection between the Fall and Christ’s redemption that cannot be fudged on either end. More liberally, one could still endorse the exclusivity of Christ’s ability to redeem mankind because of his divine co-nature. Suffice to say that someone had to die to redeem sin, but the only one who could do that had to be at once both God and man.
The next step would be simply to believe that Jesus lived to set an example for how all of us should live and that believing in him means living our own lives by that example and thus each doing his or her small part to make the world a better place. However, this opens the door to not literally believing in the Resurrection and by most commonly accepted definitions, one cannot be a Christian without believing in the Resurrection and all it entails.
The bottom line is that reconciling science and Christianity is possible, so long as one does not insist on a literal interpretation of the Bible. Fundamentalism and rational science are indeed mutually exclusive. It’s easier if you are a Deist and favor the idea of the “Divine Watchmaker” or “Supreme Architect” God over the “Talking to You From a Burning Bush” God.
What do you think?
Comments (6)
Interesting. I’m not a Christian and the main reason for that is I’m entirely too logical of a thinker to have religion of any variety make any sort of sense to me. To me, it seems like a bunch of stories, anecdotes, parables… whatever… written by man to give explanation to that which was foreign and scary and to give people comfort in their times of need. Something to believe in.
And that’s not bad, if it works for you.
On one of my blogs I called religion a crutch because to me, that’s what it is. I don’t mean that in a bad way, crutches can be a good thing if you need them. They help you walk when you can’t stand on your own. Right? And that’s all good.
I’ve been a non believer since I was 10. By coincidence(?), that was the same year I stopped believing in Santa, the Easter bunny, tooth fairy, etc…
@warweasel - I’m still a believer but I’m not what you would call religious. I haven’t been to church in eight years, for example. But I have faith. There is a huge difference between religion and faith. People brush their teeth and check their e-mail religiously. Faith moves mountains.
I didn’t know you were back on here–which is why I haven’t been.
I re-examined my own beliefs a while back–and realized I probably believe in a form of intelligent design–though probably more in the X-Files vein. (cue the music while Mulder does Sculley’s hair.) I do believe the indigenous human genome has been worked on by someone in some form–but that’s my personal belief–nothing I’d grade students on.
I am a firm believer in Evolution.
I can’t believe the Adam and Eve story at all. It just seems too made up.
Although I was born a Hindu, I’m not very religious.
Thanks for your comment, I really appreciate it!
I’ve thought about this a lot too. Speaking of it on xanga gets interesting now that there is revelife (although there has long been a religious block), especially if you buy a “plugz” for your post with a tag like “don’t just accept Jesus,” or “John the Beatle (not the baptist)” or “God is Fear, no Love, oh hell, I don’t know.”
There seems to be few better ways to get traffic – if that’s the kind of traffic you want.
I can see no sense to Christianity except the figurative sense. And I don’t know why a Christian wouldn’t emphasize what Christ taught, as opposed to “merely” accepting that he is God, and expecting salvation in return.
By the way, the advantage of the Greek story (from a sex equality point of view) is that Pandora’s husband, Epimetheus, was an idiot. His name means “afterthought”, I think.
I also have really found it interesting that Man’s ills and punishments always seem to come from the seach for knowledge. As if knowledge is a bad thing? As if God wants us to be stupid. That kind of interpretation almost explains why fundamentalists deny science. So I am with you 100% – in that I support you’re approach to Christianity. I personally am less denominational (probably most like a Deist, as you suggested – I share that with our founding fathers).
I even think the Resurrection has a perfectly reasonable figurative interpretation, and that is that when we awaken, become enlightened, in the know (gnosis), so to speak, when we realize that, for example, we are immortal (most people who are spiritual to any degree, I would posit, believe in the immortality of the soul), then we have our own Easters. Conversely when we live in denial of this, we, in a very real sense, live with the reality of death.
One last point. I read somewhere once that the Coptic Church of Etheopia, a Christian sect, believes in the sacramental use of marijuana, and supports this with the interpretaion that the burning bush was a hemp plant, which explains a lot, I think.
I am a geologist, so I study evolution all the time.
My main thought on this topic is this: many creationists will say that the evidence is there, and us scientists either 1) don’t wan’t to see the truth or 2) hide the truth. My response to that is, if I or anyone could prove creation, and thus, prove the existence of a god, it would be the most important discovery in the history of mankind, and no one would pass that opportunity up. Of course, in real life, the answer is we don’t find the evidence because it does not exist. It’s simply boring old evolution, no bells or whistles or magic.