May 17, 2008 06:56 pm
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The Gazette recently has featured some discussion of creationism vs. evolution. Any belief is fine, so long as it causes no harm. Unfortunately, we’ve repeatedly seen how some vocal creationists have intimidated schools to censor science textbooks, though now more than ever we need our upcoming generation to have a clear understanding of science.
Unfortunately, many activist creationists reduce religion to superstition. They seem to feel that if Genesis can’t be the final, literal word on how the universe came to be, then Christianity is undermined. They seem to feel that if the Earth’s origin wasn’t like a presto-chango magic trick or a movie’s computer-generated fantasies, then Christianity will collapse like a house of cards. Isn’t that a fragile, precarious sort of religion? Genesis was written before innumerable scientists had been born and dedicated their lives to close, careful examination and analysis of the specifics of the world. Genesis was written millennia before such breakthroughs as carbon dating and genetic analysis. It was a time before humankind had time for the work of learning about dinosaurs, ice ages, heredity, gravity or that Earth is round. Thus, it’s logical and no basis for invalidation that Genesis was written in the broad language of parable.
Literalist creationists and intelligent design activists might consider Jesus chose to speak in parables, and many who are sympathetic to science also value and respond to what they take to be the mythic telling of authentic truths, as in Genesis: that human awe truly should be inspired by the emergence of a vast universe, of a richly good Earth, and of our finding ourselves in the midst of it all, where each of us, like the imperfect Adam and Eve, might work toward learning how to live in harmony with the world and the laws of nature that we’ll never have enough time to explore and examine fully.
I’m deeply glad there is a building momentum among American churches to cherish the natural world as well as the Bible. Christianity has been around long enough that it’s had its inevitable low points. For example, the Catholic Inquisition tortured and burned to death Giordano Bruno for questioning the divine order of the universe, heretically claiming Earth revolved around the Sun. Today the Vatican houses an observatory and owns the world’s largest collection of meteor rocks. When I asked a Vatican astronomer what has been the most important thing the Church learned from science, he disarmingly replied, “Humility.”
Of course, it’s fine if people with their busy lives can’t find the time required to keep abreast of science’s body of knowledge. But I’m saddened by how often people who have taken so little time to understand science often are publicly very vocal and obstructive in discounting significant scientific findings. For example, so much can depend on a clear understanding of the difference between two such apparently obvious distinctions as weather and climate. Many Americans mockingly dismiss scientists’ widely and meticulously researched warnings that current trends in human activity could cause Earth’s average temperature to rise as much as 10 degrees in this century. Why is that alarming? After all, it’s common for the local weather two days in a row to vary 10 degrees in temperature, which means little more to us in our daily lives than whether or not we wear a jacket. However, a 10-degree change in average global climate is a very different reality. Eighteen thousand years ago during the coldest period of the last ice age, global climate’s temperatures were about 10 degrees colder than now, and New York was buried under a mile of ice.
We must encourage the upcoming generation to value science, because science provides the powerful tools and practical clarity necessary for planning for our species‚ future survival and for the survival of much of what makes our world so — yes — miraculous. The human population swiftly swells, in inverse proportion to non-human species’ declines and extinctions. After their millennia of survival, suddenly 12 percent of the world’s birds, 23 percent of mammals, and a third of amphibians approach extinction. I remember my fascination as a student reading a medieval European likely encountered no more than 100 other people during his or her lifetime. Our species’ worldwide population numbered 250 million during the time of Christ, expanding to half a billion by 1600, to one billion by 1800, to three billion by 1960, then more than doubling to 6.5 billion by 2005. A billion today live in slums, 90 percent in developing countries. Population is expected to swell to 10 billion by 2100, further straining — or overwhelming — the carrying capacity of global life support systems. For instance, though intuitively the world may seem too vast to be affected by mere humans, the world’s atmosphere in terms of life’s stability is diaphanously thin: if we could drive a car vertically, outer space would be an easy day trip (the troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, and ionosphere all lying within a 350-kilometer range from Earth’s surface). Yet how many cars‚ and smokestacks‚ emissions are daily altering that thin, life-sustaining layer? Our increasingly small, crowded planet needs the help of science if we’re to find our way safely into the future. Recently breaking ranks with the evangelical old guard, even Pat Robertson has emerged as an outspoken activist for addressing our climate crisis.
I’m often struck by how the most vocal creationists seem to think that if they’re outspoken in pitting the Bible against science, they’ll earn some sort of divine merit badge. Maybe that will get them into Heaven? But if that’s their true motivation, isn’t that merely self-serving? Do they believe their God is the sort who expects them to live in denial of the rich, ancient, astonishingly intricate realities of what they profess is His creation? Such guardedness is obstructive and too often merely superstitious, not spiritual or religious in the finest, most deeply enriching, strengthening way. When such attitudes attempt to influence others, I believe they actually can run counter to the Sermon on the Mount’s core message of love, empathy, self-transcendence, responsibility, and humility — of goodness. Thankfully, many Christians don’t consider their faith threatened by science and don’t consider the more quotidian details of Genesis to be at the heart of what makes their choices and actions meaningful.
Dan Corrie
Tifton
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