This is a paper I wrote for college... twice. The first time was for an English class which I took through a U.S. college while stationed in Europe in about 1992 or 93. The second time, I used it as a framework to rewrite for a Humanities course, which was Introduction to Religion.
Both times, I was attempting to reconcile the religion I was taught as a child, to make sense of the contradictions, the lack of logic or fact. I was actually trying to support the belief with facts. Perhaps a fool's errand, because some people of faith do not look for facts to support their belief. I am primarily referring to Bible literalists, who take everything exactly as written and also use the words to REFUTE science. And some even stick to only one version of the Bible regardless of how many versions predate, for example, The King James version.
With my earlier version of this writing, the instructor liked my paper so much that she had me read it aloud to the class. I was embarrassed, but also flattered (and wanted a good grade!) By the time I finished, I could tell the fundamentalists from the free-thinkers. The fundies were all shaking their heads.
I still don't think this paper is "wrong" but I now find it difficult to reconcile the two camps. I will likely write more about this in a future blog.
For now, here are my unedited thoughts from 8 years ago, and by extension, although rewritten, 20 years ago. If these words help you, great. If not, either way you have a peek into my own theological journey.
(btw, the "Huston Smith" I refer to is the author of a book called Why Religion Matters which we read for class)
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Sam I. Am
Dr. MyTeacher
Humanities (Intro to Religion)
August 9, 2005
Science
and Religion: You Kids Play Nice!
Science and
religion are two schools of thought which for some time have not been able to
peacefully coexist, at least in modern times, and probably never. Some examples from Western culture are the
rejection of Copernicus’ and Galileo’s ideas about the structure of the
universe, and more recently, the controversy surrounding Darwin’s theory of evolution. This was hotly debated in the “Scopes Monkey
Trial” in the early twentieth century, and to this day tempers flare and court
cases are filed when ideologies clash.
I agree completely
with Huston Smith when he assails scientism as the belief that science can
answer all our questions and solve all our problems. Smith places it as the floor of “the tunnel”
metaphor he uses to describe our current dark ages and lack of
spirituality. This “ism” is only part of
the problem, in my view. The “ism” on
the other side of the coin is religious dogmatism.
I am the product of
a Christian family from Virginia;
I attended Sunday school and church quite regularly as a child, and even spent
parts of my summers at a local Bible camp.
My family primarily attended Presbyterian services, but we did sometimes
switch, trying Baptist, Assembly of God and Methodist churches. And the influence of the Southern Baptist
church in that area can not be overstated!
I still recall listening as my grandmother tuned in to radio sermons and
listening about “hellfire and brimstone” and wondering if that guy would ever
stop to catch a breath! I also fondly
recall the set of Bible Story books by Arthur S. Maxwell my mother had, and
when I visit my sister back there, I still like to flip through them. And believe it or not, we had some
missionaries who came to our school periodically in the 1970s and taught Bible
lessons, long after the Supreme Court rulings in the 1960s. (They used an easel with felt figures which
stuck up there and then added or removed them, or even unveiled a new one to
illustrate the story… I thought it was pretty cool!)
So by the time I
hit my teen years, I was thoroughly indoctrinated in the stories of the Judeo-Christian
Bible, mostly of the King James flavor.
However, this created an inevitable conflict, for I was also interested
in science. I read about dinosaurs, prehistoric
men and the ice ages, volcanoes, earthquakes and was fascinated by the concept
of plate tectonics in the fourth grade.
I also watched some of the last Apollo moon landings, and even had a toy
astronaut with all the accessories when I was in first grade. Therefore, once I learned the scientific
theories behind what I was reading, it just didn’t fit with what I had been
taught through all those religious methods.
I tended to embrace the scientism, and push religious dogmatism to the
side. In my mind, it was all or nothing,
one camp or the other. They couldn’t
both have truth… could they?
Albert Einstein
and about every physicist since him have worked toward a unified theory, a
theory of everything. This would tie
together the laws of space, time, gravity, electromagnetism, radiation, and the
other forces in the universe. I’m no
Einstein, but I think there can be many unifying things between science and
religion, rather than the two camps always being at odds. I intend to explore several issues from the
Judeo-Christian Bible, offering ideas of how these seemingly supernatural
events can be explained without suspending scientific rationality. While I would like to explore the belief of
other religions, I am not familiar enough with them and time does not permit me
to study all of them. But I think the
method can be applied to any religion.
Where to
begin? I Might as well start at the
beginning: Genesis 1:1 states “In the
beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” A very simple statement, yet the explanation
from science is “The Big Bang.” According
to this theory, all the matter and energy of the universe was condensed into a
singularity, an infinitely dense point which contained everything. Genesis 1:2 says, in part “And the earth was
without form, and void…” Void is defined
as “nothing.” If there was nothing, is
it not conceivable that there were no laws of physics either? Imagine a sudden energy burst, illimitable in
proportion and of divine origin. As the
energy spread and cooled, it condensed into matter, and the future universe was
set into motion. And given that light
was created by God before the sun, it fits with the sequence of events that led
to the solar system later in time. Modern
cosmologists and physicists can explain events all the way back to within a
fractional second of the Big Bang, but not before. So how could such a point ever exist? Maybe it didn’t! Perhaps the burst was simply willed into
existence by God. There is even a school
of belief that the universe is merely a thought in the mind of God, but that’s
another topic.
Most who interpret
the Bible literally believe all of creation to be only a few thousand years
old. I find this problematic, because I
don’t believe God would have made the universe into some kind of puzzle problem
for us to figure out, with the laws of science conflicting with reality. Science shows that the universe is about 15
billion years old, so how to explain the difference? Time is meaningless to God, and there are at
least two passages in the Bible which state this. Psalm 90:5 says “For a thousand years in thy
sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.” And 2
Peter 3:8 says “But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day
is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” Therefore, if we take the “days” of creation
as a metaphor, each one could represent millions or billions of years, and they
wouldn’t even have to be of equal length.
Of course one could argue that the Biblical account is literal, and that God created the trees with rings, Adam and Eve with navels, and the earth
filled with fossils. But if so, this
seems an unusual trick to play on the mind of man.
As for the
emergence of life, a literal interpretation seems to show that life simply
“sprouted” from the earth at God’s command.
However, this germination process could have taken “days” and followed
natural laws of selective evolution.
Interestingly, man is created later, just as anthropologists say. And when man is brought forth, the story has
an interesting context: God speaks using
plural pronouns in Genesis 1:26, whereas in the other parts, He simply says
“Let there be…” So when He says “Let us
make man in our image, after our likeness…”
Was this the “royal” pronoun? If so, why wasn’t it used earlier? Perhaps God was speaking to the animals,
evolving man from them, but imparting him with a divine soul, or “the image of
God.” Another interesting thought comes
from Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael. In this book the gorilla philosopher suggests
that Adam and Eve were not two people, but were a group of people who were not
the beginning of man, but were the beginning of our culture.
I came across
another interesting example from Genesis by accident a few years ago that has
stuck in my mind. While reading a book
about snakes which one of my kids borrowed from the library, there was a
section about pythons which said they were descended from prehistoric lizards
that lived alongside the dinosaurs. They
still have remnants of the bone structure where their legs used to be. I remember being told that serpents walked on
legs prior to the “forbidden fruit” incident in the Bible, and Genesis 3:14
says “And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou has done this, thou
art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly
shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life…” Perhaps the serpent was punished for tricking
Eve into eating from the forbidden tree?
Other symbolism in
the Bible fits with widely accepted history.
The exile of Adam and Eve from Eden
might represent the switch from being hunter-gatherers to the establishment of
agriculture. To this day, primitive tribes
have more leisure time than those of us in the so-called “better” modern world,
so might switching from their way of life have been paradise lost? And when Cain slew Abel, the metaphor could
be farmers taking over from herders and nomads, fighting and killing them when
necessary.
Moving on from
creation, another amazing story from the Bible which nearly all in the Western
world are familiar with is the story of Noah’s flood. Recent research has revealed evidence of a catastrophic
flood which inundated the Black Sea
approximately 7,600 years ago. The
narrow passage connecting it to the Mediterranean
was closed off during the last ice age, and it was a freshwater lake with a
level several hundred feet below its current elevation. Sunken riverbeds have been observed, and Dr.
Robert Ballard, who discovered the Titanic,
has found possible evidence of settlements alongside these rivers. At some point, melting ice caps resulted in
rising sea levels around the globe, and the natural dam separating the Black Sea from saltwater was breached. The ensuing torrent is estimated to have been
hundreds of times the size of Niagara Falls, and
filled the Black Sea within a few months. In the process, thousands of people were
displaced, tens of thousands of square miles of farmland were lost, and mass
starvation may have ensued. Add the
stench and possible disease from rotting freshwater fish killed by saltwater,
and you may very well have a disaster of Biblical proportions.
Many older
religions have stories of a catastrophic flood, particularly those of
Mesopotamian origin, but the one with the most parallels is from the Epic of
Gilgamesh. It mirrors Noah’s flood in
many ways, from the flood itself, the boat built to preserve life, and the
birds sent out to search for land.
According to scholars, these stories predate the Bible by hundreds or
even thousands of years. Might they all
have the same ancient origin?
Of course,
conservative readers of the Bible say the story is true just as told. While reading various web sites for this
paper, I came across an interesting theory of how plate tectonics played a part
in the flood. In a nutshell, it outlines
how the continents were one, just as science states, and as they split up water
sprang from the deep. There were no
mountains yet, so the earth was easily covered.
The Grand Canyon and other great
geological features were carved during this period, and the subsequent uplift
of mountains and sinking of the ocean floor allowed the floodwaters to subside,
and Noah’s ark came to rest on a mountain.
Majoring in Geology, I find this interesting, but difficult to believe
unless God is once again playing a trick on our minds with the observed
evidence versus the story. It is worth
learning more about, but once again, that is another topic!
As we move forward
in the Bible, another very famous set of miracles take place during the Exodus
from Egypt. The plagues sent to convince the Pharaoh to
free the Jews might have a basis in nature.
The first plague
was the Nile turning to blood. This has been known to happen in modern times
when a polluting agent causes an algae bloom.
These toxic algae would kill all the fish, frogs (the second plague)
would leave the river and marshes, and die in the heat. The fish and frogs rotting would likely
result in gnats and flies (third and fourth plagues) and perhaps spread disease
killing livestock (fifth plague). The
toxins might have caused the people to develop rashes and boils (sixth plague),
since they were dependent on the Nile waters for
life.
But what source of
the polluting agent? One theory I found
on the internet proposes the explosion of the volcanic island
of Santorini around 1,600 BCE resulted
in massive ash fallout over Egypt. Deposits of ash from this event have been
found in the Nile delta region, and this type
of fallout is known to impact weather.
So hail and darkness (seventh and ninth plagues) might have been a
consequence. Locusts (eighth plague) are
a relatively common occurrence in Africa, so
one does not have to stretch the imagination to embrace this. The final plague, the death of the firstborn
in Egypt,
may have been a consequence of the disease mentioned earlier, or starvation
made worse by locusts.
During the ensuing
flight from Egypt, the King
James version of the Bible states that Moses led the Jews through the Red Sea. However,
according to many sources, the original Hebrew “yam suph” was mistranslated and
means “Reed Sea.” Many scholars point to the Bitter Lakes
of the Suez Canal area as this body of water. Computer models have shown that the strong
winds of the region can cause bodies of water to “slosh” to one side for a
period of time, and some report having witnessed this phenomenon. And Exodus 14:21 says, in part, “and the Lord
caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the
sea dry land, and the waters were divided.”
And once this east wind subsided, the water would return to its original
location. Pity anyone caught in this
pseudo-tsunami!
There are many
other miracles in the Bible, and I’m sure just as many in other religious
texts. Many scientists and researchers
have offered theories for these events, some plausible, some not. Some have stated that God did not cause these
miracles, but how can they prove it? The
explanations I have used may seem to lean in this direction, but it is not my
intent. This would be scientism, pure
and simple. I believe that if God
created the world, He also created the laws of physics and nature which it
obeys. So is it not unreasonable to
theorize that He might work within His own laws to achieve the goals? I leave open the possibility for the hand of
God to have worked in this manner.
Otherwise, how would Moses have known when to challenge the Pharaoh, or
when it was safe for the Israelites to cross the sea? And Noah’s flood could have been caused by
God, perhaps even to punish those living around the Black
Sea.
What I have
written is from only one religious perspective, only ideas, and not intended to
be exclusive of others. But if more
common ground between science and religion could be found, I think more people
might be inclined to embrace spirituality in some form. And, as a lesson, if all people could learn
the good from religion and focus on what we have in common instead of our differences,
the world would be an infinitely better place.
\\\\\\\\\\ Well, that's the end of my ancient text! //////////
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| And that pretty much sums up the way it often ends... |
And on that note, this is the end of this post!
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