February 12, 1809 was a pretty good day for the world – Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born. The Lafayette Journal & Courier had an article on Darwin with a passage that caught my attention:
“I really believe that creationism and science are hand-in-hand,” said Chris Johns, principal of First Assembly Christian Academy in Lafayette. “Just as some who see science through Darwinism.”
. . .
“We do bring up both sides,” Johns said.
“We teach both sides — and quite honestly, we believe the creationism side.”
Johns said while students are taught God had a guiding hand in the world’s creation, as opposed to the big bang theory, it is not a rejection of science.
Evolution holds that the Earth is billions of years old and that all life, including humans, evolved from simple forms through a process of natural selection.
In particular, the not believing in the Big Bang thing caught my eye – and that’s because of a parenting issue with which I was presented a couple of weeks ago. I had told Cole, my 5 year old, about the Big Bang. A day or two later, he said he told his teacher about it and she told him “he wasn’t telling the truth.” Now, some of this is probably just a translation issue by the 5 year old. I don’t think his teacher called him a liar. But, I think she did try to tell him that the Big Bang Theory wasn’t true. A few days later, he said something like “God made all snowflakes different.” I was fairly abrupt in telling him that it wasn’t God that made the snowflakes, but rather a natural combination of cold and water. Nature is a wonder on its own, we don’t need to theorize a God to add to it. I haven’t raised a fuss with the teachers or the school because it’s a church where the pre-school is located. They said that religion wasn’t part of their curriculum, aside from a thank you song at snack time, but some teachers are apparently more into proselytizing than others. But, you go to a church, you get God. I get that.
Another thing about that passage that struck me was the conflation of the age of the earth with evolution. That strikes me more as a matter of geology than evolution. The Young Earthers are more perplexing to me than the anti-evolutioners. Wholesale rejection of science in the name of believing chapters of the Bible written from the oral traditions of bronze age shepherds is absolutely baffling to me.
So, anyway, 200 years ago Darwin was born, and he wrote a book that helped us better understand the world around us. That bent a lot of folks out of shape, but I’m happy he did it. Happy birthday Charles. Thoughts on Lincoln will have to wait.
An interesting article reporting that 63% of Americans do not believe in evolution. Now as a former science teacher is there any wonder that it becomes difficult to teach science (whether evolution or geology or about “prehistoric” things.) As with many science teachers sought to avoid conflict by simply stating “going to cover X topic basic on scientific theory” –never had a compliant. Same with teaching “sex” since I taught animal science was able to do comparative anatomy without too much controversy.
Jack,
I think that figure is misleading. I doubt (or hope) that 63% think that nothing ever evolves. If so, they need to learn more about the flu.
However, I would agree that 63% don’t think we all started off as gasses that just happened to blow up, creating vast amounts of dust that formed into stars and planets, then somehow evolved from a speck of dust to a single-celled organism, then eventually evolved from a single cell to a complex organism that created a bunch oral traditions, the bronze age, and the Internet.
Frankly, the above paragraph seems to require as much faith as God creating Adam from dust. It only becomes a good theory if you exclude any chance of something supernatural. Since science is the study of nature, I get why many scientists would believe that.
However, I don’t agree that natural = truth 100% of the time. Frankly, I’m more broad-minded than that!** That’s where the division starts, IMHO.
** Funny how people that close their minds off to any explanation other than a scientific one are considered more “open-minded” much of the time.
1. The Bible is NOT a science book!
2. The main point of chapters 1-3 in Genesis is that God created the world and all that is in it.
3. Science is doing a GREAT job of filling in the pieces of how that happened.
4. I applaud the work that Darwin did.
5. Pretty cool that he and Lincoln were born on the same day and year!
Perhaps the good Rev. could comment on a statement I remember from my youth (long ago) where the minister said: Bible says in 6 days God created the heavens and the earth—his comment was that the original text said “time” which was converted to “day”. For some this would allow for creative intelligence I suppose while that was not the topic at the time.
Jack-That’s exactly it! Even the psalmist says that “a thousand years are like a day in God’s eyes.”
I have always taken the words of Genesis to mean that creation happened over time-and not LITERALLY in seven chronological days. I teach that to my confirmation (middle-school-aged) kids. I tell them that what they learn in science is not in conflict with the Bible. It is filling in the pieces from what humans have learned in the many millenia since Genesis was written.
I applaud the advances that science makes.
The problem with the “time” converting to “day” part is the line: “And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day” and so on for each day.
So, unless the earth’s rotation was a LOT slower in the past, we’re talking about 6 24 hour days here, not days or years.
I don’t know why some believe God is all-powerful but take issue with the 6-day bit.
BTW I am not for teacing ID in schools, either. I don’t like that theory from what I’ve read about it.
They take issue with the six day bit because the six day bit is just nonsense.
What’s the evidence for it, other than a book?
Jason, scientific investigation is not materialist out of some metaphysical assertion, much less certainty; it is materialist because if we are to prove any physical laws exist we can only do so by material means.
“Evolution” is not abiogenesis; it is observable fact, whether life on earth originally came from God, Old Scratch, or some Cosmic Johnny Appleseed, or as the result of wholly natural processes. The Big Bang is a theory explaining certain aspects of the physical universe. It extrapolates a Cosmic Singularity, but it says nothing about whether that represents God’s Own Wristwatch, Gene Roddenberry’s enormous Ego, or, in fact, whether it’s a one-time or a regular occurrence.
There are in all these fields scientists who are atheist, agnostic, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, or Muslim. The requirement that their work “account for” matters it does not address, like your insistence that “open mindedness” take every crackpot theory, Bronze Age superstition, or piece of internet gossip seriously, is simply unjustified.
Doghouse,
Your middle paragraph is exactly what I was trying to say about the confusion in the 63% number. Some are asked about “evolution” and associate it with ID, Big Bang, etc… Too many times, people get evolution confused with creation vs big bang, and those are different debates. I think we all agree that “evolution” isn’t a debate, actually.
My point about “open mindedness” is that I’m not going to just dismiss a certain category of theories. I don’t take everything I hear seriously, but I also don’t refuse to listen.
And finally, I do understand why scientific investigation is materialist, and I was trying to acknowledge that. My point there is that just because something is proven by the rules of science does not, in my mind, make it truth.
T,
If they think that part of the book is BS, why do they believe any of the rest of it? We’re talking about the first chapter, too!
You have to look at the type of writing in those first chapters-it is clearly a mythology-type story; about creation. The intent is to point out who made creation and not so much how. It was also told in a way that people living in an oral culture could pass on the story from generation to generation.