A past article in the Arkansas state newspaper featured two pastors, a Baptist and an Episcopal, explaining “why we don’t know for sure the details of the dawn of man.” Both articles described how these two pastors personally deal with uncertainty. The Episcopal argued that science and religion answer two different sets of questions and do not overlap, therefore, we should not attempt to combine the two. According to him, appealing to “mythos” allows “God to be God - mysterious, wonderful, beyond all knowing yet intimate and present, infusing all life with meaning.” In other words, ignorance brings an infusing of meaning to life. I think you will have to appeal to mythos to make meaning of that comment. The Baptist pastor stated that, “most Christian scholarship recognizes that the evidence is substantial for some kind of evolution at work in the earth’s origins. He proceeds by saying that, “all the biblical scholars that I read ... admit and/or proclaim that there are apparent contradictions between the biblical account and scientific evidence as they are interpreted.” Rather excuse a belief in a literal interpretation of Genesis, I argue that scientific evidence supports the account and that there is no good reason not to believe it. It is fascinating to read how some people try to resolve ideological conflict particularly between evolution and creation. Some prefer the comfort and security of the dark womb of mythos and others prefer a continual quest for new information and explanation. The former is a resignation to ignorance and whimsical fantasy. It kills the spirit of search and curiosity to discover truth. It makes its practitioners vulnerable to irrational gullibility and superstitious manipulation. The latter is an honest attempt to seek truth, to improve faulty interpretation, to find solutions to puzzles, to answer questions, and to meet the real needs of people with relevant help. Such a task is by no means small and requires both the capacity for knowledge and the patience to wait for new knowledge. Some Christians are benefited with the training of both the scientific and the religious worlds. I say benefit because knowledge of both fields gives one greater insight into their similarities and differences. Most importantly, such a person can more easily and rationally understand how to mesh the two together. After all, both science and religion claim to be sources of truth, therefore, it is only logical then that both should intersect and compliment one another. I will not bother pointing out the differences between religion and science because they are irrelevant to the question of what is true about creation. As for similarity, science is a methodological approach to discovering truth not foreign to the hermeneutical approach in Biblical studies. Both engage in collecting fact, assimilating those facts into interpretations, and then subjecting those interpretations to critical tests. Few people realize that it is the interpretive stage of the scientific method that conflicts with the literal Biblical interpretation of creation. The collected facts themselves pose no conflict. Interpretation of facts is skewed by the philosophical base of one’s world view. Thus, humanistic interpretation of origins conflicts with the Biblical creation account. Unfortunately, humanism and evolution have become synonymous with science in the minds of many to the exclusion of creation. There are reasons for this dogmatic error but they are in spite of scientific facts. At present, the intelligent design movement in the scientific community is gaining adherents because the model offers the best interpretation of collected facts. Philip Johnson, Michael Behe, Stephen Meyer, Paul Nelson, Del Ratzsch, John Mark Reynolds, and John Wells are publishing works on the subject. Not all of these are Christians, however, their conclusions corroborate with a literal Biblical creation. Interestingly, the widely accepted evolution interpretation called punctuated equilibrium is actually an excuse for the absence of fossil evidence. While it offers an interpretation for the fossil record that populations resist change and when change does occur it is rapid, it is explaining why the fossil record is sporadic and disconnected. In other words, it explains why transition between major groups of organisms is not observed in the fossil record. The creation model predicted the findings of a sporadic and disconnected fossil record but interpret the findings as groups of organisms having been created independent of other groups. You see, the same facts have been interpreted differently. The creation model, based on a literal interpretation of the Bible, is supported by scientific discovery; it conflicts only with the humanistic interpretation of those discoveries. The important point is that creation science models of origins do support the literal interpretation of the Bible. Though not popular or widely espoused (anymore than Columbus’ or Copernicus’ theories were), these models are credible scientific models, and there are no good reasons to doubt the Genesis account of creation because of science. |
