Had an argument with a friend of mine the other day about
evolution. My friend is a protestant (and I hesitate to use the word
fundamentalist but....) who believes in the literal translation of the bible so
therefore believes that Evolution is a lie and somehow an affront to God.
We argued for a while, me trying to present him with
sceintific evidence and him insisting that the evidence was incomplete
therefore untrue. He is willing to concede that the earth is 4 billion years
old but says that everything was created spontaneously and in its current form
and no "new" life forms have appeared on earth since it was all
created.
The words micro and macro evolution were bandied about but
at the end of the day I had not changed his position on it.
Needless to say I felt like a failure, I spent my trip home
obsessing over clever arguments and better examples I could have given him. Until
something simple occurred to me.
The premise of his argument is fundamentally flawed. And
that premise is that the bible is meant to be a factual book at all.
Let's all be serious for a minute, the bible (especially the
old testament) can't be factual. Noah's ark? it defies common sense. As a
catholic, I was taught that the bible isn't LITERALLY true but contains wisdom
all the same. For the so called "bible-based" churches that is pure
heresy.
So I propose the question..what is the bible FOR? For what
purpose did God give us this book?
I am sure that if God himself wrote that book for us, it was
to give us moral guidance, not to be our Science Textbook. For science he gave
us 5 senses and a rational brain.
Let's say a person reads the bible everyday of their lives
and gained not a single shred of morality or conscience from it but did get an
unwavering faith that the earth is 6000 years old and fossils were put
underground to test our faith. Would you say he has used the bible for its
desired purpose or has he wasted a lot of time?
On the other hand, if a person reads the bible everyday of
his life and disbelieves every story in there, thinks the whole thing is Israeli
Mythology with no more truth than the stories of Hercules or Luanda-Magere. BUT
he examines the stories and finds that they contain deeper meaning as to how
one should be a good person, how to treat your fellow man and the nature of
good and evil. He internalizes these lessons and (still disbelieving the facts)
uses them to better himself.
Who has used the bible for its TRUE purpose?
The bible is a moral guide, FULLSTOP. It doesn't have to be
factual to be a source of wisdom. Does the fact that the prodigal son was not
real take anything away from the moral significance of the story? NOPE. If every
word in the bible was a lie it would STILL be a good book to extract moral
wisdom from. This is not to say that some of the figures in the bible did not
really exist, there's independent verification about people like Solomon, David
and so forth. It just doesn't NEED to be true to do its job.
So if you spend your
time poring through its pages trying to calculate the age of the earth or the
resting place of Noah's ark YOU ARE MISSING THE ENTIRE POINT!
Furthermore it is IMMORAL and downright BLASHEMOUS to claim
that the bible is factually true. Why do I say this? Because the greatest gift
God gave us is the human brain, and to REFUSE to use it when contemplating God
is to spit into the eye of the creator. If you want to find out about God's creation,
don't read some Jewish book, go out and LOOK at what He did.
Secondly there is no greater reason for the rise of Atheism
in the world than the literal interpretation of the bible. Ask any atheist why
he's not a Christian and they will start with genesis. This teaching of
fundamentalists drives away many more than it saves and its utterly pointless
to morality. The worst part of this is that Atheists use this as an excuse to
dismiss everything about the bible including the sound moral lessons therein.
The main reason this angers me is that the ridiculous
posturing of fundamentalist Christians makes the rest of us look bad. Stop belittling
our faith with your idiotic nonsense!
For me, evolution does nothing to reduce my faith, in fact
it strengthens it. To look at the incredibly intricate system God put into
motion billions of years ago so that Man may exist ....Its fills me with Awe.
There is no doubt in my mind that God created the universe, maybe
not as stated in Genesis but SOMETHING got everything started right? I call
that God and I am very thankful to Him.
The study of the universe we live in, is the greatest homage
a human can pay to the creator. I believe that eventually science will give us
all the answers and they will point to God Himself.
So.....take that, Andrew.
