Saturday, July 08, 2006

Bit more on creationism

Came across a fun article here on what creationists hate. Includes pi, insects, the ice age and various other goodies. As I've said before, I don't think the real battle is won or lost on scientific data (even though I think it's overwhelming), but on philosophical grounds. However, this site certainly puts the case.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have a question for you Mike (and others) Firstly, let me preface this by saying that I can’t help but agree that both biologically (from the little I have heard and the even less that I have understood) as well as philosophically, Evolution makes sense.

My one question that I would love some sort of response to goes as follows: In the Genesis account of creation, death enters the world when Adam and Eve deliberately choose to disobey God. If we are to believe evolution, then death must have been around from the starting gun (AKA the ‘big bang’ – get it? I bet God does). Now I can put up with the whole Enzymes to Apes dying by virtue of the fact that that’s what they do, but that leaves a question of, in the process of evolution, who was the first human and was he doomed to die without having being able to bring death on himself by metaphorically eating the fruit? And if you follow my point, is it therefore correct to assume that this poor sod was already infected with that little bugger known as death upon birth? Did the first human (Child of God) evolve into a state that where he did not have the ability to choose to sin and therefore bring death into creation because it was already there? If sin is the cause of death, then did God in fact create start the world of with and bang and a pinch of sin (can amimals sin? Or does this mean that death is not the result of sin, but we where always due to die by God’s design? Or did creation reach a point when the first human was born that the whole death thing was reassessed?

None of the above seem to make sense.

Mike, if you have managed to understand my hastily written rambling then well done – a light has been requested that it can be cast upon.

Mike Peatman said...

Wow, Chris. That's good stuff.

I think the answer must lie in the mixing of metaphorical/allegorical and chronological. In other words, a truth which is told in a narrative of unfolding time (the fall story) doesn't necessarily correlate with a series of events in evolution. It could be a way of describing what actually is

In a sense, Genesis says that no humans ever lived forever, which we actually know to be true. And death represents the fact that we are not gods. Perhaps the implication that eternal life could have been ours is a pointer to what restoration of relationship with God could lead to. Of course we still need to die to this world and life in order to embrace the new one.