Recently I returned from vacation with my girlfriend's family. We traversed throughout Kentucky and had a lot of fun. The end of the vacation, though is what I will focus on.
Her family are staunch fundamentalist Bible alone people. Very good people and very good Christians. I really do love them. As the final stop on the vacation we went to the Creation Museum. Now, being a student of science and reading as much as I do, I immediately had some qualms about going. However, because I was with them, I was obliged to check it out. My poor girlfriend who knows my position on things was also a bit apprehensive. She was getting stomach pains as well, albeit for a different reason.
We arrived and being the guy that I am, I pocketed my rosary in case I needed to squeeze something. The first thing that we viewed was a show in the planetarium. That was probably one of my favorite things of the day. Basically it was an exercise in the expansiveness of the universe and how God created it all. Great. I have no problem in acknowledging that God created everything. The dicotomy that these types of Christians place unecessarily on science and faith is unwarranted. They mentioned a few times how the universe is only about 6,000 years old and used the fact that scientists say that some blue giants cannot have existed very long because their life expectancy is shorter. So they can't figure out one tiny aspect of creation. Okay. There are many things that we do not know that we are still trying to understand. Things do not operate according to our rules. We form the rules from what we observe. That does not necessarily mean that the universe is only 6,000 years old. I will give them that the production was very interactive and I enjoyed the space traveling and seeing how much of the universe has been actually mapped. It put in perspective how small that we really are in the big picture.
Next was the walk through the actual museum. When you hold the Bible to be a scientific treatise, then you can expect to see some gross miscalculations such as placing humans with dinosaurs. Immediately there were people placed in a display with some dinosaurs. As I said before, with what I have read and with what I believe, it seems to me that people are trying to present a world view that does not mesh with what we have figured out. In one instance they celebrate science and it's discoveries of the universe and the next instance, they hold contempt for what it has discovered that goes against their preconceived belief. Especially when it comes to time.
I have come to believe that my faith is only strengthened by the fact that God can choose to create in his own way and in his own time. Without the confines of the Church to interpret scripture and without the proper understanding of the context a particular verse or book of scripture this can lead to many different conclusions. As was shown by the walk through the museum. The most hurtfull aspect of the walk through was how they alleged that the Church had placed tradition over the Bible. Typical Protestant reasoning and "history." What did Luther have to do with the creation debate? They placed him there though nailing his 95 theses to a door. What I also found interesting was the fact that they had on display (on loan) the Codex Sinaiticus, which by the way, includes all 73 books of the Bible as decided by the early Church. They lumped themselves in with the early Church, yet failed to recognize the promise that Christ made to the Church in the first place, that She would be led into all truth. I doubt that many who go to the museum realize what truly the whole history of Christianity means.
I enjoyed seeing the fossils and the dinosaur sculptures, but again the time frame they placed them under was not sitting right. What I found most interesting was the fact that they even had a sign (in the corner) that mentioned that "even though there have been no human bones found along with dinosaur bones doesn't mean that they didn't coexist." Huh!? The simple fact that they mentioned this was indicative of the grasping for straws. I realize that there are scientists who are doctors and such that believe in the 6 day creation, but I believe they are starting with the wrong assumptions. Does it really hurt your faith to say that God might not have created the world in a literal 6 days? If you are going to take the Bible literally why not believe in John 6? How about the fact that Genesis was written for a specific people to help them understand that indeed God created everything that we see? Or the fact that people were already used to the 7 day week at the time it was written? Maybe it was written so that people would understand how God creates rather than the time that he creates it in? I believe in Adam and Eve. There was a specific time in history that God gave his greatest creation a soul. Did we disobey? Absolutely. We are fallen, but we are not stupid. Reason is a gift from God and God does not deceive. If he does, then he is not God.
I think you can see what I believe. I could be wrong, but I do have some faith in science. Not the same faith that I have in God, but a trust nonetheless. If you look at all the advances that science has given us, maybe it is indicative of other things as well. Science itself is not inherently evil. The misconception lies within the fact that according to the creationists, it has to be "either/or" instead of "both/and." What makes science evil is the way that people use it (i.e.- fetal stem cell research or contraception.) The scientific method is used to figure out the cures to diseases and to make new vaccines and to further the human exploration of all of God's creation. I do not have a problem acknowledging all that science has done and I know that God did everything. Will we find out some evidence for or against the creationist position? I do not know. So far, what we have found has lent credence to what scientists are saying about the world and the universe. Until I see some conclusive sound evidence to support the creationist view, I will continue to trust what science has so far found.
On another note, this whole thing depends on how one reads the Bible and what it has to say. If you are interpreting to your own belief and apply it to some preconceived notion then you can interpret the Bible to fit anything that you want. I totally believe that the Bible is God's inerrant word. But when you read something you need to realize the whole context of the work and what the author wants to convey. Since the Bible is a collection of books put together by the Church she is the rightful interpreter of it. As St. Augustine says, "I would not believe in the Gospel myself if the authority of the Catholic Church did not influence me to do so."(Against the letter of Mani, 5,6, 397 A.D.)
Maybe I am being too harsh on people. But with this mindset pervading amongst certain fundamentalist Christians, I cannot but help try to understand where they are coming from and how to me they seem very off in their thinking and interpretation of scripture. I suppose that this is another instance of the logical outcome of the complete rejection of Church authority and the emphasis on the Bible alone.
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