I’ve been trying to come up with my response to the ‘debate’ that happened at the Creation Museum here in Kentucky. Even as I write this I feel like I am banging my head against a wall and not making my point and I’m just thankful that I am not wasting actual paper on this effort.
I’m a Christian; I take the Bible seriously and consider it inerrant. I also consider myself a critical consumer of information and I find science fascinating. I love physics and geology – even if Sheldon Cooper thinks it is more of a social science than a real science.
I’m also a Christian who is a Hebrew, not in some weird (and frankly creepy) ‘Evangelical’[i] meaning of it but in the sense that my ancestors practiced Judaism and I am the descendant of the Sephardic and Ashkenazi peoples. Our cousins more interested in genealogy can trace our family back to The Flood. I’m not sure if being ‘proud’ of my heritage is correct: I’ll paraphrase my good friend Roseanne in saying that I am fortunate to have this heritage because it has always offered my a diverse outlook on faith because people I knew and respect from the early on were different. A rabbi in our family once said, “In the great questions of life science answers ‘how’ and our faith answers, ‘why.’” My faith isn’t threatened by science because it is answering a different question.
Also: please, stop using the Hebrew calendar to date the world at 6,000 years old or there about because that’s just when we started counting not when things started.
What disturbs me isn’t the lack of intellectual curiously in those share my faith, I taught too long in public and private schools to clutch my pearls in horror at that idea. The pride taken in a lack of intellectual curiosity is what horrifies me. We don’t stop at evolution in our fear and hatred of science but extend that to climate science and our poor stewardship of the planet. This will be the winter of your discontent but also of your dissonance: this is what global warming (more appropriately, climate change) looks like. There was a whole Buzzfeed list of vapid comments from Christians in response to Mr. Nye’s presentation.
Debate is the quest for truth through dialog. Dialog requires listening and respecting not only the opinions of others but their right to the opinions. Mira Wiegmann once said about these types of debates that it is important in this type of discussion: you cannot debate an idea based on faith because faith is an emotion and a ‘debate’ relies on reason and logic. Faith, an emotion, takes us further than reason or logic will let us go[ii]. I would venture the guess that secularists who believe in science do so with the same fervor with which we hold our beliefs.
And let’s keep it real, a mechanical engineer debated for evolution against someone who missed the central teachings of Christianity talking about creationism. It wasn’t like the time Creighton debated Point Loma Nazarene in 2007. It was a farce. It was a publicity stunt. It was a missed opportunity on the part of the Church to not look insipid. And don’t pull First Corinthians 1:22-25 out, we’re talking about knowing what people are talking about before tearing them down.
There are some things that we Christians need to consider before the next time we debate something with someone in the secular world:
First, we can have it both ways. You can believe in the God of the Bible and give science some credit. We don’t know HOW God created the world or ordered the Universe but we believe that he did. Remember who Galileo was treated? The simple truth is that no expects the Spanish Inquisition (although in Galileo’s case it was Roman) but the rest of the country just puts up with the Evangelical one.
Second, scientists don’t pretend to have all the answers and we can stop pretending that we do. As the guy how has an answer for everything and knows everything I am more painfully aware than most that it is off-putting. Few things are as persuasive as active listening and having someone explain their point of view to you. The best way to get someone away from a bad idea is to have the people talk themselves out of it.
Third, the Bible isn’t a work of science. It does contradict itself in places (or seems to). The Bible also has been used to justify every evil perpetrated by the United States from slavery to the war on terror. If we are going to beat people over the head with the book we need to own the contradictions and the fact that a book we love has been terribly misused and likely has been used to mistreat the people we’re attempting dialog with. And, yeah, it mentions unicorns. Sure, they were most likely talking about rhinoceroses of every variety from Indian to Birthday but it does call them unicorns.
Fourth, we can disagree with people and still treat them with the same respect we expect people to give us. We don’t do that. Sure, you can point to the fact that they make fun of us but I’ve found it is easier to find an atheist literate in the Bible than it is to find a Christian literate in science. It is okay, really, to admit you’re not well versed in a theory and it is also okay to be entirely offended by someone’s point of view, life style, and whatever else but you have to remain decent to those people.
In the future it would be interesting, unlikely but interesting, to see someone literate in the science behind creationism (not just the theology) and someone literate in the science behind the Theory of Evolution to talk together and have an informed discussion. It would be a reassurance to me, as a Christian, not to have my beliefs presented by someone cartoonish that even Pat Robertson asked to stop talking. I’m sure the science types would like a scientist, too.
[i] As a Lutheran Christian I’m very cross at the word ‘evangelical’ being hijacked by the American Taliban who don’t see themselves in the Pharisees from the Gospels.
[ii] Mira Wiegmann would be horrified to know that I listened to everything she ever said in my presence so don’t tell her. Renea said she was very smart and I ought to take notes and I rarely ignore Renea.
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