- As a layman, I read the Bible for the first time as a
teenager, and I have referred to it countless times since. At the same
time, I read pretty much everything available, including science, science
fiction, the classics of literature. That includes having subscribed to
and read Scientific American for more than half a century. I have been
less diligent, perhaps, in attending church, but I have been no less devoted
to my own spiritual well-being. Up to this point, I have never met a collision
of religion and science. At a time of growing debate about how to describe
how it all began-and that is what the Intelligent Design debate is about-I
have asked myself numerous times how I managed to avoid that alleged conflict.
Here is how.
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- The Genesis story of the creation of the earth and everything
in it is all in Chapter 1. In 31 verses, this text more or less sequentially
tracks what scientists have come to perceive as the order of events since
the Big Bang. The principal confusion that arises is presentational, centering
almost exclusively on how long it took rather than on what transpired.
It could be that on this ground we are fixated on something like the most
classic of quibbles about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
But the real problem is one of story telling.
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- Give or take a few millennia, the Genesis story may be
six thousand years old. We have no real idea when it first appeared in
written form, nor do we know in what language, although Sumerian or Akkadian
were available early enough. We have no idea how long the story, along
with the rest of the stories of the Books of Moses, the Pentateuch, was
carried in oral traditions, nor do we know, therefore, just how large a
debt we have to story tellers for preserving the story for us.
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- It is essential to have in mind, however, that first
and foremost, we are dealing with a fine piece of the story telling art.
Look at the elements. We have the combination of great events, a powerful
actor and a recognizable set of results. The reality check is what the
beholder sees with his or her own eyes: Creation is, and it looks more
or less as described.
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- Keep in mind also that the truth of the story does not
necessarily control the art of telling it. What controls the way the story
is told is the relationship between the story teller and the audience.
And the way the story teller feels that relationship works most effectively
is what determines the eventual form of a good story. Ask any successful
comedian.
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- The story teller needs to package the story in a credible
way and it needs to be told in a reasonable time or, around a nighttime
campfire, the audience will go to bed. Thus, the elements must be familiar.
The story in Genesis 1 is easy for people to follow. It introduces no
strange or new terms. It does not deal with time periods that are alien
to the audience. It tells of things that, however they may actually have
occurred, or over what time period, are credible to the listener. Creation
is that kind of story and it therefore stands infinite retelling. Perhaps
from time to time hearers questioned the "six day" part of the
story, but there was nothing to question about the rest of it. All the
elements except the timetable were simply there for all to see.
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- The length of the story fits this conception better than
we might expect. The 31 verses of Genesis Chapter 1 amount to a little
more than 800 words. That is about 8-10 minutes of monologue for a speaker
who wants listeners to hear and understand. It is interesting that the
same basic rule seems to be applied by newspaper editorial page editors:
An editorial or op-ed piece runs around 800 words. Maybe we have not
changed very much in several millennia, and the breakfast table is not
different from the campfire for purposes of this metaphor. Both Genesis
Chapter 1 and the modern op-ed deal in essences, because one cannot do
much more in 800 words.
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- But Chapter 2 of Genesis begins by saying that on the
Seventh Day God rested, not that the processes of the universe stopped.
The light arriving from distant stars and galaxies tells us that order
widely reigns but is often punctuated by chaos. On earth the oceans rise
and fall, volcanoes erupt, the earth's crust ripples, shears and trembles,
while the planet slowly warms. Creation, as summarized by the Genesis
story teller, may well have put all that in place, but it was set in motion,
not frozen in time. The universe, as we now see it, may or may not be on
some eventual path to oblivion, but it is now visibly a work in processes
of change.
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- Where then is the problem? The basic story of Creation
in Genesis 1 nominally tracks the complex events and evolutions we have
learned about the universe. Put aside the earth and man centered parts
of the picture because for this purpose they do not matter. All that is
needed to clean up this debate is to recognize that six days of creation
is a story teller's metaphor. Many scholars, including biblical, have recognized
this for ages. The conflict therefore is not between science and religion;
the conflict is between the keepers of religious doctrine and reality.
The laws, habits, and conditions of the universe are as they are, and as
we may discover them. How it was done, how long it all took or eventually
will take are simply not known.
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- Science must work with the evidence as presented over
time by the eyes and instruments available, or it becomes irrelevant. Religion
must stay grounded in reality, because reality is the prime evidence for
God's creation. If it cannot be related positively to the reality we all
witness, then religion becomes irrelevant. Religion is man's attempt to
explain creation as well as its purposes, and to argue that man has learned
nothing in several millennia to improve the explanation represents an assertive
blindness that will render religion ever more irrelevant. What a pity,
because the work itself is magnificent.
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- The author is a writer and speaker on global issues and
a regular columnist on rense.com. He was trained as a teacher but spent
most of his professional career as an officer of the US Foreign Service.
He has an AB from Stanford, a Master's and a General Secondary Teaching
Credential from San Jose State University. He is a graduate of the National
War College, and he served as Chairman of the National War College Department
of International Studies. He will welcome comments at wecanstopit@charter.net
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