Easter thought - Creation v. Evolution.

Lately there’s been a lot of controversy about the use of religion in U.S. politics and for making legislation based on religious principles – the Terri Schiavo case being the last skirmish in the ongoing cultural battle to put Christianity at the heart of legislation and politics.

As much as the whole controversy over the presence of the Ten Commandments monument on the grounds of the State Capitol in Texas is of little significance (it is right that ‘the efforts to secure some sort of quasi-official recognition of Christianity or "Judeo-Christianity" as America' faith’ is nothing to worry about – as Matthew Yglesias says it), but on the other hand , when a science museum decides not to show an IMAX film because it refers to ‘evolution’, you may think there is way too much compromise made to evangelical populism.

Not only that, but in 19 states there are battles over the teaching of evolution in public schools by school boards with religious fundamentalist members who feel emboldened by the country's conservative currents and by President Bush, who angered many scientists and teachers by declaring that the jury is still out on evolution.

It as if we were back to the 1920s, when the ‘Monkey Trial’ exemplified the rift between Christians and non-Christians, when in fact it illustrated the gap between the fundamentalist Christians who were on the defensive for not being able to cope with an ever changing modern world they failed to understand and the progressives who were embracing modern ideas.
But even though the 'E word' has now become a dirty and infamous word in many evangelical circles, there are lots of Christians who do not have a problem with evolution and I am certainly one of them.

Now on this Easter Sunday, I have tried to reflect on the whole idea and I’m going to try to give my two-cent worth ‘theory’ which basically says that ‘Evolution’, which may be quite accurate as a scientific theory, bears not the slightest threat toward religion.

• First the bible is intended to be read and understood by people living in eras spanning at least 3,500 years so in this post-Darwinian period we cannot have exactly the same thoughts that Augustine, Aquinas, or even that our grandparents and parents had. Today we need to recast all of theology in our new (ever changing) understating of the reality around us. Indeed the text of the Bible was composed in a pre-scientific age, so its primary goal is not to give a scientific account of the creation, and one has to take into account the social, cultural and historical conditions in which the books of the Bible were fashioned over thousands of years.

• Second, translation is interpretation. So there are different ways to understand the same text. All texts can be subjected to critical analysis. English and French have more words than biblical Hebrew, so a word in ancient Hebrew has many meanings, and any linguist (see Lakoff) will tell you that there is always subjectivity in our understanding of words.

• Third, one of the things we know about the nature of God is that He is a God of Love (John 1:16) and love never coerces. In other words, God is not a magician or a dictator and so it is sensible to say that there has to be room for indeterminacy in the universe, and the randomness in evolution can be one instance of it. This is why the idea of chance and evolution occuring is in accordance with the scriptures (and from a biblical perspective the primary cause is still God of course). This is also why it makes sense universe should not be finished all at once but remain eternally unchanged.

• Fourth, if Genesis does clearly not give a scientific account of how the world came to be, it describes in just a few dozens sentences the sequential steps, in correct chronological order by which God prepared Earth for human habitation (the right initial conditions, the right events accurately described and correctly sequenced, and the right final conditions.) There is nothing in science contradicting the essence of the Genesis story.

• Finally, it should not be forgotten that all Darwin's theories as well as modern sciences are the result of our Judeo-Christian culture. So science is no threat to Christianity and in the same way, Christianity should not be a threat to science or our civilization will fall into the darkest form of Taliban-like society.

Evolution makes sense to me because I believe in the power of reason and science. Now as far as my belief in the bible goes, it is based on something entirelly different - on a highly subjective (and personal) matter called 'Faith'.
Either you have it or you don't but there is no possible debate about that.