Yesterday, I posted about the problem of some Creationists having very little real knowledge of what science says about our world and its origins. Today, I’m covering another side of that: Those who do know what science demonstrates and choose to reject it.
I am not trying to suggest that scientists are infallible. Naturally the various branches of science can’t tell us all the details about everything. What scientists do is examine the evidence and generate theories to explain what they can examine with their senses. For example, where I live, there are rich deposits of natural salt (the mineral halite). The going theory for how the halite deposits got there is that our region was once covered in a tropical saltwater sea. We also have several lakes and ponds in this region. Again, the theory is that they were formed by the movement of a glacier. Now, there were no people present to observe these phenomena while they occurred. The best we can do is collect data and study what we find. In this case, I’ve presented the bare minimum of facts. In reality, the study of weather and geological trends is much more complicated than just observing some salt and making a conclusion.
To listen to some Creationists, however, one might get the impression that’s exactly what scientists do–make far-fetched conclusions based on scant evidence. I’ve heard many people say some variation of, “I know what they think they’ve discovered. But they’re wrong.” Among my least favorite arguments in this vein is that God made the Earth appear very old, even though it’s not, so that our faith might be tested. Therefore, scientists are indeed “discovering” things, but it’s just some form of cosmic trickery. What God really wants us to do is reject those findings, since they can’t be true, and believe literally in the Biblical “account” of creation.
I have asked this question before and have never received a satisfactory answer: Why? Why would God, who is supposed to be our loving Creator, want to trick us that way? I am left with two options. One, God is not a particularly loving Creator. I love my children, I want them to listen to me and believe what I say. I don’t trick them in order to achieve that effect. Or two, God isn’t tricking us, the story of creation in the Bible is exactly what it’s suppose to be–a good myth that helps us understand the relationship between Creator and Creation. (By now I’m sure you know which one I choose to believe.)
If a person has a particularly weak or immature faith, then it makes some sense to hold fast to the idea that God wants us to choose faith over science. After all, if we can’t take Genesis 1 literally, then perhaps we can’t take anything else in the Bible literally. If that’s the case, then maybe our faith hasn’t got a leg to stand on. If none of it is true, really, then why believe? But for people with strong and mature faith, it doesn’t make any difference whether Genesis 1 is literal. In fact, it doesn’t matter if anything in the Bible at all is literal. I admit I’m not quite at the point where I see none of it as being factual. But I am at the point where I don’t think it makes a difference to my faith. It would take too long to get into why in this post; I’ll address some of that in my next post where I try to make sense of the concept of the “real, true Christian”.
Thank you! I’ve tried to say what you said here, but I always end up running longer and nastier about it.
I understand. It took several tries to post something that didn’t have too much of a sarcastic edge to it.