Hey kids! Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa! Ughhh...
After seeing the Daily Show's weeklong "Evolution Schmevolution" and
the apparent endemic descent of common sense in these modern times i
thought it would be nice for the denizens of MFW to read a book
review. it isn't the same as an interview with the author on a
kick-ass fake news show, but it'll do for now.
Reviewed: The Evolution-Creation Struggle by Michael Ruse
30 July 2005, New Scientist
Karen Armstrong reviewing Michael Ruse's "The Evolution-Creation
Struggle", Harvard University Press, 2005
THE clash between those who adhere to the scientific theory of
evolution and those who believe that the biblical story of the six-day
creation is literally true is a struggle between two religions. So
concludes Michael Ruse in his accessible, skilfully written book.
Since the Enlightenment, he says, scientists have offered up an
alternative vision of the nature of reality, and those among them who
are most opposed to religion can proselytise with as much zeal as an
evangelical Christian.
For Richard Dawkins, contemplation of the natural world through the
eyes of science is a religious experience, providing the same
"spine-shivering, breath-catching awe - almost worship" as cultivated
by the great religions.
Yet Dawkins regards faith as one of the world's great evils,
"comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate". He defines
faith as "belief that isn't based on evidence", whereas science is
based upon verifiable facts. Even those who would not go as far in
their condemnation of religion would probably agree that modern
science has undermined the conventional notion of God. There is a
widespread, popular conviction that science and religion are
diametrically opposed, and that science has rendered most religious
truth frankly incredible.
But this conviction is based on an erroneous assumption: that faith is
synonymous with belief, and that to be religious, people must accept
certain credal propositions. This is a relatively recent development,
one that has arisen since the Enlightenment, and then only in the
west. Originally the Middle English word beleven meant "to love". The
Latin credo probably derives from co do: "I give my heart". Faith was
therefore not belief but commitment. Even Martin Luther, who taught
that human beings were justified by faith, did not define faith by
belief; he had in fact very little time for dogma and creeds. Faith
was a heroic cultivation of trust in the idea that, against all the
evidence to the contrary, life had some ultimate, though ineffable,
meaning and value.
Religion is not about thinking, but doing things that change you at a
profound level”Most of the great religions have had no interest in
metaphysical doctrines. Religion is not about thinking things but
about doing things that change you at a profound level. At best,
theology is regarded as a kind of poetry about matters that must, by
their very nature, elude definition. The Koran calls theological
speculation zanna, self-indulgent guesswork about matters that nobody
can prove one way or the other. Every single verse, every story told
in the Koran is called an aya, a parable, because it is only possible
to talk about the indescribable God in terms of signs and symbols.
Hence, Darwin and his evolutionary theory has raised scarcely a ripple
of concern in the Muslim world.
But the biblical creation myths were never intended as definitive
dogma either. The first chapter of Genesis, which was almost certainly
written by a priestly author (often referred to as "P"😉 who had been
deported to Babylonia after the destruction of Jerusalem by King
Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC, became the most famous creation account, but
it was not the only one. The biblical editors placed it right next to
another story that contradicts P's in several important respects.
Unlike P's creation story, most Middle Eastern cosmologies were
extremely violent. The Babylonian god Marduk, for example, slew the
divine sea monster Tiamat after a bloody battle and split her carcass
in two, like a giant shellfish, to create heaven and earth. Such
stories expressed the tragic - not to say Darwinian - insight that
life, creativity and survival depended upon the destruction of others.
Genesis chapter 1 was revolutionary in omitting all the violence. It
imagines Yahweh - the God of the Bible - summoning all things into
being with a mere word of command. P was telling the exiled Jews that
their God was far more powerful than Marduk. His calm creation was a
healing vision of order, designed to console the traumatised
deportees.
Cosmologies were originally therapeutic in function. In the ancient
world, a creation story was often chanted at the start of a new
enterprise or at a moment of crisis. These stories were thus more than
history. Nobody, not even the gods, knew what had happened at the
beginning of time. "Who then knows whence this creation has arisen?"
asks the inspired poet of the Hindu Rig Veda. "Only he who is its
overseer in highest heaven knows - or perhaps he does not know!"
Until the advent of the modern period, nobody would have regarded the
six-day creation story as a literal, historical account. In the 16th
century, for example, after the Jews had been expelled from Spain, the
Kabbalist Isaac Luria evolved an entirely new creation myth that had
nothing in common with P's story, but was full of explosions and false
starts. Far from being reviled for contradicting scripture, Lurianic
Kabbalah became a mass movement, for it expressed the pain and
bewilderment of being Jewish at that time and showed scattered,
persecuted people how they could rebuild their world.
In the pre-modern world, it was generally understood that there were
two ways of arriving at truth. Plato called them mythos and logos.
Neither was superior to the other. Logos (reason; science) was exact,
practical and essential to human life. To be effective, it had to
correspond to external reality. Myth expressed the more elusive,
puzzling aspects of human experience. It has often been called a
primitive form of psychology, which helped people negotiate their
inner world. A mythical story, such as a cosmology, described
something that had happened once, but also happened all the time. A
myth was essentially a programme of action. Unless you put it into
practice, you could not judge its truth.
Myth could not help you create efficient technology or run your
society. But logos had its limits too. If you became a refugee or
witnessed a terrible natural catastrophe, you did not simply want a
logical explanation; you also wanted myth to show you how to manage
your grief. With the advent of our scientific modernity, however,
logos achieved such spectacular results that myth was discredited, and
now, in popular parlance a myth is something that did not happen, that
is untrue. But some religious people also began to read religious
myths as though they were logos.
The conflict between science and faith has thus been based on a
misunderstanding of the nature of scriptural discourse. Many people,
including those who are religious, find it difficult to think
mythically, because our education and society is fuelled entirely by
logos. This has made religion impossible for many people in the west,
and it could be argued that much of the stridency of Christian
fundamentalism is based on a buried fear of creeping unbelief.
In the pre-modern world, it was considered dangerous to mix mythos and
logos, because each had a different sphere of competence. Much of the
heat could be taken out of the evolution versus creation struggle if
it were admitted that to read the first chapter of Genesis as though
it were an exact account of the origins of life is not only bad
science; it is also bad religion.
From issue 2510 of New Scientist magazine, 30 July 2005, page 42
Axel:
anyone out there hear the NPS program by that one Rabbi dude? that was
interesting. the old testament's punishment of killing a fetus doesn't
seem to carry anything like the weight of killing a human being. i'd
agree. also the opinion on the judaic take on homosexuality.. though
that may be left to interpretation. i don't particularly care for it
(except for some genuinely hot lesbianism, of course) but i do find
the irresponsible and narcissistic unrestrained plunge into hedonism a
bit offensive. let's face it, what religion would support a subset of
its population that doesn't reproduce?
why is it so difficult to allow for the universe that God created to
have been created over a long period of time? why can't every species
that emerges from this universe have its own communion with the
divine, actively seeking not only its own survival but also its own
evolutionary development? can't we all be divine creatures? why do
people insist on a puerile version of an anthropomorphic god of
punishment and reward? i think that's a failure of individual
evolution. i see our species, right here in america, taking a
disturbing turn towards devolution.
--
"... the street term for it would be 'Byxmyndig' *legal to get in
pants* (it's true)" - Dukeman, in AGHL