The church we attend, Epic Student Church, on the University of Alberta campus, meets at Dewey’s Pub, and professors are often invited to come and share. It’s interesting to see that, contrary to what we were told to anticipate, faith in God has not disappeared, even among the intelligentsia.
A while back Dr. Denis Lamouraux, who holds doctoral degrees is dentistry, biology and theology, spoke about his faith as a committed Christian and a committed evolutionary biologist. It was fascinating, and an encouragement to students who are trying to pick their way through the science/religion minefield. Following Dr. Lamouraux’s presentation one of the students asked if, for the sake of balance, we could have a Creation Scientist share, and last Tuesday evening Dr. Margaret Helder, a botanist and Vice-President of the Creation Science Association of Alberta, spoke to us.
Dr. Helder was very interesting. She is clearly a real scientist, despite the oft repeated assertion that no “real” scientist can be a creationist. But, I must admit, I found her pretty unconvincing. It’s not her science, however, but her Bible reading, that troubles me.
Creation Science is more about the Bible than it is about science, and more about a particular way of reading and interpreting the Bible than about the Bible per se. The Creation Science folks insist on a strictly literal reading of the biblical text, which they believe conveys factual and utterly reliable information about history, cosmology, biology, etc. And, as a result, they reject scientific theories and speculations that conflict with their literal Bible reading. What’s interesting to me, however, is that they miss the internal clues (those within the text) that should cause them to question their approach.
For example, as a literal reading of the first chapter of Genesis requires, Dr. Helder declared that she believes the universe was created in six, literal, twenty-four hour days. (“And there was evening, and there was morning — the first day.”). But this means the earth and vegetation were created before the sun was created. What was the earth orbiting for four days? And what does it mean to speak of evening and morning when there is no sun?
And she said she was completely untroubled by the fact that a literal reading of the text places the story of Abraham only 350 years after the flood. Think about it. This means that Abraham left the city of Ur, among the Chaldeans, to settle in another city, Haran, among the Canaanites. He then went down to Egypt and had dealings with the Pharaoh, and later witnessed the destruction of Sodom, another city. And all this just three and half centuries after the entire world, except for one family and two specimens from each species of animal, bird and insect, had been utterly destroyed. When I pressed her, her only response was that populations grow much faster than most people imagine. No doubt they do, but it seems obvious to me that cities, and peoples, and cultures, take much more time than a strict, literal reading of the text allows.
So the concern I have about Creation Science is not about the theory of Evolution. Frankly, I think it’s great when scientific theories are challenged; it helps them evolve. But the literalistic mindset that produces such a wooden, shallow reading of the biblical text, is a concern.
When an obviously intelligent woman reads that Cain, the first child born into the only family in the world, was a farmer, and his brother a shepherd, and doesn’t stop to scratch her head, I have to wonder. And when I read that, after he murdered Abel, Cain went out and started building a city, well, surely I must ask myself what sort of material this really is. My own conclusion is that it is a profound, and divinely inspired reflection on the meaning of just about everything. But it’s not literal, and certainly not science or history; at least not as we use the terms.
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