02-06-2007, 03:10 AM
The Bible vs. science
By Tom Krattenmaker 1 hour, 31 minutes ago
Chiseled a mile deep and 10 miles wide through limestone and sandstone, the Grand Canyon cuts an awesome divide into the earth for 277 miles. But it may be nothing compared with the chasm that separates the two camps in the public shouting match going on over the primacy of science or religion.
How appropriate, then, that the Grand Canyon - its age, to be precise - has become a big issue in the ongoing argument about creationism and the role it will play in our understanding of the world.
Frustrated by the National Park Service's insistence that the visitors center continue to sell a book with a creationist account of the canyon's formation, a public employees group is accusing the service of invalidating science and promoting fundamentalist religion.
It's not as though the two sides are splitting hairs: Most scientists estimate the canyon's age at about 6 million years. Young-Earth creationists, who believe in the literal account of the world's creation laid out in the Bible's book of Genesis, contend it's closer to 4,500 years.
The protesting group, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, an alliance of scientists, land managers, environmental advocates and others, calls it distressing that the park service is not sticking to pure, mainstream geology in the information it dispenses at the Grand Canyon.
The stakes seem even higher to some on the creationist side. If their rhetoric is any indication, nothing short of the existence of God hinges on their "proving" that the canyon was not the result of gradual geologic processes, but of Noah's flood.
'A Different View'
Tom Vail is the author of the creationist book at issue. The book, Grand Canyon: A Different View, riles the science-minded, Vail claims, because "if we're right, if the Grand Canyon is the result of a global flood and the Bible is true, then there's a God. And if there's a God, then there's a God that they might be [answerable] to."
Vail's point, however, begs a question that he and like-minded creationists might not want asked. If they're objectively wrong about the genesis of the Grand Canyon and other geologic matters - you'll be hard-pressed to find a mainstream scientist who says they aren't - must they concede that God does not exist?
That, of course, is a rhetorical question. No amount of scientific evidence will convince an ardent creationist of the validity of human evolution or that the Earth is billions of years old.
Nevertheless, the question frames a problem with the stance of the anti-science creationists that threatens not only their version of the world's origins, but also the credibility of their religion itself. Because by attempting to marshal empirical evidence in support of their beliefs, they enter the debate on the scientists' terms - terms that cannot possibly work in favor of a literal reading of the Bible. By playing in this arena, haven't the creationists already lost the argument?
As the evangelical writer and religion professor Randall Balmer points out, confronting the public with objective evidence of the Bible's literal truth is misguided at its core. Writing about intelligent design (a counter to evolution that sees an unidentified "designer" behind the world's creation), Balmer says, "Paradoxically, when the Religious Right asserts intelligent design is science, it implies that faith in God is … inadequate, that it needs the imprimatur of the scientific method."
This unwise raising of the stakes is vividly demonstrated by the soon-to-open Creation Museum in Florence, Ky., which is assembling a collection of dinosaur models, fossils, minerals and other material to "demonstrate that the Scriptural accounts of the Creation, Noah's flood, and other major events of biblical history can be trusted," as organizers describe the project in a news release.
One exhibit, according to news reports, will feature two animatronic children near a pool of water with a pair of small dinosaurs lurking behind.
In comments published last fall by the Baptist Press news service, a consultant to the Creation Museum implies that the very foundation of Christian belief will crumble if believers don't disprove the scientific consensus that humans evolved into existence tens of thousands of years ago. The consultant is one Kurt Wise, a Harvard-educated Ph.D. and director of the Center for Theology and Science at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Says Wise: "If humans really date back that far, and Adam lived far enough in the past to be their ancestor, then the genealogical record of Genesis 5 is wrong, and thus the Bible and its author, God, are wrong."
'Trust your God'
To most people, it sounds like Wise is going "all in" with a losing hand. Do religious believers really want the truth of their faith wagered on an attempt to prove that countless scientists have somehow botched their reading of the fossil record?
But here's the rub: Wise acknowledges that nothing can convince him that Earth is older than five or six thousand years. Why? Because the Bible is his ultimate authority. "The most important thing," he says, "is that you ought to be able to trust your God and the claims the Bible makes."
Given their rock-solid religious convictions, creationists such as Wise ultimately are not interested in science, in setting aside preconceptions and following trails of observable evidence to logical, testable conclusions.
Why, then, are they bothering with fossils and geology and quasi-scientific exhibitions that purport to prove that the Bible "can be trusted," as the organizers of the Creation Museum phrase it? No doubt, concern for the public credibility of their faith has a lot to do with it. They appear to have accepted that we live in a rational age, one that will not abide propositions that lack objective evidence to back them.
How ironic, then, that by dabbling in science to promote their beliefs, anti-science creationists are more likely eroding the very credibility they aim to bolster.
Granted, the new museum in Kentucky, like the creationist book at the Grand Canyon, may shore up the already-believers. But if winning new converts to Christianity is the aim, the strategy can only backfire.
How many Americans are ready to accept the proposition that science has made a colossal error interpreting the fossil and geological record and - more radical still - that the validity of Christianity depends on proving it? If anything, a stance like this repels those wavering between faith and disbelief and gives skeptics one more reason to reject religion.
A suggestion to creationists: Let science be science, and let religion prevail in the vast areas where science has little or nothing to offer. It's not as though science has an answer for everything of consequence. The purpose and meaning of life, the existence of good and evil and love and hate, the nature of a human soul and what becomes of it at death, the existence and will of the divine - these are questions that belong to ethics, philosophy and, of course, religion.
No, religion shouldn't be picking this particular fight with mainstream science. Can't the Bible literalists concede matters of empirical evidence and rational inquiry to science and devote themselves to the questions of ultimate meaning - the mighty questions that rightly occupy religion? Their religion doesn't need any scientific proof. Why should their own faith?
Tom Krattenmaker, who lives in Portland, Ore., specializes in religion in public life and is a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors. He is working on a book about the Christianization of professional sports.
By Tom Krattenmaker 1 hour, 31 minutes ago
Chiseled a mile deep and 10 miles wide through limestone and sandstone, the Grand Canyon cuts an awesome divide into the earth for 277 miles. But it may be nothing compared with the chasm that separates the two camps in the public shouting match going on over the primacy of science or religion.
How appropriate, then, that the Grand Canyon - its age, to be precise - has become a big issue in the ongoing argument about creationism and the role it will play in our understanding of the world.
Frustrated by the National Park Service's insistence that the visitors center continue to sell a book with a creationist account of the canyon's formation, a public employees group is accusing the service of invalidating science and promoting fundamentalist religion.
It's not as though the two sides are splitting hairs: Most scientists estimate the canyon's age at about 6 million years. Young-Earth creationists, who believe in the literal account of the world's creation laid out in the Bible's book of Genesis, contend it's closer to 4,500 years.
The protesting group, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, an alliance of scientists, land managers, environmental advocates and others, calls it distressing that the park service is not sticking to pure, mainstream geology in the information it dispenses at the Grand Canyon.
The stakes seem even higher to some on the creationist side. If their rhetoric is any indication, nothing short of the existence of God hinges on their "proving" that the canyon was not the result of gradual geologic processes, but of Noah's flood.
'A Different View'
Tom Vail is the author of the creationist book at issue. The book, Grand Canyon: A Different View, riles the science-minded, Vail claims, because "if we're right, if the Grand Canyon is the result of a global flood and the Bible is true, then there's a God. And if there's a God, then there's a God that they might be [answerable] to."
Vail's point, however, begs a question that he and like-minded creationists might not want asked. If they're objectively wrong about the genesis of the Grand Canyon and other geologic matters - you'll be hard-pressed to find a mainstream scientist who says they aren't - must they concede that God does not exist?
That, of course, is a rhetorical question. No amount of scientific evidence will convince an ardent creationist of the validity of human evolution or that the Earth is billions of years old.
Nevertheless, the question frames a problem with the stance of the anti-science creationists that threatens not only their version of the world's origins, but also the credibility of their religion itself. Because by attempting to marshal empirical evidence in support of their beliefs, they enter the debate on the scientists' terms - terms that cannot possibly work in favor of a literal reading of the Bible. By playing in this arena, haven't the creationists already lost the argument?
As the evangelical writer and religion professor Randall Balmer points out, confronting the public with objective evidence of the Bible's literal truth is misguided at its core. Writing about intelligent design (a counter to evolution that sees an unidentified "designer" behind the world's creation), Balmer says, "Paradoxically, when the Religious Right asserts intelligent design is science, it implies that faith in God is … inadequate, that it needs the imprimatur of the scientific method."
This unwise raising of the stakes is vividly demonstrated by the soon-to-open Creation Museum in Florence, Ky., which is assembling a collection of dinosaur models, fossils, minerals and other material to "demonstrate that the Scriptural accounts of the Creation, Noah's flood, and other major events of biblical history can be trusted," as organizers describe the project in a news release.
One exhibit, according to news reports, will feature two animatronic children near a pool of water with a pair of small dinosaurs lurking behind.
In comments published last fall by the Baptist Press news service, a consultant to the Creation Museum implies that the very foundation of Christian belief will crumble if believers don't disprove the scientific consensus that humans evolved into existence tens of thousands of years ago. The consultant is one Kurt Wise, a Harvard-educated Ph.D. and director of the Center for Theology and Science at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Says Wise: "If humans really date back that far, and Adam lived far enough in the past to be their ancestor, then the genealogical record of Genesis 5 is wrong, and thus the Bible and its author, God, are wrong."
'Trust your God'
To most people, it sounds like Wise is going "all in" with a losing hand. Do religious believers really want the truth of their faith wagered on an attempt to prove that countless scientists have somehow botched their reading of the fossil record?
But here's the rub: Wise acknowledges that nothing can convince him that Earth is older than five or six thousand years. Why? Because the Bible is his ultimate authority. "The most important thing," he says, "is that you ought to be able to trust your God and the claims the Bible makes."
Given their rock-solid religious convictions, creationists such as Wise ultimately are not interested in science, in setting aside preconceptions and following trails of observable evidence to logical, testable conclusions.
Why, then, are they bothering with fossils and geology and quasi-scientific exhibitions that purport to prove that the Bible "can be trusted," as the organizers of the Creation Museum phrase it? No doubt, concern for the public credibility of their faith has a lot to do with it. They appear to have accepted that we live in a rational age, one that will not abide propositions that lack objective evidence to back them.
How ironic, then, that by dabbling in science to promote their beliefs, anti-science creationists are more likely eroding the very credibility they aim to bolster.
Granted, the new museum in Kentucky, like the creationist book at the Grand Canyon, may shore up the already-believers. But if winning new converts to Christianity is the aim, the strategy can only backfire.
How many Americans are ready to accept the proposition that science has made a colossal error interpreting the fossil and geological record and - more radical still - that the validity of Christianity depends on proving it? If anything, a stance like this repels those wavering between faith and disbelief and gives skeptics one more reason to reject religion.
A suggestion to creationists: Let science be science, and let religion prevail in the vast areas where science has little or nothing to offer. It's not as though science has an answer for everything of consequence. The purpose and meaning of life, the existence of good and evil and love and hate, the nature of a human soul and what becomes of it at death, the existence and will of the divine - these are questions that belong to ethics, philosophy and, of course, religion.
No, religion shouldn't be picking this particular fight with mainstream science. Can't the Bible literalists concede matters of empirical evidence and rational inquiry to science and devote themselves to the questions of ultimate meaning - the mighty questions that rightly occupy religion? Their religion doesn't need any scientific proof. Why should their own faith?
Tom Krattenmaker, who lives in Portland, Ore., specializes in religion in public life and is a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors. He is working on a book about the Christianization of professional sports.