Creationism

Some have been wondering, during these crazy times of ours, what my position is on the subject of Creationism and Intelligent Design, versus Evolution and so forth. Well, the truth of the matter is that I believe that the issue is more complex than either side of the argument would have us believe.

First of all, there is the issue of numbers. The evolutionists and many scientists believe that the earth is billions of years old, which makes much of the Bible suspect. The creationists argue that since God invented numbers, He can assign them any value He wishes. Then the evolutionists reply that they are counting with the numbers of today, as opposed to the “God-numbers” used many years ago. To which the creationist response would be, There are no other numbers but for the numbers supplied by God.

It could be said that the Bible is just a book, written and re-written over centuries by different people with different agendas, and as such its contents can be read in many ways and myriad conclusions can be drawn from it. Likewise, scientific methods such as carbon dating are also constructs of mankind, and could be held to just as much scrutiny.

Take for instance, the story in the Bible where Peter, who would later become one of Jesus’ main disciples, is talking to the side of a mountain, and it begins to bleed, and Peter bathes in the mountain blood, and it totally cures a wound he got after fighting a minotaur. This story could easily be a parable about Peter finding a fossil during an excavation for God. And all the blood is a metaphor for the hard work that archaeology requires. And the fight with the minotaur represents the fight for funding that Peter had to endure to do the dig.

So really if you step back from things and calm down, you’ll find that science and religion can tell the same story. Here is another example.

There is the story of when Jesus and his entourage find a blind, homeless man in the street. Back then, if you were blind, people would steal things from you and sneak up on you a lot, something Jesus was trying to get people to stop doing. So this old guy tells Jesus, Oh, I’m blind, and they took my house and things, and I can’t get a wife, etc. Jesus takes pity on the poor soul, and tells him that if he has faith, he will be cured. And the way he has to show his faith to God, is by running in any direction for six straight days, eating nothing but pure salt, and then he can rub the liver of a fresh-killed lamb into his eyes and they will regain their ability to see! So the man immediately starts running, and a month later, when Jesus returns to that town, the guy totally sports vision.

Now then, what is this allegory actually telling us? Well I think it’s quite obvious that the beggar’s “vision” represents scientific knowlege. And the obstacles that Jesus asks him to perform in order to reveal his faith, are the scientific method— six days of “running” (research and experiments), eating only “salt” (facts and evidence), and using the warm “liver” of a recently butchered lamb (publishing the results for peer review).

So my stance on the issue is really that by teaching science in schools, we are, in a way, also teaching Intelligent Design and creationism. And as you all should know, I am pro-science.