Why Faith is Not the Answer
Long ago, when I was a parent of three grade-school aged children, IBM introduced an elementary level science textbook and workbook to our school district that included a section on the Big Bang Theory, and the outrage began from angry Christian parents who wanted the books removed from the science curriculum and banned from the library shelves because they flew in the face of the biblical version of creation by arguing that time, and not eternity, was the cosmological reality. The Roman Catholics had a theory of their own, developed, in part by a Roman Catholic priest, called the steady state theory.
Our little gym was packed for a final hearing with the PTA and school board, I remember, and it seemed to me that the majority of those who were there were dead-set against the science course. Tempers flared and voices were raised. I spoke for those parents in favor of retaining the program, arguing that the theory was developed from Albert Einstein's basic Theory of Relativity, and that it perhaps didn't really contradict metaphorical religious texts, such as the Holy Bible, at all. I pointed out that the first three words in the King James Version of the Bible are In the beginning, which implies the beginning of time, meaning that time, by it's definition, must start at some point and perhaps end at some point. "The first words of verse two," I said, paraphrasing now after all those years, "are the earth was without form and void, which is poetic metaphor for non-existent. In between, but obviously not meaning that God created a non-existent, formless and empty, space are the words God created the heaven and the earth, The word created also implies an assumption of time. This could easily mean that God, in his divine and eternal wisdom, took advantage of a tool at his disposal to create the heaven and the earth." Could it be that the tool he used was the Big Bang?
I remember my foot tapping involuntarily on the hardwood of the gym floor, keeping time with the rhythm and over-pitched adamancy in my voice because I was outraged, too, that anyone would try to suppress the advance of scientific knowledge, hypothetical or theoretical or not, by arbitrarily, with little thought, evaluation, or study, by simply railing against it on grounds it went against the grains of their religious faith.
In the end, the books stayed, the curriculum remained intact, and the Big Bang Theory was introduced to elementary school children in Fremont County, Wyoming.
But now we've got a new challenge to science and education that is building to a national crescendo after years of controversy, highlighted this week by the birthday of Charles Darwin. Once again it flies in the face of education on the same premise as the Big Bang Theory. It is the war between the theories of Natural Selection and Intelligent Design. To my mind the same reasonable logic applies to the resolution of this controversy between religion and science as to the previous one, fought over so many years ago.
To my mind, Intelligent Design is as valid a theory as Natural Selection – in some ways perhaps more so, though I doubt you can have one without the other. Again, I see the teeming life on earth that may have developed by Natural Selection as another tool for our maker(s) to enhance humanity (and other forms of life as well) by means of Intelligent Design just as our god may have borrowed from the Big Bang to create the heaven and the earth. If you think about it, and consider the fact that we are not alone in the universes and that some alien life forms may be far more advanced than any on earth, it is easy to understand that a Neanderthal could have been developed by design rather than evolution into a present day human through genetic science and manipulation. This concept would hold true under the monotheistic belief of a single god or any other form of divine leadership or superior intelligence.
We human beings are on the threshold of being able to intelligently re-design existing life forms today, and in fact are already capable of cloning humans just as we have cloned lesser life forms. So what is so contrary to divine dogma that causes the religious right to rail so boisterously against Charles Darwin and his theory of Natural Selection and the evolution of the species? Why do they abhor the very thought of their children learning about the theory of evolution at school? I believe it's because such ideas and concepts threaten their faith – the faith that has been conditioned into them through a lifetime of religious indoctrination of all persuasions from every secular and spiritual medium imaginable.
We progress as a knowledgeable species by learning and developing. We learn through curiosity, ideas, experimentation, hypotheses, and theories that, in some cases, finally emerge in all their unfettered glory upon us as truths and facts. Of course along the way many original ideas or concepts may be found untenable or false, and accordingly discarded forever to the scrap heap of bad ideas. But what's wrong with that? What is it that human beings are afraid of? We are taught to have faith – to believe in what we're told by "higher authorities." It is the Pisces Ideal that I have mentioned before in other essays: "Men must be told what to do by higher powers because man is incapable of thinking for himself." And that is the crux of the problem: blind faith!
As I have said so many times, in so many different applications, we owe it to ourselves individually as well as collectively to strive diligently to find out the Truth about why we are here and where we are going. It is, after all, our reason for living! It is reasonable to me to believe that each and every one of us would like to know something about our own identity and destiny. We will never know these things through faith, but rather through curiosity, ideas, hypotheses, theories, education, and knowledge.
We must discard faith in favor of gnosis if we are to survive, not only as a species, but in divine immortality as individuals. Faith is not the answer.
vvv
Copyright (2009) by Albert Lloyd Williams
Our little gym was packed for a final hearing with the PTA and school board, I remember, and it seemed to me that the majority of those who were there were dead-set against the science course. Tempers flared and voices were raised. I spoke for those parents in favor of retaining the program, arguing that the theory was developed from Albert Einstein's basic Theory of Relativity, and that it perhaps didn't really contradict metaphorical religious texts, such as the Holy Bible, at all. I pointed out that the first three words in the King James Version of the Bible are In the beginning, which implies the beginning of time, meaning that time, by it's definition, must start at some point and perhaps end at some point. "The first words of verse two," I said, paraphrasing now after all those years, "are the earth was without form and void, which is poetic metaphor for non-existent. In between, but obviously not meaning that God created a non-existent, formless and empty, space are the words God created the heaven and the earth, The word created also implies an assumption of time. This could easily mean that God, in his divine and eternal wisdom, took advantage of a tool at his disposal to create the heaven and the earth." Could it be that the tool he used was the Big Bang?
I remember my foot tapping involuntarily on the hardwood of the gym floor, keeping time with the rhythm and over-pitched adamancy in my voice because I was outraged, too, that anyone would try to suppress the advance of scientific knowledge, hypothetical or theoretical or not, by arbitrarily, with little thought, evaluation, or study, by simply railing against it on grounds it went against the grains of their religious faith.
In the end, the books stayed, the curriculum remained intact, and the Big Bang Theory was introduced to elementary school children in Fremont County, Wyoming.
But now we've got a new challenge to science and education that is building to a national crescendo after years of controversy, highlighted this week by the birthday of Charles Darwin. Once again it flies in the face of education on the same premise as the Big Bang Theory. It is the war between the theories of Natural Selection and Intelligent Design. To my mind the same reasonable logic applies to the resolution of this controversy between religion and science as to the previous one, fought over so many years ago.
To my mind, Intelligent Design is as valid a theory as Natural Selection – in some ways perhaps more so, though I doubt you can have one without the other. Again, I see the teeming life on earth that may have developed by Natural Selection as another tool for our maker(s) to enhance humanity (and other forms of life as well) by means of Intelligent Design just as our god may have borrowed from the Big Bang to create the heaven and the earth. If you think about it, and consider the fact that we are not alone in the universes and that some alien life forms may be far more advanced than any on earth, it is easy to understand that a Neanderthal could have been developed by design rather than evolution into a present day human through genetic science and manipulation. This concept would hold true under the monotheistic belief of a single god or any other form of divine leadership or superior intelligence.
We human beings are on the threshold of being able to intelligently re-design existing life forms today, and in fact are already capable of cloning humans just as we have cloned lesser life forms. So what is so contrary to divine dogma that causes the religious right to rail so boisterously against Charles Darwin and his theory of Natural Selection and the evolution of the species? Why do they abhor the very thought of their children learning about the theory of evolution at school? I believe it's because such ideas and concepts threaten their faith – the faith that has been conditioned into them through a lifetime of religious indoctrination of all persuasions from every secular and spiritual medium imaginable.
We progress as a knowledgeable species by learning and developing. We learn through curiosity, ideas, experimentation, hypotheses, and theories that, in some cases, finally emerge in all their unfettered glory upon us as truths and facts. Of course along the way many original ideas or concepts may be found untenable or false, and accordingly discarded forever to the scrap heap of bad ideas. But what's wrong with that? What is it that human beings are afraid of? We are taught to have faith – to believe in what we're told by "higher authorities." It is the Pisces Ideal that I have mentioned before in other essays: "Men must be told what to do by higher powers because man is incapable of thinking for himself." And that is the crux of the problem: blind faith!
As I have said so many times, in so many different applications, we owe it to ourselves individually as well as collectively to strive diligently to find out the Truth about why we are here and where we are going. It is, after all, our reason for living! It is reasonable to me to believe that each and every one of us would like to know something about our own identity and destiny. We will never know these things through faith, but rather through curiosity, ideas, hypotheses, theories, education, and knowledge.
We must discard faith in favor of gnosis if we are to survive, not only as a species, but in divine immortality as individuals. Faith is not the answer.
vvv
Copyright (2009) by Albert Lloyd Williams
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