orb@whuxl.UUCP (SEVENER) (10/21/85)
A Reply to a Fundamentalist Christian's literal interpretation of the Bible --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yesterday I was astounded at your attempt to pit a literal interpretation of the Bible against the findings of science. If you are going to say the Bible is useless unless it is literally true in every detail then you are fighting a vain and inevitably useless battle. As I mentioned the Catholic Church fought that same battle with Galileo and other scientists over Copernican "theory" 300 years ago. Religious zealots continued to battle Copernican theory for 200 years after Copernicus advanced his "theory" that the Earth revolves around the Sun rather than vice versa. In the end we know that it is unquestioningly proven that Copernicus was correct. Even you would not dare to challenge Copernican theory with quotes from the Bible. Now you are trying to use the Bible as a scientific textbook as they did 300 years ago. There is no way to do that. Those battles were fought 100 years ago - why don't you give up? To see the absurdity of the literal interpretation of the Bible consider the very first passages of Genesis: ********************************************************** *In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.* ****************************************************** In the first place we see here the conception, natural before Copernicus and advanced astronomical knowledge, that there was just heavens (the sky with its stars) earth and the sea. There is no mention of other planets or even the conception that such might exist except as part of the "heavens". This primitive conception of the universe can be seen more clearly in the succeeding passages: ********************************************************** *And God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.* ****************************************************** Is there any conception in this passage that "one day" might only apply to solely our own solar system and the Earth's rotation? No, because to the author of this passage the only light was our own terrestrial day. The idea that other stars and their planets rotation might lead to "days" on other planets is inconceivable given the author's primitive knowledge of the universe: after all, we all know there is only one "day" and one "night" as we directly experience it here on Earth. Moreover, of course, the fact that the Sun's light continues even tho the Earth may be temporarily turned away from it is also unknown to the author. There is an irremediable separation between light and darkness-either all is light or all is darkness. That part of the planet may be in light while the other is in darkness is alien to the author's view of the universe. ********************************************************** *And God said, "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters". And God made the firmament and separated the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. And it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.* ****************************************************** Again, there is this simplistic conception of the whole universe contained in the sea and sky only. ********************************************************** *And God said, "Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear." And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. And God said, "Let the earth put forth vegetation, plants yielding seed and fruit trees bearing fruit which is their seed, each according to its kind, upon the earth." And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and morning, a third day.* ****************************************************** Even clearer here is the idea that the Earth is the center of the universe. Moreover since two-thirds of the Earth's surface is water it was only natural for the author to believe that the dry land arose out of a predominately water environment. Of course now we know that most of planet Earth is actually rock despite the predominance of water on its surface. The author also suggests that life began on the dry land and gives absolutely no mention of microscopic bacteria, plankton, etc. How could he? Leevanhoek had not yet invented the microscope with which to observe these first and most primitive forms of life. Of course the author also fails to mention trilobites ,an aquatic life form, and fails to realize that trees came relatively late in the development of plant life. He also does not realize that the first fossils (e.g. trilobites) are found in the sea rather than land. ********************************************************** *And God said, "Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, and let them be lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the earth." And it was so. And God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.* ****************************************************** Here it is even clearer still that the author has a preCopernican conception of the universe. This passage states that the earth was created first before the sun and moon or any other stars. The sun, moon and stars are not separate bodies similar to earth but "lights" placed in the firmament (i.e. sky). It is these "lights" which separate the light from the darkness, not the Earth's rotation blocking the constant light of the sun. Of course in all this one can ask, "what is meant by a day?". It is obvious that neither life, the earth, the sun or the stars were really created in seven days as we know them. The first fossils of trees are discovered thousands and thousands of years after the first fossils of trilobites. Moreover the Earth itself has been dated at millions of years. So in a literal interpretation are the seven days of Genesis really seven rotations of the Earth (a concept which the author obviously does not even have in the first place)? It would seem so in the passage: "Let there be lights....and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years..." If the sun, moon and stars are the measure of a "day" in this passage then they should logically be the same measure in the rest of this account. I could go on but it would only reinforce the basic point- Genesis 1 is a beautiful poetic account of creation based upon the best understanding of the people of the time. But to take it as literal scientific truth with what we know today about the solar system is ridiculous. Moreover the account in Genesis 1 directly contradicts the account in Genesis 2.4-3.24. Genesis 1 begins with the creation of light, then the sky, then the seas and land, then plants and vegetation on dry land, then the animals and finally man, both male and female. Genesis 2.4-3.24 begins with the earth and the heavens ********************************************************** *These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created. In the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up...* ****************************************************** Then goes on to the creation of Adam only, excluding women: ********************************************************** *then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground* ****************************************************** Only *after* Adam has been created does God create the animals: ********************************************************** *Then the LORD God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him." So out of the ground the LORD God formed *every beast of the field and every bird of the air...* ****************************************************** When this passage says *every beast of the field* it implies that it is not a question of merely creating *some* beasts and birds for Adam's company but *all* beasts and birds. Yet in Genesis 1 beasts and birds have already been created *before* man. Therefore these two accounts of creation in the very beginning of the Bible contradict each other quite blatantly. I should think that this argument *simply based upon Copernican theory* is enough to prove that the Bible cannot be considered as some sort of literal scientific textbook, without even getting into arguments about evolution. There is no more reason to think that any literal interpretation of the Bible contradicting evolution is any more valid than the account of Genesis which obviously contradicts Copernican theory if taken literally. Another premier example of the absurdity of taking the Bible as some literal scientific textbook was Bishop Usher's calculation of the age of the Earth. Bishop Usher painstakingly went throught the Bible and added up the ages of all the generations so fastidiously presented there and came up with an age for the Earth of a little over 5000 years. All scientific evidence from radio-carbon dating to geological dating indicates that this literal figure calculated from the Bible is powers of ten off the mark. Yet this is the sort of absurd result one gets by taking the Bible as some literal scientific textbook. The Bible is no textbook! It is a wellspring of history, myth, poetry, morality and wisdom accumulated over the ages by part of mankind. Regardless of its literal falsehood, the account of Creation in Genesis 1 is a marvel of poetic beauty. It is demeaning to Genesis and the whole Bible to destroy its beauty by reducing its wisdom to some sort of literal scientific textbook. I hope you will come to understand that! Pacem in Terris, Mir Shanti, Shalom, Hey Wa! tim sevener