This is a column in the well-respected Christianity Today? As my friend Edward points out, “I hope it’s part of a series! ‘Why We Need Child-Crippling or Child-Exterminating Bacteria & Viruses,’ ‘Why We Need Mass Extinctions,’ ‘Why We Need People Devoted to Competing [Hellfire-Threatening] Religions/Denominations With Competing Holy Books and/or Competing Interpretations of Those Books.’ “
The Latest on Faith and Doubt
7 responses so far ↓
1 Tim Stroud // May 6, 2009 at 1:57 pm
Perfect. We need earthquakes to maintain an ever evolving planet over eons of time. An ever evolving planet makes conditions for humans to exist.
Glad the author put that “God made the world in 7 days” theory to rest forever. And with it that old Adam and Eve story is made fiction. No Adam and Eve? No original sin. No original sin? No need for salvation, etc, etc.
You think God loves humanity more than he loves building mountains? Sorry, he loves building mountains more and he’s done it a lot longer. So get out of the way!
The author, Dinesh D’Souza, is trying to merge a religious viewpoint and a scientific/evolutionary/geologic viewpoint. Why he would try to do such a thing is my question.
2 NickDLP // May 6, 2009 at 2:23 pm
If God were real, he could just tell people to “watch out!” for any particular earthquake…
His hands wouldn’t be tied if he were real.
Ehrman 1, D’Souza 0
3 Jumper2 // May 6, 2009 at 10:25 pm
Bill, I really don’t get your comments about this article! What’s your point?
Tim (and Bill),
Many have believed that the creation story is not a literal story or the story of Adam and Eve as well. This doesn’t change a thing about it’s importance! The creation story does not describe how the earth was created, it is about challenging the common thoughts of the day. One of those thoughts, for example, was the belief of the cosmic gods (like the sun). The story is about putting things in the right order.
God is the creator of the sun.
Living things are higher than non-living things and among living things some are more “alive” than others, that is power of awareness and desire! So, for example, man is higher than animals. This is a fact that is incontestable (although some contest it anyway).
Genesis and evolution are not contestable to each other. They are not about the same thing!
Adam and Eve are provided for in abundance, they have the bounty of the entire natural abundance of the garden at their disposal yet, we as humans choose human freedom, human reason, which is deeply questionable and the likely source of our unhappiness. God warned us that our reason influences and alters natural appetites, human appetite increases beyond what is necessary and good for us. Because we are rational and free, we can freely desire things that are harmful to life, health and well being. We choose that tree when we are provided for in abundance with all the other trees!
So, you see, there is a need for salvation.
4 Tim Stroud // May 7, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Well Jumper2 I just don’t know.
I was brought up to believe that everything that is real is more important than anything that is fiction.
Used to be that folks thought the story of Adam and Eve was real, and that’s what made it important.
Real flesh and blood people, and a real God and a real evil in the form of a serpent all really happening many thousands of years ago in a real place somewhere on this Earth. Now if we go around believing that it’s just a made-up story then it’s just not as important as it used to be.
Why, anyone can go around making up stories! But reality? You can’t make that up.
And if it’s just a made-up story with a made-up God and a made-up man and woman then the author needlessly made beautiful reptiles a symbol of deceit and made that poor woman look the fool!
5 Jumper2 // May 7, 2009 at 9:14 pm
Fiction?
Who said anything about fiction. The story of Genesis is a true descriptive of the human condition with much wisdom to learn from.
I am sorry that you don’t feel wisdom is real!
I am also sorry about your disdain of fiction. I’ll make sure that anytime I read a book or watch a movie that any lessons are ignored from the story about humans and the human condition, I wouldn’t want to let my imagination to be any part of my self to learn from!
And for that matter, people make up reality all the time!
There just isn’t any time or room to go into it here but if the story is descriptive or proscriptive of the human condition then there is no blame to spread to serpents or women. The serpent is cunning. In fact (I am looking this up), the Hebrew word for cunning is ‘arum which is short for ‘arumim or naked. The root sense of ‘arum is ‘erum is “smooth”. Someone who is naked is hairless, clothesless, smooth of skin. So it’s a pun, someone who is naked is smooth and someone who is clever is smooth, a speaker and talker whose surface speech is attractive and flawless, hiding his ulterior motive (which was to question the meaning of the tree).
So actually the story not being literal is much more fair to women and reptiles for that matter, than taken literally!
I highly recommend the book “The Beginning of Wisdom” by Leon Kass. No, it is not a book for me to “sneak in” and convert you. It can very much be read from a point of non belief (and in my opinion from a point of belief as well). It just talks of the wisdom in Genesis written from someone that as he describes it “a man of science and medicine, raised in a strictly secular home without contact with Scripture”
6 Tim Stroud // May 8, 2009 at 3:16 am
Jumper2, we may share a language, but not share a meaning.
When you wrote “Many have believed that the creation story is not a literal story or the story of Adam and Eve as well.”, I thought you were saying that many believe that the story of Adam and Eve is not a re-telling of actual events. And I just made the leap from “not a retelling of actual events” to “fiction”.
There is nothing wrong with fiction. Yes, we gain a lot from fiction, including lessons that strive to make us wiser. Fiction uses the author’s imagination to describe the human condition, create characters (Gods, Heroes and Men, etc) and events that aid our understanding, especially our understanding of other people.
It’s just that fiction doesn’t compare to reality. I am going out on a limb here and declaring that reality is more important that fiction! Let the debate begin!
But I don’t know where you got the notion that I don’t feel wisdom is real.
Or that people “make up reality all the time”. People who “make up” reality? Influence yes. But make up? Do you mean like an author makes up a story? Or do you mean like the people who see the Virgin Mary in a water stain? Or…
Heyyyy, wait a second, are you implying I’m crazy?
7 Jumper2 // May 8, 2009 at 10:18 pm
Tim,
I think I put too much meaning into the word fiction! I do mean that parts of the Bible is obviously (or should be obviously) metaphor. The creation story as well as Adam and Eve are metaphors! The story of the garden of Eden accurately (an opinion) describes the TRUTH of the human condition.
So I was reacting to you say saying fiction as you saying that it was non-truth or a lie! And by calling it that (mind you, you didn’t call it that, I took it that way), you were discounting the wisdom in it, thus you don’t like wisdom!
Yea, sorry about that! To speak facebook, I should be a “fan of extrapolation”!
Fiction is very important to the human mind. Plato and other Greeks tried to separate imagination, emotions from the real, but they were wrong. Reality of course is very important but I fail to see how the “reality” of the creation story or of the Garden of Eden is important. If we had 3000 years of human history that did not believe the creation story as real but then 200 of it that now does, this means that there was an importance to the story prior to it’s change of status.
I am not asking you to be a fan of the Bible or to change your mind about it. I’m just asking to be open to the Bible having wisdom and that many of the ‘problems’ with the Bible you have is likely much more about modern interpretation / misinterpretation.
Remember the Bible comes from an “Eastern” origin and has be co-opted into a “western” philosophy!
This as you can imagine creates problems.
As far as making up reality, I don’t think you give enough credit to the individual mind and it’s influence and interpretation on reality. Send a few people to a conference and you’ll likely see a couple different realities on what the conference was like and what it provided. Who are you or I to say which reality was correct?
I’ll hold judgment on your mental status for the time being!
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