Essays for Katrina: The Biblical Genesis
Dean
Our friend Moze, the Defiance, Colorado Democrat has asked me to answer the following question:
Does the Theory of Evolution refute the account of creation in Genesis 1&2?
The short answer is yes. The longer answer is that it depends on how you look at it, but no not really.
The Bible, most particularly the first five books of the Tanakh or the Old Testament, is mostly a collection of mythology strung together over a period of thousands of years. The creation myth it tells is no more accurate than the Greek mythological tale of how the Earth was created from the body of the goddess Gaia (SOURCE) or the Egyption creation stories (SOURCE) or the countless other tales spun together by folklore and tradition that ancients strung together (SOURCE). When the biblical book of Genesis was put together, an unknown scholar or group of scholars--almost certainly not Moses--took the various tales of creation that had been passed down by oral tradition by his people and wrote them down.
When looking at the Bible, the tale of the Genesis creation is not one but two completely different creation stories, cleverly woven together. The first tale is told in Genesis Chapter 1, and begins "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. (SOURCE). That tale ends, oddly enough, not at the end of chapter 1 but at chapter 2, verse 3, which concludes "By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done."
The second tale, which probably ought to begin the second chapter, begins at is a completely different tale from that told in the first. The second story begins, "This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created," and ends more or less in Genesis 3 (SOURCE), with Adam and Eve being expelled from Eden.
The two tales are not quite perfectly separated. On that point, Biblical scholar Richard E. Friedman, in his excellent book Who Wrote the Bible? (SOURCE) lays out, in fairly convincing fashion, that some sentences were cribbed from the first tale and inserted into the second, and vice versa, in order to make them blend better and seem less in conflict with each other. Regardless, these are two mythological tales, and an interesting and fascinating allegory for the human experience--most especially the human experience as understood by mostly-illiterate people who were incredibly poor and very short-lived by modern standards.
Those tales were later compiled many generations later by literate and somewhat more wealthy people based on what had come down from their parents and grandparents. The fact that we still have that thousands of years later is remarkable.
None of this has anything to do with science. It's mythology. That's not a dismissive thing to say either: mythology is extraordinarily important to the human spirt. We need mythology: it tells us things about ourselves, about each other, about our past, and about our future. It's not insulting to call something mythology. It should just be remembered that it is not science.
There have been efforts by a few to suggest that evolution followed the broad path laid out in Genesis, but this effort fails to pass close scrutiny. Simply read Genesis 1 and follow the literal sequence, and you can see where it doesn't mesh with what we know today; just for starters, the Earth was not dark and completely covered with water before the sun came up and the land masses were created. In Genesis, the first living things described as being created are plants, when we know for a fact there were many other organisms before there were plants; then Genesis describes birds and sea creatures being created around the same time, when in fact those were millions of years apart; it describes livestock animals and all other land animals being created at the same time, when in fact the various forms of livestock and other land animals appeared at many different times and through many different processes--and livestock didn't exist until humans created them by breeding. Genesis then describes man being created last of all, which is wrong because many important species came into being after the earliest humans.
I keep looking for a better online source and not finding one, but at least one basic chart I've found (SOURCE) looks to mostly be accurate and shows how the sequence of events in the evolutionary record just didn't happen in the sequence Genesis mentions. So even if you try the old allegorical trick that we all heard in that terribly overblown--and by the way, historically very inaccurate--film Inherit the Wind (SOURCE), it doesn't work. No, you really can't just say, "days were longer than 24 hours during the period of creation, to God, millions of years could be a day." I'm sorry, that doesn't much hold up. The sequence of creation that Genesis lays out simply does not map to what we've seen in the evolutionary record. Not in any way I can tease out, anyway.
More to the point, if the Genesis account is to be taken as literal truth, wouldn't we expect it to say somewhere that God later established the length of time of a day as a short time period? Come on. This is all gilding the lilly: here we have a wonderful and important mythology passed down by word of mouth by ancient humans, and we're trying to twist and contort it to fit a scientific theory--and contorting the science to fit it as well? What's the point?
If I were a man who believed that Christianity (or Judaism) was the true religion and these books the genuine Word of God, I'd still say that religious folks should stop pretending that God personally came down, took out a pen, and wrote these tales down. I'd say that the proper way to look at them is that God's chosen people passed down the tales by word of mouth for dozens or hundreds of generations, and when they were written down God let them be written that way because God was far more concerned with the spiritual truths and the lessons those tales had for people, not the exact intricacies of how He went about piecing together his creation. No more than He wanted to make it a math text or a cookbook. God is not incapable of approving of myths. Myths are not "lies."
As a non-believing man, I say that these myths are still wonderful and powerful, no different from any other mythology--and that mythology is truthful, powerful, important stuff. There's no reason to gild the lilly that mythology represents by trying to twist it to fit a biology textbook.
So: can the Biblical tale of creation be jibed with the theory of evolution? No, not literally, not at all, and attempting to do so is kind of silly. But as an allegory to the evolution of the human spirit? Sure. No problem.
--
This is the second in a series of what I've dubbed "Essays for Katrina," essays written to support relief efforts for Hurricane Katrina. For a $50 donation to the American Red Cross, I'll write an essay of at least 600 words with at least 2 references on any subject you request. Any subject at all. I can't guarantee you'll like the essay, but I'll do my best to make it informative--or at least entertaining. :-)
This essay was written due to the generosity of Moze, the Defiance, Colorado Democrat.
Related Posts (on one page):
Floods happen all the time, and they can be devastating. We are the most powerful nation ever and we can't stop Mother Nature. What chance does a stone-age or bronze-age culture have?
There are many ways of considering the Bible creation story. Some people understand as a story of seven days. I don't. I tend to see the Genesis creation story as telling me that
1) things change
2) there's an order to the universe
3) human beings screw up sometimes
4) there's still hope
"Myth" (which, despite the attempts to say otherwise, implies the meaning of "fancy falsehood") or "religious discourse" (as I'd probably prefer to describe it) work differently than scientific or historical discourse. Simply put: Genesis is not a geology, physics, or biology textbook, and it should not be treated as if it was.
If you read a history book, and you read that Lincoln died of a gunshot wound to the head, you don't consider that to be false because, actually, the gunshot wound wasn't immediately fatal, and that the real cause of death was likely starvation of blood to the critical portions of the brain that control the vital functions, or alternatively clotting destroying brain tissue in that area. You recognize that this is a history book, and that the actual medical details are probably both unknowable at this late date and irrelevant to the issue at hand, and so you ignore the small scientific inaccuracy.
Similarly, if you read a historical aside in a science book about Edison's creation of the electrical infrastructure, do you necessarily throw the science in the book away because, technically, Tesla created much of the technology behind modern electrical infrastructure, and Edison (and his companies after him) fought him on it until Westinghouse ended the debate? No. You recognize that this is a science book, not a history book, and you feel confident that Maxwell's equations work like the book says despite the horrible injustice done to Tesla (as some might describe it).
Similarly, the creation stories do not have to line up with some evolutionary time frame, or some idea of the chronology of the fossil record. Scientific inaccuracy does not take away from the central facts of the accounts: among others, that God created the world, and that the creation of humanity was different in kind from the creation of the rest of the world. Do either of those facts change because the story says that birds came before reptiles, and current evolutionary theory says otherwise? Of course not.
Although I happen to think Friedman and others are correct that there were probably two or more earlier written documents that formed the basis of the current book we have, I can't prove it. The question would be: would anyone's faith be shaken if one or more of those documents were found? Why?
Nowhere does the Bible say--nowhere--that God put his personal seal of approval on the book of Genesis. These are just the oldest surviving remnants of those ancient tales.
Consider the number I just typed. The "first" number is "4," yes? Let's say I use my mouse to put the pointer before the 4, and type in "123."
What it would look like is
123456.
Which number is "first?" Well, if you ask which is first in the sequence that's now present, it's "1". That does not change, however, the fact that the first number I typed was "4".
If I had just done that without explaining what I had done, there would be NO way for you to know that I had actually typed "4" first.
One thing I've often considered is that God is, you know, God. He can do freaking anything. (Kinda in the definition.)
So he creates Man and Earth, see. Just took 7 days. Then he decides, like a Creator, to put in a little backstory, so creates millions of years and fits it before Man. He can do that because, you know, Master of Time and Space and all that. There are no contradictions because he's just that good at what he does.
Why do that? He's God. Like he told Job, he doesn't need to explain how he does things.
But we humans can't see events from outside time. Just like if I had just typed out 456 and then added 123 in front of it before posting this comment, you can't tell which "really" came first. Only the sequence it is now.
Good essay, Dean. If anyone wants to do a search, the notion that the "days" of Genesis represent longer periods is often called the day-age theory. It was the favored explanation at the Christian school I attended in the 70s and 80s, so I've always had a soft spot for the idea.
Nowdays I'm content to believe that God initiated the universe and "tilted" the natural laws of His creation toward the goal He wanted. Yeah, it smacks of Intelligent Design, but the way I think of it places God one step farther removed from the process, with makes physics and biology and evolutionary processes a part of the plan rather than something God selectively circumvents to realize his design.
Nowhere does the Bible say--nowhere--that God put his personal seal of approval on the book of Genesis.
Really?
But it is a series of stories of human history. On a more careful reading the story of Noah does suggest in the face of impending floods of (biblical) proportion one ought to build an ARK or perhaps get other means of tranportation (like transit and school busses) to insure survival. Then again, Noah was instructed to take only two of each species. That is curious.
We now fast forward several millenia. There are now close to 7 billion people on planet, Earth.
To be continued---
True, that belief is is an old part of tradition--just like a lot of stuff that isn't actually in the Bible.
The first time in the Bible you can honestly say anything's unequivocally coming straight from God is the 10 commandments, and then the long detailed listings of the law in Exodus and Leviticus. Why call a creation story the law?
Thanks for your thoughtful post in response to my essay request. Moreover, thanks for what you are doing to assist the victims of Katrina.
Cheers,
Dean wrote:
"None of this has anything to do with science. It's mythology. That's not a dismissive thing to say either: mythology is extraordinarily important to the human spirt. We need mythology: it tells us things about ourselves, about each other, about our past, and about our future. It's not insulting to call something mythology. It should just be remembered that it is not science."
True.
and:
"As a non-believing man, I say that these myths are still wonderful and powerful, no different from any other mythology--and that mythology is truthful, powerful, important stuff. There's no reason to gild the lilly that mythology represents by trying to twist it to fit a biology textbook."
True.
I believe that Stephen A. McNallen of the Asatru Folk Assembly (formerly Asatrue Free Assembly) put it best when he said:
"Myth is the language in which the Gods speak to us."
That is abolutely true.
Thank for those links to various creation myths, including the Egyptian myths.
Andy00's analysis of God and time was extremely provocative. God (the Godhead) stands outside of time as we know it, in that higher dimension known as eternity. As somewhat of an aside, the question has been raised here as to how we can have free will if God knows everything, including the future. My thinking of that question is that of the 17th century Spanish Jesuit theologian Luis Molina. He argued that God does not know the future, since there is no such thing as "the" future, as it doesn't exist yet, but rather God knows all possible futures, or "futuribles", depending on what choices we ourselves make in the present. E.g., "If Mr. A chooses B, then C will be the case, but if Mr. A chooses D then E will be the case...."
As I'm seeing it now, there seem to be 4 types or levels of humab knowledge:
1) Science, which deals with inducing abstract generalized "lsws", repeatable patterns, from empirically observed facts.
2) Philosophy, which deals with deducing such patterns or abstract ideas from other ideas.
3) History, which deals with concrete, singular events, what one man or woman did to another at a specific time and place, their motives and the consequences of that action.
4) Myth, which is a story or history of Gods and Goddesses, often interacting with men and women. Mythology takes place in eternity but occasionally intersects with our time.
All of these are necessary. They are separate but sometimes overlap. E.g., the philosophy or history of science. An earthquake, scientifically speaking, is part of the recuring shifts of tectonic plates, but viewed from history it is a cataclysmic event. There is a history of mythology, and mythic events, as I said, at epochal times intersect with our history, e.g., the Virgin Birth of the Christ. Theology is philosophizing about mythology.
Evolution may or may not be true in a purely scientific sense. Philosophically, historically, and mythologically, the myths of the Creation and the Fall ring more true to me.
An excellent look at the Judao-Christian Bible in the context of the Near/Middle Eastern milieu in which it was written is Samuel Henry Hooke's Middle Eastern Mythology (1963). Professor Hooke discusses Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Hittite, Ugaritic, Hebrew, and Christian mythologies, and shows varioua tie-ins and parallels. The eternal Divine archetypes.
As to your question about Genesis being "Law", I believe "Law" is here a translation of Torah, which usually refers to the first five books of the Bible, including Genesis. The entire Old Testament, from what I gather, is called the Tanakh.
Anyway, thank you.
It is possible that he used a commonly understood term for another purpose, in order to obscure his meaning, but I tend toward plain interpretations of the Bible unless good reasons exist not too. In other words, what would an educated Jew of that time, reading his words have thought he meant?
Also, as to the dual beginnings of Genesis, I have looked at this, and satisfied myself at some years back that it is more in the nature of telling teh same tale from two different pov's or for two different purposes. Now I wish I could remember the details and conclusions better, but I don't.
And I'm skeptical of skeptics. Many aren't that good...this sort I reference, well, at times they make moonbats look clever and just. And just because one guy in a book says something.... well I've heard that the multi-author theory was debunked quite some time ago. There's been a lot of books put out by skeptics that once you get to the meat of their arguements, you're left with a few good points, and muchness of "is that all? Pull-ease" (aka its pretty pathetic, and one is surprised that a book company wasted ink and paper and money), but then perhaps one doesn't make as much money from selling pamphlets as books.
Dean makes a good point about the Bible and its incongruity with Evolution. And about how it could be Myth and still Revelation.
But I'm reminded of the non-existent Hittites who disproved the Bible, until decades later archeologists caught up to the Bible. I tend to think that the Bible will, as it has so many times before, have the last laugh.
And the "Lincoln assasination" example is clever, but not good enough. Death by gunshot wound is accurate. Granted, the other is more accurate, but that does not invalidate the first statement.
No, when the Bible says the Earth is floating on nothing, and that it is a ball, it is speaking accurately. And when it tells of history, well, lets say that the Textus Receptus, the Majority Text is the number one, number two, and almost number three most validated source of literature in the ancient world. Homer's stories come in a far distant second, 11,000 to 3,000 plus.
Historically, one should, in fairness, assume that if the Bible claims something happened, it did, unless one can mount an awesome amount of refutation.
No one here in this post deserved my fire. Its aimed at poseurs, and sea lawyers (except sea lawyers seem an honorable breed compared to these).
"...eternity becomes known from two characteristics: first, from the fact that whatever is in eternity is interminable, that is, lacking beginning and end, taking terminus as applicable to both; second, from the fact that eternity itself lacks successiveness, existing entirely at once. --- "
Thomas Aquinas.
Evolution on the other hand does not lack successiveness.
I worry about stuff like this.
None of the sources I linked are either moonbats or cousins to moonbats. They're either straightforward accountings of various mythologies or, in the case of Friedman, respected biblical scholars. Friedman is hardly the only one to hold his view among accepted and respected biblical scholars, and despite the efforts of some (almost entirely American, almost entirely biblicist-protestant), mostly the views he presents are considered respectable and not particularly wild or heretical by either most Jews or most Christians around the world.
Christian tradition for a very long time was that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible, but very few people accept that view anymore. At least, not that I'm aware of. Thus raising the obvious question: so who did? And why? And why do we take it on faith (heh, heh) that everything in those first two chapters is literal truth, or was even meant to be read that way? It's not like there's any tale where God came down and dictated all that stuff, or handed a finished book to someone.
In that scenario, He gave us a brain and then told us not to use it. Your faith has to trump your intellect. In other words, you have to ignore carbon-dating, the fossil record and He must have created the light from other stars so as to make it seem as if the stars are really thousands of light years away. That seems pretty mean.
But then, using what He said to Job as an example makes sense. He was pretty mean to Job.
According to my Scofield Bible notes, Genesis is quoted more than sixty times in the New Testament. This is one of the proofs of canonicity...that an accepted part of the canon treats another book as canon. Good enough?
As to Moses, well yes, it is probably Biblical inerrancy supporters who argue against alternate authors (indeed there is supposed to be some controversy about a NT book authorship, Hebrews??), and Thomas Jeffersonian cut your Bible to size supporters who argue for it. I'll let you guess who I find most persuasive.
Personally, I could ask my Baptist brother, the one with multiple Bible masters and a doctorate, but he'd probably just give a horse laugh at the Moses theory. I'm sure my Church of Christ father in law, who's been collecting Bible translations for forty years would be more polite, but still pretty definitive in the negative.
And since I'm lazy and pressed for time, I'll accept that arguement from authority.
That would be tradition as held by most Christians, yes. But it's not actually in the Bible.
According to my Scofield Bible notes, Genesis is quoted more than sixty times in the New Testament. This is one of the proofs of canonicity...that an accepted part of the canon treats another book as canon. Good enough?
Good enough for what? It certainly doesn't refute anything I've said.
As for the belief that Moses wrote the Genesis and Exodus--it was Christian tradition for a very, very long time. It no longer is, because evidence and logic simply don't suppor tit. If it gets a horse's laugh, however, I hope that horse has some humility.