I have been amazed by what some people who aren't religious think Christians believe. So, I think the first thing to do is set the record straight by mentioning a few things that we, Christians, don't believe.
We've all heard the unfortunate arguments for our planet being only 6000 years old - give or take a few years (but certainly not a few billion years).
Those that subscribe to the theory that our planet is a little over 6000 years old do so through a literal reading of Genesis and working out the time from Adam - who, according to the book of Gensis, was created on the sixth day from the beginning of the universe - to now. The time from Adam can be determined, as Genesis provides the ages at which Adam and Eve and their progeny had their offspring. It's a simple matter of addition of the family tree from Adam to Abraham to Jesus to now. Given that both secular and religious scholars agree that Abraham lived about 2000 B.C. and the birth dates of the family tree between Adam and Abraham add up to about 2000 years, and given that there have been approximately 2000 years since the birth of Jesus, the Earth must be about 6000 years old. There's no arguing that the logic isn't sound, but you can't help feeling they're missing something.
When supporters of this theory are confronted with proof the Earth really is quite a bit older than they suggest,
we hear rebuttals such as: dinosaur bones were put there to test our faith
or you can't really trust
carbon dating anyway
.
While one might admire a Young Earth Creationist's strength of faith in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, their wilful ignorance and obstinance to concede to the facts is hugely damaging to Christians as a group. Obviously, the absurdity of these claims attracts much media attention, much more attention than a Christian saying they do indeed believe what scientific research has shown us. Unfortunately, this imbalance has led to me being asked if I truly believe the Earth is only in its seventh millenium.
So, in answer to that question, I should say (although I really think I shouldn't have to) that I do indeed believe our planet to be approximately 4.5 billion years old and the universe to be about 13.8 billion years old. And I'm not the only Christian who thinks so; in fact, the Catholic church states that religion and science can never be contradictory when she says:
methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and
does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things
of faith derive from the same God.
Even from the early days of the Church, it was taught that Genesis need not be taken literally. St. Augustine of
Hippo, a bishop in North Africa during the early 5th century, wrote: the first two chapters of
Genesis are written to suit the understanding of the people at that time. In order to communicate in a way that
all people could understand, the creation story was told in a simpler, allegorical fashion.
Christians are not expected to believe the earth is only 6000 years old: indeed, they are taught that scientific truth cannot not contradict the faith.
It might also surprise you to know that, far from Church teaching only being capable accommodating scientific discovery, it has often been Christian thinkers who have been at the forefront of such discovery. The Big Bang theory, which states the universe expanded from nothing to what we have today over the past 13.8 billion years, was first proposed in 1927 by Georges Lemaitre, an astronomer and professor of physics at the Catholic University of Leuven. Georges Lemaitre was also a Catholic priest. Fr. Georges was at the same time a priest and a leader of the scientific community: the Big Bang theory was initially resisted by some of the most respected scienctists of the day, including Einstein, who believed in an eternal universe, before the theory's later acceptance in the 1930s and 1940s .
One question I often don't know how to answer is, Do you believe in
evolution?
. I struggle to answer it, not because I find evolution contradictory to Christianity and
I would therefore struggle to admit the widely-accepted theory without betraying my religion, but simply because
it is a strange question and when I answer, well, yeah, obviously
, I often see my inquisitor waiting for a
more detailed response, or some justification as to how I, a Christian, can accept evolution. I find the question
wouldn't be much harder to answer than if the myth got about that Christians don't believe in elephants, and I was
asked, but, you believe in elephants, right?
. My answer would
again be, well, yeah, obviously...what more do you want me to say?
Well, here's a bit more of an answer:
Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and the Roman Catholic Church are not in conflict. The Catechism of the Catholic Church does not exclude nor require belief in evolution, but states: The question about the origins of the world and of man has been the object of many scientific studies which have splendidly enriched our knowledge of the age and dimensions of the cosmos, the development of life-forms and the appearance of man.
Roman Catholic schools teach evolution without controversy on the basis that scientific knowledge does not extend beyond the physical, and, as we read in the previous section, scientific truth and religious truth cannot be in conflict.
It is often thought that Charles Darwin's famous book, "The Origin of Species", which described how populations evolve over the course of generations through a process of natural selection and which presented a body of evidence that the diversity of life arose by common descent through a branching pattern of evolution, was banned by the Catholic Church, or at least discouraged. This is simply wrong. In 1868, John Henry Newman, later to be made a Cardinal, corresponded with a fellow priest regarding Darwin's theory and made the following comments:
As to the Divine Design, is it not an instance of incomprehensibly and infinitely marvellous Wisdom and Design
to have given certain laws to matter millions of ages ago, which have surely and precisely worked out, in the
long course of those ages, those effects which he from the first proposed. Mr. Darwin's theory need not then to
be atheistical, be it true or not; it may simply be suggesting a larger idea of Divine Prescience and Skill.
Perhaps your friend has got a surer clue to guide him than I have, who have never studied the question, and I do
not [see] that 'the accidental evolution of organic beings' is inconsistent with divine design - It is
accidental to us, not to God.
Concerning human evolution, the Church has a more definite teaching. It allows for the possibility that the human
body developed from previous biological forms, under God's guidance, but it insists on the special creation of his
soul. Pope Pius XII declared that the teaching authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with
the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions...take place with regard to
the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from
pre-existent and living matter—[but] the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by
God
And in 1986 Pope St. John Paul II reaffirmed from the viewpoint of the doctrine of faith, there are no
difficulties in explaining the origin of man in regard to the body, by means of the theory of
evolution...However the doctrine of faith invariably affirms that man's spriritual soul is created directly by
God...it is possible that the human body, following the order impressed by the Creator on the energies of life,
could have been gradually prepared in the forms of antecedent beings
Whether the human body was and always has been as it is now, or whether it is the product of evolution, all a Christian is required to hold as a matter of faith is that the human soul is specially created: a soul does not evolve, and it is not inherited from our parents, as our bodies are.
Genetics
But, once again, the Church was much more than a bystander in scientific discovery. Members of the Church played an integral role in the forming of the ideas around evolution. Even though a single name is often attached to a breakthrough, it is rare, if not unprecendented, that a single person is responsible for a complete understanding of anything: deep understanding is often the culmination of many people's work.
By the early 1900's, Darwin's theory of evolution had fallen out of favour.
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This was not because of objections from religious institutions, but largely due serious objections from biologists who recognised two large gaps in the theory: the explosion of life forms in the early Cambrian period had not been preceded by transitional forms; and heredity: the passing on of traits through the generations.
Darwin proposed that natural variations in a population that help an individual to survive are more likely to be passed on, because that individual is more likely to survive, and if enough variations occur in one population, in isolation from another, a new species comes into being. However, Darwin did not have an explanation of how those variations could be preserved over successive generations. The prevailing theory at the time was that new traits were blended in the offspring; but, this would lead to dilution of new traits, as most blending would occur with individuals that did not have the trait.
It took the work of a man named Gregor Mendel, and his colleagues, to revive Darwin's theory of evolution. Their work showed the answer to heredity was not that traits were blended, rather they were inherited individually. Gregor Mendel and his colleagues were Catholic monks.
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Gregor Mendel and his fellow monks spent eight years cross-breeding pea plants to understand the inheritance of traits. They produced a formidable body of work: 29000 crosses were made, from which they discovered the laws that many of us today would recognise:
- The Law of Segregation states during fertilization each parent passes on one allele for each trait. Which allele the offspring would get from the parents is random.
- The Law of Independent Assortment states transmission of one trait does not affect the transmission of other traits. For example, pea colour does not affect pea size.
- The Law of Dominance states one type of allele (the dominant) could mask the other (the recessive).
These laws were published by Mendel and his colleagues in 1866, but weren't rediscovered by other biologists until the early 1900's. It is these laws, so recognisable to us today they seem obvious, that revived Darwin's theory and led to the field of Genetics - Mendel is commonly referred to as the Father of Genetics. Today, reference to Darwinism generally blends the work of Darwin and Mendel.
Whilst I hope I have shown that Christians do not need to deny scientific fact, and even that they are often found
right at the front of scientific discovery, there are a few misconceptions (I'm sure there's more than a few, but
let's start with the most popular) about what Christians believe, theologically speaking. Let's start with another
incredulous question that I have actually been asked: So, you think there's
an old man in the sky with a grey beard who controls everything?
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I'm sure you could guess my answer: No
.
God is certainly not a bearded man in the sky. That is the metaphore we give to four-year-olds; actually, I'm not sure it's even that: it's a picture of God that is illustrated in books for four-year-olds.
To my knowledge, no-one has been able to define God, and no-one ever would be able to. We are humans, evolved to perceive and react to our environment, bound by the laws of nature. God, as understood by Christians - and Jews and Muslims for that matter - is not bound by the laws of nature: God is outside of nature.
As God is outside the natural laws that bind us, we have no chance of being able to understand the nature of God. If we consider something as ordinary as a hawk, for example, we cannot even perceive what a hawk can perceive. A hawk can see UV light, but for us to try to understand what that might look like, we just represent it with varying shades of purple: we, as humans, simply cannot perceive UV light. Given that we cannot even perceive what another animal is capable of perceiving, because physiologically speaking, each of us only has the biological tools necessary that helped our species to survive thus far, and given that God is the laws of nature, we certainly do not have the biological tools to see God - whatever "see" would mean in such a context.
And while we're on the subject, God is not a name. God is what God is, in the same way that "human being" is not your name (probably). The Old Testament often refers to God as Yahweh, because when Moses asked God his name, God replied, I am that I am
, the letters for which in Hebrew are YHWH, hence Yahweh (bearing in mind that Hewbrew text didn't record vowels until the 9th century AD). God, being a description of nature, means the same thing as Allah. In fact, the Maltese Catholics' word for God is Alla.
We understand God to be outside the laws of nature, because God is the Creator of all that exists. God is not just a divine craftsman, working with and shaping pre-existent material, but God is the source on which all reality depends for its existence. As the source of all creation, and thus not created, God is self-existent: unlike everything else in the universe, nothing is required for God to exist.
That description of God could describe the scientific search for the source of the universe, such as an as yet unknown force that will one day be described by physicists. That might have been our thinking, and the essence of God would have been no more than an equation on a page - albeit the most sought after equation since scientific endeavour began - if God hadn't intervened in our history.
C.S. Lewis highlights the difficulty of describing God, who is so completely outside of our understanding that we could only use negatives to describe how God is different to us:
Let us suppose a mystical limpet, a sage among limpets, who (rapt in vision) catches a glimpse of what Man is
like. In reporting it to his disciples, who have some vision themselves (though less than he) he will have to
use many negatives. He will have to tell them that Man has no shell, is not attached to a rock, is not
surrounded by water. And his disciples, having a little vision of their own to help them, do get some idea of
Man.
But then there come erudite limpets, limpets who write histories of philosophy and give lectures on comparative
religion, and who have never had any vision of their own. What they get out of the prophetic limpet's words is
simply and solely the negatives. From these, uncorrected by any positive insight, they build up a picture of Man
as a sort of amorphous jelly (he has no shell) existing nowhere in particular (he is not attached to a rock) and
never taking nourishment (there is no water to drift it towards him). And having a traditional reverence for
Man, they conclude that to be a famished jelly in a dimensionless void is the supreme mode of existence, and
reject as crude, materialistic superstition any doctrine which would attribute to Man a definite shape, a
structure, and organs.
We know that God is not an elderly-looking man in the sky, but we also know that God is not an "energy" permeating the universe: God is a concrete being. However, given our experience as humans is limited to within nature, we have no positive reinforcements to make: we have no way of positively describing God, which is why we resort to metaphors and similies - the omnipotent fatherly figure is our best metaphore.
Although we cannot understand God any more than Hamlet could perceive or understand Shakespeare, just as Shakespeare could reveal his nature to Hamlet by writing himself into Hamlet's story, God wrote himself into our history through the revelations recorded in the Old Testament and as Jesus, who is described as the Word of God made flesh. The interventions of God in human history, recorded in the bible, have allowed Christians to develop a little understanding of God.
God's interventions in the world show us that God is interested in the world, especially in the human race.
We also understand that God has a moral code, as Moses was given the Ten Commandments.
Christianity also teaches us that God listens to us, and given that God is not bound by time, when we pray, God has all the time in the world to listen to each one of us and to what we have to say. Christianity also teaches us that God - the Creator of the entire universe and of every person that lives and has ever lived - cares about what we have to say to him. The bible records Jesus saying that only he knows God the Father completely, and one of the reasons that Jesus came to us was to help all people know God better. So we understand that God wants us to know him.
So, among other things, we have an indescribable source and sustenance of the entire universe, who has interveined throughout history, who wants us to know and love him, and who wants us to love each other. Although we cannot understand the true nature of God, at least not in this life, we do know that God isn't a bearded man in the sky. Whether or not we believe in God, if we want to have a debate about God as adults, we must do it on adults' terms.
An Educated Debate
If I were not religious and I thought Christian's believed God to be a bearded man in the sky, the Earth to be only 6000 years old, and as such evolution is impossible, I too would consider Christians to be foolish, childish, credulous or any other adjective you could think of synonymous with being a little bit simple.
To have an educated debate, we must put behind us childish misrepresentations of religion. Maybe those representations have become prevalent through a lack of education, or maybe through propagation by famous atheists - as it would clearly suit their argument. Why such misrepresentations occur is irrelevant to us at present, but if we are to take a position on either side of the debate, we should at the very least know the other side's position.