Christian proponents of creation theory continue to confront the Darwinian theory of evolution in new ways. Creation theory itself, however, is covertly anthropocentric. Nevertheless, the controversy concerns more than Christians and their scientific opponents.
The American Religious Right have been abandoning the ship of secular humanism ever since recognition of abortion rights sparked their political activism. A new ship has been built, with pro-life politics, the nuclear family, and biblical education as some of its main planks. Creationism—the belief that God created the universe in six days—is its answer to secular humanism’s scientific counterpart—Darwin’s doctrine of evolution—which makes humanity the product of a Nature devoid of any Supreme Being.
The conflict between creationism and evolutionary theory is just one of the most intractable elements of a long opposition between science and claims to transcendental truth that have fractured the Western psyche, an opposition that appears to be growing.
Creationism, though it claims to be God-centered, is, however, covertly anthropocentric. This is what accounts for its incompatibility with science.
The causus belli between the Religious Right and science in this instance is of course the creation passage early in the biblical book of Genesis. Genesis describes God’s creation of the heavens, the earth, plants, birds and beasts, as well as humans, in the extraordinary span of six days. Creationists claim that scientific evidence exists to back them up, though most scientists reject it as bad science and the Roman Catholic Church reject it as well. Yet creationism is a notable reason why there is a move toward increased Christian educational separatism and is kindling in the fire of conservative politics.
Mainstream Christians, and Jews for that matter, have adopted the view that six days is a figurative expression for a period of time that actually amounted to aeons. In effect they have adopted one hypothesis in the scientific corpus in opposition to the literal text.
Anything “figurative” however can connote a sort of emasculation, as if what was written is too strong to bear, or a sort of mental deficiency, as if what was written was a failure in choice of words. The Religious Right, motivated as they are by a desire for textual accuracy, have picked up on this point and stuck to their literalist guns. This is inevitable when a religion depends so heavily on scriptural correctness. And it is true that Genesis describes what happened as an accomplishment of six days, and does not use the word “aeon” when it presumably could have. The need for conceptual mediation is apparently avoided.
The Enduring Enlightenment
A persistent result of the conflict of religious text with science, of which the creation-evolution controversy is only one example, is that what might be other transcendental truths in the Bible or elsewhere tend to be tainted, suspect by association with creationism, as it were. And those of other religious persuasions may also be forced to bear the shame of having transcendental convictions or aspirations simply because religion in the West since the Enlightenment has come to be seen as riddled with rationally indefensible dogmas and a paucity of verifiable truth. The Judeo-Christian creation story is only one such example of what rationalists see as nonsense.
Thus, modern science, which at root denies a role for the transcendent, if not its very existence, continues to reign supreme in many matters. People are left with little or no scientific verification for their transcendental impulses. Materialism, or, more precisely, radical materialism, which teaches that matter is the root cause of everything without exception, is the only respectable scientific position.
Yale University constitutional law professor Stephen L. Carter, in his popular 1993 book The Culture of Disbelief, sees in the controversy over teaching the biblical creation story in U.S. schools an issue of the right of conscience and religious belief against the state, and calls for tolerating diverse knowledge systems.
Creationists want to be rational, he writes. They do not want to come across as wild-eyed fanatics straight out of the woods, and differ from science only in their starting points and sources of knowledge. Science relies on experiment, data and theory, and religion relies on scripture, prayer and faith. Yet, once the premises of scripture, such as the creation story, are accepted, he writes, creationists still want to follow reason.
This, however, they have not done, though not for the reasons usually given, which deal with the mass of evidence said to weigh against them. Rather, creationist premises themselves are not simply a matter of faith or as opaque to reason as the insistence on scriptural veracity would have them be.
In the Beginning...
The book of Genesis says that creation took six days; science says “creation” has taken billions of years. The crux of the matter of course lies in the definition of one word—“day”.
Orthodox Hinduism is a good guide for this issue because it doesn’t have the problem of contradicting science so directly. Hindu cosmology states that ages last 12,000 “years of the gods”, each of which is 360 human years, and that 2,000 ages form one aeon, which is but one day in the life of God. A day for God, in other words, is 8.64 billion human years.
The point is not that Hindu cosmology is correct, but that it offers a more majestic and profound conception of time than a literal reading of the Bible.
A little more care with words, an element of good argument, could be an equally good guide. In fact, the literal depiction of the biblical creation story is not literal at all, if the day in question is a divine day. It is simply the projection of a tiny—we could call it petty—human conception of time onto divine time.
When in Genesis 1:5 we read, “He called the light day, and the darkness night. So evening came, and morning came, the first day”, neither the sun nor earth had been created, and still a light shone and a “day” had passed. Without a sun or planet Earth a day must have been defined on other terms; the light and darkness cannot be understood to mean our day and night. A day as we know it didn’t exist until well into the creation drama. Nor is there any being other than God at this point in the story to measure time. The word must, therefore, if there is any truth in the creation story, be a conception of time within God’s mind and frame of reference. Whatever that is. It cannot be a human reference, the 24-hour day.
Astronomy likewise advises that a day of human time is not necessarily the same as a day for a cosmic being or for any other being in the universe, since our concept of day is limited strictly to life on Earth and the Earth’s spin on its axis. It isn’t even the same as a day on other planets in our solar system. The axis and “sun” or other nucleus that define the day of a divine being who is presumably infinite are easily something other than what we know, if only according to astronomical variety and reasonable possibility.
Despotism in a Dogma
The six-day creation theory, as long as it relies on human time measurements, thus has all the appearances of being nothing more than a dogma. Webster’s defines dogma as “A system of doctrines proclaimed true by a religious sect”. As such it appears neutral, neither good nor bad.
More is involved, however. P.R. Sarkar, in discussing his Neo-humanist principle of liberation of intellect, defines dogma as “a preconceived idea which forbids human beings to outstep the limits of that idea or object”.
Also: “What is dogma? Where there is no logic, where there is no support of intellectuality, where there is no debate and free discussion, but where there is only severe imposition forcing people to accept something, that is dogma.” It is an obstacle to freedom in more than a superficial sense of that word, but rather a sense that goes to very intimate parts of ourselves—our minds and the form of our association with others.
Shrii Sarkar was also a spiritual leader who revived and updated the ancient spiritual practices of Tantra for modern times. Unlike most spiritual leaders, he made the struggle against dogma a vital plank of his teachings, and remarked that it could be found in any field, including philosophy, economics, archaeology, history and sociology, not only religion. In his definition, dogma is that which limits or checks the mind and, he writes elsewhere, creates divisiveness in human society, and is negative in connotation. The six-day creation theory, even within the boundaries of Judeo-Christian scripture, fulfills this definition, since it unquestioningly mandates a human framework of reference.
The Road to Cultural Reunification
Though the Religious Right advise us again and again that the ways of God are mysterious, in this case they have ignored their own admonitions. For all their argumentation against secularist norms, the Religious Right are in this instance being as anthropocentric as the secular humanists they deplore. Their scriptural literalism is a human literalism, not a divine literalism. If we stick to the word used in Genesis, it can only be a day defined in terms of God. The idea of a human day, and thus a six-day creation, is neither a textual requirement nor a logical possibility within Genesis creation story itself. It does not even follow Stephen Carter’s guideline of reason based on faith, but rather gives up on reason and analysis too soon in the creation issue.
Adopting a cosmic conception of time does not prove the existence of God or divine involvement in creation. Nor does it disprove them. It thus leaves a premise of secular humanism, and of what could be called materialistic science, intact.
Creationists willing to change their concepts of time may see this as a one-sided sacrifice. Sacrifices are noble when done for the truth and the common good, however, even though the enemies of the Religious Right will likely gloat over what they see as a victory. Moreover, sometimes sacrificing one thing brings greater benefits in its stead.
If a day in the life of God does last hundreds of millions or billions of years, those of the Judeo-Christian tradition who believe in divine creation may find the scientific account of creation and the evolutionary hypothesis less objectionable. The time spans for both frameworks could conceivably match, facilitating their link-up on terms yet unknown. At the very least, the Religious Right can drop their anthropocentric creationism. This need not mean full agreement with scientific theories, only general agreement about the time-span of creation.
Theologically this would seem to be to their advantage, since it restores a majesty to the concept of the Divine that secular humanism denies and creationism diminishes. Socially it would relieve the U.S., a nation torn by many centrifugal forces, of a cause of divisiveness on fundamental principles.
The Shape of Future Conflict
Is this a “private” battle between a portion of the Christian community and the scientific establishment? To the extent that opposition to the theories of materialistic science is framed in terms mirroring Judeo-Christian scripture, yes.
A larger issue looms in the background, however. That is whether any theory that incorporates divine factors in creation and evolution is possible given the hold materialist and secular thinkers have on science and educational policy. As such this issue concerns not only Christians, but New Age religious practitioners, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, and anyone with theories incorporating the transcendent.
Dogma can infect any school of thought, not only religious, but scientific. It is a general term, an anti-intellectual vice of wide application. Thomas Kuhn’s famous book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is nothing if not a study of how science builds up and then overcomes its own dogmas. To consider in light of his thesis that matter-centered, anti-transcendental science may be shackled with its own dogmas about creation and evolution is hardly far-fetched or anti-scientific.
Violation of dogmas can bring severe consequences, however. P.R. Sarkar described it like this: “Suppose the intellect wants to follow a particular path. In the meantime dogma comes from all sides and forbids, ‘Oh! No, no, don’t take a single step further on that side. If you do, you will be burnt in eternal hell-fire. You will be doomed to hell for eternity.” Hell for non-conforming scientists may take the form of professional ostracism, denial of funding, promotion and tenure refusals, and even closed doors when searching for work. Religion has no monopoly on hell.
Considering existing dogmas in religion and the ever-present possibility of dogmas in modern science, any road to a general theory of creation and evolution that incorporates physics, biology and the Divine will likely meet with opposition from both camps. A general theory is needed, however, if we are to satisfy both the empirical scientific and the transcendental faith, intuition and realization strains of human nature and unite American society, or any country, on more solid grounds.
Posted by proutist-universal on March 4, 2005 02:21 PM
