God and Science

Religion is never about facts. Our ancestors knew this, despite their lack of knowledge about so much else. This is apparent in the ways they kept histories. True beauty is seldom derived from fact.

As much as Humanity has learned throughout history, one broad failure is the way we have treated religion. We, as a species, love to learn. (It’s a good thing.) Problems, however, come when we try to defend old “knowledge” in the face of new.

Take any creation myth. While centuries ago, believing a culture’s creation myth to be literally true my not have been so absurd and illogical, it certainly is today. Really, now– even the Pope believes in evolution. The problem arises when we try to make an old system fit into our new paradigm. Creationists who try to use science to defend their theories (which science clearly does not) or who posit that God is trying to fool us in a test of faith (really?) are making silly attempts at defending an illogical belief.

Perhaps what we should be asking ourselves is not how to defend our myths, but how to better understand them. After all, there is little reason to believe the point of any scripture is to establish facts. There is little reason to believe our ancestors took such care in preserving our tradition so that we can know how long it took to form our world. In all reality, knowing the specifics of creation is about as useful as me knowing the name of whoever built my desk– not very.

Why should we get our panties in a bunch about something that wasn’t the point of the story and in the grand scheme of things is rather peripheral? The point of scripture is its meaningful aspects; those aspects cannot be affected by science or history and needn’t be at odds with them. Perhaps we can derive from Genesis a story about how beautiful our natural world is. Perhaps we can see how the increasing diversity in our world is a great pleasure to God. Perhaps we can see that it is impossible to deceive God. Perhaps we can learn that the pursuit of knowledge can be horribly damaging if it’s in defiance of morality. Perhaps we can find that our actions are only ever our own and that placing blame on God or others cannot justify acts of betrayal. Not one of these lessons is derived from the “facts.” They’re from the story. The details of the story are not why it’s been repeated for thousands of years; it’s the lessons that we are supposed to remember. My belief in evolution doesn’t contradict any of these lessons. 

What the evolving human mind needs to do is not to suspend logic for fear of displeasing a puppet master god, but to embrace logic and use it to unpack scripture which has provided spiritual sustenance to our species for generations upon generations.

We should approach scripture with the hearts of children and the minds of scholars. We deserve no less.