In the past couple of posts I’ve been talking about evolution, now I hope to wrap up this short series of posts. I’ve mentioned the reasons that I think it’s the truth, but I’ve not really mused about the opposition. It’s an interesting question, why do people shout so loudly about evolution? It seems to me that it’s not just faith, but given the strident approach and the volume, I’m wondering if it runs a little deeper.
Why do I say that it’s not just faith? Well, there are plenty of religious moderates for who evolution seems to coexist quite happily with their faith. There are plenty of accommodations that can be made along the lines of “God started it all, evolution is just one of the tools he chose to use” and so on and so forth. The thing is that all of this requires the understanding of the believer to change. The believer needs to think about it, question, and then allow their personal theology to evolve.
Bingo. That’s why the screaming. Even for a moderate, evolution requires a reassessment of their beliefs, mental accommodations must be made. This begins to shift the so-called “rock of faith”. I keep talking about a shifting of the rock on which a religious faith is built, now I can start to illustrate a little more clearly what I mean.
Now … If I was a fundamentalist this sort of thing would keep me awake at night. Let’s think about this in and I’ll invoke a question that I first saw on “Atheist Thought”, the site of an atheist writer from the Orkneys called Eric Stockton.
When reality puts a spanner in the works of a dogmatic religious system, the adherents have a limited series of choices. You can remain utterly fundamentalist and deny reality, but anyone who’s seen the courtroom scenes in “Inherit the Wind” knows how bad that makes you look. Or, you go down the rabbit hole……
The question is “Given the words of Matthew ch 6, v5-6, how do you justify the practice of collective prayer and worship in church? “. I’ve given the exact wording from the NIV below.
5. And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full.
6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
OK, we have a contradiction between scripture and practise here. Of course the question above could have been phrased “Given the overwhelming and ever increasing evidence for evolution. Given the fact it produces the goods in both science and industry and is therefore beyond any reasonable doubt. How do you justify the Adam and Eve story in Genesis?” But whichever, let’s take the red pill and see how deep the rabbit hole goes……
We have but 3 real choices:
1. The religion’s founder was wrong. Our first option, this is the least acceptable as a religion based on the word of a mistaken founder simply won’t do. What else was he wrong about? There’s not much else to be said there, it’s the nuclear option.
2. The scripture was mis-reported / mis-transmitted. Again a fairly nuclear option, it means that there is absolutely no guarantee that any of the scripture is reliable. I’ve covered this before in my essays, and in summary, I consider this a highly likely thing.
3. It’s all open to interpretation. This is the option I’ve seen used as the main answer to this problem it leads straight into “Cafeteria Christianity”. Once you can interpret things anyway you please, the centre cannot hold. Frankly, at this point it’s all over for any orthodoxy and fundamentalism bar the shouting. You may as well simply do as you please, so what’s the point?
Given the above, I can see why Evolution has caused such a controversy. It is indeed the wolf at the door of dogmatic religions. I should point out that I see no threat to Paganism or some forms of Buddhism in Evolution, I also plan to move on from this now, I think I’ve said my piece.
Interesting. I remember starting around #3 and working my way down to #1 on all matter of issues, until I just couldn’t claim to be a christian anymore. I think a lot of christians suspect that if they give a little on anything, it’ll all come crumbling down. I don’t think that has to happen, but it did for me. In my case, it was a cathartic and freeing process, but to others it is truly terrifying.
Very true, and this is pretty much the path I’ve taken as well. Once you actually look at it and realise that some of the stuff in there is plain wrong, there is only one eventual conclusion.
Many will not move, as this will be seismic for their world view. It’s a lot of mental effort, but well worth it, I think.
I believe this goes back to the development of critical thinking skills. If one utilizes critical thinking, it is impossible to maintain a fundamentalist theological standpoint. But, if one was never taught how to think critically, never taught how to examine ideas from various angles, then it is easy to be fundamentalist in whatever views that are held.
I agree with you Astasia, but I would just like to make a quick addition to what you say.
Critical thinking is anathema to fundamentalism, but only if used without fear or bias. But if we are not honest with ourselves when we use it, it’s not so useful. I have heard of scientists who profess Christian faith, Dawkins mentions this in “The God Delusion” (p321 – 323 of the paperback edition). They must be indulging in some seriously compartmentalised thinking to do that.