If you’ve been reading my blog for a while and have been observant, you may have noticed that I use created and evolved more-or-less interchangeably. At one time I was a strong creationist, but that was years ago. Now I tend use whichever one is more convenient. Evolution makes logical sense, the evidence I’ve reviewed seems to support it, and seems to be supported by those who know more than me about the science involved, so I accept it as fact. On the other hand, I would not be overly surprised if liberals and their pet scientists have constructed a false scientific narrative on this issue. Whatever the case, I accept evolution as fact but do not discount the possibility of creationism, and tend to use whichever happens to be most convenient at the time.
The veracity of evolution has no impact on my faith either way. Did God create man through natural evolutionary processes, did He create man through guided evolutionary processes, did He create man from ashes in a literal 168-hour period? It doesn’t matter. Maybe God was being literal when having man dictate His Word, maybe He was being figurative and poetic, maybe He wanted the focus to be on the more important underlying points, or maybe explaining 20th century biological science to iron age nomadic shepherds was not the point of the Biblical narrative.
This has been my position for many years. It doesn’t matter, but recently, I’ve begun to think that it dose matter but in a completely different way.
The problem with the creation/evolution debate is not whether one or the other is fact, but the entire frame of the debate itself. The whole creation/evolution debate is an example of both creationists and atheists being pwned by modernity. Any Christian jumping into that debate has already lost himself to modernism and its secular worldview.
Creationists have lost completely their conception of primal/mythic truth. They can not conceive of Truth apart from fact, so their faith rests on a literal interpretation of what is fairly obviously poetical and has a high chance of not being meant to be understood literally. They believe that if creation as written isn’t fact then it can’t be true and therefore the Bible is false and the faith is false.
This is false. Whether the literal creation is fact or not does not impact whether it is true. It is the myth, the Truth, of man’s relationship to God, man’s relation to nature, man’s purpose, man’s blessing, man’s relation to woman, and man’s sins. This is all true, whether or not the literal creation is fact. To rest the basis of the mythic truth of these claims on the fact truth of a poetic narrative of creation is to allow their greater humanity to be pwned by the modern’s soulless materialism.
As I said recently, “Modernism, in its essence, is the destruction of myth in the human experience and its replacement by fact, often false. Modernism is the entirety of truth being conquered by fact. Buying into the naturalist, materialist world-view is to swallow modernity whole.” To debate creationism as a science is to accept the modern frame. If you do so, you are already a materialist. You have accepted Nietzsche cry of “God is dead” and have embraced the death of metaphysics. You have embraced positivism as the only way.
By accepting the modern frame, creationism has made positivism their god.
Positivism has it’s place, the realm of fact. Science discovers fact, mundane truth, but it doesn’t discover Truth and it cannot create Truth, it cannot even create truth. To elevate science above its place is to destroy reason and Truth.
The creation myth is not a mundane truth under the yoke of positivism; to treat it as such is to degrade it. To look for Truth in science is to degrade yourself, to kill your own soul.
We can see soul-killing of the positivist approach to creation through the vulgar atheists. We can see them degrade themselves. They accept positivism in theory, but it kills their soul. So, to save their soul, they deify science and create a nonsense modernist morality based on rehashed puritanism. Simply read this from the statement of Aims and Principles of the American Atheists:
Materialism restores dignity and intellectual integrity to humanity. It teaches that we must prize our life on earth and strive always to improve it. It holds that human beings are capable of creating a social system based on reason and justice. Materialism’s “faith” is in humankind and their ability to transform the world culture by their own efforts.
Their positivism has so mutilated their mind and soul that they look at nothing and create a religious faith of it while decrying religion and faith. They need myth, they need Truth, but have none, so they have to make up blatantly self-refuting falsehoods to succor themselves. How could any mind not raped by modernism possibly “think” ‘I am nothing but an accident of material laws, therefore my life is to be prized’?
They deify themselves, they deify science, they deify ‘reason’, they deify humanity, because they have are broken creatures needing Truth, searching for Truth, in a system that denies the existence of Truth. It’s inhuman.
Don’t let yourself be pwned by modernity and positivism. Reject creationism; reject vulgar atheism; reject positivism; reject modernism.
The thing is, as C.S. Lewis said (or something to the effect), and as Chesterton likewise said similarly, Christianity is a myth that happens to be true. This makes it different from all other myths, which are false. That isn’t to say that other myths may not contain elements of truth within them, i.e. fundamental truths about human nature, etc.; no doubt they do. But only one myth is actually true.
And I doubt very much that our ancestors, before Darwin, thought of the account of Genesis as being not factually true; no doubt they held it to be part of the myth of Christianity which happens to be true.
One needn’t necessarily be a modernist to reject Darwinism. And interestingly, there are even non-believers who reject evolution by natural selection, like David Stove, or Fred Reed.
But it isn’t inconsistent with traditional Christianity in the least to reject Darwinism, nor does it entail buying into the modernist frame. The fact that our ancestors could easily completely believe the Genesis account of creation as literally true, long before modernism, demonstrates that it is possible; one need only embrace their premodernist mindset to be able to do so without embracing modernism.
If I could translate this article into the intellectual idiom of Julius Evola, we’d be discussing the dichotomy of the material-physical plane of Becoming and the spiritual-transcendental plane of Being. Truly excellent.
Great post.
I lean toward a literal reading and interpretation of Genesis, but recognize that modernists smirk at the very idea. Since you’ve a link to Wintery Knight in your blog roll, I’d wager you’re familiar with his excellent work on using the various cosmological arguments for God’s existence that lead to an inescapable conclusion that the universe is created. Once you get to the point of “God exists” and are truly humbled by his greatness and your own limitations in knowledge and understanding, it’s much easier to say, “I don’t know and I’m ok with that.”
But whether God created it in a literal six days with the appearance of age or actually took the time is irrelevant to me. The important part is that God is God, and we are here by his action and he is worthy of glory. Nothing makes sense without God and though the mechanisms would be nice to know, it’s far more important to know the God who made it.
Ah, you’ve finally hit a right and good realization. Now take it one step further apply it toward your neoreaction/reaction political and social posts.
Simple fact of the matter is that Christians get sucked into a lot of things that don’t matter. Civilization is not going to be fixed through anything we do, but as Christians that’s never what we were called to do in the first place.
Ultimately, the one fact that matters: was Jesus Christ raised from the dead? And if so, what does that mean? See: Great Commission. Making disciples is not saving society.
That’s good that you have the ability to use whichever concept suits the moment but God is a woman… a black woman – as was Eve – explains a lot doesn’t it?
It doesn’t matter.
I hear a hamster churning a wheel. Creationists have answered your statement ad nauseam.
The whole creation/evolution debate is an example of both creationists and atheists being pwned by modernity.
Well, at least you understand (maybe) that modernism plays a role. You misunderstand its role, however. Modernists attacked the doctrine of creation using an evolutionary argument. They also attacked the doctrine of redemption, for if sin did not precede death, then payment for sin would not be linked to Christ’s resurrection.
Ultimately, the one fact that matters: was Jesus Christ raised from the dead?
That fact matters not if death preceded sin, as modernists aver.
their faith rests on a literal interpretation of what is fairly obviously poetical
This statement is “fairly obviously” laughably absurd.
As someone who went the opposite route (and that route leading me, ultimately, to reaction), I intend to respond to the major points.
“Maybe God was being literal when having man dictate His Word, maybe He was being figurative and poetic, maybe He wanted the focus to be on the more important underlying points, or maybe explaining 20th century biological science to iron age nomadic shepherds was not the point of the Biblical narrative.”
You accept the strawman characterization of six day creationism as some kind of explanation of biology, but it isn’t. Creationism is, first-and-foremost, an assertion about history, not biology. Yes, it has the biological implication that we are not all descended from one primal single-celled organism, but that never was or is creationism’s primary point. Creationists merely argue against such theories, not to prove their history, but to disprove the opposition’s accounting of history.
“They can not conceive of Truth apart from fact, so their faith rests on a literal interpretation of what is fairly obviously poetical and has a high chance of not being meant to be understood literally.”
There are plenty of six day creationists who take allegorical and symbolic approaches to other portions of Scripture. As someone who has actually had the opportunity to study the Scriptures formally, this is all dependent on context. The context of Genesis 1 is an historical account, and there isn’t really much of a way around that from the text itself. There is no indication that the general framework of Genesis is anything but an historical narrative, from beginning to end. Now, that historical narrative includes imagery (i.e., “the windows of heaven” opening up when the rains of Noah’s Flood come pouring down). Now, there are plenty of folks in the Fundamentalist world who would be subject to this criticism, but not on Genesis per se.
“By accepting the modern frame, creationism has made positivism their god.”
Perhaps this was once too true, but today I see Creationists digging down into philosophy for their criticism of the modern way of doing science as a whole. There is now much talk of a need to reform our understanding of what science is and is not capable of proving, and that the question before us is one of history and philosophy, primarily. Now, creationists make scientific arguments, but this is about incorporating science into their mythic worldview. They don’t use the term “myth,” but let’s not be too obsessed over terminology.
When it boils down to it, the fundamental argument that continues to convince me of Creationism is that:
(1) God is real.
(2) Science cannot give us ultimate answers about what happened in the past.
(3) God explicitly, in the language of historical narrative, reveals to us how He created us.
(4) Therefore, what God says to us about how He created the world and us is true.
Let’s get real here: The number one tool in the Atheist arsenal is the idea that science has disproved God through evolution and the like. It’s a load of garbage. There is no reason to doubt Genesis’ account of our origins, and it has the advantage of grounding our worldview in what actually took place.
Nathanjavens is on the right track.
You seem to think too little of God and too much of man.
Here is the problem whenever anyone talks about evolution.
1) People’s knowledge of evolution typically stems from what they’ve been taught at school, and sometimes this includes out-of-date sub-theories already debunked within the evolutionary science community, as well as over-simplifications of competing theories.
2) People often ascribe to evolution a lot of inferences that are not proven and may never be proven. In short, they claim it solves problems that it really doesn’t.
3) Evolution itself is somewhat of an ‘accordion word’ that can be used to mean several different things depending on who is using it. When someone mentions evolution, you need them to clarify which particular theory they are talking about.
Now, every Christian must accept the fact that ‘Young Earth Creationism’ COULD be true. If you believe in an omnipotent God, then you must accept that it is entirely within His power to make things appear in a way that they are not. Now, we have few good reasons to think this is true, but it cannot be disproved.
I must also stress the issue is largely unimportant. Evolution does NOTHING to invalidate religion. It is not an argument about origin, but about process. There are thousands of Creation accounts the world over, and some are so far-fetched that it would be foolish to assume their adherents ascribed to them a kind of scientific accuracy. Contrary to popular belief, our ancestors were linguistically masterful and had a better grasp of metaphor and legend than even the greatest writers of our age. Evolutionary science is also a science with absolutely no practical application, so teaching it in schools is rather puzzling at any rate. Other such fields are relegated to specialist academies. You can only conclude that there is an agenda here.
I 100% agree with what you are saying, in that Modernity has no concept of truth within myth, and it is precisely due to this materialistic worldview, where if something cannot be tested then it cannot be classed as ‘real’. This kind of thinking would actually be considered primitive by Traditional societies, who recognized what Evola called the ‘invisible world’, that surrounded the visible world and effects in which had impact upon how the visible world changed (at least for the most part). Many myths have truth that cannot be found in the physical plane, but can rather be afforded an even greater significance as events occurring in the invisible world.
I choose to accept that some evolution occurred, though likely to a far lesser extent than modern evolutionists claim. All this is written and directed by the Lord. Intelligent Design is in my opinion beyond criticism. Teleology alone points to the Cosmic Designer, the Grand Architect, the Prime Mover.
The Reactionary should indeed reject the debate entirely as it is framed (as so many things are) to the benefit of Modernists. It supposed they are right before the question is even asked.
Good post. Agreed.
BTW, I know few creationists who dispute microevolution; we know that small changes within species have happened; after all, we’ve bred dogs, horses, pigs, cattle, sheep, etc. of all different breeds, for different characteristics, and we’re all familiar with the pepper moth adapting to soot on trees following the Industrial Revolution in Britain; nobody seriously questions microevolution.
Macroevolution, on the other hand, is a different matter.
As Mark points out above, nothing is impossible for an omnipotent being.
And as I’ve argued before, consider that Adam and Eve were created as adults; the planet could well have been created ‘grown up’, too, and thus, like two adults newly created who look like they’ve lived 20 years, even though just created, the world could look ‘old’ even when it was brand new.
There is no reason to be ashamed of holding to what Scripture teaches as the truth; it doesn’t make you an idiot, nor does it make you a modernist necessarily.
Rather, it makes you rationally consistent.
First time poster. I normally come for your lightning round. I’ll just arrogantly jump in with my “opinion” that just happens to be true. God is the omni-evolution (my word) of all of reality, biological evolution just one strand of a larger more complex evolutionary process involving culture, government, technology, matter and energy, time and space, and eventually order and entropy. God is the end point; perfection; a meta-singularity that arises at the end point of omni-evolution, “God is an infinite sphere, whose center is everywhere, and whose circumference is nowhere.” When we evolve into God, we all become part of the whole. We are little pieces of God reforming into perfection at the end/beginning of time. I left some things out. The process starts over at the end obviously. Think of it as God entertaining himself.
Jesus was a prophet, in touch with God, but like any fragment of God, imperfect. He was a divine man in sense, but not in a magical/miracle sense. The bible is incredibly flawed. I pay attention to only direct quotes attributed to Jesus. The miracles were just propaganda.