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In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. Many races believe it was created by some sort of god, though the Jatravartid people of Viltvodle VI believe that the entire Universe was in fact sneezed out of the nose of a being called the Great Green Arkleseizure. The Jatravartids, who live in fear of the time they call The Coming of the Great White Handkerchief, are small blue creatures with more than fifty arms each, who are therefore the only race in history to have invented the aerosol deodorant before the wheel.
From the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, By Douglas Adams
A lot of people believe some fairly strange things about the Universe we find ourselves in; I’ve known physicists who will wax lyrical of bubbles and strings and myriad dimensions, some cultures insist on an infinite regression of turtles, occasionally I hear people propose that the Genesis account of creation is to be taken literally. The proliferation of creation myths in every culture is evidence to me of the human need to account for our existence, not just in terms of who created us, for I emphatically acknowledge God as my creator, but to gain some inkling as to the mechanics of how we find ourselves on this most remarkable and precarious globe.
It seems to me unfortunate that science and religion have become so divorced in modern society and that the two have been set against each other in a science vs religion fight. It is a fight which is frankly a no win situation for those Biblical Fundamentalists who insist on taking the Bible as a literal textbook on cosmology, physics and biology. To my mind the painful separation of scientific investigation and theorising from the revelation of God in the Bible is a senseless and unhelpful one. The insidious idea that the Bible is at odds with science helps to propagate the idea that, as Cliff Richard puts it, “… you have to be some sort of moron to swallow Christianity.” I find this somewhat disturbing and something which to my mind hampers the spreading of the gospel by giving the impression that to come into the church you have to leave your brain in the porch.
To rehearse all the ways in which the literalist account of creation is unacceptable to anyone who investigates the issue seriously would be futile, suffice to say I find the suggestion that God created dinosaur bones, radiation, red shift, coal and the human appendix, to name but a few, as an elaborate joke to fool anyone arrogant enough to look for them preposterous to say the least. I am utterly convinced that, among other things, the universe is a good deal older than the Old Testament implies, that the Earth is not flat, that Man is evolved from apes (and by implication, amoeba) and that I am the unique creation of my Lord God.
To insist otherwise seems to me to be burying ones head in the sand — what is more I do not find any contradictions in accepting all of those things.
I do not believe that Genesis, or any of the Bible, attempts an account of creation that is particularly literal — indeed if it were then it would be inaccessible and incomprehensible to anyone except the creator himself. Rather it is set out allegorically to illustrate to people of all ages and of all scientific knowledge and worldviews several basic truths about the creation of the Universe.
As to the question of evolution, some people seem to take exception to the idea that people are evolved from other animals, even to the extent of accepting evolution and natural selection but postulating a second, special, creation for humans. I cannot see any good reason why this is necessary unless one discards the idea that creation is an ongoing, continuous process. Man is an animal as much as any other creature — the only thing which makes him specially unique in the animal kingdom is his knowledge of right and wrong — his capacity to turn away from the will of God. No other creature can do this, whales, wolves, worms and weasels, all have no choice but to follow the will of God. They do not have free will in the same sense that people do, since they have no sense of good or evil. I do not find this view incongruous with the ones expressed in the Bible.
On an incidental note it seems to me that there are rather striking analogies between ‘The Fall’ and the evolution of moral sense. Perhaps there is a sense in which man was created, as in Genesis not knowing right and wrong and that it is the evolutionary path he has trodden which is characterised by the fall from the state of grace that other animals enjoy. It is a fall from grace that has allowed Man alone of the animals to chose the relationship he has with his creator, and to decide his own destiny.
Christianity has nothing to fear from science, there is no scientific truth that disproves religion, and anyone who tries to propound the idea that there is either does not understand science, or does not understand Christianity. The idea that the world should show obvious signs of shoddy workmanship if it were indeed created by God is frankly nonsense. The fact that there are no loose ends and ragged seams, that the whole thing seems to work as a single, integrated whole and that it does not appear to have to be cranked up regularly by a supernatural being is, I feel, predicted by the theory that it is created by an omnipotent being.
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Last modified: 25th November 2005