Contradictions in the Bible | Religious authority and science
As a matter of fact, the way of approaching knowledge by the religious authorities is manly based on axioms, fixed or rigid propositions, which are pronouncements not proven in any way, and which are accepted as truth through human agreement, by vote of a majority in a Church Counsel or Synod. The “truths” of religious dogmas have come sometimes with the force of a majority led by strategic interests, and aren’t based on direct observation and analysis of the phenomena but on statements of belief and canons of doctrinal faith.
Real knowledge comes in time, and is in evolution, and we cannot imprison all knowledge about God within the confines of some old dogma or religious doctrines based on ancient biblical texts. For this reason, I maintain that the knowledge of God is sometimes better reached through scientific research, through the knowledge of nature, than by the reiteration of the same religious propositions. The universe looks more complicated than ever, and precisely this multidimensionality points towards the possibility for the existence of an extremely complex and generous Reality infinite in space and time.
The narratives of the Bible are not to be blamed for trying to replace real knowledge with false information because at the time they were written such real knowledge didn’t exist.
- 57 -
In the context of the history of sciences, revelation about the origins of the universe didn’t compete with real knowledge; they are the product of a very different historical epoch and, from the point of view of information contained, the narratives of creation from the book of Genesis reflects the level of pre-scientific cosmology available in that historical epoch. They speak the same pre-scientific language as other non-Jewish sources, which tried to bring light to the mysteries of the origins around 2,500-3,000 years ago or more. That is another clue which leads to the conclusion that this revelation doesn’t present the superior knowledge of God about the universe but rather the average human knowledge at the time.
Scientific explanations are qualitatively superior to the imposition through the religious authority of certain dogma about the cosmos, precisely because they are based on continuous research for truth and incessant progress and not on religious authority. The latter pretend to possess a certain knowledge which was given to it once and for all. Faith and science can go together undisrupted but science and authority usually cannot befriend each other just because authority is by definition conservative and against change and science is, in its essence, the knowledge of things in change. Authority wants to keep what it has, but science disputes all that is.
Historically speaking, the competition between revelation and sciences emerged only when the development of modern sciences gained momentum. Real scientific knowledge was prohibited for a while by the religious clergy, who sustained the so-called revelation from the book of Genesis and a battle had been waged between progress and resistance to it. Notwithstanding, what was thought to be revelation from the book of Genesis has been step by step swept away by systematic human knowledge in spite of the power of the forces sustaining its permanence.
Some religious functionaries, representatives of religious institutions, tried, in the past, to impose their spiritual convictions on believers but, by not allowing any alternative to their cosmological or anthropological views, they have in fact unwillingly disclosed an incredible vulnerability. This fragility was demonstrated by trying to replace a critical analysis with spiritual authority. In time, what was based only on authority but not open for debate suffered defeat.
- 58 -
On the other side, no scientific discovery can be foisted on society and no authority can sustain obligatory scientific theories, and never did.
Are the newest discoveries of modern sciences prohibiting the possibility of the existence of God? Of course, they are not. The sciences cannot prove a negative fact, the inexistence of God, in any way. I think that whoever tries to “demonstrate” that God doesn’t exist on the basis of scientific facts is doomed to failure. If God’s existence cannot be proved or disproved scientifically it seems that this is a matter only for faith.
What the science can prove is that the narratives of creation from the book of Genesis don’t reflect reality, hence they cannot be trusted as the explanation for the apparition of the universe and of humankind. In this situation, God didn’t create the universe as the book of Genesis says and He isn’t correctly described by the first chapters of the Bible. When one rejects the book of Genesis God becomes even more mysterious and the understanding of His nature becomes very important. Dogmatic faith doesn’t explain God anymore and every believer needs to have his or her own personal vision about Him.
Knowledge of God through the study of nature is only the understanding of the possibility of His existence mediated by the knowledge of nature. A more advanced experience with God happens when He dwells in a particular human being and inside his or her consciousness, and the encounter between God and the human being takes place.
In the same time, before believing something one needs arguments for his or her belief or disbelief and all these arguments give the rationality of the faith. Faith is based on reasons because none can believe or refuse to believe anything without good motivation.
Does the Bible contain enough information, in the first two chapters of it, to make sense of the origins of the universe? I would answer negatively to this question because on just two pages of the book of Genesis, which contain contradictory texts and also which negate all basic human experience, it would be impossible to tell the whole story of the origins of the universe. The book of Genesis can be at the most an allegorical way to transmit a certain message, and it is not at all a book of science.
- 59 -
How credible are the narratives from the book of Genesis in our days, when astrophysics, quantum physics or genetics took their rightful place? Is there anyone left to believe that, at a certain moment in time, in the process of the creation of the earth, our planet was alone in cosmos, being the first created and wandering in complete isolation under the eyes of God for three days? This description is an unreasonable proposition.
Anyone can remember, from historical accounts, that, for a long period of time, the institution of the Church defended the belief that the earth is in the centre of the universe and the sun and all other celestial bodies are gravitating around it.
The Church didn’t yield to this position until it was forced to do so, by strong scientific arguments. How can anyone trust, any more, the interpretations given by the classical theist commentators, to the book of Genesis? It isn’t that the representatives of the Church made a mistake in the way in which they understood the dynamic of the solar system. The interpretation given by the clergy to the Bible was determined by what the book of Genesis and other biblical texts state about the earth, sun, moon, and stars. That interpretation was based on a myth in which the earth was created first, before the celestial bodies, and all the latter were set in place only in the service of our planet. Of course, that seems to mean that the earth is in the centre of the universe and all the cosmos gravitate around it. The description of the universe by the Bible being wrong, all interpretations based on it cannot be other than false.
Based on the Bible, for a long period of time the explanations given by organised religion to cosmological problems were wrong and the Roman Catholic Church not too long ago conceded that its cosmological views were incorrect. Nevertheless, many commentators of the Bible representing many Christian denominations continue to trust and to promote a literal interpretation of the book of Genesis. What must happen to persuade them to reconsider their positions? Such a literal interpretation was the cause for the misunderstanding of the functioning of the solar system. The geocentric theory has been adopted by the Church which endorsed it with all its spiritual authority in spite of its fundamental error:
- 60 -
“The early Greeks observed the sky and all that it contained. From their observations, the Greeks believed the Earth was the centre of the moon, Sun, and the only known planets at that time, Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter. These planets were said to be moving around Earth in a clockwise direction. They believed the Earth was motionless, because no one felt the Earth moving. The stars appeared to move around the Earth daily, further convincing them of this theory, which became known as geocentric or Earth-centred. The Greeks had a basic understanding of geometry and trigonometry, which lead them to conclude that fast moving objects were closer to the Earth than slower moving objects. Around 140 A.D., Claudius Ptolemy wrote thirteen volumes on the motion of the planets, and put the geocentric theory in its finest form.”[1]
With the book of Genesis at their disposal the representatives of the Church sustained Ptolemy’s theory and were ready to declare as heretic everyone who dared to reckon otherwise. This was not a coincidence. The book of Genesis is conceived in a way that not only permits, but also privileges the interpretation of the cosmos given by Ptolemy.
How can anyone trust the present endorsement of the Church for the book of Genesis if it clearly had interpreted it so wrong in the past? Placing so much weight behind the geocentric theory, the Church has compromised any credibility of its interpretation of the first 11 chapters of the book of Genesis. Reading the book of Genesis from the Bible, one can easily notice an incredible resemblance between what Greeks thought about the universe and the record of the Bible. Why could that be? In my opinion, it is obvious that the narratives from the book of Genesis reflects the level of knowledge of the ancient time when the book was written, and isn’t at all a form of “high science” or a “science from above”, which bears the secrets of the universe transmitted to humankind through revelation.
The narratives of creation from the Bible are not at all a kind of an extraordinary knowledge, very exact and carefully descriptive, but a pre-scientific explanation of the origins of the universe, usual for that historical time, and it is in accordance with some similar explanations given by the Greeks. Both explanations have the earth in the centre of the universe, given its importance for humankind.
- 61 -
This earth-centricity is a direct effect of the narrowness and the limited view of humankind about the universe.
From that time on, until our days, the universe became bigger and bigger, due to the improvement of instruments of observation and the accumulation a scientific data. Nevertheless, for a divine discovery one would expect that the record of creation from the Bible to be ahead of its time and to convey a much more advanced knowledge.
Why was the empirical science of the universe embraced so much by the Christian religion? Probably just because religion in reality needs science, or it was felt at the time that it needed it in order to strengthen and legitimise its minute record of creation. To me, the adoption of the Greek science in the intimate corpus of dogma, by the Christian religion, shows the insufficiencies of the biblical record as an explicit model of the universe. If the biblical record was a quasi-comprehensive story of creation and didn’t leave anything unclear, the demand for extra biblical explanations would have been less obvious.
The association between religion and science wasn’t always a happy one. While in the Middle Ages thinkers like Thomas Aquinas embraced strongly the Aristotelian theory of the universe and through this helped the promotion of the Greek scientific thought, later on, at the dawn of the development of sciences and particularly of astronomy, the relationship between science and Christian religion became more problematic. The Greek philosophy with its scientific offshoots which once was acceptable and useful in order to sustain the religious doctrines, in time became unacceptable when it was obvious that science is no longer subservient to religion.
The victims, who died on “the altar of truth”, are well known and I would remember Giordano Bruno. He was an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician and astronomer. His cosmological theories went beyond the Copernican model in proposing that the sun was essentially a star, and moreover, that the universe contained an infinite number of inhabited worlds populated by other intelligent beings.[2]
- 62 -
I also would propose for recollection the treatments applied to Copernicus and Galileo Galilee by the official Church, which by themselves show how far astray the stories contained by the book of Genesis can lead someone. One would say that the stories from the book of Genesis concerning the creation of the world are not directly responsible for the clerical abuses but they were the direct source of documentation and ideological support for such religious behaviour.
The Roman Catholic Church was not the only enemy of science but, based on the stories of creation from the book of Genesis, Martin Luther, one of the most important Christian reformers, also condemned the new theory.[3]
Martin Luther once said:
“People gave ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon. Whoever wishes to appear clever must devise some new system, which of all systems is of course the very best. This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred Scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth.”[4]
This statement makes us wonder if that sacred Scripture, mentioned by Martin Luther, was really inspired by God, even if clearly it is not in accord with the undisputed astronomical facts. There is only one reasonable answer and that is that God wouldn’t have inspired that story with Joshua, which is also a legend.
John Calvin, another important reformer, was not welcoming to the heliocentric theories. He stated:
“The Christian is not to compromise so as to obscure the distinction between good and evil, and is to avoid the errors of those dreamers who have a spirit of bitterness and contradiction, who reprove everything and prevent the order of nature. We will see some who are so deranged, not only in religion but who in all things reveal their monstrous nature, that they will say that the sun does not move, and that it is the earth which shifts and turns. When we see such minds we must indeed confess that the devil possess them, and that God sets them before us as mirrors, in order to keep us in his fear.”[5]
- 63 -
He referred clearly to the revolution of the sun, moon, and stars around the earth. For him, a person who could demonstrate that the earth moves around the sun, it was a deranged human being. What I want to say here is that the cosmology, suggested by the book of Genesis, was not just a misinterpretation of a certain particular Church but it is also, more fundamentally, inherent in the texts of the Bible themselves and whoever wants to take these narratives literally, unavoidably reaches the same conclusions.
How can a book be inspired by God if contains demonstrable untruths? How could Joshua ask to the sun to stand still and not to orbit around the earth, if in fact the sun doesn’t orbit around the earth anyway? This passage could not be inspired by God, who knows the truth.
Not only the book of Genesis but also other texts of the Bible seem to support the geocentric view of the cosmos. For example, psalm 93 was interpreted as evidence for the geocentric theory:
“1 The LORD is king, he is robed in majesty; the LORD is robed, he is girded with strength. He has established the world; it shall never be moved;” (Psalm 93; 1 NRSV)
Specifically, members of the Catholic Church took that line to mean that the earth did not revolve around anything because it is “immovable”. That stands in direct opposition to the heliocentric idea of orbiting planets.[6]
The question arises: “Was that line, from psalm 93, inspired by God?” If God knows everything it is hard to accept that He would inspire a text, which in fact contradicts a demonstrable reality. How many lines of the Bible are not inspired by God and what is inspired and what is not? I try to give an answer to this question in relation to the book of Genesis.
- 64 -
The Roman Catholic Church has rejected for a long time the heliocentric theory of the universe because it seems to be contradicted by the Bible. In time, it changed its position concerning the heliocentric theory. In 1758, the Roman Catholic Church dropped the general prohibition of books advocating heliocentric theory from the Index of Forbidden Books. Pope Pius VII approved a decree in 1822 by the Sacred Congregation of the Inquisition to allow the printing of heliocentric books in Rome.[7]
Even if the Roman Catholic Church changed its attitude in relation to geocentric and heliocentric theories, nevertheless, a literal interpretation of the texts concerning the creation of the world, contained by the book of Genesis, still continues to be present in the evangelical movements. The representatives of the Roman Catholic Church admit that mistakes were made in the past in the relationship between religion and science, but this admission doesn’t seem to have an important impact on the new apostles of the literal interpretation of the Bible.
The heliocentric theory of the universe is now taught in all schools and accepted in all but a tiny minority of communities as the definitive understanding of the universe. It posits that the Earth revolves around the sun, thereby overturning the previously accepted geocentric theory of the universe, which held that the universe revolves around the earth. Nicolas Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, and Johannes Kepler are some of the scientists most famously related to heliocentric theory.
Some people try to reconcile a literal interpretation of the book of Genesis with the modern discoveries of cosmology but the results are unconvincing. It was either seven days or 13.7 billion years. The earth is either a part of something much bigger, and they originated in the same unique process, for example the Big Bang, or the earth was created separated from the cosmos and all celestial bodies came afterwards only to service the blue planet.
- 65 -
The earth, as one amongst other planets of the solar system, always took its light from the sun, or for a certain period of time the earth was alone in the universe and was illuminated by an undetermined source. A literal interpretation of the first 11 chapters of the book of Genesis is the basis for a false understanding of reality and for an incorrect theology about God.
It is probably not fair to choose based on religious beliefs which information offered by sciences we accept and which we reject. Religion should not dictate what information or scientific results we can accept and what we have to reject on the basis of religious dogmas. If one denies scientific methodology which is used to analyse the origins of the universe and humankind, why is he or she using practical scientific results in other domains? Sciences use, generally speaking, the same methodology, when drawing any of their conclusions.
The same methodological tools were used by sciences both when the principles which govern the functioning of our TV sets or our mobile phones were discovered, and when the age of the universe was established. Why is it that the same people accept or love the first category of scientific results and reject or despise the conclusions about the origins of the universe? Is there a double standard? The same human creativity and intelligence was at work. The same general methods applied by sciences are used in mechanics, communications, or in astrophysics. Sciences use the following steps in order to reach their conclusions:
“1. Observation and description of a phenomenon. The observations are made visually or with the aid of scientific equipment.2. Formulation of a hypothesis to explain the phenomenon in the form of a causal mechanism or a mathematical relation.
3. Test the hypothesis by analyzing the results of observations or by predicting and observing the existence of new phenomena that follow from the hypothesis. If experiments do not confirm the hypothesis, the hypothesis must be rejected or modified (Go back to Step 2).
4. Establish a theory based on repeated verification of the results.”[8]
These are the general steps which precede any scientific discovery. If we accept and validate the discoveries which give us the chance to communicate easier, for example via Internet, we should understand that human knowledge in astrophysics follows the same basic principles when dealing with the universe, albeit in a specific way. We are happy to drive a powerful car, but, at the same time, some of us become ironic with the idea of a Big Bang, on religious grounds, even if both aspects are the conclusions of similar processes of scientific knowledge. Sciences all work in the same direction and with the same purpose, the increase in human knowledge, inclusively in the topics of the origins of the universe and of humankind.
- 66 -
[1] academic.emporia.edu/abersusa/students/denning/geo.htm
[2] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno
[3] forums.catholic.com › Forums › Apologetics › Philosophy
[6] www.ehow.com › Culture & Society
[7] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliocentrism
[8] www.scientificpsychic.com/workbook/scientific-method.htm
CHAPTER 1. SCIENCE AND RELIGION |
|
I. | |
II. | |
III. | |
IV. | |
V. | |
VI. | |
VII. | |
CHAPTER 2. AN ABSURD ORDER OF CREATION – EFFECTS BEFORE CAUSES |
|
I. | |
II. | |
III. | |
IV. | |
V. | |
VI. | |
VII. | |
VIII. | |
IX. | |
X. | |
XI. | |
XII. | |
XIII. | |
XIV. | |
XV. | |
XVI. | |
XVII. | |
XVIII. | |
XIX. | |
CHAPTER 3. THEOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES |
|
I. | Introduction to this chapter |
II. | |
III. | |
IV. | |
V. | |
VI. | |
VII. | |
VIII. | |
XIX. | |
|
As a matter of fact, the way of approaching knowledge by the religious authorities is manly based on axioms, fixed or rigid propositions, which are pronouncements not proven in any way, and which are accepted as truth through human agreement, by vote of a majority in a Church Counsel or Synod. The “truths” of religious dogmas have come sometimes with the force of a majority led by strategic interests, and aren’t based on direct observation and analysis of the phenomena but on statements of belief and canons of doctrinal faith.
Real knowledge comes in time, and is in evolution, and we cannot imprison all knowledge about God within the confines of some old dogma or religious doctrines based on ancient biblical texts. For this reason, I maintain that the knowledge of God is sometimes better reached through scientific research, through the knowledge of nature, than by the reiteration of the same religious propositions. The universe looks more complicated than ever, and precisely this multidimensionality points towards the possibility for the existence of an extremely complex and generous Reality infinite in space and time.
The narratives of the Bible are not to be blamed for trying to replace real knowledge with false information because at the time they were written such real knowledge didn’t exist.
- 57 -
In the context of the history of sciences, revelation about the origins of the universe didn’t compete with real knowledge; they are the product of a very different historical epoch and, from the point of view of information contained, the narratives of creation from the book of Genesis reflects the level of pre-scientific cosmology available in that historical epoch. They speak the same pre-scientific language as other non-Jewish sources, which tried to bring light to the mysteries of the origins around 2,500-3,000 years ago or more. That is another clue which leads to the conclusion that this revelation doesn’t present the superior knowledge of God about the universe but rather the average human knowledge at the time.
Scientific explanations are qualitatively superior to the imposition through the religious authority of certain dogma about the cosmos, precisely because they are based on continuous research for truth and incessant progress and not on religious authority. The latter pretend to possess a certain knowledge which was given to it once and for all. Faith and science can go together undisrupted but science and authority usually cannot befriend each other just because authority is by definition conservative and against change and science is, in its essence, the knowledge of things in change. Authority wants to keep what it has, but science disputes all that is.
Historically speaking, the competition between revelation and sciences emerged only when the development of modern sciences gained momentum. Real scientific knowledge was prohibited for a while by the religious clergy, who sustained the so-called revelation from the book of Genesis and a battle had been waged between progress and resistance to it. Notwithstanding, what was thought to be revelation from the book of Genesis has been step by step swept away by systematic human knowledge in spite of the power of the forces sustaining its permanence.
Some religious functionaries, representatives of religious institutions, tried, in the past, to impose their spiritual convictions on believers but, by not allowing any alternative to their cosmological or anthropological views, they have in fact unwillingly disclosed an incredible vulnerability. This fragility was demonstrated by trying to replace a critical analysis with spiritual authority. In time, what was based only on authority but not open for debate suffered defeat.
- 58 -
On the other side, no scientific discovery can be foisted on society and no authority can sustain obligatory scientific theories, and never did.
Are the newest discoveries of modern sciences prohibiting the possibility of the existence of God? Of course, they are not. The sciences cannot prove a negative fact, the inexistence of God, in any way. I think that whoever tries to “demonstrate” that God doesn’t exist on the basis of scientific facts is doomed to failure. If God’s existence cannot be proved or disproved scientifically it seems that this is a matter only for faith.
What the science can prove is that the narratives of creation from the book of Genesis don’t reflect reality, hence they cannot be trusted as the explanation for the apparition of the universe and of humankind. In this situation, God didn’t create the universe as the book of Genesis says and He isn’t correctly described by the first chapters of the Bible. When one rejects the book of Genesis God becomes even more mysterious and the understanding of His nature becomes very important. Dogmatic faith doesn’t explain God anymore and every believer needs to have his or her own personal vision about Him.
Knowledge of God through the study of nature is only the understanding of the possibility of His existence mediated by the knowledge of nature. A more advanced experience with God happens when He dwells in a particular human being and inside his or her consciousness, and the encounter between God and the human being takes place.
In the same time, before believing something one needs arguments for his or her belief or disbelief and all these arguments give the rationality of the faith. Faith is based on reasons because none can believe or refuse to believe anything without good motivation.
Does the Bible contain enough information, in the first two chapters of it, to make sense of the origins of the universe? I would answer negatively to this question because on just two pages of the book of Genesis, which contain contradictory texts and also which negate all basic human experience, it would be impossible to tell the whole story of the origins of the universe. The book of Genesis can be at the most an allegorical way to transmit a certain message, and it is not at all a book of science.
- 59 -
How credible are the narratives from the book of Genesis in our days, when astrophysics, quantum physics or genetics took their rightful place? Is there anyone left to believe that, at a certain moment in time, in the process of the creation of the earth, our planet was alone in cosmos, being the first created and wandering in complete isolation under the eyes of God for three days? This description is an unreasonable proposition.
Anyone can remember, from historical accounts, that, for a long period of time, the institution of the Church defended the belief that the earth is in the centre of the universe and the sun and all other celestial bodies are gravitating around it.
The Church didn’t yield to this position until it was forced to do so, by strong scientific arguments. How can anyone trust, any more, the interpretations given by the classical theist commentators, to the book of Genesis? It isn’t that the representatives of the Church made a mistake in the way in which they understood the dynamic of the solar system. The interpretation given by the clergy to the Bible was determined by what the book of Genesis and other biblical texts state about the earth, sun, moon, and stars. That interpretation was based on a myth in which the earth was created first, before the celestial bodies, and all the latter were set in place only in the service of our planet. Of course, that seems to mean that the earth is in the centre of the universe and all the cosmos gravitate around it. The description of the universe by the Bible being wrong, all interpretations based on it cannot be other than false.
Based on the Bible, for a long period of time the explanations given by organised religion to cosmological problems were wrong and the Roman Catholic Church not too long ago conceded that its cosmological views were incorrect. Nevertheless, many commentators of the Bible representing many Christian denominations continue to trust and to promote a literal interpretation of the book of Genesis. What must happen to persuade them to reconsider their positions? Such a literal interpretation was the cause for the misunderstanding of the functioning of the solar system. The geocentric theory has been adopted by the Church which endorsed it with all its spiritual authority in spite of its fundamental error:
- 60 -
“The early Greeks observed the sky and all that it contained. From their observations, the Greeks believed the Earth was the centre of the moon, Sun, and the only known planets at that time, Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter. These planets were said to be moving around Earth in a clockwise direction. They believed the Earth was motionless, because no one felt the Earth moving. The stars appeared to move around the Earth daily, further convincing them of this theory, which became known as geocentric or Earth-centred. The Greeks had a basic understanding of geometry and trigonometry, which lead them to conclude that fast moving objects were closer to the Earth than slower moving objects. Around 140 A.D., Claudius Ptolemy wrote thirteen volumes on the motion of the planets, and put the geocentric theory in its finest form.”[1]
With the book of Genesis at their disposal the representatives of the Church sustained Ptolemy’s theory and were ready to declare as heretic everyone who dared to reckon otherwise. This was not a coincidence. The book of Genesis is conceived in a way that not only permits, but also privileges the interpretation of the cosmos given by Ptolemy.
How can anyone trust the present endorsement of the Church for the book of Genesis if it clearly had interpreted it so wrong in the past? Placing so much weight behind the geocentric theory, the Church has compromised any credibility of its interpretation of the first 11 chapters of the book of Genesis. Reading the book of Genesis from the Bible, one can easily notice an incredible resemblance between what Greeks thought about the universe and the record of the Bible. Why could that be? In my opinion, it is obvious that the narratives from the book of Genesis reflects the level of knowledge of the ancient time when the book was written, and isn’t at all a form of “high science” or a “science from above”, which bears the secrets of the universe transmitted to humankind through revelation.
The narratives of creation from the Bible are not at all a kind of an extraordinary knowledge, very exact and carefully descriptive, but a pre-scientific explanation of the origins of the universe, usual for that historical time, and it is in accordance with some similar explanations given by the Greeks. Both explanations have the earth in the centre of the universe, given its importance for humankind.
- 61 -
This earth-centricity is a direct effect of the narrowness and the limited view of humankind about the universe.
From that time on, until our days, the universe became bigger and bigger, due to the improvement of instruments of observation and the accumulation a scientific data. Nevertheless, for a divine discovery one would expect that the record of creation from the Bible to be ahead of its time and to convey a much more advanced knowledge.
Why was the empirical science of the universe embraced so much by the Christian religion? Probably just because religion in reality needs science, or it was felt at the time that it needed it in order to strengthen and legitimise its minute record of creation. To me, the adoption of the Greek science in the intimate corpus of dogma, by the Christian religion, shows the insufficiencies of the biblical record as an explicit model of the universe. If the biblical record was a quasi-comprehensive story of creation and didn’t leave anything unclear, the demand for extra biblical explanations would have been less obvious.
The association between religion and science wasn’t always a happy one. While in the Middle Ages thinkers like Thomas Aquinas embraced strongly the Aristotelian theory of the universe and through this helped the promotion of the Greek scientific thought, later on, at the dawn of the development of sciences and particularly of astronomy, the relationship between science and Christian religion became more problematic. The Greek philosophy with its scientific offshoots which once was acceptable and useful in order to sustain the religious doctrines, in time became unacceptable when it was obvious that science is no longer subservient to religion.
The victims, who died on “the altar of truth”, are well known and I would remember Giordano Bruno. He was an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician and astronomer. His cosmological theories went beyond the Copernican model in proposing that the sun was essentially a star, and moreover, that the universe contained an infinite number of inhabited worlds populated by other intelligent beings.[2]
- 62 -
I also would propose for recollection the treatments applied to Copernicus and Galileo Galilee by the official Church, which by themselves show how far astray the stories contained by the book of Genesis can lead someone. One would say that the stories from the book of Genesis concerning the creation of the world are not directly responsible for the clerical abuses but they were the direct source of documentation and ideological support for such religious behaviour.
The Roman Catholic Church was not the only enemy of science but, based on the stories of creation from the book of Genesis, Martin Luther, one of the most important Christian reformers, also condemned the new theory.[3]
Martin Luther once said:
“People gave ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon. Whoever wishes to appear clever must devise some new system, which of all systems is of course the very best. This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred Scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth.”[4]
This statement makes us wonder if that sacred Scripture, mentioned by Martin Luther, was really inspired by God, even if clearly it is not in accord with the undisputed astronomical facts. There is only one reasonable answer and that is that God wouldn’t have inspired that story with Joshua, which is also a legend.
John Calvin, another important reformer, was not welcoming to the heliocentric theories. He stated:
“The Christian is not to compromise so as to obscure the distinction between good and evil, and is to avoid the errors of those dreamers who have a spirit of bitterness and contradiction, who reprove everything and prevent the order of nature. We will see some who are so deranged, not only in religion but who in all things reveal their monstrous nature, that they will say that the sun does not move, and that it is the earth which shifts and turns. When we see such minds we must indeed confess that the devil possess them, and that God sets them before us as mirrors, in order to keep us in his fear.”[5]
- 63 -
He referred clearly to the revolution of the sun, moon, and stars around the earth. For him, a person who could demonstrate that the earth moves around the sun, it was a deranged human being. What I want to say here is that the cosmology, suggested by the book of Genesis, was not just a misinterpretation of a certain particular Church but it is also, more fundamentally, inherent in the texts of the Bible themselves and whoever wants to take these narratives literally, unavoidably reaches the same conclusions.
How can a book be inspired by God if contains demonstrable untruths? How could Joshua ask to the sun to stand still and not to orbit around the earth, if in fact the sun doesn’t orbit around the earth anyway? This passage could not be inspired by God, who knows the truth.
Not only the book of Genesis but also other texts of the Bible seem to support the geocentric view of the cosmos. For example, psalm 93 was interpreted as evidence for the geocentric theory:
“1 The LORD is king, he is robed in majesty; the LORD is robed, he is girded with strength. He has established the world; it shall never be moved;” (Psalm 93; 1 NRSV)
Specifically, members of the Catholic Church took that line to mean that the earth did not revolve around anything because it is “immovable”. That stands in direct opposition to the heliocentric idea of orbiting planets.[6]
The question arises: “Was that line, from psalm 93, inspired by God?” If God knows everything it is hard to accept that He would inspire a text, which in fact contradicts a demonstrable reality. How many lines of the Bible are not inspired by God and what is inspired and what is not? I try to give an answer to this question in relation to the book of Genesis.
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The Roman Catholic Church has rejected for a long time the heliocentric theory of the universe because it seems to be contradicted by the Bible. In time, it changed its position concerning the heliocentric theory. In 1758, the Roman Catholic Church dropped the general prohibition of books advocating heliocentric theory from the Index of Forbidden Books. Pope Pius VII approved a decree in 1822 by the Sacred Congregation of the Inquisition to allow the printing of heliocentric books in Rome.[7]
Even if the Roman Catholic Church changed its attitude in relation to geocentric and heliocentric theories, nevertheless, a literal interpretation of the texts concerning the creation of the world, contained by the book of Genesis, still continues to be present in the evangelical movements. The representatives of the Roman Catholic Church admit that mistakes were made in the past in the relationship between religion and science, but this admission doesn’t seem to have an important impact on the new apostles of the literal interpretation of the Bible.
The heliocentric theory of the universe is now taught in all schools and accepted in all but a tiny minority of communities as the definitive understanding of the universe. It posits that the Earth revolves around the sun, thereby overturning the previously accepted geocentric theory of the universe, which held that the universe revolves around the earth. Nicolas Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, and Johannes Kepler are some of the scientists most famously related to heliocentric theory.
Some people try to reconcile a literal interpretation of the book of Genesis with the modern discoveries of cosmology but the results are unconvincing. It was either seven days or 13.7 billion years. The earth is either a part of something much bigger, and they originated in the same unique process, for example the Big Bang, or the earth was created separated from the cosmos and all celestial bodies came afterwards only to service the blue planet.
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The earth, as one amongst other planets of the solar system, always took its light from the sun, or for a certain period of time the earth was alone in the universe and was illuminated by an undetermined source. A literal interpretation of the first 11 chapters of the book of Genesis is the basis for a false understanding of reality and for an incorrect theology about God.
It is probably not fair to choose based on religious beliefs which information offered by sciences we accept and which we reject. Religion should not dictate what information or scientific results we can accept and what we have to reject on the basis of religious dogmas. If one denies scientific methodology which is used to analyse the origins of the universe and humankind, why is he or she using practical scientific results in other domains? Sciences use, generally speaking, the same methodology, when drawing any of their conclusions.
The same methodological tools were used by sciences both when the principles which govern the functioning of our TV sets or our mobile phones were discovered, and when the age of the universe was established. Why is it that the same people accept or love the first category of scientific results and reject or despise the conclusions about the origins of the universe? Is there a double standard? The same human creativity and intelligence was at work. The same general methods applied by sciences are used in mechanics, communications, or in astrophysics. Sciences use the following steps in order to reach their conclusions:
“1. Observation and description of a phenomenon. The observations are made visually or with the aid of scientific equipment.2. Formulation of a hypothesis to explain the phenomenon in the form of a causal mechanism or a mathematical relation.
3. Test the hypothesis by analyzing the results of observations or by predicting and observing the existence of new phenomena that follow from the hypothesis. If experiments do not confirm the hypothesis, the hypothesis must be rejected or modified (Go back to Step 2).
4. Establish a theory based on repeated verification of the results.”[8]
These are the general steps which precede any scientific discovery. If we accept and validate the discoveries which give us the chance to communicate easier, for example via Internet, we should understand that human knowledge in astrophysics follows the same basic principles when dealing with the universe, albeit in a specific way. We are happy to drive a powerful car, but, at the same time, some of us become ironic with the idea of a Big Bang, on religious grounds, even if both aspects are the conclusions of similar processes of scientific knowledge. Sciences all work in the same direction and with the same purpose, the increase in human knowledge, inclusively in the topics of the origins of the universe and of humankind.
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[1] academic.emporia.edu/abersusa/students/denning/geo.htm
[2] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno
[3] forums.catholic.com › Forums › Apologetics › Philosophy
[4] http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/White/a…
[5] http://biologos.org/blogs/archive/john-calvin-on-nicolaus-copernicus-and-heliocentrism#sthash.kqGZaLj0.dpuf
[6] www.ehow.com › Culture & Society
[7] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliocentrism
[8] www.scientificpsychic.com/workbook/scientific-method.htm
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Can God be known by human beings or not? If the answer is a positive one there is another question. Can God be known only through reason or do we also need revelation in order to be able to know Him? Even if God cannot be known completely by finite human beings living on Earth, we can know many things about Him. According to the Bible knowing God is the main purpose of human salvation:
“3 And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” (John 17; 3 NRSV)
Apostles John also had written in one of his epistles about the knowledge of God:
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“14 I write to you, children, because you know the Father. I write to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I write to you, young people, because you are strong and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.” (1 John 2; 14 NRSV)
In order to know God He has to reveal His Person to human beings. He already offered His revelation through human nature in Jesus Christ who was not only divine but also human.
“18 No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son,* who is close to the Father’s heart,* who has made him known.” (John 1; 18 NRSV)
God can be known through the study of natural world which is also revelation. Nevertheless, the natural world was created by God in a very different way than the one described by the two stories of creation from the book of Genesis.
“19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse;” (Romans 1; 19; 20 NRSV)
If Adam and Eve’s alleged sins would have changed the way in which nature was created, Paul wouldn’t have been right in maintaining that God can be known from His creation because that creation wouldn’t have been the same as He had made it.
At first glance it seems that sciences contradict the existence of God because they don’t agree with all that the Bible says about the universe and nature. It has to be said that the sciences don’t automatically reject the existence of God and His eternity even when they don’t agree with what the book of Genesis or other biblical texts maintain about the creation of the universe or the origin of humankind. The sciences rightfully reject the biblical descriptions of the creation of the universe and humankind as being in contradiction with observations made on reality.
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Rejecting the Bible is one thing and rejecting God is another thing. It doesn’t matter how strong is one’s faith in God, he or she can be totally unconvinced that God created the light before the sun or about other similar things contained by the book of Genesis. Even if many texts from the book of Genesis are contradictory and absurd, this isn’t enough reason to discard all faith in an eternal personal God.
The revelation through nature and particularly through human nature shows us the possibility of God’s existence. Revelation in nature reaches its most important scope in human nature. We can find God in us if we allow Him to dwell in our human beings. As Apostle Paul says, Christ in us is the hope of glory. (Colossians 1; 27) Anyone can believe in a personal God on the basis of his or her personal experience with Him even if he or she doesn’t find knowledge of nature in the book of Genesis.
Above all, no scientific data can be interpreted as a categorical rejection of the possibility of God’s existence even if they disagree with the facticity of the narratives from the first 11 chapters of the book of Genesis. Paradoxically, even if revelation in nature is real, sciences cannot prove either the existence of God or His nonexistence from the study of nature, but they open the way towards the understanding of the possibility of His existence. Revelation in everyone’s human nature as the revelation in Christ in order to be confirmed needs the personal experience of the believer with God.
Through the natural world, the existence and eternity of God is fully revealed and that revelation doesn’t need the book of Genesis in order to understand how things had been done. The revelation in human nature is an argument for God’s existence only for the human beings who have personal experiences with Him.
God can be known from nature because through the study of it one can understand that existence didn’t come from absolute nonexistence, hence it is eternal. Nature demonstrates clearly that from absolute nothingness nothing can appear because only existence can generate existence. All phenomena are caused by other existent phenomena, not by nothing at all, no space, no time, no particles, and no nothing. If existence per se is infinite and intelligent this intelligence cannot be other than an infinite intelligence and an infinite intelligence is God.
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The Christian religion teaches that God can be known as a subject through a personal relationship but also through the objects of His creation. The personal relationship between God and every human being is based on a personal experience with Him made possible through personal revelation. At the same time knowing Him through reason is possible and means using sciences to acquire knowledge about the objects of His creation.
Scientific knowledge cannot replace a personal relationship with God and the latter doesn’t need to follow any religious doctrine or dogma in relation to the origins of the universe and humankind. We cannot pretend to know God as a subject only through scientific means because sciences generate an objective way to relate with reality. The personal God can be known in a personal way by every human being who has faith.
Personal revelation and reason don’t contradict each other as long as they keep working together. A personal revelation from God gives us what we cannot know through scientific means. At the same time, any information coming from God is rational and can be understood through human rationality. God is rationality and all irrational and absurd messages don’t come from Him.
Any meaningful revelation from God has always a rational content through which it expresses its message. Through rationality in this context I understand what isn’t confused, contradictory, absurd, or contrary to everyday facts. Through rationality I also understand what is commonly understood through this term, meaning what is agreeable to reason; reasonable, sensible, having or exercising reason, sound judgment, or good sense.[1]
St. Thomas Aquinas, a great medieval theologian and philosopher, asked why we need revelation at all if we can already know God by reason. He then answered his own question.
“Few people, he writes, would acquire adequate knowledge about God by mere exercise of the intellect. Some people lack talent to think with acumen; others are too busy with necessities imposed on them by their daily lives and would not give much time to the leisure of contemplative inquiry as to reach the highest peak at which human investigation can arrive, namely the knowledge of God. Finally, some, being indolent, do not make the needed effort to learn about God properly.”[2]
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St. Thomas goes on to state that the truth about God is so profound that we can acquire it only after a long training. Secondly, young people are prisoners of their fillings and passions and their condition is not suitable to acquire the knowledge of God. St. Thomas Aquinas continued in his analysis of the relation between reason and faith:
“Therefore if the only way open to us for the knowledge of God were solely that of the reason, the human race would remain in the blackest shadows of ignorance. For then the knowledge of God, which especially renders men perfect and good, would come to be possessed only by a few, and these few would require a great deal of time in order to reach it” (Summa Contra Gentiles 1,4; trans. Anton C. Pegis).[3]
In St. Thomas Aquinas’ view, because of our errors in judgment many human beings cannot see the truth of things even if that truth is thoroughly demonstrated. For the same reasons, something erroneous can look to be right by its apparently correct argumentation. For these motifs, the truths concerning divine things have to be presented to human beings by way of faith. For Thomas Aquinas, there are truths for which divine revelation is absolutely necessary..[4]
“Finding the creator and father of this universe is toilsome and, after he has been found, it is not possible for everyone to speak of him”. (imaeus, 28,c; see Albert Vanhoye, S.J. - “The discourse at the Areopagus and the universality of truth” in Oss. Rom. 24 Feb. 1999)[5]
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If Plato found God not being a believer, he could have found Him only through reason, not through faith. This would be an example that God can be found through reason alone.
Vatican I, in 1870, articulated as a doctrine of the faith the teaching that divine revelation is absolutely necessary for humans in order to gain access to supernatural truths; heaven and divine adoption are truths that lie beyond the natural sphere, and can be known only through revelation.[6]
If we need revelation for the knowledge of so-called supernatural truth it means that we don’t need it for the natural realities which can be analysed only by reason. Is the problem of the origins of the universe in the natural or in the supernatural domain? In my opinion, the issues regarding the origin of the cosmos are in the natural domain because its beginning happened in the natural world. Everything which happens in the natural world is a theme for the study of the sciences of nature.
Even if for the era before the Big Bang science doesn’t have the necessary means to investigate reality, that reality is nevertheless natural. For what happened during and after that initial event there are scientific possibilities of research and the phenomena are in the natural domain. Even God, a supernatural Reality, has His own nature. As far as we don’t know what God’s nature is we cannot really make clear delimitations between natural and supernatural. God having a different nature than human beings doesn’t mean that He is supernatural. Supernatural cannot mean above any nature because there isn’t anything, not even God, without a particular nature. If the spiritual nature is different than the material nature, it has its own consistency, but the former, we don’t know, hence we cannot define it. We only suppose that there is a spiritual nature but we don’t know what it is. If there is a spiritual nature it is possible that it is very closely linked to the material nature in ways which are still unknown.
How the universe exists and why it exists are two different questions and they are related. The answer to the first of these questions can make easier the finding of the answer to the second one. Why the universe exists is a question which can be answered by science but also by theology and philosophy. It is wrong to adjudicate all the problems of the origins of the universe exclusively to one domain, either to science or to religion. At the same time, it must be emphasised that religion without scientific arguments cannot contradict direct observations made be science.
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As far as the book of Genesis doesn’t offer a coherent description of the creation of the world from the era correlative with the scientifically identified period after the initial event of the Big Bang, a description which can be verified through the study of nature, there isn’t any value in the conclusions based on its texts. Many contradictions and absurdities in the texts lead to the conclusion that the first 11 chapters of the book of Genesis are mere human products. The presumption is that the word of God can be neither contradictory nor absurd.
This problem of the origins of the universe is so important that all means must be employed in order to reach some conclusions. If we accept this assumption, we will be closer to the ongoing disputes between science and religion.
There isn’t a supernatural discovery in the Bible about the origins of the cosmos. Where else can be found such revelation of the origins of the universe if not in the Bible? The only remaining place is the natural world. Why wouldn’t God show to scientists the right path through knowledge if He wants humankind to have an understanding of origins of the universe? If God really wanted to give us the understanding of how the universe came to be, He didn’t do that through the book of Genesis, but He can do it by revealing important information to scientists working in that field of knowledge.
“Religion without science is blind, science without religion is lame/font>.”[7]]
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More and more people accept spirituality as a complement to science, the combination of both being capable of giving a more complex image of reality. The same view is expressed by the author of the following quotation:
“Science and religion are two sides of the same coin. Recent scientific discoveries have unknowingly provided evidence that supports the multi-dimensional nature of reality that Hindus, Buddhists, Gnostics and abbalists have known about for thousands of years. By combining modern scientific facts with ancient spiritual knowledge we can begin to uncover the whole truth and bring unity out of the existing duality. There can be only one true reality, but we will never know the whole truth if we only look from one perspective and hold on to our preconceived ideas.”[8]
The competence of sciences and religion regarding the beginning of the universe and of the human races is a very important issue. Do they have competence in the same areas of reality, or is each of them competent in a certain domain? What exactly is the sphere proper to scientific cosmology, and what of religion? The two differ greatly through the methods employed so the frontier between the competence of modern sciences and of religion must be also given by the most adequate method of study of the object. What is the most legitimate manner of investigation of the origins of the universe? Can the reading of two pages in the Bible, the first two chapters from the book of Genesis, be considered to be more relevant than countless efforts made by many scientists for the understanding of the universe? The affirmation that the book of Genesis is more informative or more relevant than the scientific discoveries on the topic isn’t reasonable.
What is the stronghold of religion, the sphere where it cannot be contested in connection to our universe? Is there such an area of human knowledge which is only confined by the boundaries of religion? Which would this be? Can we understand the infinite dimension of reality only through scientific methods? Probably the area where religion in its more philosophical expression is called to give us enlightenment, is the infinite dimension of reality, where the sciences cannot use their usual methods of research. experience with God isn’t necessarily
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The intuition of infinity given by a personal based on deductive reasoning but is an authentic opening towards the wholeness of reality. Is there an infinite dimension of reality or did all existence start from absolute nothingness? This is the most important problem of the debate between science and religion and a personal experience with God can become a gate for entering into the infinite dimension of existence per se.
The modern sciences are the only valid instrument when dealing with direct observation on the reality, measurements, experiments, theories and predictions. What can we do in the situation when the so-called revelation and the results of modern sciences contradict each other? Which one can we follow when drawing conclusions? We are pushed to choose between one and the other if they don’t agree among themselves, and if they cannot be brought to a common denominator.
“Whatever one’s conclusions concerning the process of human origins, Christian theology stands or falls with a historical Adam and a historical fall.”; (Horton 2011, p 424)
I fully agree with this assertion which synthesises very well the reason for which I write this study. The Christian religion changes fundamentally if one rejects the authenticity of the narratives of creation and of the Flood from the book of Genesis. Many other texts of the O.T. can be put in doubt but none of them are as fundamental for the Christian religion as the first 11 chapters from the book of Genesis, which present God as a Person who created our universe with all its components from quasi nothing. If one contests this creation from quasi nothing the entire vision of the cosmos changes dramatically. God isn’t any more the supreme Creator who contradicts all known laws of nature in order to realise a universe based on those laws.
At the same time, the theology constructed by the apostle Paul about the first and the second Adam, isn’t relevant any more if one considers that Adam is not a historical personage. This conclusion is based on the observation that Paul treated the story of the creation of Adam quite literally. That being said, this doesn’t mean that new theologies are not possible, or that a better explanation of Jesus’ mission on Earth wouldn’t be even more revealing. In my view, faith in God shouldn’t be that closely related with the narratives from the first 11 chapters of the book of Genesis.
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[2] www.lifeissues.net › Zimmerman
[3] www.lifeissues.net › Zimmerman
[4] www.lifeissues.net › Zimmerman
[5] https://www.ewtn.com/library/Theology/fides5.htm
[6] www.lifeissues.net › Zimmerman
[7] www.huffingtonpost.com/david-l.../genesis-and-science_b_500201.html
[8] www.esotericscience.org/
[9] https://answersingenesis.org/creationism/.../influential-pastors-and-theologians-on-the-...
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