CREATION: "Isn't the creation story a bit silly and primitive?"
A silly, outdated story? An incredible myth?
Creation is an idea which raises a lot of controversy. As you'll know, there are lots of arguments (amongst Christians too) about creation and evolution. We're not going to wade into all that here - there are Christian thinkers on both sides - but just make three points that most Christians would agree with.
| You need to read the story in the right way. It's not
supposed to be a scientific account. Let's face it, if the story at the start
of the Bible was written in modern scientific language, nobody would have been
able to understand it for centuries and centuries. Instead, what you get is a
simple story about a man and a woman and a tree which anybody, in any culture,
could make sense of. It could fit in with lots
of competing scientific accounts. Yet this easy-to-understand story conveys a
wealth of absolutely vital information: that there is a God who is responsible
for the cosmos; that he made us "in his image" so that we could
relate to him; that our rebellion against him is the source of this world's
problems; that we have a responsibility for looking after creation, not messing
it up... And much more besides. Primitive? No, it's brilliant. |
Something had to be there to start the process. We
still don't know how everything started. What was there before the Big Bang?
Anything? The philosopher Gottfried Leibniz commented that the biggest of all
questions was "Why is there something rather than nothing?" Recently
many scientists have advanced theories to explain how this whole universe could
appear from nowhere: the necessary instability of nothingness, leading it to
produce "something" from time to time; strings, membranes, the
quantum vacuum; and so on. But as philosopher Lloyd Strickland observes, The trouble with such scientific answers to the question of “why there is something and not nothing” is that it is not clear why we should think that there had to be gravity, or the quantum vacuum, or strings, or even a universe at all. It seems entirely possible that instead of these things there could have been absolutely nothing. Unless we have a scientific explanation that rules out God, an act of creation remains a distinct possibility. And we don't. | |
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This one creation story has stood the test of
time. Isn't it interesting that out of all the creation stories of the
ancient nations - some of whom were much bigger and more sophisticated than the
Hebrews - there's only one that's still
taken seriously. The Babylonians were one of the greatest civilizations ever,
and militarily overwhelmed everyone else (including the Israelites). But where
in the world today do you find people seriously debating whether the universe
emerged from a cosmic battle between the god Marduk and his Mum Tiamat? And who
still thinks that half of Tiamat's body became the earth, and the other half
the sky? Yet the Bible's creation story is debated, argued over and written about all over the world. Still. |
Why would you listen to our ideas when you can learn from some of the
best scientists in the world? Such as Francis Collins, for example - the
man who led the renowned Human Genome Project, the biggest
collaborative scientific enterprise in the world's history. He's founded
BioLogos.org as a
site where people can explore the interface of Christianity and science. There's loads here, but start with the short, snappy "BioLogos Basics" videos - the instant low-down on questions such as "Is God the Creator?", "How did God create the ingredients for life?" and "What is Genetics?"
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- Check out what we have to say about a different science question?
- Go off in another direction?
- Let us have your reaction to this?