From the very funny Failblog comes this little diddy. Some kids are going on a field trip the Rocks and Mineral Festival (BYOB by the way). In order to attend the lil tykes need to have a permission slip. This is how one came back.
The note reads.
“Note: Just to let you it is not that we don’t believe in things like that, it is just misleading when you talk about it being billions of years old, when we all know that the world is only about 6,000 years old. So why would I pay so that you can misslead my children, your world is just a revolving(?), ours has a start and an end. God created the world. He created animals and man all in the same week. It was also Adam who named all the animals, they will do the essay ‘Rock and Minerals’ but it might not be 5 pages long, and about billions of years, it will be according to the Bible.”
The best part is that if you look at the picture, she signed the permission slip. Its not that I don’t believe in misleading my children its just that I don’t believe in misleading my children but they can go anyway. Or something.
January 7, 2010 at 9:39 pm
It's George Bush's fault.
— Mack
January 7, 2010 at 10:09 pm
Wow.
January 8, 2010 at 12:51 am
Growing up Catholic, I never gave Creationism a second thought. It's just not a Catholic problem, since we are not biblical literalists. After moving to Texas and living among evangelicals, I find attitudes like this very, very common. In fact, scientists like Francis Collins thinks that "young earth" beliefs are the predominant ones in the U.S. despite any and every scientific proof to the contrary.
I simply can't explain it. But yes, fail. Big fail. Many sects in the US think that if you believe in evolution and natural selection you absolutely cannot be a Christian.
January 8, 2010 at 4:16 am
Sounds like that Mom needs a whack upside the head with good old fashioned commonsense. Just let the kids go. They might have a good time and get to see some cool stuff. Just a thought…
January 8, 2010 at 9:24 am
I really think that the comments reflect a serious lack of understanding as well as a lack of concern about the problems embedded within evolutionary based education.
First of all, even if she is wrong about 6,000 years, she is infinitely more correct that God created man as opposed to the idea that man evolved into being by random mutations over billions of years from a single cell organism. In fact, evolutionary theory on a chemical level for elements to happen into molecules to happen in to RNA is astronomically, statistically an impossibility. It would be like clouds evolving into writing out the Magna Carta.
To believe that the cell came to exist through evolution is idiocy. We’ll never know everything there is to know about the cell wall, let alone the cell. It is incredibly complex.
1000 years is as a day to God. It is just as possible that in one or six days God aged the universe a billions years. Even creationists have to admit that the trees in the garden were created old with rings and all. We also don’t know everything there is to know about time. Most Catholics don’t even talk about the flood as if they never heard of it or are embarrassed by it. It had catastrophic effects on reading earth time.
It may be obvious that I am quite perturbed but Catholics should take the high road and not mock our brothers and sisters in Christ who have unfortunately made the literal interpretation of Genesis a dogma. We interpret John 6 literally as a dogma and they can go ahead and mock. At least we are supposed to but probably 90% of Catholics couldn’t even find John 6 let alone believe it. It makes me furious when Catholics mock sincere protestant believers about creationism and seem to care less about the lack of reverence for the Eucharist. I’m not saying these particular individuals lack belief in the Real Presence. I’m saying most Catholics do and most mock creationists.
Please read Chesterton's Everlasting Man if you want some common sense about evolution.
January 8, 2010 at 1:41 pm
dulmer,
The problem with your whole argument is that you're setting up a false dichotomy: Either you have to completely buy into the atheistic notion of evolution or you agree with strict creationism. That's not the case at all. Have you happened to hear about intelligent design?
As for your transition to the lack of respect for the Real Presence: Huh? Is it something like "So if she weighs the same as a duck, she's made of wood, and is therefore a witch"?
Literal interpretation of Christ's teachings in the gospels and of the creation narratives in Genesis are two completely different matters.
January 8, 2010 at 2:51 pm
The thing is, as far as I can tell, this field trip isn't about the origins of man. It's about geology. Maybe the particular geology society sponsoring the fair has an agenda or something which we don't know about, but if all they're doing is studying rocks shouldn't you want your kids to learn the current state of the science.
If the universe really is only 6,000 years old, the only way anyone's going to be able to prove it is by doing the science and demonstrating why things merely appear to be older. But having her kids write a report on rocks and minerals according the Bible is just bad science.
January 8, 2010 at 3:36 pm
I'm conflicted. On the one hand, I understand the mother's desire to protect her child from an educational field trip that may challenge or even ridicule the beliefs her child is being taught at home. A sixth or seventh grader, I hope, would be able to recount for his parents what went on, what the teacher/guide may have said that stuck out in his memory, and what questions he had lingering in his mind, if he had any. It sounds, honestly, like it would be a fascinating field trip, and I'd be inclined to let my kid go, though I'd want to talk to him about it later.
I understand dulmer's point about the dangers of letting our kids get brainwashed into believing Darwinian evolution as an explanation for the origin of species. I don't have a problem believing in a strict, seven-day creation of the world (i.e., taking the Genesis account literally). No one should question that God could certainly make the world in seven days and make it look centuries or even millenia older. Why not? Any Narnia fans, here? Remember the description of the creation of Narnia in _The Magician's Nephew_? I'm not saying God did it the same way, but if He'd wanted to, He certainly could have. I don't think it's unscientific to accept that explanation of how God created the world.
Do we really need to know the particulars as to how He did it or how long He really took to do it? The important thing is to keep God as the Creator and not try to explain Him away as a man-made myth–a crutch for feeble, unscientific minds. Whether God took six twenty-four-hour days or six "days that are as a thousand years," . . . does it really matter? Evolution without God is the lie we need to expose to our kids, as we teach them what God has taught us (through Scripture and Tradition) and what He has enabled us to discover ourselves with the intelligence He's given us. Real science cannot contradict the Truth.
January 8, 2010 at 6:53 pm
I'm a recent convert to Catholicism with a 31 year Protestant background. Yeah, one of those. Not surprised about the response on the note. Many evangelicals aren't too well-rounded in their thinking when you can even get them to do any. That was always a problem for me. Haven't been Catholic long enough to know the attitudes I'll find in my new fold but, humans being what they are, I'm sure I'm in for a learning experience. But for sure evolution (as in man evolving from primates) throws a significant inconsistency into the concept of Christ as the second Adam. If you're interested check out the website of Arthur Custance 1910-1985 (www.custance.org). He was a Protestant (he prefered to worship as an Anglican)anthropologist who had some very original thinking. You don't have to agree with all he says to find his free downloadable books enlightening.
January 8, 2010 at 7:53 pm
Catholics in the US, especially those who are especially influenced, or have extensive interactions with Fundamentalist Protestants should be very wary about accepting Creationism in its various forms.
As everyone knows Catholics are permitted to believe in evolution as long as it does not reduce all being to mere material components and does not discount the divine origin of creation and the divine creation of man (especially the existence of Adam and Eve, and original sin).
Yet Catholics who believe in creationism should also be careful to avoid falling into heresy. It is heresy to deny reason its rightful place in the pursuit of truth, and if reason tells us that the world is several billion years old it would be wrong to deny what our reason is telling us and accept an irrational proposition.
In cases where the Scripture is clear and talks of faith and morals, then we should trust that above appearances or what our reason seems to be telling us (eg: the Eucharist). However, when Scripture is not clear, when there is a question of science and not faith and morals, when Catholic tradition going back at least to Augustine leaves open the possibility of evolution, and when our reason clearly contradicts the literal interpretation of Scripture, then I think it CAN be heresy to persist in an irrational belief (eg: Creationism.)
January 8, 2010 at 9:23 pm
Anthony,
How can it be irrational to take the creation account in Genesis literally? I don't see how "reason clearly contradicts the literal interpretation of Scripture," unless you understand "reason" to exclude the possibility of miracles or anything we can't explain.
And, no, it is not heresy to accept the literal interpretation of the creation account–any more than it is heresy to accept the Biblical account of the great flood (Noah's ark), the crossing of the Red Sea, or the feeding of the five-thousand.
January 8, 2010 at 10:52 pm
Sarah – it depends. Many Biblical commentators (not just Catholics) think of the first chapter of Genesis as a poem, not a blow-by-blow history textbook of the creation of the Earth. Even the rest of it probably isn't a straight history the way modern Westerners understand the word. It's much more narrative and it isn't meant to be a scientific treatise, but a record of God's works.
Reason can contradict a literal interpretation of Scripture the same way reason can contradict a literal interpretation of any highly-symbolic and stylized narrative. Reason clearly contradicts a literal interpretation of Styx's "Come Sail Away." Are they really on a boat heading for the virgin seas? No, they're just young and excited about their lives, and they're expressing themselves with poetry – and that's before we get to the angels who are actually space aliens. (Man, the 70's were WEIRD.) They get farther saying "Come sail away with me, lads!" rather than "We're young and life is cool, isn't it fellows?"
Reason clearly contradicts me when I say that I'm starving when I'm just hungry, or that my head is killing me when it just hurts, or when I sarcastically suggest that I've never been better after a tumble down the front brick porch. I'm not lying, I'm just using some tricks of speech to more accurately express myself than if I had just said, "I'm hungry, my head hurts, and falling down the stairs was unpleasant."
Long story short, the Bible in general and Genesis in particular do not require us to accept a young earth creationist explanation for the origins of man. Reason doesn't require us to reject miracles (they are often quite a reasonable explanation for some of the craziness that went down in Biblical times). Reason is there to give us a more complete picture, and God wouldn't have given it to us if it wasn't going to help.
January 9, 2010 at 12:53 am
Reason can certainly contradict the literal interpretation of much that we say and write, but when we're talking about the inspired Word of God Himself, why reject outright the literal interpretation of any part of it simply because it sounds improbable or we can think up a more "reasonable" explanation for it?
I'm not saying we have to accept the literal interpretation and only that, but as far as I know, the literal interpretation of the Creation account is still considered by the Catholic Church to be an acceptable interpretation of that text. It is at least AS believable as anything we've come up with on our own and more believable than some.
January 9, 2010 at 2:58 am
I don't like the dichotomy of literal/allegorical interpretation here. The literal interpretation of a Biblical text is always true, and binding (and determinative of the other senses). The literal interpretation is just not always the first one that pops into your head when you are reading the text. So the question here is what is the literal interpretation of the text. Which is from tradition that (a) God created the world. and (b)that God sustains the world in existence.
My problem with creationism and ID is that they are both failed theologies. In particular, they suggest a very low view of human reason, which is probably why they are both so popular amongst protestants. Oh. Of course, creationism could be true, in the same sense that phlogiston theory could be true, and Geocentrism could be true. But it doesn't seem to be true, nor does there seem to be a good reason to believe it.
In the second place, and perhaps more significantly, creationism and ID constitute scandal in the eyes of many. So, while we could hold on to the idea of the earth as 6000 years old, and fossils and coal just put there, or that God had to constantly "tinker" with nature to make it work (more dubiously, since it seems to contradict the omnipotence of God), in publicizing such beliefs, we should be careful not to create new stumbling blocks for people unnecessarily.
January 9, 2010 at 11:37 am
Michael, if my argument was to say it must be creationism (as we defined it) or a Godless evolution then it would be false. We certainly agree that is a false dichotomy. One of the problems with my argument is that I seemed to not make my point clear enough.
The fool says there is no God. Mock the secular view that believes the forces of time and chance brought about all that exists. Don’t mock the creationist who believes in God and may be correct in what she believes. It may have taken 6 days and it may have been 6,000 years ago. That remains open for discussion.
Since our schools are only allowed to teach a secular evolution then they are the ones that FAIL. Any Christian mocking another Christian because of their literal 6 day interpretation of Genesis 1 FAILs.
If you can’t see the relationship between a discussion of a literal interpretation of Christ’s teachings in Genesis and a literal interpretation of Christ’s teachings in the Gospels then quite frankly I don’t know what to say. You must mean something other than what you wrote. They are not two completely different matters.
January 10, 2010 at 12:41 am
If we evolved, why would Jesus come as a man just to save man, why not an ape to save the apes, can someone explain this to me. I dont believe in evolution, science can keep digiing up all sorts of fossils, how can i belive a science which kills babies and the elderly and tries to get rid of handicapped kids. NO WAY. I believe the bible, God created man
at the end of the day it really is do you believe sicene which in all its advances has led to the destruction of man or Christ who in his Anihiliation on the cross saved man.
January 10, 2010 at 12:43 am
As a PS I am catholic, Science was good when monks and men who belived in God did experiments they were not trying to disprove the existence of God but tyring to find out more about the world He made.
Today most scientists are nonbelievers and hell bent on proving they are right and God is wrong that dear blog owner is why I say current science ie FAIL
January 10, 2010 at 6:48 am
Well, you can't pick and choose, or rather you are welcome to do so, but I don't see why such a choice is rational. Me, I take my stand with Thomas Aquinas, who, against Bonaventure and the Franciscan "orthodox" consensus held that, by reason, one could not disprove that the world was eternal, and that if one tried to prove it by stretching the bounds of reason, one ran the risk of looking ridiculous. One can and should hold the opposite (in his case) by faith. And just as Aquinas pointed out, point by point, and over and again, that those who argued rationally for the eternity of the world were right, so too do we, Catholics of today, have an obligation, for our part to point out, that rationally, the arguments against evolution do not hold water. See this, and this.
This would be true, even if, as was the case with Thomas Aquinas, a particular point of view is explicitly and uncontestably contrary to the Faith. On the other hand, the claim that evolution, in and of itself, is contrary to the Faith, is not proven. Indeed,
(a) the early Catholic reaction to evolution was largely positive, in England (Newman, Bishop Hedley, the Wilfrid Wards etc…), France (Fr. M-D Leroy OP), and the US (of many names, one might state St. Elizabeth Seton's grandson, William Seton).
(b) Some quite prominent scientists in the last century or so have been Catholics, including the man who came up with the Big Bang theory, the Belgian Catholic priest, George Lemaitre.
(c) Several Popes, including Ven. Pius XII have spoken of the evolution of the human body as entirely viable. The present Pope and his predecessor have both tended to regard evolution, scientifically, as established scientific theory with its own legitimacy.
January 10, 2010 at 6:49 am
(d) Attacking a scientific theory, rather than challenging its metaphysical assumptions or ethical conclusions, does exactly nothing to establish the error of those who say this or that scientific theory proves we don't need God. Essentially, you have two opposing camps who cannot have an argument or disprove each other, because they have nothing in common. What is needed is to show that "even if" x is true, the conclusions drawn from it are false, not elaborate attempts to show that coal, or diamonds, were created 6000 years ago.
(e) It is quite naive to think that science "in the past" was done by men who believed in God, and today, it is not. In the first place, medieval science was often conducted by people who were opposed to the Church as they are today. Conversely, quite a few scientists today are not unfriendly to the Faith, or are themselves Catholic.
(f) I oppose Creationism, because Creationism opposes reason, and the rational quest for understanding. As such this is a Catholic position, quite at variance with the Protestant disdain for human reason. Indeed, some of the same arguments trotted out against evolution are (with variation in content) trotted out against the dogmas the Church has defined. Calvinists ain't our friends. The either/or distinction between God and science isn't Catholic, but Calvinist.
(g) Jesus came as man to save man, because He chose so to do. As Aquinas says, (ST, Prima Pars, Q. 46, Art. 2, Answer, linked above) "the will of God cannot be investigated by reason, except as regards those things which God must will of necessity; and what He wills about creatures is not among these, as was said above." On the link between the views of creation and redemption, see Jaroslav Pelikan on Creation and Causality. Rather than being orthodox, the restriction of creation to a "once for all" act of Creation, 6000 years ago is connected with the rise of Protestant polemics against the Eucharist as Sacrifice. Both creation and redemption, in the traditional Catholic view, are continuous processes, something which is not opposed to evolution at all.
God bless
January 10, 2010 at 10:32 am
The old Latin maxim *ab abusu ad usum non valet consequentia* tells us that we can't draw a valid conclusion about something's proper use from its abuse. Even if a majority of scientists were to misuse scientific methodology to try to disprove some element of belief, it still wouldn't follow that Science (note the capital!) must receive a FAIL. It's not a case of: "Scientists are our enemies, therefore we MUST believe in a six-day creation in order to remain good Catholics." The one doesn't follow from the other by necessity, nor is the antecedent true by definition.
While I, too, object to atheists attempting to paint us into a materialist, reductionist and determinist corner, I must still point out: That's not "science" doing the painting. Science doesn't have to be reductionist, and is only materialist because no one has bothered to try to formulate immateriality mathematically. As for determinism, there is an extreme degree to which determinism renders reason–and therefore Science–impossible; let it allow some room for free will and it can yield positive fruit.
Finally, evolution PROPERLY UNDERSTOOD is not Godless; as a mechanism for species variation, it works, though some argue that it can stand more tweaking. It becomes "atheist" only when atheists such as Richard Dawkins try to push it beyond its design. Again, though, the abuse doesn't speak to the proper use.
As for taking Christ's words literally, DU: I hope you allow for figures of speech? or rhetorical exaggeration? Or parables? If Jesus can create fictional characters, such as the Good Samaritan or the Prodigal Son, to illustrate his teachings of God, then do we really need to insist on a six-day creation? No one takes him so literally that he can't exaggerate or tell a tall tale in service of his ministry.