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| The Garden of Eden by Jacob Bouttats |
The theory of evolution, that all species including man arose gradually through a process of natural selection based on random mutation, has for many years been largely accepted by most Catholics. Along with that, the modern view that the earth is many billions of years old has also been accepted.
Both of these obviously fly in the face of a literal interpretation of Genesis. But it has long been a claim of modern religious faith that they are perfectly consistent with a metaphorical or allegorical interpretation of Scripture. God may not have actually created the world in six twenty-four hour days, but the creation "myth" of Genesis is still true on a deeper theological level. While Genesis is obviously not a science textbook, it is still inerrant (as the Church teaches that it must be) if interpreted correctly on its own terms.
Thus, we can have evolution, at least in some form - perhaps including a divine nudge or two here or there to make sure the "random" mutations go in the right direction or whatever - and a 4.5 billion year-old earth with ages upon ages of survival of the fittest - from unicellular organisms to trilobites to dinosaurs to rats to apes to humans - without giving up anything essential in Catholic theology or doctrine.
It seems like almost a happy ending, doesn't it? We can have both our modern scientific cake and our Catholic cake and also eat them.
So, I'm sorry to break it to you, but:
The above is utter hogwash.
If the theory of evolution is true and the earth really is billions of years old, then Genesis is not only literally false, it's false in virtually any other way that it could be true or false. Nor does it have any other meaning that is even remotely helpful. At best, it's a "myth" with no connection to anything. At worst, it's directly misleading - a lie.
And thus the claim that the Bible is inerrant is a lie.
And thus the Catholic faith is a lie.
Of course, I'm a believing Catholic, so I don't think the faith is a lie. (Note the "if" three paragraphs up.) But in terms of the truth of the if/then statement, I'm with the atheist Richard Dawkins on this one.
I'll be writing more about this topic in the coming weeks, including references to the Catholic Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation.
For now, though, I want to leave you with this to think about. In Genesis 1:29-31, we read:
And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.But if the general outlines of the theory of evolution are true, then the above is not only not good science, it's not even good theology. What God should have added (or what Moses or whoever supposedly wrote the Pentateuch should have said God added) is this:
But I (God) am only going to provide a finite amount of food such that every beast of the earth will be locked in an unending struggle for survival that will result in the unnatural death by starvation or predation of the vast majority. Many creatures will eat each other, even though I earlier didn't tell you that. And you will eat some of them, though I didn't tell you that either. And once in a while you'll get eaten yourselves. Such a state of affairs will continue for billions of years punctuated by the occasional meteor that will periodically wipe out almost everything. Did I say before that it was very good? What I meant was, it might be very good for modern people to think about in armchairs, but for the trillions upon trillions of creatures, including some of your ape grandparents, who led brief lives of meaningless suffering, not so much.
Intelligent atheists completely get the contradiction here. Modern faithful Christians don't want to get it, for obvious reasons. But I think most of them actually do get it, at least, subconsciously. Or if they don't get it, their kids will.
I think this is is the primary reason for the decline of Western religious faith in the 20th century.
