I've written recently here about the vulnerability of Christianists to scientific knowledge under cutting their claims that the Bible is inerrant and causing their whole house of cards belief system to teeter and collapse. Over time, I believe that it will prove to be the Bible literalists who will be responsible for the death of Christianity - or at least the toxic, conservative version of the faith. Also at risk is the Roman Catholic Church which for centuries has used "original sin" as the bogey man to keep the laity under the puppet strings of the Church hierarchy. A new Forbes article takes a further look at the issue of science setting up conservative Christianity for a huge fall. It may not happen overnight, but ultimately science will win out. Here are some article highlights:
Perhaps apropos the recent Nature article on the increasing evidence that modern humans have inherited the genes of more than a few now-extinct relatives on the evolutionary tree, NPR hosted a short program on what this all means for one of the fundamental stories of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Adam and Eve.
University of Chicago biologist Jerry Coyne sums up the problem in his inimitable fashion: I’ve always maintained that this piece of the Old Testament, which is easily falsified by modern genetics (modern humans descended from a group of no fewer than 10,000 individuals), shows more than anything else the incompatibility between science and faith. For if you reject the Adam and Eve tale as literal truth, you reject two central tenets of Christianity: the Fall of Man and human specialness. These can then be saved only by post facto theological rationalizations about why humans are special in an evolutionary sense, and also sufficiently sinful to require salvation.
The question arises: Can theology adapt to the findings of science? Can the strict monogenism of the human race as traditionally understood by Christians, be modified to the scientific consensus that the human species originated in a small population, not a single couple? . . . .
Christians have for centuries adapted to a more allegorical interpretation of many books in the Old Testament. But not the Book of Genesis and its account of the Fall and Expulsion from Eden. To be sure, not all branches of Christianity are necessarily put on the spot by this. The NPR story only discusses the issue as it is faced by evangelical Christians.
The Catholic Church indeed of all the Christian churches faces a particular quandary. The Council of Trent is quite explicit on the topic. Catholics are required to believe not only that Adam is the single father of the human race, but that Original Sin is passed on by physical generation from him to the entire human race. It’s not something symbolic or allegorical.
The First Vatican Council reiterated the doctrine, as did Pope Pius XII in his 1950 encyclical Humani Generis: For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own.
There are to be sure individual Catholic theologians out there mulling over how to handle the problem. But they are not on the Vatican’s radar, and a new encyclical on the issue is not likely to come very soon. This is unfortunate. For while the Vatican maintains its silence on the challenge of genomics, Catholics in general are either encouraged to fall back on the denialism of Evangelical leaders like Albert Mohler, or to keep their mouths shut.
One might almost feel some sympathy for those who have refused to open their eyes to scientific truths and clung to fairy tale like accounts written by uneducated tribes in Palestine. But I'm not one to show such sympathy to either to the professional Christians or those who have deliberately stuck their heads in the sand. The creator gave all of us intellect and the ability to think and reason, yet some have chosen ignorance. With the Internet and access to information on a scale unseen in previous generations leaves very few with an excuse that they did not now any better.
1 comment:
I remember reading a comment from the Vatican while John Paul II was still alive that said evolution is not incompatable with the teachings of the Catholic Church.
As former student of Catholic education back in the 1950s and 1960s I am somewhat surprised that evolution is a controversy for the Catholic Church today. I went to a Catholic high school in the Diocese of Buffalo in 1964. I remember clearly the first day of my freshman Religion class. It was taught, no less, by the principal. Father Ross strode up to the front of the class, turned around and said, "First thing I want you all to do is forget all the crap the good sisters taught you in grammar school." Back in 1964 our Catholic school was known throughout the diocese as a "progressive" Catholic school. Yes, I know that is a contradition in terms but that's what was said and apparently Fr. Ross' comments that day confirmed the school's reputation.
What I really want to say here though, is that the science books we used at St. Mary's High School taught us evolution. In fact, I think that all or most Catholic schools taught evolution as well as Catholic Doctrinem back then...at least in the Diocese of Buffalo.
Looking back though, what I find odd is that no one, including me, ever brought up the contradiction between what was taught us in Science class and what was taught in Religion class. We simply accepted both. Apparently Science classes and Religious classes were never scheduled back to back.
Post a Comment