It has always bothered me that there are scientists who go to work everyday, practicing the sciences that fly in the face of their faith directly… how can they justify their life?
Christian doctrine states that God created the world in a week. If a geologist goes to work everyday studying FACTS he knows disproves this completely, how does he sort that contradiction out in his/her head at church on Sunday?
I’ve always felt that one’s faith (in whatever they believe) should be lived out through their life. Meaning, one shouldn’t contradict his/her religion through choices he/she makes, their job, anything…it isn’t compromisable. These people, in my estimation are, in effect, ‘living a lie’.
And don’t say that interpretation of the good book comes into play… supposedly the Bible is THE WORD OF GOD HIMSELF, so I doubt their is ANY room for interpretation, though countless people justify it this way.
No. A literal interpretation of the Bible says that. Many Christians (like, you know, the Pope) have no problem with understanding that the Bible is not a science textbook.
Hi. I’m the third consecutive non-theist to respond and tell you that you are off-base here. There are all different stripes of Christianity, and many stripes adapt from time to time or consistently to meet head-on the facts that science discovers. Heck, the Catholic Church was one of the early proponents and sponsors of astronomy and other sciences. Don’t let the most wack-a-do sects inform your knowledge of such a large religion. For people who believe that there’s a Big Man in the Sky, some of them can be pretty darn reasonable and, indeed scientific. Check out the Biblical Archaeological Review for some folks doing some decent science in service of the Big Guy.
No room for interpretation? I can go find a half-dozen biblical literalists off the street, hand them a couple of biblical passages, and get a good dozen (or more) “interpretations” without raising a sweat. Wandering around the LBNB for a while, even if we eliminate all the posts by Catholics or other disdained groups, we can find lots of people disagreeing about the meaning of lots of things.
It is simply not accurate to claim that there is no room for interpretation. I do, in fact, believe that the bible is True. I do not believe that the bible is a factual textbook of events that occured with no humans present to record them. Obviously, some people do believe that the bible is factually correct in every word. (Those people then have to run around explaining all the contradictions or magically proclaiming that the contradictions we can see do not exist.)
It is fine for a person to proclaim their own belief in biblical literalcy. It is not fine to try to impose that rather weird reading of the bible onto other believers.
Modern religious practice has moved away from fundamentalist views of strict interpretation to a more lax and liberal ‘book of parabolic myths and great philosphical wisdom.’ Religion has long ago lost the cosmology fight and has changed accordingly to survive.
I can’t imagine why a strict fundie Creationist would even get involved with geology. Luckily only a small % of people who call themselves Christian are realy “Creation Theorists.”
I think you might underestimating the number of creationists around.
18 months ago I took part in a survey here in New Zealand sponsored by the International Social Survey Program. The topic for 1999 in New Zealand was religion in NZ, and in the results booklet that they posted out I find the following from the question on evolution/creation:
"Just over 30% of those surveyed believe the Darwinian position that humans developed over millions of years from less advanced life forms and that God had no part in this process. The same proportion subscribe to the theistic evolutionist idea that humans have developed over millions of years from less advanced life forms and that God guided this process including man’s creation. Only 17% adopt the biblical creationist position that God created man pretty much in his present form at one time within the last 10,000 years (the remaining 20% were undecided).
By contrast, when the same question was asked in America in 1997, 44% of the people identified themselves as creationists, 39% subscribed to the idea of scientific creationism and only 10% believed in evolution."
(Religion in New Zealand. Department of Marketing, Massey University. January 1999).
Oasis325, are you by any chance a member of a Christian group that regards the Bible as literal truth? Because if you are not, I find it hard to understand why you should find it inconceivable that geologists might also be religious (to some extent or another) and not feel that they were living a lie. As the others have pointed out, you can’t use “Christian” as a blanket indicator for the particular beliefs of all groups that accept the New Testament writings as part of their faith.
FWIW, my qualifications to respond to this question: I just finished my PhD in geology (topic: geologic evidence for climatic conditions 650-575 million years ago). I also spent 12 years in Roman Catholic grammar school and high school, plus another three years at a Jesuit-run university. I’m not a practicing Catholic at the moment, but I do feel comfortable with the idea that God could have created the physical laws that set this universe in motion & govern it now.
Not once, in my many years of schooling, was there ever an issue raised about the incompatability of science and faith. At the college level, it was made quite clear to us that the Roman Catholic Church distinguishes between parts of the Bible that are purely works of literature and parts that discuss historical events (realizing that “historical” parts were written long after the events they describe, and so are suspect as literally accurate accounts). Furthermore, we were encouraged to learn the political and religious backgrounds and motivations of the authors of the Gospels and other New Testament books, so that we could understand “where the author was coming from.” In short, while the Bible is treated with great reverence, there is also plenty of acknowledgement that the authors were still human, and that human perceptions and biases may color other divinely-inspired words. No Roman Catholic is taught that the Bible is literally true - that is simply not RCC doctrine.
A little anecdote to illustrate the view of the RCC on geoscience and related investigations: A professor who taught an “Origins of Life” class told me that a group of scientists interested in the topic asked the Pope whether such a research topic was acceptable to the Church. The Pope’s response (paraphrased here): “As long as you don’t try to address what happened before the Big Bang, the Church has no problem with a scientific exploration of the origins of the universe or life within it.” So I think it’s safe to say that no RC geoscientist need feel uncomfortable about practicing their faith while conducting their science.
I am not expert in the beliefs of Protestant faiths, but friends of mine who belong to some of the larger groups (e.g., Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist, Dutch Reformed) don’t appear to hold with a literal reading of the Bible, either. Several of these are also geoscientists who don’t seem to have any problem reconciling faith and their work.
I did once meet a fundamentalist woman in an introductory geology class. While she liked the science a lot, it also clearly troubled her to be learning things that didn’t jive with the literal reading of the Bible she had been taught. Some of the other students tried to encourage her to stay with geology, and offered ways that she might rationalize the two (i.e., take each day of creation to literally mean several hundreds of millions of years of earth history), but in the end she dropped out of the class.
HorseloverFat said:
Actually, creationists love getting involved with geology. Geology, as well as biology, offer fertile grounds for making arguments in support of creationism (“creation science”) because both disciplines require the mastering of a lot of material in order to understand all the complexities of a given issue, and because it is not often possible to give absolute answers to particular questions. Creationists exploit both of these qualities to craft reasonable-sounding arguments that support their particular perspectives, which they then disseminate quite effectively.
Apollyon said:
Frankly, I suspect that this doesn’t reflect the number of people who are creationists because they belong to a fundamentalist faith. I think it is more a reflection of: a) a generally poor level of scientific education in the U.S., and b) the wide dissemination of creationist literature. Please note that geology is rarely taught at the high school level (when it is, it is typically an elective), so relatively few people are ever exposed to geology formally. So when Joe and Mary Blow read creationist literature that appeals to their “sense of reason” while taking advantage of their scientific ignorance, they will come to adopt a creationist viewpoint, and will identify with that viewpoint in polls.
Besides, The Flintstones shows humans and dinosaurs together, and if it’s on TV, it must be right, eh? :rolleyes:
Well, hey, I’m a Christian, I would even describe myself as a Fightin’ Fundie, and I don’t have any problems believing that God made the world. However, I do happen to believe that it took him 4 billion years and evolution to do it, not 6 days and a “poof!” with a magic wand.
I love geology. And paleontology. I don’t find them incompatible with belief in God. If anything, for me they serve to emphasize His existence–“the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth His handiwork.” To me it’s more amazing to think of Somebody coming up with a system that would ultimately lay down hundreds of feet of layers of sandstone and limestone under a Cretaceous sea, that would in millions of years become the stone in the highway rock cuts that I see whenever I drive down to southern Illinois on I-57. “How did He know it was going to do that?” I marvel.
The church I currently attend AFAIK has no official position on evolution/creation, believing it, quite rightly, to be a matter of individual decision, and ultimately Not That Big A Deal.
Notthemama - I certainly agree that “theistic evolution” has no conflict with either the scientific theory of evolution or a non-literal interpretation of Genesis – I mentioned in another thread my father-in-law who is both a theistic evolutionist (and a great lover of geology, astronomy, paleontology, etc) and a Methodist Minister.
I am a bit confused however. I thought that “Fundie” was a diminutive of “Fundamentalist” which refered to groups who adhere to certain Bible-affirming fundamental principles expounded at the 1895 Niagra Bible Conference, of which the first is: “(1) Literal inerrancy of the autographs (the originals of each scriptural book)”.
I also thought that this principle was the basis for the stance that the six days of creation in Genesis were six literal days of 24 hours each, and that fundamentalists were generally the ones pushing for the teaching of young earth creationism, and so forth.
How do you see the two fitting together? Do you not see an incompatibility between fundamentalism and theistic evolution? Or am I just misunderstandng the “Fighting Fundie” designation?
Doesn’t it bother you in the least that the theistic traditions did not originate nor until recently tolerate evolution and the time-frame of geo-sciences, but only approve of these advances only to fill pews and pander to ones “sense of reason?”
Or that those in the past who have spent their lives within the religious establishment studying the mysteries of god and the universe did not concieve of this much earlier on through their rapport with a god? But instead they came up with much contradictory material that in modern times has been swept under the rug and modified to pacify the modern believer?
Don’t you think your church’s “don’t tell” policy shows the limitations of your belief system and the complete loss of any credibility in cosmology? Doesn’t sound like a sure, sane, or even existant god that would, “…know that it was going to do that?”
"Doesn’t it bother you in the least that the theistic traditions did not originate nor until recently tolerate evolution and the time-frame of geo-sciences, but only approve of these advances only to fill pews and pander to ones “sense of reason?”
I say they did tolerate it other than the few who have gotten into the media and dont believe in god.
Or that those in the past who have spent their lives within the religious establishment studying the mysteries of god and the universe did not concieve of this much earlier on through their rapport with a god? But instead they came up with much contradictory material that in modern times has been swept under the rug and modified to pacify the modern believer?
Well maybe the religious establishment did and they simply had the contradictory material “7 days” besides the modern believer is 44% christan (in wherever they polled) so wouldent they still suscribe to creationism?
Don’t you think your church’s “don’t tell” policy shows the limitations of your belief system and the complete loss of any credibility in cosmology? Doesn’t sound like a sure, sane, or even existant god that would, “…know that it was going to do that?”
What does the church have to do with a belief system?
Dont you think that your statements without backup deny your credibility?
If by “the few who have gotten into the media” you mean the Fundamentalist Christians who insist on a literal interpretation of Genesis, these people most assuredly DO “believe in God.” They might not believe in your version of God, and they might claim that their God says some rather intolerant things, but that doesn’t mean they don’t believe in God at all.