No one said I had to agree with the OP. I’m here to see what your going to say. My disagreeing is not a disregard.
Lolo, I’m posting this from a library. As I sit here, I can see a lot of children’s books, and they tend to avoid controversial issues, but provide some useful attitude-focusing material for the age levels they’re written for (and if you don’t think small kids need some socialization and focusing of attitude, you’ve never dealt with a group of preschoolers! ;))
There are some extremely good novels which, besides being enjoyable relaxation reading, deal with the psychology of the individual in ways that a non-fiction psych. book could not hope to accomplish – you get a feel for what it’s like to be that person from them. There are collections of poetry with images not intended to be taken literally but nonetheless beautiful and uplifting, or poignant and moving, or harsh and cathartic.
Their copy of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain is out at the moment. As history, it’s laughable. But it’s nonetheless a valuable work: it gives a clear insight into the origins of the Arthur myth, and it makes quite clear what was important to the literate Briton and Norman of the 13th Century.
Over there is Catherine Drinker Bowen’s Yankee from Olympus. It tends to put Oliver Wendell Holmes on a pedestal, but he was a fantastically good Associate Justice of the Supreme Court despite her attempts to cover up his foibles, as his own writings and other works about him show.
There are a couple of old histories of this North Carolina county that are, quite bluntly, tainted by a view of the black inhabitants that is quite racist. They are useful for background despite this.
In short, one reads with an understanding of what preconceptions may have altered the perceptions of the writer, and what genre he or she was writing in. And one gets useful information from all this, despite those preconceptions and non-literalisms.
I read the Bible the same way. Because Luke, a scholarly man of the First Century, believed that schizophrenia was caused by indwelling demons which could be exorcized, does not require that I have to hold the same belief, or else reject his account of the cure of a supposedly possessed person. And I remember as a kid being told the story of how somebody fed a large crowd with nowhere near enough food to do so. No, not Jesus’s miracle, Stone Soup.
Behind all the tribal jealousies and superstitions I see the growing awareness of a concept of agapetic love, and a moral imperative to show this despite any failure to reciprocate. And I subscribe to that as a goal to live for.
And yes, I believe that there was a God who chose to work through a bunch of writers who got only the slightest glimpse of what He had in mind for mankind (not that I claim to have too much better an insight!). Feel free to cast aspersions on me for that bit of superstition, if you like.
poly,
and what does this ahve to do with evolution and the bible?
don’t answer
I’m out
peace
Wow, I must have lost all capacity for clear English exposition.
Lessee, the general gist of the question was “what does evolution do to the Christian concept of sin?” My first comment was that Accipiter’s identification of sin as “the core concept” of Christianity was, IMHO at least, in error. In response to Lolo’s earlier remark on the co-evolution of H. sapiens and P. paniscus clearly throwing out the idea of God creating man, I reflected that it only throws out a literalist interpretation of the creation account, and gives those who don’t hold to such an interpretation a clearer explanation of the means He used. Much as czarcasm despises Christian doctrine, I have a strong sense that even he would agree that the idea of a God creating a universe by processes explicable by the natural sciences is not a logical fallacy, but only, in his view, an erroneous add-on to the purely natural universe of the senses.
So then Lolo questions how a Christian is to interpret the Bible if not literally, and I give him an answer. And it would appear that he considers that a hijack of the thread.
Oh well…
::: checks self for incipient Alzheimer’s ::::
I insist, and let me make this clear: Where did I equate science with myth? Provide a quote and provide it now. I am not even a theist myself, but unlike some small minded folk, don’t take it upon myself to belittle those that choose to believe. I merely pointed out, in what was once an interesting topic, that science and Christianity need not be at odds.
What business would evolution have in the bible? Does there have to be a footnote that says, “Oh, and by the way, all animals evolved into what they are today.” The bible doesn’t mention that the earth is round either, but that doesn’t make it flat. The whole Evolution vs. Christianity debate is made up of people’s interpretations of the bible. Bear in mind, the bible also never said “all animals didn’t evolve into what they are today.”
In Genesis, God creates light and dark first. It doesn’t say how He did it it merely states that He did. So when science discovers and proves the events that happened to create the first instance of light is someone going to start a fight over it? This event marks the end of the first “day.” Now how can we possibly call that a day? There was no earth from which to reference a day. And there was no one in existence to observe this “day,” so when this account was written it had to be regarding someone much later. The following events fell into a sequence of “days” which could have easily been just as massive a length of time as the origin of light. If a child read the word “day,” he/she would assume it to mean a literal day because they don’t know any better. That which is figurative in the bible should, therefore, be extraordinarily evident.
I thank you all for your time and genuine consideration of my question. The responses I have read here have really helped bring new ideals and ways of thinking about this problem to light. It is sometimes difficult for me to see beyond some of my own presumptions or even be aware that I am holding presumptions until I can talk to other people with different outlooks.
The presumption that I discovered that I had from this is that even though I had taken the story of creation as allegory all the way through the creation of man, I never continued the allegory in to the Garden of Eden. Thus from the way I was thinking before, mankind already existed (from the creation allegory coupled with evolution) but one man was responsible for bringing sin in to the world and in essence bringing damnation to everyone (from not continuing the allegory in to the Garden of Eden). This hardly seemed just or fair.
(Please bear with me for the following, I still have to figure how to do quotes)
DLB asked: “Is this really the only problem you have?” in relation to my OP.
Reply: It is not the only problem I have, but it was one problem that I couldn’t find an answer for. Most of the other problems I had with the creation story I have already worked through and aren’t that much a problem any more.
Quote from Polycarp:
"A significant part of the problem may lie here. Much of historical and present evangelical theology does focus on the concept of sin, to be sure, but I would say that Christianity’s core concept is God’s love. Particularly as expressed through the person of Jesus. "
Reply: I did mispeak here, a more accurate statement would had been that sin is one of the major core concepts of Christianity, not the core concept.
And in case I wasn’t clear in the OP, I did intend this post to have the assumptions that both Christianity and evolution are true. My original question is really moot if both are not true.
I lumped you in with the others, and this was my mistake. I am at work, dipping in and out, and took your opposition as Christian opposition. My bad.
I read this thread just before I left work this evening and I intended to post my thoughts on the place of the ‘fall of man’ in the context of non-literal interpretation, but I see that Polycarp has not only saved me the bother, but done it much more completely and eolquently than I would have, nice one Poly.
Lolo, “your bad” was not in seeing Waverly’s opposition as Christian when it wasn’t, but in failing to read and understand the merits of the points posted. Apparently, you will rapidly attack anything posted in support of what you believe is a “Christian” agenda.
You’ll last longer on this board if, instead, you respond to each post (at least in GD) on the merits therein.
Mmmmkay?
- Rick
The following is an excerpt from an article in “Science News Online”, located at
http://www.findarticles.com/m1200/6_155/53965045/p1/article.jhtml
Analyses of mitochondrial DNA–inherited only through the maternal line–in people from different parts of the world traced the origin of these genes back to one or a few African women dubbed “mitochondrial Eve.”
While the jury is still out regarding the meaning of the above research, it does raise the tantalizing possibility that religious teachings and evolution may not be as disparate as we think.
What sense does it make to talk about a time when the world was “free of sin” when “mankind” supposedly consisted of only two people very shortly after the world was created? How can sin simply “enter the world” like that? If Adam and Eve sinned and were immediately punished by God, how did this one episode make sin unavoidable in their offspring. The purpose of punishment is to make the behavior less likely in you and others, not inevitable. I can see how, say, art can enter the word. Someone makes a picture and others say, “hey that’s neat. I’ll try that”. No one says, “doing something that God told me not to, for no reason, and immediately getting punished for it is neat”.
Sin is not a concept that can exist entirely on its own. We declare certain behaviors sinful of immoral upon analyzing the outcomes and finding significant negative ones. But there have to positive outcomes too, or the actor wouldn’t have chosen that behavior.
In my mind there are two rather contradictory schools of thought as to the origin of immoral tendancies in humans. One is that, whereas animals are controlled by instinct and are thus ammoral, but when humans evolved intelligence and became self-aware, they started to override instinct and make choices, including bad ones.
The other is that animals are indeed immoral, indeed they are motivated entirely by self-interest. It’s just that their limited abilities limit the amount of harm they can do in their lust for food, territory, etc. Humans have developed the ability to empathize with others, but we often revert to “animalistic” greed and territorialism. And now we have the tools to really fuck things up when we do.
Indeed animals sometimes do things that might be called “sins” and not just instinctive. Your dog knows he doesn’t belong on the couch, but gets up there anyway when you’re not around and gets down when he hears you coming. We’ve all seen guilt in dogs. And I’m sure Jane Goodall has catalouged all sorts of behaviors in chimpanzee society that might be considered wrong or immoral. They even fight wars.
So on the one hand, it might be argued that we “fell from grace” when we started to disobey “God’s programming”, on the other hand, we are being “raised up” from the viscious animal state toward an as-yet unattained angelic state.
Getting back to Adam and Eve, I have my own bizarre interpretation. Perhaps it was indeed based on a true story. A young Mesopotamian couple ran away from society, found a nice meadow somewhere, shed their clothes, and proceeded to frolic (not to mention cavort). Soon they ran out of food, but they found these mushrooms growing at the foot of a tree. Now then, God tell us not to just go ahead and eat any musrooms we find. He also tells us to beware of snakes and spiders because these things are poisonous. It’s instinct. But Amanda and Steve said, “what the heck, let’s eat 'em anyway”. They overrode their instincts.
Only they turned out to be psychedelic mushrooms. When the Bible says, “their eyes were opened and they knew good and evil”, that’s not a bad little summary of the psychedelic experience. That shit also makes you paranoid and self-conscious, hence the bit about them freaking out 'cause they were naked. (Otherwise that passage in Genesis makes no sense. Why would being naked be embarassing if the only other person in the world was your sexual partner?) As for the snake, perhaps they encountered a real snake–which would really freak you out if you were tripping. Or maybe it was hallucinations of snakes–a common occurance. Or perhaps it’s a metaphor for regressing to the “evil” animal-like state. (Shades of Carl Sagan’s The Dragons Eden here.)