Today’s New York Times has an extremely interesting article discussing new advances in the field of evolutionary-development, and what it means for our understanding of the processes of evolution. Assuming that the information presented in this article is correct (a decent assumption, but one should always take mass-media articles on technical subjects with a significant grain of salt), biologists are making a lot of headway in understanding the basic question of how species evolve. In particular, they are discovering that genetic mutation may actually be a lot easier than was first assumed. For instance, it turns out that fish have most of the same genetic building blocks that would allow them to grow the limbs and appendages necessary to walk on land. These genes, however, are sort of tuned to different settings, however, which cause the development of other body parts instead. If this is correct, it may explain how fish were able to evolve into land-creatures relatively rapidly.
In an excellent blog entry at NYTimes.com, law professor Stanley Fish notes that three recent books critiquing religion all share a few basic ideas, including the dismissal of faith. These books, like so many others who attack religious belief, set faith as the opposite of reason and then claim that any argument that cannot be proven, or at least adequately demonstrated, is not an argument that the intelligent or rational mind should consider. Moreover, the willingness to act out of faith, and not reason, leads men to do monumentally stupid and dangerous things.Of course, it isn’t just a few authors who make this claim. The media often juxtaposes “science” or “reason” with “faith” or “religion”. Religious leaders buy into that argument when they attack the scientific claims made by evolutionary theory or the some archaeological find that seemingly contradicts the Biblical account. I’ve heard any number of stories of people who break from the Church because they cannot stomach the seemingly necessary contradiction between belief and “scientific fact”.
There is no such thing as the “literal truth” of the Bible. I say this in response to the numerous reports about the Creation Museum that just opened in a suburb of Cincinnati, which claim that the museum is based on the “literal truth” of the Bible. Now, to be fair, the articles are just mimicking the museum’s literature. But the literature is wrong because there is no literal truth to the Bible, or any other document for that matter. All documents must be interpreted, and anyone who says otherwise is trying to dictate to you what you should believe.
Let’s take the Bible’s creation story. Genesis 1 describes the creation of the natural earth in the following way:
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
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