While you are reveling about Revelation, please answer me this: while science is cross cultural and the laws of physics operate regardless of political, social, or religious paradigms, how is one to choose which of over 38K Christian revelations, not to mention all the rest, is correct, and therefore the one to use in classrooms? PLEASE don’t say “Because we “know” ours is right…” I will send you to the next room filled with representatives of those nearly 40 thousand denominations and you guys can have it out. The winner goes to the next round, with the Muslims, and then…
Frank,
By way of answer to this, and to your more comprehensive post #11, page 1, I see a simple solution.
Christianity must give up any pretense that it knows who God is, what his properties and characteristics are, why he created the universe, and especially why he created mankind. That stuff has gotten religions in trouble with fact-based science, and they only got away with it by suppressing science. Moreover, that stuff has nothing to do with the job Jesus Christ charged his church with.
Christ didn’t teach anything consequential about the nature of God, or his purposes. He taught people how to live among one another in a good way, without conflict between rich and poor, or between religions, nations, and cultures. The Church could get rid of its problems by getting back to its original business, leaving science to the scientists and metaphysics to philosophers. Its an extension of the “Give to Caesar that which is Caesar’s…” teaching.
If the Church actually did such a thing, its conflict with science would soon end. When its members ask how the universe came into being, or how life made its appearance, instead of reiterating primitive ideas which make no sense in the context of reality, it could simply advise them to study some physics and biology.
Now, as it turns out, the answers about those particular fundamental questions that they will get from physics and biology really suck, and make no scientific sense. They would be unconvincing to the critically-thinking mind if not for the fact that they make much more sense than their religious counterparts.
So, if the opinions about beginnings were simply removed from all religious teaching, absurd beliefs like the Big Bang and Darwinism would be left to stand on their own, all by themselves. This would leave them naked, and exposed to competent scrutiny.
That scrutiny might come from intelligent Catholics who, finding no explanations about the beginnings from their Church, will take up science and realize how very bad its ideas are. They could take it upon themselves to find better answers.
Those answers will not be in conflict with any Christian teaching in the proposed new context,
the specific teachings of Jesus Christ and only Jesus Christ. So those who seek answers will not be in any fear from their church for thinking on their own.
Moreover, the scientific bias against the few religious scientists who dare to reveal their beliefs would disappear. It exists now in many universities and research organizations, based upon the fact that Christians tend to believe in ideas about the beginnings which make no sense. It is the same bias that would exist in a serious math department against a mathematician whose religion insisted that God could declare 2+2=5.
It is unlikely that there would be a genuine persistent bias against people because they treated their fellows fairly and charitably, and generally consistent with Christ’s words.
The Church may be the only religion which has the power to lead all other religions in this respect, by changing from within. It would cost the Church nothing, and gain it great credibility.
Actually, that’s wrong. There would be a cost. The Church would have to give up its claim that Genesis was divinely inspired, and admit that while God may have wanted the Hebrews to write some stuff down, they were not always clear about exactly what he meant. Might also have to admit that Genesis was mostly cribbed from the Babylonians, which every serious scholar already knows. They might even admit that ideas about the nature and purpose of God which were invented by men managed to sneak their way into the texts.
But in my experience, people are very forgiving of those who admit mistakes. They are less forgiving of those who insist upon being right in the face of obvious errors.
The most difficult thing for the Church to let loose of will be its opinions about the nature and purposes of God. The paraphrased rule, ‘
If you love something let it go. It will come back to you in its time if it is truly yours,’ applies. Since we live in a created universe, science will discover the nature and purpose of its creator. This will happen
after the Church gets out of the science business entirely, leaving the Big Bang and Darwin to stand alone in the cold for awhile.
All the Church needs to do to pull this off is to trust its core belief in the existence of a
Creator.
