FROM THE DESK OF THE PRESIDENT

Since the last Newsletter another “science versus 6-day creation” issue has emerged in Oklahoma. The Tulsa Zoo has a standard scientific exhibit on the history of the universe, earth, and evolution of animals. A donor offered to fund an alternative zoo display depicting a “6-day, young earth” view of earth’s history. With enough money, one could easily set up an exhibit with more glitz. Visitors might assume that zoo curators saw scientific evidence for both scenarios. Significantly, an interfaith group was one of the most effective in convincing the Zoo Board to overturn their previous decision to accept the proposal.

Incidents such as this are even more painful for scientists who are Christian or Jewish than for others who may not share our reverence for the profound meanings of Genesis 1. My purpose in this column is to promote understanding and tolerance. Most OAS members could “write the book” rebutting 6-day creation. Therefore it should be more helpful for us to try to understand the perspective of people who support 6-day, young earth creationism; and secondly, to explore the ideas of scholars in other fields such as literature, ancient cultures and the Hebrew language. What do Jewish and Christian scholars conclude as to whether the 6-day format of Genesis 1 was ever intended to describe physical events at all?

Why are people who believe in a literal interpretation of Genesis 1 so sure that it speaks of the physical processes of earth’s beginnings? They have been taught that the bible was dictated word-for-word by God, without influence from the human writers’ cultural contexts. It follows, for them, that God would only write in simple documentary style as if writing a newspaper story or a science paper. The idea of a literal 6-day creation has become so interconnected with many other intangible values, that fundamentalists fear the loss of their entire belief system if it is not true. They think that once a person acknowledges Genesis 1 as a different literary genre, then the truth or historicity of all the rest of the bible is undermined. This controversy is a re-run of the Galileo affair (early 17th Century) when people predicted that faith would be destroyed if the earth moved around the sun (Giberson, 1993). Must three more centuries go by before the present controversy is over? Or is it possible that education, understanding and mutual good will could spare today’s students from adult leaders who fail to respect others’ expertise in different disciplines?

Teaching a concrete illustrated storyof Genesis 1 may be appropriate for young children and primitive or uneducated people. However, church scholars who know literature, ancient languages, and cultures should teach adults the deeper, more profound meanings of this awesome piece of literature. It draws from the Babylonian seven-tablet cosmogony, and the “science” of its day , yet is distinctly different (Hyers, 1984). Literary analysis of Genesis 1 shows this “Hymn of Creation” to be a wonderfully crafted analogy celebrating the covenant of the Sabbath. It begins with a thesis statement, (“In the beginning God created de novo the heavens-and-the-earth.”) Next comes a statement of the problem, (“the earth was formless and empty”). The Hebrew words for “formless” and “empty” rhyme - a word play. Then follows: two parallel sets of three “days”. The first 3 days solve the problem of formlessness, setting the stages for the second 3 days which solve the problem of emptiness - filling each of the 3 stages, respectively. On Day 1, light and dark are separated and on Day 4 the sun and moon/stars fill them. On Day 2 air and sea are separated, and on Day 5 birds fill the air and fish fill the sea. On Day 3 dry land is separated from water and in its parallel Day 6, air-breathing animals including humans appear. Next it becomes apparent why the 6-day analogy is used: God “worked” 6 days and rested on the 7th. The purpose of the story was to call the Jewish people to the covenant of keeping the 7th Sabbath Day as a special day, set apart for acknowledging that their God was the one creator of heaven-and-earth (everything intangible and tangible). A chart such as shown by Wright (2003) and many other authors, is helpful in showing this literary parallelism. “Yom”(day) never meant a solar 24 hours, and the sequence of events mentioned was never intended to reveal the geological time scale that science would discover many centuries later (Hyers, 1984)(Wright 2003). God is seen in Genesis 1 as bringing order and approving good, yet it is the literal, wooden, uninformed interpretation of this piece of literature that causes so much confusion and controversy.

Israel already had a traditional creation story about the origin of humankind. The newer literary masterpiece that used the 7-day Sabbath analogy was inserted intact, preceding the older story, and with no attempt to synchronize their sequence discrepancies. Much later when the bible was divided into chapters, the last “3 verses” of the 7-day analogy were mistakenly combined with Genesis 2 (the Adam story). The division should have been after Genesis 2:3; and they are clearly two different pieces of literature. Some protestant translations obscure the discrepancies by choosing among possible verb tenses, but neither story was ever intended to be a science documentary. Israel’s older story also uses literary devices. Adam (accent on the last syllable) is the Hebrew for man. A dam/ ah is the word often translated dust. These rhyming words symbolize that man is made from earth-stuff. Scores of other verses in many other books of the bible affirm that God is creator with no mention of a 6-day magical process. The bible, itself, is the strongest evidence against a 6-day interpretation.

[Moderate voices summarize: “The bible is not about science” and in one sense this is true. However, no human writes without basic assumptions about the tangible world around them. The Genesis 1 story was written within the “science” of its day and place. Observations: The water of seas and lakes is blue, the sky is blue, and therefore water is up there. Sky-water does not all fall down at once; therefore a transparent dome (firmament) holds it up and contains windows which open for some water to fall as rain. The sun, moon, and stars are not obscured by the blue water above the firmament, so they must be on the firmament dome. We “know” that we are standing still on a stable earth and the sun, moon and stars obviously move across and around the dome above us. The earth feels flat. Travelers observe that one never reaches the horizon, and eventually one reaches an ocean. Conclusion: we must live on an island, and the flat earth is supported by pillars that hold it up above an underground ocean (Lamoureux, 2005). ]

Denis Lamoureux holds Ph.D.’s in both biology and theology; so is particularly qualified to understand many aspects of the controversy.† At one time, he had planned to join a “creation science” organization, thinking that was the Christian thing to do. But first he decided to pursue more education to search for the truth. Evidence from the biblical text, Hebrew language, and ancient literary forms convinced him that Genesis 1 carried totally different meanings from the 6-day young earth interpretation. Now a professor at the University of Alberta, Lamoureux teaches students there and travels to present lectures to other audiences in an attempt to bring truth and reconciliation. His web page, www.ualberta.ca/~dlamoure contains an excellent on-line lecture and numerous links.

We must continue to work to prevent allegories from being presented as science. We must stand against text books that omit or water down evolution, see that high school test standards include evolution as the central organizing principle of biology, and block paste-in disclaimers that use the oxymoron “only a theory.” Meanwhile, we should educate people in both sciences and humanities, and teach respect for scholarship in each discipline. The words “creation” and “design have been commandeered, perverted, and constricted so thoroughly in the public’s mind that it seems futile to explain their reasonable meanings. I hope that in my lifetime evolution and creation, by whatever names, will cease to be opposites separated by “vs.”

Sharon Young, OAS President

syoung@snu.edu

Falk, D.R. 2004. Coming to peace with science: bridging the worlds between faith and biology. InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, Illinois. 235 pages, paper. ISBN 0-8308-2742-0. Forward by Francis Collins.

Giberson, K. 1993.Worlds apart: the unholy war between religion and science. Beacon Hill Press. Kansas City, MO 224 pages paper.† ISBN 083-441-5042.

Hyers, C. 1984.The meaning of creation. John Knox Press, Atlanta, Georgia, 203 pages, paper. ISBN 0-8042-0125-0

Sarna, N.M. 1966. Understanding Genesis.† Jewish Theological Seminary of America, McGraw-Hill.

Wright, R.T. 2003. Biology through the eyes of faith. Harper Collins, San Francisco. 309 pages, paper. ISBN 0-06-069695-8