This is a two part article and the second part is here.
The Creation Museum has a point of view — a point of view that is astonishingly anti science — that is the focus of the museum. It acknowledges that its purpose is to advance this point of view. Any objective observer would accurately described the museum as a sophisticated, coordinated and expensive work of propaganda. And the museum itself, I imagine, would be proud to acknowledge that fact. It seeks to convince, and, the museum’s point of view is the most radical anti evolution point of view possible, the “Young Earth” view, and the museum seeks to persuade attendees that its point of view is true.
It is amazing that people pushing this point of view raised $35 million or so to build the Creation Museum. The museum is located off in Kentucky off I-275, 10 miles west of I-75, toward the Cincinnati Airport.
The museum has beautiful grounds and state of the art displays. It has automated lifelike figures, huge dinosaurs, etc. It’s very high quality. I visited yesterday — two adults and a child cost about $50. Regardless of the cost, the place was full of people — I heard that usually more than 2000 people attend each day. It has a gift shop where I bought this amazing element collecting guide book and it also has many restaurants. It offers photographs and special features that cost extra (the planetarium costs $7 extra per person). This place takes in a ton of money. I’d love to know how much and how the profits are distributed. You’ve got to wonder if the opportunity to make big bucks was part of the motivation for starting this attraction.
The Creation Museum, run by a group called Answers in Genesis, teaches that the world is 6013 years old and that all 6.5 billion humans now on earth came all from a very small group of humans that survived a world wide cataclysmic event, a great flood, 4350 years ago. This Great Flood, according to the museum, wiped out all human beings in the entire world — except a small group of survivors, at most, fifty or one hundred people, led by a man named Noah. The whole story of Noah and the Ark plays a big part of the museum’s explanation. You might think that the Grand Canyon came about because of millions of years of erosion, but the museum teaches it came about in a short time because of the great force unleashed by the Great Flood.
The Creation Museum teaches that the Great Flood also would have destroyed all animals had Noah not saved a pair of each, and all animals that we presently know today came from that small group of animals from 4350 years ago. A scaled down replica of the Ark that Noah built is shown in the Museum. And, by the way, all dinosaurs, according to the Museum, were very much alive at the time of the Great Flood, and various displays in the museum show humans and dinosaurs in the same scene.
The point of view of the Creation Museum repudiates everything modern science says about the origins of the earth and the origins of humanity. The museum’s point of view demands that the words of Genesis be accepted as being literally true. When the Bible says “day,” according to the museum, it means 24 hours and when the Bible says the first human, Adam, was created in one day, it means exactly that. And, since the present generation can be traced back to the original human, in order for the generations to work out, Adam had to have been created in exactly 4004 BC — all at once, out of nothing, fully formed. The museum says that when humans rely on human reason to find truth, instead of finding truth, humans find error. The point of view of the museum is that the literal meaning of the words of ancient scripture reveals literal truth. The writer of Genesis clearly meant a day to mean 24 hours and, according to the museum, there is no reason to think that the Bible doesn’t mean exactly what its words originally were meant to say. Ancient people had words to describe eons, but the writer of Genesis deliberately chose the word, “day.” Fair enough.
This is amazing that here in 2009 a state of the art, high quality museum is so brazenly teaching anti scientific ideas. And, it is astounding that educated, prosperous, middle class Americans, in 2009, can agree with and support such a shockingly radical, anti-intellectual point of view, to the point of making this museum, by all appearances, a huge financial success. Who was it that said that nobody ever went broke by underestimating the thinking of Americans?
Carole and Ike at the entrance to The Creation Museum. The museum advances a “Young Earth” belief that says dinosaurs and humans at one time were contemporaries.
I believe in adam and eve I believe in God also I know there were dinosaurers but days and time was different back then the calander wasn’t made until roman times before that who knows how long people lived.
Thanks for the comments about the quality of our Creation Museum, but we note that you made a number of errors (e.g., we do not say — and the Bible does not teach — that ALL animals were on the Ark). Also, how do you know how much money we bring in (yet you wrote that we are a “huge financial success”) and how much it cost to operate the museum? You draw your conclusion without any good data. Hmmm. We don’t average 2,000 people a day (it’s actually less than 900). Ticket sales do NOT cover the cost of operating the facility (including staff salaries), and whatever we make on cafe and bookstore sales enables us to break even — and any profit goes towards building new exhibits. We are a non-profit museum and can’t operate with a profit. Your speculation and research are quite faulty. Mark
Biblical literalism is based on objections to the theological implications of modernity and the worldview associated with science, particularly its mechanistic and purposeless qualities.
Adherents often say that if the Bible is not literally true in its entirety, say if Pharaoh’s priests did not turn their staffs into snakes or if Balaam’s donkey did not talk, than the Bible is a lie, there is no God and anarchy, chaos and evil rule unchecked.
This all or nothing literalistic view is not required. Many have no problem seeing the Bible as a collection of stories, poems, folk tales, and other literary genres, many handed down from oral traditions, then written down, and then edited and reedited in order to explain peoples’ understanding of God. Biblical editors were less detail oriented than we are and did not mind combining ancient traditions with different elements, as long as these differences were not significant to the point they were trying to make. Scholars have found that there are two Creation stories in Genesis, from two ancient traditions, so you can have two Answers in Genesis (In what order were people, plants and animals created? Compare Gen 1, 11-27, with Gen 2, 7-9 and 18-23.) Does this matter? To some yes, others no. It depends on your theological perspective.
Biblical literalists will generally accept science so long as it does not cause theological challenges. They will turn on a light bulb and expect electricity to make it light. They will drive their cars with gasoline that is best explained and located as the product of ancient forests that predate the combined ages of Biblical patriarchs. They appreciate medical treatments based on the DNA that also evidences evolution.
The theological issues raised by science are significant. Do people have a special place compared to other living things? Is the world governed by chance and randomness? What kind of God operates through the cruelty of something like natural selection in evolution? How much do people matter in the universe? Are there absolutes and if so, what are they? Can science explain everything that needs explaining, such as how do we explain what we can’t control or understand, does life have meaning and purpose, how should people live together, how do we deal with so much change, what happens with death, and why do people do so much evil? If it can’t, then how do we render the right amounts to science and to God?
I suggest that Biblical literalism is impossible, as the Bible is too big and contradictory for everything to be literally true. The Bible challenges the reader to separate truth from literary devices that seek to articulate truth, and from bad ideas from the culture of the times (slavery is popular throughout the Bible as it was in the ancient world, and we struggle today with the legacy of relations between the genders from Biblical times).
The idea of Biblical literalism, that the Bible needs to be literally true, with set explanations for various problems that creates, is however quite popular. In part this is because today’s psyches are battered by technological and social change, as Biblical people were often battered and then comforted. Polls show that the public often relate more comfortably to the Bible than they profess agreement with troubling or difficult aspects of science, showing they feel more at home there even if science is dominant in their everyday lives. This may help explain the popularity of the Creation Museum. However Biblical literalism, given political power, can do great mischief, and this we need to avoid.
Mike,
If public schools serve a “compelling governmental interest in educating all of our children to function effectively in a multiracial, democratic society and realize their full intellectual and academic potential,” then how might they address your concerns with the AiG Creation Museum?
I heard today on the radio that the Creation Museum is sponsoring a “Faith Day” promotion at a Cincinnati Reds game. It wasn’t clear from the broadcast exactly what that entailed and it sounded like some other sponsor was doing the giveaway that often accompanies these promotions. According to http://www.answersingenesis.org/prayer/PrayerRequestDetails.aspx?id=1213 the purpose of this is to present the museum to the Cincinnati community, it looks like with some sort of a booth about the museum at the ballpark. http://blogs.answersingenesis.org/aroundtheworld/2008/01/30/%E2%80%9Ccome-for-the-game-stay-for-the-fun%E2%80%9D/ describes the museum effort to imitate the Reds’ annual tour of their fan area, and to persuade people to visit Cincy, take in a game and also visit the museum.
All of this is certainly a new and different approach to the creationism-evolution debate, and not necessarily one that gives faith a lot of honor. It is not clear what it will add, although I suspect a Jon Stewart type of comedian could have a field day with this. The fact that the Reds seem to be sinking in the standings doesn’t help.
Stan and Eric, thanks for your comments. The Creation Museum is thought provoking. I wrote this post today.
Yes, but why allow Biblical literalists to ignore the irreconcilable problems in Genesis?
For example, did Noah really take 2 of every animal onto the ark (Genesis 6)–or was it really two of each unclean beast and seven of each clean one (Genesis 7)?
Did God create man–and then all the animals “to be an help meet to him”–and then Eve (Geneis 2), or did God create all the other living things first and Adam and Eve last (Genesis 1)?
I have no doubt that those with millions invested will be motivated to gloss over those glaring internal contradictions. Too bad that they can’t take a more scientific view of the facts and adjust their theories to account for all the data. Doing that would require them to recognize–as have many major denominations of Christianity–that much of the scriptures are poetry, mythology, and allegory–NOT literal, inerrant, empirical truth.
Evolution is also a point of view that is “astonishingly anti science”. Remember the scientific method? One of the steps required is to test the theory with an experiment. Show me the experiment that shows simple life evolving into more complex life, then I will consider evolution as science.
Dan, it’s obvious you’ve never studied science in any detail. You should do so before sharing your opinion; as Harlan Ellison noted, you are entitled to your opinion, but unless it’s an informed opinion no one ought to respect it.
And as Daniel Patrick Moynihan also noted, “You’re entitled to your own opinion. But you’re not entitled to your own facts”.
Where you fall short is that you think a laboratory big enough to contain an entire ecosystem and a time-frame of the millions of years it would take to get organisms to evolve from single-cell to multi-cell is somehow possible.
Current evolutionary theory–including both Darwin’s natural selection and Gould’s punctuated equilibrium–meets the genuine scientific standard for a theory; it accounts for all available empirical data.
Creationism, on the other hand, doesn’t even account for the data in the scriptures from which it came.
Face it Dan, your Bible is highly errant and full of non-literal passages. Those of us who aren’t invested in ignoring those truths are not at all bothered; you, on the other hand, are like a centipede on a hotplate.
Mr. Looy, thanks for you comments. I see that you are identified as chief communications officer of Answers In Genesis-USA and one of the ministry’s founders.
In my article I reported that I had heard that attendance at the museum was more than 2000 each day, that by all appearances the museum takes in a ton of money, and is a huge financial success. In your response to my article, you dispute my comments describing the museum’s finances. You write, “Your speculation and research are quite faulty,” and say that the museum averages less than 900 visitors each day and that the museum makes no profit.
My research about the museum was my own observation. I visited the museum on Thursday, July 23. There was a huge crowd of people at the museum that day — lined up to spend money. The book store and eating places were full of people spending money. So I was simply reporting on what I observed on that one day visit.
Maybe the day I visited was especially busy. On the Answers In Genesis blog, Ken Ham reports that on Wednesday, July 22, the day before my visit, 3200 people visited the Creation Museum, and on Tuesday, July 21, over 2500 visited. The Answers in Genesis web-site also reports that the museum had 650,000 visitors in its first 21 months. That works out to an average of considerably more than 900 visitors each day.
Since the Creation Museum pushes a specific religious outlook, it’s sort of surprising to me that the Creation Museum is qualified according to IRS standards as a nonprofit organization. Maybe that is why, of all of the things you could have responded to in my article, you responded to my suggestion that maybe the foundational motivation for starting this museum was first of all financial. The fact that the museum is “nonprofit” doesn’t mean that individuals in the organization might not be making huge individual salaries. I’m wondering if the museum has ever released a complete financial report showing salaries paid to its CEO and other leaders?
650,000 visitors in 21 months averages out to about 1020 visitors per day. “considerably more” is a subjective term. There are churches and other religious oragnizations and businesses all over this country that push specific religious outlooks but, under IRS rules, qualify as non-profit organizations. The salaries paid to employees are taxable. Just like the rest of us, the more they are paid, the more they are taxed.
Duane, thanks for your comments. Mr. Looy in his comments said that museum attendance, on average, is “less than 900.” A good guess is that Mr. Looy was saying the average attendance is 875. By your calculation, the average number of visitors, based on the info at the Answers in Genesis web-site, must be 1020 visitors each day, so your estimate is 17% more than what Mr. Looy indicated, and it seems to me that 17% more is fair to describe as “considerably more.”
Of course salaries are taxable, but the point is the museum could be paying Mr. Looy and Mr. Ham $200,000 each per year or $400,000, or more, and still be considered a non-profit. It seems to me that the founders of the Creation Museum are pretty savvy business people, and it’s not so far fetched to speculate that one big motive for these individuals starting the Creation Museum was the opportunity to realize personal gain. I’m wondering if, since the museum is a non-profit, somewhere the salaries paid to museum officials are required to be reported as public information?
I’m thinking that IRS non-profit rules for a church are probably different than the non-profit rules for a museum, and probably the rules for a museum give a much greater leeway than the rules for a church — but I have no expert knowledge about IRS rules for non-profits.
Thanks for the provocative article, Mike. I too question the validity of the Museum’s Non-Profit status. According to the IRS, the requirements are:
“To be tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, an organization must be organized and operated exclusively for exempt purposes set forth in section 501(c)(3), and none of its earnings may inure to any private shareholder or individual. In addition, it may not be an action organization, i.e., it may not attempt to influence legislation as a substantial part of its activities and it may not participate in any campaign activity for or against political candidates….”
The rest of the requirements are here: http://www.irs.gov/charities/charitable/article/0,,id=96099,00.html
From that, it seems that the founders are unable to profit personally from the revenue stream the organization makes. But of course, it does not say that the founders and others cannot be paid employees of the organization, just that any excess profit can’t go to any private shareholder or individual.
Non-Profit rules, record-keeping and reporting are notoriously complicated, stifling most efforts to find out where all the money went. I think many organizations take advantage of this fact and gloss over the details, explaining only that they are obliged to operate without a profit. Any more questions? Please direct them to my accountant! Next?
The prohibition is against influencing legislation and political activity. When key individuals of a non-profit organization feel compelled to influence legislation or participate in political campaigns, they form a PAC (Political Action Committee) which is a totally seperate entity from the non-profit organization. Contributions to a PAC are not tax deductible. The NRA is a non-profit organization. The NRA Institute for Legislative Action is not. It is a PAC. I don’t believe the Creation Museum folks have a PAC.
Truddick makes some interesting comments in his reply to Dan. Natural selection is real. It can be and has been observed. It is not evolution. Every case of observed natural selection has resulted in a loss of genetic information not an increase of information which would be necessary for the general theory of evolution to be true. Natural selection is anti-evolution. Gould’s punctuated equilibrium does account for the empirical data, the empirical data being the lack of transitional forms in the fossil record. When Darwin posed his theory he fully expected the transitional forms to be found. He believed the failure to find the transitional forms would be devastating to his theory.
Darwin’s and Gould’s theories are both untestable.
Mutations are fairly common occurrences. Evolutionists believe mutations to be the machine that drives evolution. Truddick, give us an example of a mutation that resulted in an increase in genetic information.
Mr. Bock,
You said in a previous post that “I’m thinking that IRS non-profit rules for a church are probably different than the non-profit rules for a museum, and probably the rules for a museum give a much greater leeway than the rules for a church — but I have no expert knowledge about IRS rules for non-profits.” As a staff accountant at a CPA firm, I can tell you that your thinking is reversed. The IRS rules for a church are MUCH more lenient than those for a museum. A church as no requirement to report to the IRS, so a church can essentially do as it pleases without the IRS even inquiring about its financial decisions. A non-profit museum is required to file a form 990, disclosing all revenues and expenses, along with the salaries of every employee in a high ranking position. If the primary motivation for Mr. Ham and Mr. Looy was financial gain, they would have started a church and raked in mega profits like that crook Benny Hinn.
Mike: You only visited the museum one day when it was well-attended and you pronounced in your first posting that we are making a “ton of money. ” Yes, that’s speculation, regardless of your follow-up spin. You took one day out of the 730 or so days we have been opened and then extrapolated from ONE DAY to make your pronouncement. about attendance and revenue. Second, you didn’t know how much it costs to operate this high-tech facility.
You’re shooting from the hip a lot.
The figure I gave you of almost 900 people a day was based on our 25 months of operation, not 21 as you chose to cite. By the way, about 10% (about 70,000) of the museum tickets were given out free of charge during those 25 months.
You challenged our integrity in your posting as you questioned our attendance figures (as if you have access to better data than we do). Because of your careless and speculative ramblings, I wonder if my time would be better spent elsewhere dealing with more serious critics … (For full disclosure, a correction: I forgot to figure in that for our first year, we were closed for a few more days than for year two; so factoring that in, we have averaged over 900 people a day in 25 months.). — Mark Looy
Mr. Looy, Yes, you’re right that when I said, about the Creation Museum, “This place takes in a ton of money,” and when I said, “By all appearances, a huge financial success,” that these statements, in part, were speculative. But, I think most people would agree, these statements were reasonable and fair — because they were based on my own observation: the one day that I attended, the museum was very crowded and a lot of money was being spent.
I don’t see a report of the museum’s finances on the Answers in Genesis web-site. It would seem that if AIG wants to clear up any misconceptions about its finances, it would make accurate and complete information about its finances readily available.
Regardless that AIG doesn’t post a report of its finances, as Dan (above) noted, as a non-profit organization, the financial record of AIG is available to the public as part of the public record. It would be an education for me to discover how to find such public records.
I did find a partial record of AIG finances at a site called Charity Navigator. But the information at this site is a little out of date — the record is two years old. In 2007, evidently prior to the building of the museum, according to this report, total revenue to AIG was $17.8 million, and of this, $2.4 million was spent on “administration,” and $1.5 million was spent on fund raising. In my book, $17.8 million is a “ton of money.” This report also shows that Ken Ham, the founder and CEO of AIG, in 2007 received compensation of $162,000.
As a public accountant I can tell you that $162,000 as the salary for the head of a non-profit is below average. The CEO of the American Red Cross makes $565,000. I deal with the “business” side of non-profits on a regular basis, and they have to pay a fair salary or high levels of talent will join the for-profit sector where they can often make close to four times as much.
Duane, since you want to challenge me to provide transitional forms or
evidence of “an increase in genetic information”, perhaps you will gird up your loins like unto a man and answer my challenges to your benighted creationist viewpoints. Specifically: there are no religious accounts of creation that are factual because they all contain self-contradictions and outright absurdities.
If you wish to claim that the Bible is literally true, then you are ignoring the contradictions that start with the first 2 chapters.
As for your challenges, each is itself flawed.
You want transitional forms? Hundreds have been discovered. But you don’t suddenly pause when you see ambulocentesis or homo erectus or archaopteryx and say “oh–transitional! Guess I was wrong.” No, you commit the fallacy of the arrow–you demand not only a good number of transitional forms, you require every individual in the chain of species and subspecies.
You babble about an increase in genetic information. Nonsense. Each species has more genes than are necessary because so many of them are vestigial. The genetic information for each viable living thing is the right amount for that life form.
And you nonsensically claim that there is no way to “test” theories of evolution. I note that you don’t subject your religious views to the simplest of tests of logic, so again you are quick to hand out challenges but not to meet them. The test of Gould and Darwin continues to be if their explanations account for all available data. Since the Bible doesn’t (due to self-contradiction) then we need something else if we care about reality.
By the way, your use of “testable” is more scientific ignorance. In lab science, what gets tested are hypotheses, not theories. And evolutionary biology is not often amenable to lab experiements, but in that it’s just like other branches of science, including meteorology, geology, and astronomy.
I’ll presume that you are no longer of the earlier form of Christian ignorance–the one that insisted on an Earth-centered universe with the astral bodies stuck onto firmaments–despite the Bible’s seeming opposition and the lack of “testability”. Then again, maybe you are a flat-earther. Maybe you should prove otherwise, in some “testable” fashion.
truddick,
By consistently stating that the Bible contains contradictions, I can easily tell that you have never studied the Bible in any sort of detail. A contradiction is two statements that cannot possibly BOTH be true. If Joe pulled up to a stoplight and said the light was green and wrote that in his book, and Jerry pulled up to that same stoplight and said the light was red and wrote that in his book, is that a contradiction? No. Because if they arrived seconds apart they both would have seen different things that were both true, it only takes simple logic to see this. Show me 1 contradiction in the Bible, just 1.
truddick
I have no idea what “ambulocentesis” is so I can’t comment. Homo Erectus is a transitional form between _________ and _________? Archaopteryx ia a transitional form between _________ and _________? The contradictions in the first two chapters of Genesis are ________________.
Duane, if you want a respectful response, quit claiming ignorance.
Over in the other thread on this topic, you wrote:
“This is a clash of worldviews; the evolutionist worldview, which excludes God, verses the creationist worldview, which includes God. Compromise is difficult if not impossible.”
What is difficult for you to comprehend is actually not that hard for most of us. That much is evident.
Authoritarian Christianity had over 1000 years of European history to prove itself. It failed. Developing morality, health care, government, economics, and technology based on scriptures that are not literally true nor even accurate proved a fool’s enterprise; we now are better off in all those areas because we no longer limit our leadership to those who think that one book contains all important knowledge.
True, there are some who are still in a midieval frame of mind, such as those parents who recently were convicted for praying over their diabetic daughter rather than allowing competent medical science to adjust her blood glucose. At this point I’m considering that you are equally ill-informed on these issues–and I’m wondering if you will respond and say you don’t know th meanings of diabetic nor glucose.
In short, I’ve wasted enough of my time on you in this thread. You know where education is available; go get some and then maybe you’ll be worthwhile.
Before my last post I did a Google search on ambulocentesis. I found nothing. For grins I just Googled it again, still nothing. Maybe it’s a mispelling. I don’t know where else to go for my education.
Since the discovery of Turkana Boy, homo erectus is thought to be totally human. Some scientists are ready to reclassify homo erectus as variation homo sapien. This would make homo erectus a transitional form between humans and humans.
Archaopteryx is classified as a bird. A bird with teeth. Archaopteryx causes me to ask an interesting question. To go from a bird with teeth to birds like we see today, without teeth, are we gaining complexity or losing complexity? I can understand a random mutation causing the loss of teeth. For evoulution to work we need a mutation going the other way.
When I read the first chapter of Genesis, I read a summary of what happened on each of the six days of creation. When I read the second chapter I read a more detailed description of the creation of man and woman which occured of the sixth day in chapter one.
The Bible I read would not allow me to withhold medical treatment from my children. It’s unfortunate that others have misunderstood the Bible in this way. It is also unfortunate that things like the medieval crusades were conducted in the name of the God of the Bible. Shame on the leaders of that time.
What happens today is our young people are told they are the result of a random accumulation of chemicals mixed in with time and more random, chance occurences. Some of them have no problem taking guns to school and shooting the people they don’t like. In a world that is the product of evolution, who could say they are wrong?
The Bible has many contradictions and other problems if taken literally. There are two creation stories, two versions of the Noah story. The Cain and Abel story presupposes the existence of an outside world of people who might kill Cain and provide him with a wife. David is anointed king twice under different circumstances. Kings and Chronicles tell varying versions of the same events. There are four gospels with differing accounts of Jesus’ life. Matthew, Mark and Luke have many stories that are similar but narrated differently. John has a very different Jesus who makes long speeches rather than parables. John’s Jesus preaches for 3 years, the rest have him preach for one. Matthew and Luke describe a virgin birth under different circumstances. Matthew has Jesus born in a house in Bethlehem and visted by Magi , while Luke has the journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem to be born in a manger, and a visit by shepherds. Mark and John do not mention the birth, although John’s gospel has it’s own explanation of Jesus’ origin as being with God from the beginning. Paul does not mention a virgin birth in his many letters. Luke has Jesus ascend to heaven in his gospel and another version in Acts. Matthew’s Judas hangs himself while in Acts, he falls in a field bursts open and his bowels come rushing out (both stories explain while the field in question is named “field of blood”). The Resurrection accounts at Jesus’ tomb vary between the Gospels.
There are also issues with passages that are either highly improbable or contrary to modern understanding, perhaps due to archeological discoveries (including descriptions of periods of time, numbers of people and possessions that are likely to have been embellished, such as the number of people wandering in the wilderness during the Exodus, plus stories like Pharoah’s magicians turning their staffs into snakes and Balaam’s talking donkey) or may relate to to issues with translating from languages that are not used today, or the fact that texts we have date back to later than when they were written and even later than the events they are writing about.
The suggested “red light, green light” analysis, namely that everything described in the Bible actually happened although perhaps not all at the same time, does not hold up to this volume of material. There are too many problems. The best explanation is that the Bible is a work composed of many sources and traditions, written and then edited over long periods, generally by people seeking to make points of theology using the literary methods of the time.It was not written nor intended to be taken literally, and things that bother us in our cultural context did not bother them in theirs. But some today have learned to re1quire literalism in reaction to modernity and modern science, which has both devised explanations to things that could not be explained previously, and thus were attributed by some to the actions of God, and also pointed in theologically unsatisfying directions, particularly by being either mechanistic or random. Modernity also challenged ideas that previously carried authority as to how society should be organized.
Bible writings challenge people to understand God and how we are to live together. We have an economic system that did not exist in Biblical times, technologies that did not exist then, and political and social institutions that are different. Would Jesus say today that it was easier for a camel (maybe he would say a Lexus) to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven? We got rid of slavery, which was accepted then. We struggle with patriarchy and empire, and the Bible can be quoted for or against them. Who would be the outsiders (analogous to Samaritans or Gentiles) Jesus would value if were here now? Homosexuals? Undocumented immigrants? Homeless people?
It seems both wasteful and harmful that so much energy is spent fighting for the literalism of the Bible, with it’s 6000 year old earth and compressed creation story, instead of the things that should matter more. Literalism of course ends up defending the status quo and the power structure, which the Bible did not do. Kings and religious authorities were challenged for their abuses and evil deeds. In Psalms like 72 and 82 the king is judged, not by his wealth or armies, but by how well he defends the poor against oppression. How about a museum about that?
Let’s address as many of these alleged “contradictions” as I have time for. When I read Genesis, I only find one creation story, if you see two you will have to be more specific and point it out to me. Does they Bible say Adam and Eve only had 2 children, Cain and Abel? No, Adam and Eve lived for hundreds of years and would of had multiple children to help populate the earth. It would be those other children that might seek to kill Cain, and yes he would of had to find a wife out of his siblings, but incest had not yet been forbidden. The 4 Gospels all provide a different view on the life of Jesus. If 4 reporters all covered the same event, are they going to write exactly the same thing? No, they would all see different things and cover the event in their own way, just like the 4 Gospels cover Jesus life in different ways, the 4 writers did not see EVERYTHING exactly the same way. What good would it do to have 4 books that all said exactly the same thing? That would just be redundant.
And concerning the virgin birth, the answer is so obvious you missed it. In Matthew, wise men, or Magi, come to visit Jesus after he had already been born. Matthew says nothing of Jesus being born in a house, he simply says that wise men came to visit Mary and Jesus and bring gifts to the house where they were staying. Luke, being a doctor, describes the actual delivery of Jesus, who was laid in a manger. Luke also says shepherds came to visit Jesus. When babies are born today, don’t multiple people often come to visit? Jesus had wise men visit him and bring him gifts, he also had shepherds visit him.
All alleged “contradictions” can be explained if simple logic is used.
Perhaps the gospels, or at least the synoptics (Matthew, Mark and Luke) , have a Rashomon like quality to them, that is like witnesses to an auto accident, everyone sees something different. The best guess today is that the gospels were actually written in the form we have them a generation or so after Jesus’ death, and after traumatic events like the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans and the expulsion of Christians from synagogues. Stories and sayings were undoubtedly passed on, remembered and embellished. Think of how memories of significant figures of a generation or two ago, say Kennedy or MLK, would be contructed without newspapers or tv clips to help us, or how sports events are remembered.
In any case, even if the gospels were composed of eyewitness accounts that differed because of perceptions, they are not all the literal truth, any more than the collection of witness statements to an accident is the literal truth. We would not say that the collection of witness statements is a lie unless we believe every detail of every statement. We would have to interpret them and try as best we can to discern the truth.
In Genesis, after Cain kills Abel, Adam’s next child (at least male, as Genesis doesn’t name any daughters) is Seth whose name is derived from the fact that he has replaced Abel. Then they have other sons and daughters. Cain meanwhile goes off, finds a wife and builds a city. All this is mentioned before Seth’s birth. In addition, the difference between Cain and Abel, one tends animals and the other grows vegetables, reflects the specialization within early civilizations. All of this suggests that a separate story has been edited to make Cain and Abel the 3rd and 4th person, in order to show the primacy of enmity and murder in human experience, even between brothers. This of course immediately follows the eating of the fruit and expulsion from the garden. As a theological work of art explaining humankind’s alienation from God this is a great work. We should accept it as such. As literal history it does not work.
The biggest problem between the two stories of the birth of Jesus is less the multiple visits than that while both put the birth of the Nazarene Galilean Jesus in Bethlehem, which was the birthplace of David, they do so in different ways. Luke has Joseph travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem and the manger to comply with a census, while Matthew has him living there until Herod seeks to kill the child, chases them to Egypt (both echoes of the story of Moses) and then Joseph decided to live in Nazareth to be out of the territory ruled by Herod’s son. All of these details make theological sense in view of points and intended audiences of these gospels (Luke cares about ordinary people, hence the shepherds, while Matthew cares about the fulfilment of Jewish traditions, hence the scholars looking for the Messiah) but the subject of Jesus’ birth does not come up in the other two or in Paul. Luke and Matthew also have different geneolgies of Jesus.
Genesis 1- 2, 4 is one creation story, while Genesis 2-4 starts another. Plants, animals and people are created in different order, and the special creation of the woman Eve from Adam’s rib is found in the second but is not mentioned in the first.
There are many instances like this. Literalism doesn’t work, because the Bible is not a work by one author but many, and the product of many edits of earlier works. In Genesis and other early books, the Hebrew used different names for God, indicating different authors. In Ezra parts are written in Aramaic and parts in Hebrew.
Instead of literalism we need to try to discern the Bible’s meaning. This is not always easy. Some parts are calls to violence and others to nonviolence. (The famous Ecclesiastes passage suggests this may be ok but doesn’t really say how to tell the difference). Some celebrate wealth and some warn against it. The many different interpretations and sects of Christianity and Judaism reflect that this speaks to different people in different ways, and we can tell it did so within its own time also. It is also challenged by changes in technology, social organization, and science. Would Jesus think that modern capitalism, which didn’t exist then, is great, or just more of the same? What about modern democracies with mass media? Possession by demons? Would he love our outsiders the way he did his? Would he call us hypocrites? Would he like how we do politics? There are no easy by the book answers, and if we think we know the answers, we must admit that other people may not agree.
I must apologize to truddick for seemingly “claiming ignorance” but I missed one of previous posts where he asked a couple specific questions about the Bible.
truddick asked,
“For example, did Noah really take 2 of every animal onto the ark (Genesis 6)–or was it really two of each unclean beast and seven of each clean one (Genesis 7)?”
Noah took two of each unclean beast and fourteen of each clean beast. If you had fourteen pennies in your pocket and I asked you if you had two pennies you could honestly say “yes”.
he also asked
“Did God create man–and then all the animals “to be an help meet to him”–and then Eve (Geneis 2), or did God create all the other living things first and Adam and Eve last (Genesis 1)?”
The land creatures were created on the sixth day before Adam and Eve. The birds had been created on the fifth day.
The New International Version in Genesis 2:19 reads,
Now the Lord God HAD formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them.
Truddick’s questions and my answers are another example of conflicting worldviews. In my worldview I have the presuppostion that the Bible is the inerrant word of God and when faced with questions like truddick’s I seek an understanding consistent with that worldview. I answered the question on Noah without doing any research. I had to educate myself a little to answer the other question. The answer was not hard to find because the question has been asked before.
The Internet is an amazing place. If I want to find a site that lists contradictions in the Bible, I can find it. If I am looking for a site that resolves apparent contradictions in the Bible, I can find that, also.
Truddick posted this on the other article,
“Why are we showing such deference to Duane and Dan, who are insulting us as immoral heathens,…?’
I don’t know that any of you are immoral heathens. I have said, in the evolutionary worldview there can be no basis for morality. When you do “good” or abstain from “evil” you are borrowing standards from the creationist’s worldview and unconsciously acknowledging in your heart of hearts you know there is a God and that the creationist worldview makes more sense.
I also apologize for earlier using the non-word “devouted’. Devout or devoted is what I meant to say.
Saying “if he had 7 animals he also had 2 because 2 is less than 7” is not something anyone would say in their daily affairs or out of the context of trying to deny that there are these contradictions exist. If I say I am going to sell you 7 of something and just give you 2 and say it is the same, no one is going to buy that. The author who said two meant two, not “oh by the way it could also be 7”. And of course the two by two image is the one people remember and makes sense in the story.
The key issues are raised in the parallel collection of posts.
“Do you realize responsbility and reasoning and consistency only exist in the creationist’s worldview. In the “molecules to man” evolutionary worldview, belief in such things is without reason.
Our democracy’s lack of concern for the billion undernourished could be result of the prevalent evolutionary thinking. “Natural Selection” and “Survival of the Fittest” should demand they make their own way in this world. The Bible teaches us to be concerned for our fellow man, physically and spiritually.
The folks at the Creation Museum are concerned that a rejection of the Genesis account of creation leads to a rejection of the Bible as authoritative in other matters. As a society, we are reaping what we are sowing.”
The politics of Biblical literalism has not really been for its advocates to be all that concerned about the billions of undernourished. If you look at issues like welfare, foreign aid, and things of that sort, literalists have been more interested in issues of authority, sexuality and the like, plus perhaps a certain amount of regional or class antagonism. How much of this is a continuing culture wars conflict over the Scopes “Monkey” trial pitting the “enlightened” northeast against the “ignorant” South? A recent generation of evangelical Christians (not all of whom are literalists) has seemingly looked more at the parts of the Bible that talk about caring for the poor, which is a positive step. We face an enormous problem of world poverty, disease and death which often seems to dwarf that within American society. However as the world economy becomes more globaland capital becomes more mobile, the walls between us and world poverty come down both here and there.
That being the case, it is not clear that accepting Genesis’ creation accounts as literally true is going to support responsibility and reason and consistency, to say nothing about being concerned for our fellow man.
Responsibility and reason and consistency means we have to look for the truth and follow it with integrity. While science doesn’t claim to be “absolute” the way religion sometimes does, it should remain true to integrity. That doesn’t always happen when some people will pay for science they like and not for science they don’t like, but it does better.
Religion suffers when it hangs its existence on things that turn out not to be accurate. The medieval church thought that it was important to both its and God’s authority that the earth be seen as the center of the universe. No doubt those Popes felt like you do about a literal interpretation of Genesis. When Galileo and similar people found out that wasn’t the case, religion was dealt a blow, particularly its earthly institutional power, but nothing it couldn’t live with. Similarly today science’s view of the age of the earth works better than Genesis’. Shouldn’t be a problem, but you are making it one. Nothing in the sermon on the mount requires a 6000 year old earth. If it is authoritative, it’s not because the earth wasn’t created in 6 days. The Sermon on the Mount stands or falls on its own merits. If people don’t believe it, or don’t pattern their lives around it, it’s not because there have been millions or billions of years of history. It is because people believe other things more. If bad things are happening, it’s because people choose to do evil, often because evil has been done to them. Or in organized society, it may be because we choose to ignore a lot of the structural systems that perpetuate evil happening to others, particularly when it is not happening to us. We don’t need social Darwinism to convince us that it is in the greater good to get away with harming someone.
Stan,
You are confusing true Bible believers with those of denominations, such as Catholics, whose views over the centuries have always been influenced by political motives. The God and Bible that I believe in tells us that we should care about feeding the hungry, if fact, the Bible tells us that we should even feed our enemies if they are hungry (Rom 12:20). It is evolution and natural selection that tells us we should let the hungry people in Africa die because they are weaker than the rest of us.
I think it’s great if you and others love and feed your enemies but I’m not sure I see a lot of that thinking out of the literalist camp. I’m not sure what a “Bible believer” is if it’s not a literalist, since I’m sure most self idenitified Christians including Catholics identify with and follow the Bible as well as other things like their traditions. Rejection of evolution made the big time into politics when Reagan questioned the theory of evolution during one of his debates, but you didn’t see that kind of politics out of him or the so called conservative Christians who embraced them. Lately there has appeared to be a generational switch with Falwell, Robertson and Dobson being replaced by people like Rick Warren, although I don’t think he is a literalist either, and others who are concerned with poverty and mission.
I also don’t think that evolution tells us to let hungry people in Africa die. Starvation in Africa has nothing to do with evolution, since genetically we are all the same species, and the time periods are too small to let evolution happen. Plus during the 1400s parts of subSaharan Africa were more civilized that Europe. We are talking about the fortunes of social organization. Various empires have been powerful throughout history and other places, like Palestine when Jesus lived, have been dominated by them and suffered as a result. In addition the climate has changed, a major problem for Africa which also suffers from diseases with flourish in its climate. None of that has much to do with evolution. You may describe so called “social Darwinism” which suggests that whoever happens to dominate at a particular time does so because they are better and this is progress. I suspect that people on top have always thought that, without needing to invoke Darwin. However this hasn’t really worked or else Iraqis and Egyptians would still be dominating the world. Evolution takes place over large numbers of generations and is difficult to perceive what is happening in the short term. And since we live in and only perceive the short term it makes it easy not to believe in.
For example there are common birds, warblers and orioles, that live in different parts of the US and look different. They were thought to be different species, but it turns out if they are brought together they can “hybridize.” There are related species that can not. Is this evolution in action, showing that if these birds are separate for long enough they will be separate species? You can only tell that from hindsight. The same thing is true of the turtles that Darwin observed.
Of course you first have to believe that these long periods of time happened. There is lots of evidence that they did. The evidence that they didn’t is a religious book where you can add up the ages of exceptionally long lived characters in a geneology that dates back to a 6 day creation of the universe. By the time we get to the patriarchs and characters who might be considered historical, the pyramids had already been built. The sensible answer is that the Bible is about God and how people perceive God and their relations with God. It is not about science and is not primarily about what we now consider history. Once we accept this we can think about how we are to treat our enemies, and be Bible believers in that sense.