Why the Bible Ain't Tellin' Me So

The other day I read what I consider to be the best deconstruction of the entire foundation of Christian Faith by hard and fast science I have ever read.


The article, entitled "Evolution threatens Christianity", by Paula Kirby appeared in the Washington Post on Aug 24, 2011. In it, she pointed out several reasons why Christians are afraid of evolution in a no-nonsense, dispassionate, straight-forward and iron-clad manner. Like a round-world advocate in a flat-earth society, she proved beyond any doubt that the entire foundation of Christianity was not just flawed, but outright impossible.


She pointed out that science has these things called facts and that facts, no matter how hard they are to ignore (and no matter how many people choose to ignore them) can not be disproved. She even went into why a theory to a scientist (which is what a scientist would correctly call Darwinism, Mutation and other proven - but not all encompassing in and of themselves - forces influencing Evolution) is not something that is "theoretical". A layman may look at a theory as something which is untested and unexamined, like a plan yet to be implemented. To a scientist, that's called a hypothesis. When a scientist talks about a theory, that's something which is proven, has observable, repeatable data and has been subjected to intensive peer review for flaws, errors or inconsistencies. It doesn't have to be all encompassing, however. It only has to describe one aspect of a known fact in such a way that the aspect is described scientifically and is not refutable or able to be disproved.


To describe a scientific theory versus a layman's concept of a theory, Ms. Kirby used her own methods, which, I feel were a touch high-brow. So I'll provide my own way of explaining the difference.


We all know bridges exist. We see them every day. We cross over them. We go under them. They are a fact. A Bridge is defined as a structure creating a span between two or more points across which travel between those two or more points is comfortably possible. This way we all know what a bridge is defined as.


A theory of a bridge isn't so much what the bridge is made of, but the design of the bridge itself - why the bridge stays standing. In some cases it's a suspension bridge - the weight of the bridge being redirected by cables or ropes to a strong supporting area. In other cases it's a rope bridge, either planked or unplanked, which is little more than a couple of ropes stretched over a chasm, river or other obstruction. There are truss bridges, and flat bridges and arch bridges. All of them are bridges, as described, but each stays standing by a different Theory - or reason it's stays standing instead of collapsing. No single Theory describes every bridge - every reason that bridge stays standing. But each one can describe an aspect of what we have defined as a "Bridge".


The same goes for Evolution. We know it happens. We see it in the fossil record. We even see it happening in real time We have reasons explaining why it happens. Scientists call these reasons "Theories". No single theory explains everything we see happening in Evolution, but like with bridges and the reason they stay standing, it takes a number of theories (or reasons) to explain every reason evolution happens. Like trusses, suspension, arch and other theories explaining the ways bridges stand, Darwinism (Survival of the fittest or natural selection), mutation (random changes in genetic code to create a new attribute - whether advantageous or not) and other lesser-known theories all explain a part of why evolution happens. Using the term "theory" is scientifically correct, but to the layman makes it sound like there is some uncertainty about it. There isn't.


Getting back to the article, Ms. Kirby points all of this out in a more high-brow manner, but makes the same case. But she leaves out some background about Christianity which, I think, would have made a more eye-popping, "Holy crap!" case for most people.


First of all, there are those who take the Bible literally. That is, they say it explains and describes everything exactly as it happened. Then there are those who say it's apocryphal. It's a collection of parables intending us to lead a better life provided you follow the teachings of Jesus. But no matter how you slice it, there is one point of convergence for Christians and Christians in particular.


It's pretty clear, whether you believe in the literal interpretation or are a member of of the apocryphal crowd that the only reason the Old Testament exists is to set up the coming of the Christ - the Redeemer. But there's something else that's glossed over: The reason we need a redeemer in the first place. That reason is Original Sin.


All Christians believe that no man born of woman is sin-free. They are conceived in original sin, and are tainted with the sins of their fathers and their father's father and their father's father's father ad infinitum. In short, we're all born sinners. Why's that? Because of the fall of Adam and Eve - who both lived in "innocence" until the infamous Apple incident (which makes me wonder about Steve Jobs, the snake and Jobs' choice of logo, but that's another blog), after which they realized they were naked, and got busy. That was Original Sin. We needed the Redeemer to redeem Mankind from the taint of Original Sin arising from the Fall of Man. That Redeemer was Christ, and that is why Christians are called Christians: "Followers of Christ".


This is the foundation upon which ALL versions of Christianity stand. It is the bedrock upon which all Christian faith is built.


So we have the fact of evolution. It's undeniable. It's proven. Like gravity, you may want to ignore it, but like gravity, it's going to affect you even if you try to ignore it or deny it. And we have Christian faith built entirely on the foundation of Original Sin and the need for a Redeemer from that Sin.


Now, to quote Ms. Kirby's article:

"Evolution poses a further threat to Christianity, though, a threat that goes to the very heart of Christian teaching. Evolution means that the creation accounts in the first two chapters of Genesis are wrong. That's not how humans came into being, nor the cattle, nor the creeping things, nor the beasts of the earth, nor the fowl of the air. Evolution could not have produced a single mother and father of all future humans, so there was no Adam and no Eve. No Adam and Eve: no fall. No fall: no need for redemption. No need for redemption: no need for a redeemer. No need for a redeemer: no need for the crucifixion or the resurrection, and no need to believe in that redeemer in order to gain eternal life. And not the slightest reason to believe in eternal life in the first place. "

Thus falls Christianity.


Way back when, my first blog post was "The Simple Truth". It tried to explain the reason we have a spiritual side, the need for expressing spirituality, and a "better" way of addressing that need. Christianity is merely one way of addressing the need to express spirituality.


Christianity has taken on the aura of sacred over the years simply because it's been around for so long, but the fact is, it hasn't. It's changed many times, often radically. The First Church was Catholicism, and even that has changed quite a bit since the time of the founding of the papacy in Rome. (At first, priests were allowed to marry, and they had female priests - both allowances abolished by later popes). The schism that broke the Catholics was Martin Luther, creating the Protestant Church (The Lutheran Church was the first Protestant Church), which itself underwent multiple schisms as each society tried to reconcile the word of the Bible with the way they expressed their spirituality. But no matter how different their rituals were, or their administrative practices, or their costumes or their songs, they all had one thing in common: Belief in Christ as the Redeemer of Man for Original Sin.


The bottom line is Christianity can be disproved. The need to address one's spiritual side (assuming, of course, there IS a spiritual side - or any sort of afterlife) remains. Evolution isn't going to do it, nor will Christianity (and, by inference, all of the major religions since all major religions rely on biblical accounts of creation as part of the foundation of their mythology, though not to the extent Christians do). But with yet another major religion destroyed at the very root of its dogma, how many more will we have to go through before we stop putting our faith in gods and devils and start doing the work necessary to make our lives, and the lives of our kids and their kids and their kid's kids ad infinitum better?


The time will come when the Bible, the Torah and the Koran will be seen as nothing more than a mash-up of impossibilities, thoroughly discredited as paths of any kind of "enlightenment" and spiritual dead ends simply because they rely on invisible sky friends, and a strong, powerful central religious "government" which control their believers very thoughts. Science will prove them wrong about everything. When you have proof, faith is the casualty, and faith in impossible, disproved things will no longer be acceptable.


But with the utterly factual deconstruction of the foundation of Christianity, it's obvious that people will have to find better reasons to be nice to one another than because it's "What Jesus Would Do".