MetaCatholic

I’ve received an extremely long comment which would seem to be connected to what I said yesterday about creation and evolution (which wasn’t very much). The problem is that it doesn’t actually respond to anything I said, and the commenter tried to leave it on my About page, rather than the post. I have no intention of letting it stand as a comment on that page, and can’t quite work out how to transfer it. But since it contained a number of views with which I am not familiar, and which seem exceedingly strange to me, I thought I would make it the topic of a separate post, and invite those who know more of the varied fundamentalist views to help me out.

In what follows I will quote the comment in its entirety, but intersperse my own comments and questions. I have put in bold the bits I want to comment on: there is no bold in the original. The first chunk, since it contains a fair bit of introductory material, is quite long.

Below is a letter written to reporter Jeffery Weiss, of the Dallas Morning News. He was the moderator of a “evolution/creation” panel discussion, which was held on March 11, 2008, at the University of Dallas. Coverage is found at: http://www.udallas.edu/ministry/evolutionpanel.cfm

Much of what is said applies to all churches and institutions of learning all over the world. They open their doors to false doctrines, yet refuse to hear the truth of Genesis.

* * *

Hello Mr. Weiss.

I viewed the video of the one hour and 41 minute panel discussion, and may I say that you performed the duties of a moderator “very well”.

I must confess that my antennae quiver whenever phrases like “false doctrines”, or the “truth of Genesis” get trotted out. At this point I was beginning to assume the rest of the post would be standard creationism.

As I wrote and told you earlier, there was no one present on the panel that could accurately represent the correct view of Genesis. Dr. James McGill misrepresents the Bible by saying that the scriptures convey “..a mess,… disassociated matter, turned into a life giving, life supporting world”.

That is a position of ignorance. Where Dr. McGill leaves the realm of ignorance, and enters into the realm of false doctrine is when he says ”the Bible denies creation out of nothing”. He also makes mention of there being two “creation accounts” in Genesis. That is not true. There are no creation accounts in Genesis. Moses wrote what God had let him see while he was on Mt. Sinai in 1598 BC. Nothing in Genesis was written during the Babylonian captivity. That was another misrepresentation.

I’m not sure if McGill is accurately quoted, and it’s certainly a partial excerpt, but I fail to see how, even by fundamentalist standards, the idea that a chaotic mess is turned into a life-supporting world is in any way a misrepresentation of the story. Now I have no great desire to listen to this debate to see exactly what McGill said. Creation ex nihilo is certainly not explicit in Genesis, and in some respects there is greater support for it in Isaiah and Job among the OT scriptures. I suspect what was said was more along those lines.

I was not at all surprised the letter writer did not like the long-standing critical consensus that there are two creation stories in the opening chapters of Genesis. I was very surprised to read that there were no creation accounts. Is this view totally idiosyncratic, or have others come across it? What on earth is this story if it is not a creation account? I also loved the very precise date for the Sinai story. I found myself wondering if the author realised that there are some people who see an exilic date for Genesis as very conservative.

What Moses wrote about was the geologic history of Earth, because that is what God revealed to him. Nowhere in Genesis is there any description of the creation of Earth. The only description of the creation of anything, were the celestial bodies of our universe. Also, we CAN use science to prove the existence of God. Because it is God that reveals to mankind what occurred on Earth before modern mankind existed. Creationism is not the opposing view of evolution, but rather it is the “Observations of Moses”. God created all science, and co-authored the book of Genesis. It is the public that is perpetually kept in the dark, because they only get to hear the “skeptics”, and those that are unqualified to expound upon the Word of God.

This view is, as I said, completely new to me. I can’t believe that these views are widespread. The logic seems to be that Earth already exists as a shapeless mess at the start of the account, and God then creates the sun, moon, stars and so on. That is certainly a possible (perhaps likely) reading of the account in its pre-scientific naivety. The complete impossibility of the earth existing without the rest of the universe, however, puts an even deeper gulf between science and religion than more conventional forms of creationism. What is baffling is that in saying this, the author seems to think he is reconciling the two, so that science can prove the existence of God, that creationism is not in opposition to evolution, and that science is created by God. How one can make those affirmations while at the same time affirming the scientifically impossible, I do not know.

Finally, Genesis does not support any “young Earth” doctrine. Genesis states that there was mankind in existence on Earth before the advent of Adam and Eve. Bible scholars, creationists, and theologians, who do not understand the Genesis text, fail to convey the truth to others. That is why I tried to get Dr. Matthew Ogilvie to allow a Genesis expert to come and present the correct view of Genesis, but he refused. He, like most others of religious persuasion, don’t want the truth to be known, for it would expose their own false teachings.

Sincerely,
Herman Cummings
PO Box 1745
Fortson GA, 31808-1745

This is again an example of literalism that I have not come across before. Does Mr Cummings take the Genesis 1 account to refer to a creation of humanity separate from and prior to that of Adam and Eve in Genesis 2? This is even more mind-boggling to me than bog-standard creationism. How on earth can one explain the complete absence of a woman at the start of the second creation account, if God has already made male and female human beings? Again, I ask, is this view common or completely idiosyncratic? How can you “rescue” one text at the expense of distorting another so violently?

I am not at all surprised that the organisers of the conference declined the services of an “expert” in Genesis. But I am totally baffled that the author seems to believe he has not only reconciled religion and science, but has found a truth in Genesis obscured by “most others of religious persuasion”. His convoluted attempts at explaining the text only make it more and more obvious that it simply cannot be read literally, historically or scientifically, only poetically and theologically.