So what does it matter if a small group of people spend
their lives gathering donations to promote unworkable theories of how the laws
of physics and biology can fit their need to prove a 6 day creation? If it was just about that I would live and
let live – people are free to believe and interpret their faith however they
wish to – until it becomes harmful to others.
The climate in the American Bible Belt has become very
literal in its expression of faith, here they have campaigns seeking to teach
creationism in science classes, or even to have evolution taken out, here is
the heart of Christian home school curricula that reduce science and claim that
poetic language in various parts of the Bible are claims to scientific
fact.
The same people who promote creationism as the only valid Christian view of the beginnings of life, are part of the Moral Majority, the Religious Right – the process by which evangelical Christians have been recruited into co-dependency with the Republican party. A journey that has led many of them to see Donald Trump as almost messianic, despite much in his lifestyle that would be condemned by their moral values. Meanwhile any Democrat is evil, despite Biden being in church much more often than Trump ever would – but then Biden is Catholic and many of them don’t consider catholics as part of their faith.
The attack on Evolution has morphed into a general anti
science stance, enforcing the idea that scientists are trying to edit out God,
and that science and faith are incompatible.
Science goes back to prechristian thinkers, whilst a lot of mathematics and
astronomy was advanced by Islamic scholars whilst Christendom was said to be in
the ‘Dark Ages’. Time moved on and much
of scientific study for centuries was linked to the monasteries – this people
set aside from regular labour in the fields, more educated, scribes of the
ancient Greek texts preserved by the Islamic scholars, and the desire to seek
out more understanding of God’s creation – the world around them. The idea that science is at war with faith is
relatively recent, and yes Darwin’s theory was a landmark in that, though
Darwin was a man of Christian faith.
So parts of the church responded by proclaiming that evolution and the geology
of an ancient earth could not be true, leading them to cling more and more to a
literal view of the earliest stories of the Bible. They became sceptical of science, whilst
happy to benefit from uncontroversial aspects -computers, internet, medical
progress. This contradictory mindset has been ripe for those rebelling against
the science of these Covid times – the anti vaxxers who protest against even
others getting the jab; the anti maskers who complain that their rights are
being infringed; the church leaders who see requests to avoid gathering in
crowds as persecution from the atheist scientist cabal.
Christian literalism has contributed to situations where
people are told what to believe, taught to fear science and to expect
persecution from the big bad world. Leading to a context where to some it is
seen as Christian to defy the scientific advice about covid. - leading to huge variations in state % of vaccinations. Okay no authority
or country has had a perfect response to the pandemic, we all have to consider
what is best at any point in this journey, and I am sure that hindsight will
judge the flaws. However where vast parts of a population have already been conditioned
to see science as bad, as anti-christian, then the ability of any authority to
seek co-operation in protecting lives and limiting the spread of illness is neutered. This is what we see in the extreme parts of American evangelicalism,
running churches that ban the wearing of masks, and prophesy about Trump–
until he said he was vaccinated and boosted, when new theories grow.
So yes our view of Genesis may be a private faith matter,
however the militant young earth creationists do affect others lives, and in
Covid that has become very clear.
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