Reasonable Doubt

Without sounding like I'm trying too hard to be the voice of reason here, I'd like to add my two cents to a debate that's been going on for a while. I know that nobody ever actually asks my opinion in these matters, but on this particular debate, given my rather long and somewhat dissatisfied history with the subject, I want to have a go at finding an alternative to all the squabbling.

I've been through this all before. Did God create all that we see, or some big bang way back when? The real question, though, is what the hell do we teach our kids? I think that so many of the normal folk realize that we can never truly know the answer to the first question (that is, until we die, when we can't really come back to tell everybody else), and thus, the second question becomes so much harder. Do we teach them evolutionary "theory" or do we teach them "intelligent design?"

For whatever reason, the debate has touched a nerve in the American populace (while the rest of the world looks on thinking 'what's their problem?'). I have my theories on that one, but they'll have to wait. Some people are adament: evolution is not just a theory, it's proven fact. Others hold the opposite: evolution isn't even science, but that it itself is religion, and not very good religion at that.

I've been thinking. I do that. It's a problem because it keeps me from going to sleep at night (but at least it gives you something to read). But it seems to me that the question keeps coming back to everybody's definitions of the word "religion." Really, the definitions of a lot of words - neither side of the debate speaks the same language, not really - but for now, "religion" is a good place to start. If you go by a reasonably broad definition of religion - say, a belief system involving an element of faith or trust that one can't know all the answers but looks at what they see to extrapolate the rest - then I'd say sure, evolutionary theory, creationism, intelligent design, and aliens all fit into the "religion" category. Maybe not aliens, but I suppose we can all see what we want.

I personally think that there are six major religions of the world: judaism (deifies "Jehovah"), christianity/christendom (deifies "I AM"), Islam (deifies "Allah"), Buddhism (deifies the intellect), Hinduism (has lots of deities), and atheism (deifies science and the self). There are lots of variations on that, but those are the biggies. My personal background, like many in the US, is christendom. I grew up going to a presbyterian church every week (with the few rare exceptions where I managed to beg/cajole/plead my way out of it), but at the same time, barely heard much about creation. Aside from the occasional "God created everything," I didn't hear much else from a 'christian' perspective on the matter. I learned the standard evolution model taught in new york schools. It was about high school that I started taking an interest in the subject, when I started wondering if perhaps my beloved science and my not-so beloved religion had any conflicts. For the next four years I read and studied and examined the two sides of the debate. I talked with teachers, fellow students, pastors - anybody who would listen (my poor parents had their ears questioned off, and I still remember 3am conversations with my mother on the specifics of the Genesis account, when my half-asleep father would come in begging her to come to bed).

I came to the conclusion that God had indeed created everything, but that Genesis doesn't mention "how" - science could shed light on that in the evolutionary theory. So I bopped along for awhile, happy that I'd figured it out, and then, tragedy struck - I entered college and was hit by a problem with the argument. It turns out that, due to a rather interesting logical fallacy, you can't just mesh the two arguments together like that. So, with the debate renewed, I continued to study.

I'm still not sure I've landed anywhere solid - and nobody really ever can, which is why I pretty much stepped away from the debate for about two years - but at the moment I consider myself an old-earth creationist. I don't buy into the whole "6000-year old" earth mumbo jumbo; the evidence is too overwhelming on both sides for that to be true (we all know the science, but did you know that "yom", the hebrew word for "day", can also mean "age"? it makes Genesis 1 read really differently).

I think this is where my insight might be useful. In all my searching, reading, discussing, etc, I discovered a little piece of information that could prove itself to be the solution: science needs the evolutionary theory to uphold a lot of other theories that seem to be working out just fine, which is one reason that scientists hold on to evolution so tightly - they need it, badly. However, the parts of it that they need don't really have much to do with apes or big bangs. The parts they need have a lot to do with genetics, cell biology, adaptation theory, and that sort of thing - the raw data, not the theory.

See, evolution has two parts: microevolution (survival of the fittest, called "natural selection") and macroevolution (accumulation of natural selection, genetic variation, and whatnot; and it usuall talks about apes starting to talk). This is the solution:

In schools, we need to do three things:
1) acknowledge that none of us really have the answers to life, the universe, and everything
2) remove the theories of origin from science classes and instead teach the genetics, the natural selection, and the stuff that's useful to science but that isn't terribly controversial
3) begin a manditory religion class (teaching all six major world religions, which is where we can then include theories of origins)

I think this solves a lot of problems. It acknowledges that religion is important, that it affects more than just what you do on sunday, \ that you can't just lump it into a history class (because there is so much to learn about), and it allows kids exposure to a greater amount of culture. It also clears up the issue of whether or not we evolved - nobody knows for sure. Some scientists are so sure, and some creationists are so sure, but in the end, they weren't there, and they're still just guessing. Some are guessing harder and smarter than others, but they're still just guessing. It moves the information in question into an arena that allows kids to expand their minds and think, to work through the arguments and maybe even grow a little. We can do science in science class, philosophy and religion (and therefore controversey) into their own class.

In the end, I know that whatever we do, nobody will be happy about it. Creationists usually are the sorts of people that think their kids are being corrupted by the public school system anyway, and so if worlds like "evolution" or "sex" or "homosexuals" are ever mentioned without saying "God doesn't like ___" in front of them, the parents freak out. Likewise, scientists have a rather unhealthy habit of making anyone who claims any sort of deity to be a fool unworthy to be in the presence of the wise scientist. BOTH attitudes are unhealthy, unwise, and frankly, appallingly annoying. It's time to start thinking of everybody involved, not just one side or the other.

We still have to live together, ya know.

Just Plain Nuts

I've noticed an inordinate number of crazy people around these days. Maybe Liz and I keep wandering into the wrong places at the wrong times, but it seems like we almost attract people who don't quite have it together.

For example, we were on the train the other day on our way home from somewhere and Liz decides to snuggle up next to me in the seat. Nothing out of the ordinary, we see far worse (you wouldn't believe the PDA from some of the high schoolers) on a regular basis. Just as I reach over and kiss her forehead, this lady with a very worried expression on her face smacks Liz in the shoulder (not taps, not politely shakes, smacks) and says "stop that, you're disturbing me!" Liz asked what we were doing to disturb her. "You're doing all that kissing and cuddling, stop it! It makes me unhappy!" Liz mumbled something to the effect of "sorry" and took her head off my shoulder as I grabbed her hand.

I've never had that happen before. I'm quite sure in my high school days that I engaged in far worse acts of affection in public than simply kissing my wife's forehead, but for some reason the lady couldn't take even that.

Another example, Liz and I are again on a train on our way home when a lady, face covered in paint, asks us in a slightly agitated voice, "how old is your dog?" We always have Wisdom with us, with little exception, and so naturally she attracts a lot of attention. But the lady has eyes that are a bit wild, and she's holding a plastic bag. I'm thinking "ok, weird, maybe she's just got back from painting ... at 9pm in the evening ..." as Liz politely explains what it is she's doing with Wisdom and launches into her now-memorized little blurb about SEDA. The lady takes one more look, mumbles something unintelligable, and shuffles over a bit. Then, she sticks an aerosol bottle into the bag, squeezes, and then inhales from the top, just as the train is stopping at our station. I almost said, "wait, you know that's going to make you dizzy," when suddenly a few things started snapping into place in my mind and, as quietly as I could, said "oh. I get it." Liz smirked and pushes the button to open the door, and we got off, putting as much distance behind us as quickly as we could.

Another time, Liz told me she was on the train and a man started yelling at his sandwich and then threw it at her, knocking her in the head. He stopped, pulled out another one, yelled at it a bit, then threw it at the lady sitting across from him, startling her out of her wits. I'm not sure quite what the sandwiches had done, but apparently they warranted such treatment. Later, he retreived the two sandwiches and resumed somewhere in another compartment.

We've seen more than that, but those are the examples that stick out in my mind. I heard somebody say that some politician has been closing mental institutions around Melbourne to save money. I wouldn't be too surprised if that was the case. But it's weird, it seems almost like as they let them go, they point them towards Coburg. "There's two Americans there, stay on the trains and make them feel welcome."

Surgery

There's a certain amount of delicacy that one has to worry about when changing one's entire lifestyle to reflect his beliefs. That, in a way, is why I'm here in Melbourne. I'm really not much of a missionary; I'm horrible at meeting new people, I prefer my computer's dimly lit screen or my guitar's easy company to the company of lots of new people, and I don't deal well with impulsiveness. I'm a man of my schedule, of my habits, and I'm not that great at recognizing evangelistic opportunities when I see them, unless they're the "hey, you're a Christian, tell me about Jesus" variety.

But I think, by some freak chance, this may be one of those rare occasions that I've taken some initiative and handed control of my life over to somebody else. The occasion, by the way, is a chance I have to work with Urban Seed as my mission project for my FORGE internship. It's a big change in my lifestyle; the simple act of helping prepare lunch with both business-types and the poverty types and drug addicts is ... well, a hard thing for me. But I have to remember that change is a constant, and that everybody has to endure it, like it or not. That being said, there are three sorts of people in this world: those that willingly change, those for whom change is hard, but do it when they notice it's necessary, and those that refuse to change and get dragged along behind the train.

Sometimes I'd put myself in category 2, like right now, but mostly I'm a category #3. I'm horrible at change; I've only ever changed my hair style once, it took mom ages to convince me that sweatpants were really just not a good idea for public use, and I still think that comfort is more important than style. Incidentally, stubbornness and one's fashion-sense shouldn't go hand-in-hand.

Getting me to change my mind on things, usually, is the hardest thing ever. It's like a delicate surgury, where the doctors are all dressed up in their clean-suits, gloves on hands, and they're trying to replace one part of my body (my heart) with a new and better one. They have to do it slowly and carefully, without much chance for error, lest their charge die a horrible death.

It's not a lot of comfort that lots of people think change is supposed to be like a triage center, where we brutally rip the person open, quickly "fix" what's inside, and then move on to the next victim - I mean patient. One of the things that worries me about so many American emergent-types is that they tend to be all for disbanding every church in America and revamping the whole system themselves, as if everybody would agree or be out: sensible Christians would agree, and to hell with the rest of them, they're giving us a bad image. I must confess, when I first began to agree with emergent- and missional philosophy, I was one of these. I thought, ya know, this is the way to go, and every church should do it just like I think it should be done and think the way I think.

It's just not realistic. I've come to realize that it just doesn't happen that everybody is on the same page. We have to learn to accept each other's differences if we're to work together for the common goal: a world unified in Christ. Some people are harder to work with than others, but in general, I've found that if we put behind differences like "pre-trib vs. post-trib" or "baptism by immersion vs. sprinkling" or "evolution vs. creation," we find that we quite like working together, especially when we get our hands dirty when we work together with real people instead of theories. My friend Ruth is moving her family to Thailand to work with orphans. The thing is, she'll be living and working with Seventh-Day Adventists. She's a Wesleyan. If you know anything about denominations and their theology, you'll know it's not much of a match. Yet still she goes, because they have a common creator, a common savior, and a common goal.

The irony is that, in saying this, I'm asking everybody to agree to my position. I know that won't happen, but I hope that many will try. I know it's hard, and many times we'll just have to part company. If anything, maybe this will just help make that parting a little more agreeable and less spiteful. Hopefully with so many different ideas, somebody is bound to be right, or more likely, we've all got some part of it right and maybe collectively, with our little bits of truth combined, we'll start seeing some bigger part of the picture of God's plan ...