No Contest

The 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth has beeen widely celebrated. And so also, though he hesitated long before publishing it, is his book about the theory of Evolution which has caused religious people - not just Christians - so much difficulty.

I confess myself quite astonished that it should still be so. It is not just that we now know a great deal more than Darwin could, about the process which seems to have taken place. But we also know a great deal more about the nature of Religion, about History, and about human consciousness. I find it very hard to understand how people living today can still have trouble with the so-called conflict between Scientific knowledge and Religion.

It was naiive of me, I guess, but I had supposed that such things were literally History. The stuff of a bygone age when folk had had an excuse for not knowing better, but nothing more. For me, denying Evolution has always seemed as daft as pretending that Atomic bombs can't explode.

But here we are in the first years of the 21st century, with folk all over the place wanting Creationism taught in schools; Christian folk wanting to teach that God made the cosmos in six weekdays; people knowing so little of the nature of religious faith that they still need to imagine there is only one kind of truth which is only gotten by trying to understand Holy Scriptures literally.

Well, I have never thought it my business to tell the congregation what they are allowed to think about or how they should go about it, and I shall not do either now.
But I do declare, that I am weary of folk who want to fight all over again the battles of religious understanding which our Fathers fought and sorted. I am weary of folk who want us to interpret Christina Scripture literally. I am even weary of trying to be charitable about such issues. They are batty. Just batty. They may even be well-meaning, but that changes nothing; they are still batty, even if it is well-intentioned batty. I have had it with fundamentalists, Christians or any other sort. It is time they grew up and tried using the minds God gave them. Richard Dawkins is not the only one who thinks they have a screw loose.

I suppose it will not be the last time I have to try to say it. But I will try again. I really do not think there is any conflict between Scientific understanding and Religious understanding. There is a difference: broadly, the science asks How? and the Religious asks Why? But there is no conflict.

Which bit of that is hard to grasp? It is hard, of course, if you have a closed mind and the sort of simplistic religion it is easy to follow. But there you go. Real faith is bound to make your head hurt sometimes. If it does, tough. The other sort of faith ain't worth a candle.