Liquid worship - Tim Ross’s talk on Christianity and science. Part3

Truth is a Roundabout Sign – Is Genesis “True”?

What exactly do we mean if we say “Genesis is true”?

Poet Maya Angelou said this:

“There's a world of difference between truth and facts.

• Facts can obscure the truth.”
• “The truth is very important. No matter how negative it is, it is imperative that you learn the truth, not necessarily the facts. I mean that that can come, but facts can stand in front of the truth and almost obscure the truth.”

The statement “Genesis is true” can be understood in at least three different ways:

1. “Genesis is true” means that it is literally and historically true (Theological Fundamentalism).

The fundamentalist viewpoint is that God created everything in six twenty-four periods, and there have been no further acts of creation since.

Criticism: Evidence for a universe billions of years old is too strong, unless the whole of science is a conspiracy. One example is that if the earth is only thousands of years old and there was no evolution then dinosaur extinction would have to be accounted for by The Flood. This would imply that there were people living at the time the earliest dinosaurs (and other prehistoric life) existed, but there are no fossilised humans. Also, the fundamentalist theory does not explain the several separate extinctions, which occurred.

2. “Genesis is true” means though not literally true, it explains an important truth about the world in which we live. It should be regarded as a myth in exactly the same way that the stories of Egyptian, Greek and Roman mythology are.

I.E. It didn’t happen at all, they are just stories told to explain processes in the world which appear to have no explanation – Where did the world come from? What are stars? Where does the sun go at the end of the day? Who or what controls our fate and destiny? Science has found answers to most of these questions, making the stories (and faith) redundant (Rational or Epistemological Fundamentalism).

Criticism: Genesis is made out to be little more than a fairy tale.

2a. Tweaked myth explanation (popular with some theologians) – it did not happen historically or literally in any way, but the stories still contain spiritual truths relevant for today (Theological Liberalism). What they are saying is that whilst Genesis is not literally true, it contains truth. That status of Genesis has now been elevated from the fairy tale level, but it is still not much more than a fable.

3. “Genesis is true” means though the events may not have happened precisely as they are written, the account is nevertheless absolutely true in a deep spiritual and theological sense. This is a sense of truth that is more important than the exact details of how it all happened.

Genesis 1-3 is an account of events that did happen in some form or other, though they are portrayed symbolically or ideally.

The explanation in Genesis is true in the same way that the road sign for a roundabout is true.

 The sign shows a real and actual roundabout; though the sign for the roundabout is not the roundabout itself. It doesn’t show what the roundabout is really like, yet it represents the roundabout in a very real and truthful way. You would not say that there is no roundabout. Having once seen the roundabout sign, you know that there is a roundabout, even if you don’t know what it’s actual shape is. You would not say that any of the details on the sign are inaccurate. The information on the sign, what roads lead off it, where they lead and so on, is true, but you would not want to argue that is a literal depiction of the roundabout. In fact, what the roundabout really looks like is irrelevant to the truth about the roundabout that the sign is giving. When you arrive at the roundabout, what you observe about it will not be in contradiction with the sign. The roundabout sign is therefore a true representation of the actual roundabout. It is “true”.

In the same way, Genesis is true. Genesis represents what happened at the origins of the universe in a very real and truthful way.

Genesis is true in an absolute sense that is regardless of whether the individual details happened precisely that way in history. Just as whether the roundabout exists or not does not depend on the whether the sign depicts the roundabout in a photographic way.

No one would say that the sign’s depiction of the roundabout is in conflict with what you observe about the roundabout.

Going back to what we said earlier about science and theology having different purposes. The purpose of the sign is quite different to the purpose of a photograph of the roundabout. The purpose of the sign is to tell you, as a driver, what you need to know in order to navigate the roundabout. All the information it gives for that purpose is true. In the same way, the purpose of Genesis is to give you the information you need to navigate your way through life. All the information it gives for that purpose is true.

This could be called a sacramental way of explaining of scripture.

Genesis is a sacramentally true.

Genesis is true, in a deep and fundamental way that is far more important than what happened when, because it is the truth behind the facts that make the difference to our eternal destiny.

Conclusion

“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”

• Albert Einstein
• “The wonderful arrangement and harmony of the cosmos would only originate in the plan of an almighty omniscient being. This is and remains my greatest comprehension.”
• Isaac Newton
• “We may conclude that from what science teaches us, there is in nature an order independent of man's existence, a meaningful order to which nature and man are subordinate. Both Religion and science require faith in God. For believers, God is in the beginning, and for physicists He is at the end of all considerations…..”
• Max Planck, physicist.

Resources

www.reasons.org A website dedicated to the science/religion debate with particular emphasis on Day-Age Creationism

www.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/faraday Website of the Faraday Institute of Science and Religion.