When Your Church is Wrong, Say So!

The argument between science and "Intelligent Design" is too often limited to whether religious beliefs belong in public schools. That's only half the story and the other half is much worse. Some religious beliefs are so misguided that they don't belong in churches any more than they belong in schools.

Biblical Literalism damages not only young people who should be learning real science, it also harms young and old who should be learning genuine Christianity. Literalism is to Christianity as steroid use is to baseball.

The fundamentalist movement, which has infected all the Abrahamic religions, is only about 200-300 years old, born of the inability of a few to cope with modernization and the rapid advance of scientific knowledge at the end of the Renaissance. It has nothing to do with Biblical truths; it is a distortion of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, perpetrated by the unscrupulous on the uneducated.

To reduce the Creation story, for example, to a mere history or geology lesson is to gut it of its inherent beauty. The Genesis authors borrowed a more ancient Sumerian/Babylonian myth and added God’s assertion that creation is good, plus strong statements about male-female equality and our duty to care for the planet.

Likewise, the great Exodus myth begins with the core Judeo-Christian value that God hurts when one group of people oppresses another. Moses was told to free the people because God couldn’t stand hearing their cries anymore. The Hebrew Bible is about nothing if not lofty notions such as freedom, justice and equality.

Ultimately, the beautiful Jesus myth, exaggerated and edited during the first three centuries as it may be, calls people to extraordinary living, a message sorely needed in the 21^st century. Though the story’s historical integrity is being called into question today as we learn that most of the biographical details were lifted almost verbatim from older god/man myths from more ancient cultures, the message is still compelling. “Love your enemies.” “Do good to those who harm you.” “We, though many, are one.” “You will be judged by how you feed and clothe the least ones.” “Forgive and you will be forgiven.”

To glorify the messenger (“only begotten Son of God”) while distorting the message (“all are sons/daughters of God”) is idolatry. But that's what fundamentalism does. To reduce the great Creation story to a mere geology or history lesson is to deny its beauty. To make that the extent of the religion lesson and never tell children that the Earth is good is to teach an impoverished, distorted faith, unlike the faith of our ancestors who understood the power of myth.

Why does all this matter to more than science teachers? The danger of replacing original Christian teachings with this recently-invented distortion is experienced not only in science classes but globally. One need only count the dead and wounded as misguided religious fundamentalists in Washington wage war on misguided religious fundamentalists in the Middle East to see just how dangerous it is.

# posted by Truth Chaser @ 5:31 PM