On Science and The Scriptures
Audrey Yu
I have long wished to write an article on this topic, namely on the connection between science and religion. Indeed, many people have written similar articles, usually to justify the truth of their respective religion(s). These articles are often polemical, derogatory, long-winded and boring. In my 35 years of life, I have met many unbelieving friends, many of whom are better human beings than me—people of virtue, compassion and strong moral character. The last thing I want to do is write a self-righteous or offensive article. I hope this article can get all of us—believers of all religions and nonbelievers alike—to think together, in an atmosphere of peace and harmony.
My university major was physics, and my undergraduate thesis (Final Year Project) was on the field of neutrinos,[1] so my naturally scientific mind has long pondered on the aforementioned topics. The “scientific” argument against religions goes like this: In the past, people had very limited scientific knowledge. They didn’t understand why the sun appeared in the morning and then “disappeared” at night, why the seasons change, etc. So they use religious myths to “explain” natural phenomena, hence the myth of Hades and Persephone, the sun god and the moon goddess, etc. Each culture has a different way of “explaining” the natural phenomena which their primitive science couldn’t understand, hence the differences between religions. As science progressed and our understanding of the world grows, we know exactly why the sun rises and sets, how planets rotate and revolve around the sun, etc. Therefore, we no longer need these “myths”. One day, scientific knowledge will be complete, and we will no longer have any need for religions. In the meantime, it is OK to “use” religions as a means of personal comfort, but please be aware that the only reason we need religious comfort at the moment is because our scientific knowledge is still incomplete. One day, our descendants with more perfect scientific knowledge will surely laugh at us as being “superstitious”, and religions will be made superfluous, redundant and unnecessary.
Fair enough. What the aforementioned argument forgets, however, is despite all the differences, all religions (regardless of culture, era and country) agree on at least three main truths:
- The cruelty of the universe
Our world is a cruel and merciless place. Animals survive by preying on smaller animals, and all flesh that lives is destined to die and decay (i.e. preyed upon by microorganisms after death). The same sun that makes plants grow also scorch the earth and make them wither; the same rain that helps greenery flourish also cause destructive floods and landslides.
This year, for example, is the year of the Rabbit. How cute are these beautiful animals! But rabbits in the wild are prey animals, they rarely live more than a few years.[2] What about swans, these graceful creatures that are often immortalized in love stories? In nature, half of baby swans (cygnets) fail to reach adulthood.[3]Indeed, whenever we marvel at the peaceful waters of a river, lake or ocean surface, be mindful that a war of survival is always going on beneath that seemingly calm surface, with bigger fish feeding on smaller fish, which feeds on even smaller fish and plankton and krill, and so on.
All religions lament this underlying law of cruelty and predation that permeates our visible universe. Even if we live our whole lives as vegans who never eat animal products, animals will still eat and hunt other animals: this is their means of survival. This is how nature works in our world. No matter how advanced our technology, the underlying law of cruelty and predation permeating our world will never change. Viruses will continue to mutate, seeking to survive and looking for new hosts. From the microscopic level to the macroscopic, our universe is filled with cruelty, predation and injustice. Whatever life and happiness we have here is fleeting and unpredictable, and will soon be taken away by accident, illness or death. This is true for all living creatures—human beings, animals, plants, bacteria, viruses and all microscopic organisms.
- It was not that way in the beginning!
Just as all religions lament the fact that our current world is merciless and cruel, they all affirm that it wasn’t this way in the beginning: this world’s deplorable state of cruelty and predation is not the way it was meant to be. Once upon a time, animals didn’t need to kill each other in order to survive; once upon a time, there was no cruelty, injustice, disease, pain or death. Something catastrophic happened that caused our world to be the way it is today. In Christianity, this catastrophe in called the Fall of Man, which happened when human beings wanted to set the standard of good and evil in God’s place (“to be like God”).[4] In Buddhism, this catastrophe happened because of ignorance and greed.[5] The ancient Greeks tried to explain this catastrophe through the myth of Pandora’s box.
All the religions affirm that there is a world (or a state of being) free from the underlying cruelty of predation, pain and death that permeates our visible world. In this other world, happiness lasts forever, and everything is pure and pleasant. All creatures live in harmony with one another. There will be no boredom, for we will not feel the passing of time; we will be free from Time and its constraints. There will be no cruelty or degradation, no pain or illness or death. There will be everlasting justice, love, truth, beauty, and all that is good. This other world goes by many names: heaven, paradise, nirvana, Elysium, moksha, the Pure Land. But this world exists, and it is possible to get there.
- The flesh is just a container of something eternal
All flesh in this world is bound to die and decay. But all the religions affirm that the flesh is merely a container, a receptacle of something eternal. We must tend to that eternal essence within us, not to the flesh that is so temporary. This is why all religions advocate some sort of self-discipline, such as fasting (to curb the appetite of the flesh) and temperance. Because if we spend too much time and energy pursuing the pleasures of the flesh, we won’t have the inclination to pursue that which is eternal, which can bring us to a better world.
Despite vast differences in culture, geography and eras, all religions agree on the 3 main truths above. It’s as if we’re all always hungry for the same thing, and we all have an idea of the function and effect of that otherworldly food which will eventually satisfy us, although we use different expressions to describe the taste and texture of this heavenly food. It’s quite astonishing, isn’t it, that all the hundreds of billions of human beings that have ever existed since the beginning of time, who don’t know one another, all hunger for the same thing, and describe the desired food in similar ways?[6] This is definitely something worth thinking about.
***
Now, on to the next topic: How does the Biblical story in Genesis correspond to what science tells us about our origins? In this part of this essay, I will offer my interpretation of this matter.[7]
You may have heard some Christians say that the Bible is not a science book. “Whyever not?” you may ask. “Is this not simply a shortcut to evade the fact that the Bible is filled with inaccurate myths?” Now, let us think about what would happen if the Bible provides an exhaustive explanation of how the world came to be, like in this article by the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.[8] How many people would be able to read and understand it? The Bible wants to give the hope of salvation to all people regardless of culture, era, intellectual background or ability.[9] Therefore, it explains in simple, countable numbers: days and years, hundreds and thousands, not eons or parsecs or billions of years. Being the Word of God, however, it does not contain untruths or falsehoods. Let us now look at how the first four chapters of Genesis, which explain the origin of the world and mankind, stand to scrutiny.
Genesis 1 explains, in very simple terms, how the world was created. It was created in an orderly manner, with everything existing in blessed harmony. In Genesis 2, the life of the first human beings were described: they lived in the paradise of Eden, in fellowship with God and one another. Note that in Hebrew, the word Adam means “man”, while Eve means “living one” or “source of life.” So Adam and Eve here are a metaphor for human beings—men and women—who existed before the Fall in a glorified state, living in harmony with God and with one another.[10]
In Genesis 3, human beings wanted to be “like God”, setting the standard of good and evil in God’s place. This sin sets forth a chain of catastrophe: first, the ground is cursed (Gen 3:17), it now produces “thorns and thistles” (3:18) and is prone to disaster and barrenness. Secondly, the animal world is cursed (3:14): animals now must kill in order to survive.[11] Thirdly, human beings are cursed: they become mortal—indeed, no more than dust (3:19). Physically, we become specks of dust in a cold and merciless universe, alienated from our divine origins. God became distant, hidden and invisible to our mortal eyes; indeed, even the most religious people sometimes do not feel His presence. We must toil and compete in order to survive, and can enjoy happiness only for a short time before our time comes to die and decay, just like the rest of creation. The “pessimistic” writer of Ecclesiastes describes our cursed situation after the Fall most appropriately:
Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; humans have no advantage over animals. Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return. Who knows if the human spirit rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?” (Ecc 3:19-21)
Genesis 4 describes cursed mankind in more detail: humankind is now prone to hatred, uncontrolled anger and murder, the total reverse to the harmonious relationship described in Genesis 1-2. God doesn’t want people to live forever in this state of depravity, so the tree of life (bequeathing immortality) is forbidden until mankind is redeemed to a glorious state (Gen 3:24, cf. Revelation 22:2, 14). Indeed, wouldn’t it be horrendous to live forever in a cursed universe, where creatures continually hate and kill one another![12] Finally, Genesis 5 described the degradation of humankind through the (probably metaphorical) narration of a continually decreasing lifespan.
Now, you may ask, where does the scientific theory of evolution fit in here? What do you think? Our observable universe has always been marked by the law of cruelty and predation, of evolution and dissolution, of pain, death and decay. Therefore, the evolution of our current universe happens after the Curse in Genesis 3, that is, after the Fall of Man. The people who transgressed at that time all died, as the Lord had warned them would happen (Gen 2:17). Upon their transgression and death, that Eden of Paradise disappeared and became inaccessible, and the cursed universe entered the first stages of its current evolution.
It also made sense that cursed humankind arrived quite late into the evolutionary timeline. In Genesis 1, we see human beings created last, as the crown of all creation. They were made in God’s image and likeness (Gen 1:26) to rule over all creation. It’s as if everything had been created first in preparation for humankind’s growth, pleasure and enjoyment. However, in a cursed evolutionary timeline, we indeed appear last, but only to hunt and be hunted! Our first ancestors were hunter gatherers who had to hunt to survive, and were themselves vulnerable to being hunted by other animals. In a cursed universe, we appeared as prone, degraded and vulnerable, unlike what we were first created to be.
In the Bible, however, Genesis 4 starts with “Adam lay with his wife Eve, and she became pregnant…,” as though the evolutionary timeline never happened. This “skip” is related to the Bible’s primary purpose as a book that offers hope to mankind, not to animals, plants or other microorganisms. Therefore, it “skipped” over the evolutionary timeline of our cursed universe, and simply started describing the effects of this curse on man’s hearts: hatred, anger, deceit, murder and so on. Of course, the human beings who first inhabited our cursed universe were different from those who existed in the Paradise of Eden. “Adam” and “Eve” (which means “man” and “source of life” respectively) are simply stand-ins for men and women in general. The Bible simplifies all this information, just like a short brochure that describes how complex machinery works, so as to be accessible to all. Just imagine what would happen if the Bible describes every phenomena in great detail! It would become an abstruse book that nobody understands, which would defeat its purpose as a source of hope, comfort and salvation to all people.[13]
Since our current observable universe is a product of the Curse, thoroughly permeated by the law of cruelty and predation, it would be futile to try to find traces of Eden through scientific inquiry or archaeological excavation: we would simply find traces of life from the same cursed timeline. The only traces of our divine origins lie in our hearts and souls, which is why, despite differences in culture, eras and geography, we all hunger for the same things. Indeed, it is difficult to expunge these divine traces from our hearts—even nonbelievers often express the hope that their deceased loved ones go to a “better place,” and wish them a “safe journey”. The belief that this cruel universe is not our origin or destination persists, for we were created in the image of an eternal God. The question, of course, is what to do with this universal hunger and hope. Do we look for the right food, which will satisfy our souls and lead us to eternal life?
Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever. (Daniel 12:3)
[1] http://physics.wm.edu/Seniorthesis/Senior%20Theses%202004/Lukito-Audrey.pdf
[2] “Rabbits are prey animals whose predators include foxes, dogs, cats, birds of prey and stoats.” Source: https://www.gov.scot/publications/pet-rabbit-welfare-guidance/pages/2/
[3] “Swans face many risks during their first few months alive, and as many as 50% of all cygnets die within three months of hatching.” Source: https://birdfact.com/articles/how-long-do-swans-live
[4] Described in Genesis 3 of the Bible. Theologians have always interpreted the desire to “know” good and evil (Gen 3:5) by eating of the corresponding “tree of knowledge of good and evil” (Gen 2:17) in this way.
[5] The Buddhist worldview is well explained in Donald S. Lopez, “The Universe,” The Story of Buddhism (NY: Harper San Francisco, 2001), 19-36. I quote an excerpt from that article: “According to a widely known creation myth, the first humans in the present period of abiding had a life span of eighty thousand years. Free from the marks of gender, they were able to fly and were illuminated by their own light; there was no need for a sun or moon.”
[6] The Christian Bible describes this universal phenomenon as God’s “setting eternity in the human heart” (Ecclesiastes 3:11). See also Romans 1:20.
[7] The writer of this essay holds a Master of Theological Studies degree in World Religions from the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, USA, as well as a Bachelor of Science degree in physics from the College of William and Mary in Virginia, USA.
[8] Early Life on Earth—Animal Origins, https://naturalhistory.si.edu/education/teaching-resources/life-science/early-life-earth-animal-origins.
[9] Cf. John 21:25: Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written. Also John 20:30-31.
[10] Taking Adam and Eve literally as meaning 1 man and 1 woman would lead to the conclusion that “their” children had to marry each other in order to procreate and populate the earth. This act of incest is expressly forbidden in the Bible (Leviticus 20:17, 19). Therefore, I don’t think this is the case here.
[11] This curse, of course, will be reversed in Paradise, when “the wolf will live with the lamb”, and no harm will come to any creation (Isaiah 11:6-9).
[12] Somehow, this reminds me of JRR Tolkien’s elves, who despite their long lives eventually grew weary of Middle Earth (the cursed world of killing and depravity) and sought to leave.
[13] 1 Timothy 2:3-4