The sheer alienness of religious faith
"Evolution held a particular fear in my family because my half-brother had rejected Christianity as a result of embracing evolution. My parents were uneducated, but they warned me about the dangers I would face if I went to a school that taught evolution."
Found via the comments in Keith Devens’ blog, the Internet Monk’s viewpoint on evolution. This blanket rejection of evolution, this dogmatic insistence on the Bible being completely and literally true, is just… alien to me. We don’t get that attitude in Europe.
Which is not to say that Michael Spencer is in that camp - he’s not. In the FAQs at the end he says things like this:
How old is the earth? The age of the earth is not something I believe the Biblical writers understood or cared about. The genealogical data in Genesis is not there to date the earth but to demonstrate important parts of God’s message to human beings, such as the universality of death. Personally, I accept the commonly stated age of the earth from the current astrophysical models.
Because:
The literary nature of a text can’t be overlooked or taken for granted. In my opinion, this is typical of the creationist approach to the Bible. It becomes a piece of evidence in a scientific discussion, and the text of scripture- particularly its literary distinctiveness- is largely ignored.
This seems to be to be far saner attitude towards scripture than dogmatic fundamentalism. Cheered me up no end after being annoyed by the creationist debate on keithdevens.com. (Interestingly, Keith abandoned the argument after being asked, perhaps one time too many, to explain what his actual position was…)