Questioning Darwin

This month HBO is airing a program that it promotes as a documentary, called Questioning Darwin. 

Somewhat predictably, the program paints the picture that Ken Ham and his museum for Young Earth Creationism should be considered the only viable and true alternative philosophy to Darwinism,  completely ignoring brilliant thinkers such as John Lennox, Francis Collins, Connor Cunningham, Stephen C. Meyer and Frank Turek, as well as competing ideas such as Intelligent Design and Old Earth Creationism.

The documentary dredges up the old, tired creationism versus evolution debate once more, reinforcing many of the known, misleading stereotypes and repeating the same mistaken assumptions that have pretty much been hashed to death already.

The narrator begins by claiming that Christians who insist the Bible must be accepted as the literal Word of God are creationists who consider Darwin the antichrist. This was news to me.

Based on my limited knowledge mostly gleaned from biographies of his personal life, I was sort of under the impression that Darwin was sort of a spoiled, petulant rich guy who married his cousin and never really had to work for a living.

Curiously, the documentary  described creationism as a growing branch of Christianity, as if “Creationist” was comparable to Baptist, Lutheran, and Catholic.

On the whole, the documentary depicted creationists as stubborn, ignorant and silly deniers of science, while the scientists were portrayed as calm, soft-spoken, rational people. There simply wasn’t an option offered that didn’t fit those two somewhat predictable caricatures, which don’t accurately reflect reality.

For example, Pastor Tim Schofield of Christ Community Church said that God knows “the number of hairs on my head” — which he’d shaved completely bald, making it easy even for me to determine the number of hairs on his head at that moment in time was zero.

In one brief, particularly cringe-inducing clip from an interview, Pastor Peter LaRuffa of Grace Fellowship Church said:

If somewhere in the Bible, I were to find a passage that said two plus two equaled five, I wouldn’t question what I’m reading in the Bible. I would believe it, accept it as true, and then try my best to work it out and understand it.

My initial reaction was probably similar to what I imagine a majority of atheists did after seeing the same clip — a face-palm. Really? I thought to myself.

Even with a subject as simple and basic as first grade math, you wouldn’t even question whether or not the Bible was accurate if it included a claim that you knew couldn’t possibly be true?

But then I stopped to consider Pastor LaRuffa’s comment a while longer, eventually coming to see things from a completely different perspective.

I now think I might know what he meant — after remembering how for years I assumed that the story of Abraham’s near sacrifice of his only son, Isaac, had to be allegorical. There was once a time that the story of Abraham and Isaac made absolutely no sense to me.

The problem was one that I dubbed the enigma of Abraham and Isaac, and bothered me for a long time.

Remember that prior to the near sacrifice, only a few chapters earlier in Genesis God had promised Abraham He would build an entire nation from Abraham’s offspring.

Suddenly in Genesis 22, God then somewhat arbitrarily commands Abraham to offer his son as a human sacrifice, a practice deemed “detestable” in other parts of the Bible, when performed by the followers of Baal.

My mind also failed to comprehend the fact that Abraham hadn’t even questioned the order to kill his only son. The Bible appeared to offer no explanation for what obviously seemed to be God’s capricious and grotesquely unjust cruelty.

Of course, a cruel, violent, and pernicious God did not reconcile very well in my mind with the image embodied by Jesus the Christ, revealed in the New Testament, so eventually I decided the story couldn’t literally be true.

While studying Genesis 21 one day, a new thought struck me that allowed both the story to be literally true, and that God was consistent when Abraham hadn’t been.

In my opinion, the key to solving the enigma is found in the preceding chapter, involving Abraham, a Philistine named Abimelech, and a treaty about a well at Beersheba.

So, much like Pastor LaRuffa seemed to be saying, my default decision is always to assume that whatever I’m reading in the Bible is true.

Still not too sure about that whole 2 + 2 equals 5 thing, though.

Just seemed like an unfortunate choice of words, and a really bad analogy.