I thought I'd post the enclosed editorial by an Atlanta Scientist in today's Atlanta Journal Consitution. It might be of specific interest to Christians here as he is one too.
Also because it's a hot topic here right now with the debate in the Cobb County School System and the placement of stickers in Science Text Books that stated, "Evolution Science is only a Theory".
Please pay particular attention to the areas in bold and underlined.
ajc.com > Opinion
GUEST COLUMN
God's reach can't be confined as science
By MIKE D. RUCKER
Published on: 01/21/05
For five Sundays, a visiting teacher in our Sunday school class used a PowerPoint presentation to argue that Genesis, Chapters 1-2, provided a solid scientific explanation of the origin of the universe.
I am a Christian. I am also an engineer (Georgia Tech, 1983). And I am tired of being dumbed-down to by biblical misreadings and interpretations. Since they started their search for evidence to piece together a six-day Creation model, have creationists and intelligent design advocates bothered to look at what God's intent in Genesis might have been?
Let's look at the first two chapters of Genesis.
• In Genesis I, verse 5, "the evening and the morning" are called "the first day" — a "24-hour solar day," according to our visiting teacher. The sun, however, is not created by God until verse 16, the fourth day. An "evening" and a "morning" — even a "day" — makes no sense without the sun.
• Plants appear, too, before the sun has been created. To any elementary school student, the sun is a critical factor in plant growth — remember photosynthesis? Yes, one could argue that God chose to create plants before he created the sun. But why do that? Let the passage speak for itself.
• In Genesis 2, man appears after an explanation that no plants were on the Earth because there was "no man to till the ground." Now what does that mean? Will plants appear only if man is there to tend them? Do plants require man to plant seeds and water the ground? The weeds in my yard say, "No."
These are all problems if Genesis is to be taken as a scientific text. Just as important, however, are the obvious differences between Chapters 1 and 2:
• In Chapter 2, man is created before plants. But in Chapter 1, plants were created before man.
• In Chapter 2, God sees man alone and wants to make a "helper comparable to him." But in Genesis 1, animals are created before man.
What I find most disturbing is that creationists will not admit these problems, instead choosing to force readings on the texts. It makes much more sense to see that what Genesis 1-2 teaches is twofold: God is the creator of everything, and humanity has a special place in that Creation.
When creationists make six-day Creation a basic tenet of the Christian faith — equivalent to Jesus' death and resurrection, they only push the church a little closer to irrelevancy. Christians appear ignorant. And the world rightly looks away from us as a source of answers.
On the Sunday following the last presentation, I was given 10 minutes as a "rebuttal." I brought in three objects for a lesson: a small box, a rock and a hula hoop. I made the lesson simple: God does not need to fit — nor will he — into No. 1; the devil is not hiding under No. 2; and if meanings we try to twist out of Scripture force us to jump through No. 3, then the problem is ours, not God's.
When scientists and science books make the jump from evolution to a conclusion that there is no God, they are venturing outside the realm of their method. I will be first in line to oppose every attempt they make to do this. But I won't do it by twisting Scripture to make claims it never intended to make.
The fear that every other claim the Bible makes must be thrown away if Genesis 1-2 isn't read as a scientific text is unfounded, and has pushed Christians too many times into indefensible positions that harm our true message. There is a valid reading of Genesis 1-2 that does not require us to oppose science or put our heads in the sand. Or jump through hoops.
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Mike D. Rucker lives in Fairburn.