Response to “Anonymous”
Please read the About Us page. This statement provides our perspective and commitment to empirical reality.
The challenges included in a reader’s comment to “Genesis and the Big Bang” (posted October 11th) illustrate a sad reality. Most of us have neither been exposed to, nor had the opportunity to study Bible Texts as literature. We have been offered two choices. The Bible is the word of God which must be “obeyed.” Or an independently drawn conclusion that Biblical Texts are a puzzling and confused inheritance promoting magical thinking, delusion and confusing, inconsistent rules for living.
If the latter is true the texts are unworthy of our attention, respect or affection. Hence, the traditions and the intellectual culture of our ancestors is abandoned and lost.
But, the purported facts contained in Biblical texts need not be true in order to possess relevance. The wisdom and inspiration of ancient cultures does not necessarily reside in the truth of their definitions of reality. Even in the face of rigorous challenge the texts contain valuable lessons, insight, inspiration and lasting value.
For example, the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is obviously not an accurate account of human creation. It probably was never intended to be. But as an allegory of human life it still possesses value and insight into the human condition.
From innocent infancy in the care of loving parents to sexual maturity and, then, responsibility for the generation they are to conceive Adan and Eve represent the stages of human life. Furthermore the biblical author offers a bleak perspective of adult life as being filled with pain, endless work and death.
Concerning the “tree hazards,” we are again offered insight into the biblical author’s challenge to the generations. Genesis 3:22: “And the Lord God said: “Now that the man has become like one of us, knowing good and bad, what if he should reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever!”
Does this not imply that only immortality prevents humans from being gods? The human capacity for advanced culture and learning is a blessing and a profound responsibility. It is, after all, every parent’s complaint that their children have reached the point of knowing it all, of striking out on their own without real knowledge of how the world really works! These myths and stories were a source of wisdom and strength for cultures whose lessons were fashioned in myth and were told without the enhancements of electronic media.
The obvious problems of where Cain and Abel found wives and implications of incest in the first family are contained in stories whose lessons are profound but whose details are flawed. This is not only the expression of concern about killing one’s brother but a teaching against violence as a means of solving problems. The family details were not important to the author/editor. The underlying theme was, perhaps, his concern.
Please keep the dialog going!
