As the son of a Baptist minister, I often read with dismay the incredible thoughts of some of the most far-gone among the evangelical set. The true top of the heap is probably the apocalyptic crew, the sort who try to calculate the exact date of the Rapture by turning words into numbers and mis-applying the Book of Revelation. But a close second is the "Creation Science" crowd, who just can’t seem to accept that the creation story is a beautiful story, extremely useful in every way except as science. One can believe a story without insisting it is literal, and that story still remains compelling and still delivers truth of a higher sort. The literal level just isn’t all that relevant here.
But what truly amuses is the contortionist antics of those who try to apply science to a story that holds only religious and cultural truth. The latest volley of folly revolves around the discovery of another fossil with some soft tissue. It’s a rare phenomenon, perfectly in keeping with the expectations of science. But those who try to fix the facts around the story, no matter how implausible or irrelevant it may be, say this proves people and humans hung out at the watering hole together, all of this a mere 6,000 years ago.
It must be rough to have to maintain belief in something when, over and over, the facts say you’re wrong. Perhaps someday these folks will realize that even in the face of notions of universal truth, there can be different kinds of truth that are valid. What I mean is, take a question like this: "Were Adam and Eve real?" They say "yes," no matter what. Literally true. But there is another notion. Their "realness" is not what makes the story true. Their cultural importance, their heroic status, is true, no matter what, but for these folks, it only matters if it’s really really real. That’s got to be a bummer.
Pardon my going on so, but I guess one must work out the things that persist in confounding and frustrating after years of the evangelical extreme. You know, like Christian rock and stuff.
Oh, and the soft tissue is fossilized, which undermines the whole wacko thing. It’s just rare that it has the soft tissue, is all.
