Friday, November 17, 2006

Jesus Was Eaten by Dinosaurs!

I (vaguely) remember having difficulty with the concept of 'history' when I was a small child. I imagined the past as some sort of undifferentiated place containing everything and everyone that wasn't here 'now'-- a kind of Parmenidean 'being', static and frozen. In the past, I imagined, cowboys co-existed with dinosaurs. Of course I had only a vague notion of 'linear time' and almost no notion of the age of the world and the universe. And of course at that early age I wouldn't have been able to articulate it like I just have.

It seems that creationists/intelligent design proponents have similarly childish concepts of space and time. Today, for example, I read a blog entry in which the writer exclaimed "Dinosaurs are in the bible!". I can't bring myself to comment on the actual details of the post, but feel free, dear reader, to follow the link and see for yourself what I'm talking about.

2 comments:

  1. Salamaat,
    Interesting. One thing that runs across religions, is the tendency for us to want to use our "books" to explain every single phenomena on earth. The bible isn't a scientfic book (neither is the Quran, talmud, etc). All of them are *guides* to belief which should in turn inform our conduct, ethics etc.

    But I have often wondered about the dichotomy between creationism and evolution. Why does it have to be either/ or? Couldn't God have *willed* the big bang and everything else is history?

    Science explains what is; and I respect the field highly...I don't think it necessarily has to conflict with religion.

    anywayz sorry for rambling.

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  2. Hi Maliha,
    There was no rambling in your comment!
    First of all, any self-respecting skeptic/atheist will admit that, really, he's only a 'strong' agnostic (because there is no disproof for the existence of God).
    I agree with you that science explains what is--it explains that which can be measured, quantified, etc.; it is descriptive and not prescriptive. I think most scientists are quite happy to work with the 'is' and leave the 'oughts' to philosophers, theologians, etc.
    I'm not sure, Maliha, if the creation/evolution debate rages within Islam. Within Christianity it's really a kind of sad joke. Most of the scientists are Christians (whose opinions are very similar to yours), whereas the creationists generally pretend to be scientists.

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