I’ve been working with this free Biology curriculum (one that actually goes slowly enough for me to understand it), and overall, it’s decent, but there’s stuff I can’t stand about it. The person who wrote it seems convinced that believing the Earth is more than 10,000 years old is completely incompatible with thinking there’s a God. Now granted I don’t know why I’m arguing this point because I’m kind of a misotheist, but I can’t understand/support a system where you start with a basic assumption (that everything in an ancient document is 100% true) and then twist every bit of logic and evidence you find around to support it. They do this – they are seriously convinced that there has to be some other explanation for why the stars are light years away than that things existed more than 10,000 years ago. Supposedly because one guy with a Ph.D. believes it, that must mean all the scientists who don’t believe it are big hacks.
Okay…this would all make some sense to me IF the Bible were actually written by God himself. If God wrote a book and autographed it at the end, I might be inclined to understand people warping their science to fit what it says. The truth is, however, that God did not write the Bible! Humans wrote it! Humans are not perfect, and if humans are capable of being wrong now (as the intelligent design folks are insisting that all evolutionary scientists are), then why is it so impossible to consider that they were wrong back in the B.C.E. years when they wrote that the world was 10,000 years old or whatever it was they wrote? Having been to some lousy churches in my life, I can tell you that humans will say literally ANYTHING they want to and slap “God agrees with me” on it to try to force other people to believe that shit. People will even twist what the Bible says toward any agenda they want. For example, did you know “turn the other cheek” is actually about poor people/slaves/servants/etc refusing to let masters they could not fight back against humiliate them? At church, we were taught it basically means that the kid who defends herself against a violent, abusive teacher is a worse human being than the teacher. Given that people interpret it however they want and people are generally the most fickle and self-serving beings on the planet, WHY are we trusting what humans have written about God just because it’s the most comprehensive document about the Judeo-Christian deity available?
Some of the stuff in there has been backed up as historically accurate I think, and some of it makes sense. For example:
1. The flood actually happened. Whether or not it was because of God or Noah was the only survivor is debatable, but there *was* an actual flood like that.
2. A lot of historical documents back up the stuff about Jesus from what I’ve heard.
3. Given that climate changes over time, maybe there was a garden in the Middle East at one point.
4. There are legit historical figures mentioned in those books like Caesar, and so it’s hard to imagine that it’s just “lies” like some people want to say.
That being said, I do not understand why ONE thing that’s written by humans who though the Earth was flat (ie: that the Earth was 10,000 years old) absolutely has to be true or else it just blows the entire faith to bits. Isn’t it possible that human error could get a few numbers and dates wrong without it ruining the whole system? To me…if you’re going to believe in a God, it seems a little arrogant to assume that something a person (not God) wrote is infallible when it’s supposed to be God that’s infallible and God’s world is demonstrating evidence that doesn’t support the 10,000 years old theory.
Homeschooled Daemon 