Po and Gus know what’s up in Jackson Hole
Here’s a nice quote from Huang Po, a 9th-century Chinese Zen master:
The foolish reject what they see, not what they think; the wise reject what they think, not what they see.
What this means to me is that it is unwise to cling to your ideas, because your ideas are eventually going to run up against reality, and reality surely won’t change for your ideas. Which is fine; the Master does not tell us it’s unwise to have ideas, only that it’s unwise to hold onto ideas that clearly violate the evidence staring you in the face. For example: The video above. It’s a promo for a place called Jackson Hole Bible College, which offers high-school graduates a one-year curriculum based on a literal reading of Genesis. Here we have young people being fooled by those who reject what they see and not what they think. A passage from the Answers in Genesis (run by the same guy who started JHBC) web site makes this very clear:
One of the major problems we all have is that we tend to start from outside God’s Word and then go to what God has written in the Bible to try to interpret it on the basis of our own ideas. This is really the major reason why most people question the days of creation.
On some level this fear is understandable. If the Bible doesn’t “mean what it says” then the whole thing falls apart. Here, the “whole thing” means the world as it stands in the minds of people like Ken Ham and others responsible for JHBC: literal six-day creation, literal and physical heaven, literal and physical hell. But beyond the personal fear of losing one’s mental anchors, there is the issue of power. Many vocal scientists, who occupy powerful and nearly priestly positions in society, are scathingly critical of creationists (who make very easy targets). So it’s easy to understand the push-back of folks like Ham who see their entire way of life threatened by a secular culture that does nothing but laugh at them. So the institution of places like JHBC is a thoroughly human response.
But it is also a foolish one. This is because they are ignoring evidence that is staring them in the face and clinging to the ideas in their minds (yes, that’s where it is — it’s surely not “in the Bible”). Even St. Augustine, from whom we Christians — including Ken Ham — have received so much of our theology, is well known for his agreement with this point:
It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are. In view of this and in keeping it in mind constantly while dealing with the book of Genesis, I have, insofar as I was able, explained in detail and set forth for consideration the meanings of obscure passages, taking care not to affirm rashly some one meaning to the prejudice of another and perhaps better explanation.
from The Literal Interpretation of Genesis, Chapt. 19 [408]
Augustine lived back in the late 3rd/early 4th centuries. So the idea of religion and science getting along is neither new nor radical. I just wish more Christians could understand this so that people like Dawkins could no longer “laugh when he sees how totally in error they are.”
OK, so let’s say Ham & Co. come to realize that that they’re wrong about the literal six-day creation. What do they replace it with? Modern biology, geology, astronomy, physics? Perhaps, but how about the rest of the Bible? You know, Abraham, Moses, David, the prophets, Jesus, etc.? What about those guys and their stories? Indeed that is the question. I have no answer for them, except to trust God and plunge into the exhilarating experience of not knowing.
