麻豆传媒

THE clash between those who adhere to the scientific theory of evolution and those who believe that the biblical story of the six-day creation is literally true is a struggle between two religions. So concludes Michael Ruse in his accessible, skilfully written book. Since the Enlightenment, he says, scientists have offered up an alternative vision of the nature of reality, and those among them who are most opposed to religion can proselytise with as much zeal as an evangelical Christian.

For Richard Dawkins, contemplation of the natural world through the eyes of science is a religious experience, providing the same 鈥渟pine-shivering, breath-catching awe 鈥� almost worship鈥� as cultivated by the great religions.

Yet Dawkins regards faith as one of the world鈥檚 great evils, 鈥渃omparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate鈥�. He defines faith as 鈥渂elief that isn鈥檛 based on evidence鈥�, whereas science is based upon verifiable facts. Even those who would not go as far in their condemnation of religion would probably agree that modern science has undermined the conventional notion of God. There is a widespread, popular conviction that science and religion are diametrically opposed, and that science has rendered most religious truth frankly incredible.

But this conviction is based on an erroneous assumption: that faith is synonymous with belief, and that to be religious, people must accept certain credal propositions. This is a relatively recent development, one that has arisen since the Enlightenment, and then only in the west. Originally the Middle English word beleven meant 鈥渢o love鈥�. The Latin credo probably derives from co do: 鈥淚 give my heart鈥�. Faith was therefore not belief but commitment. Even Martin Luther, who taught that human beings were justified by faith, did not define faith by belief; he had in fact very little time for dogma and creeds. Faith was a heroic cultivation of trust in the idea that, against all the evidence to the contrary, life had some ultimate, though ineffable, meaning and value.

鈥淩eligion is not about thinking, but doing things that change you at a profound level鈥�

Most of the great religions have had no interest in metaphysical doctrines. Religion is not about thinking things but about doing things that change you at a profound level. At best, theology is regarded as a kind of poetry about matters that must, by their very nature, elude definition. The Koran calls theological speculation zanna, self-indulgent guesswork about matters that nobody can prove one way or the other. Every single verse, every story told in the Koran is called an aya, a parable, because it is only possible to talk about the indescribable God in terms of signs and symbols. Hence, Darwin and his evolutionary theory has raised scarcely a ripple of concern in the Muslim world.

But the biblical creation myths were never intended as definitive dogma either. The first chapter of Genesis, which was almost certainly written by a priestly author (often referred to as 鈥淧鈥�) who had been deported to Babylonia after the destruction of Jerusalem by King Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC, became the most famous creation account, but it was not the only one. The biblical editors placed it right next to another story that contradicts P鈥檚 in several important respects.

Unlike P鈥檚 creation story, most Middle Eastern cosmologies were extremely violent. The Babylonian god Marduk, for example, slew the divine sea monster Tiamat after a bloody battle and split her carcass in two, like a giant shellfish, to create heaven and earth. Such stories expressed the tragic 鈥� not to say Darwinian 鈥� insight that life, creativity and survival depended upon the destruction of others. Genesis chapter 1 was revolutionary in omitting all the violence. It imagines Yahweh 鈥� the God of the Bible 鈥� summoning all things into being with a mere word of command. P was telling the exiled Jews that their God was far more powerful than Marduk. His calm creation was a healing vision of order, designed to console the traumatised deportees.

Cosmologies were originally therapeutic in function. In the ancient world, a creation story was often chanted at the start of a new enterprise or at a moment of crisis. These stories were thus more than history. Nobody, not even the gods, knew what had happened at the beginning of time. 鈥淲ho then knows whence this creation has arisen?鈥� asks the inspired poet of the Hindu Rig Veda. 鈥淥nly he who is its overseer in highest heaven knows 鈥� or perhaps he does not know!鈥�

Until the advent of the modern period, nobody would have regarded the six-day creation story as a literal, historical account. In the 16th century, for example, after the Jews had been expelled from Spain, the Kabbalist Isaac Luria evolved an entirely new creation myth that had nothing in common with P鈥檚 story, but was full of explosions and false starts. Far from being reviled for contradicting scripture, Lurianic Kabbalah became a mass movement, for it expressed the pain and bewilderment of being Jewish at that time and showed scattered, persecuted people how they could rebuild their world.

In the pre-modern world, it was generally understood that there were two ways of arriving at truth. Plato called them mythos and logos. Neither was superior to the other. Logos (reason; science) was exact, practical and essential to human life. To be effective, it had to correspond to external reality. Myth expressed the more elusive, puzzling aspects of human experience. It has often been called a primitive form of psychology, which helped people negotiate their inner world. A mythical story, such as a cosmology, described something that had happened once, but also happened all the time. A myth was essentially a programme of action. Unless you put it into practice, you could not judge its truth.

Myth could not help you create efficient technology or run your society. But logos had its limits too. If you became a refugee or witnessed a terrible natural catastrophe, you did not simply want a logical explanation; you also wanted myth to show you how to manage your grief. With the advent of our scientific modernity, however, logos achieved such spectacular results that myth was discredited, and now, in popular parlance a myth is something that did not happen, that is untrue. But some religious people also began to read religious myths as though they were logos.

The conflict between science and faith has thus been based on a misunderstanding of the nature of scriptural discourse. Many people, including those who are religious, find it difficult to think mythically, because our education and society is fuelled entirely by logos. This has made religion impossible for many people in the west, and it could be argued that much of the stridency of Christian fundamentalism is based on a buried fear of creeping unbelief.

In the pre-modern world, it was considered dangerous to mix mythos and logos, because each had a different sphere of competence. Much of the heat could be taken out of the evolution versus creation struggle if it were admitted that to read the first chapter of Genesis as though it were an exact account of the origins of life is not only bad science; it is also bad religion.