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Matthew777
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« on: March 26, 2005, 12:23:35 AM » |
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I wrote this dialogue in order to personify the Creation vs. Evolution controversy:
God: Moses, This is the Lord, Your God.
Moses: Yes, Jehovah?
G: Remember that book that I revealed to you, the one where I explain the act of Creation?
M: Genesis
G: Right. Well, I think it's about time that I tell you the truth.
M: I thought you already told me the truth.
G: Well...I did...kind of. You see, in the 19th century, a British naturalist will discover a scientific theory which directly contradicts the doctrine of creation ex nihilo.
M: What a sad, sad man.
G: Yeeaaaah. Well...The truth is that I'm not as all powerful as you think I am. I was only able to create a single-celled organism and hope that anatamically modern humans would eventually evolve from it.
M: Well, I'm sorry that you're more impotent than omnipotent.
G: Don't get me wrong, Moses. I still am the one and only God. But the truth is that I gave you the Hexaemeron in order to sound cool.
M: You spoke and all plant life rapidly sprouted. You spoke and all the animals appeared. You formed Adam from the dust of the ground and Eve from his rib. But you're telling me that you made all that up just to sound cool?
G: Yes, my son. The divine origin of life is not that divine after all. Given enough time and the proper scientific laws, my creative work becomes unnecessary. An omniscent being, perhaps, would know every possible design plan and create all things from nothing but instead the evolutionary process through trial and error, through competition and extinction, from simple to complex, produced all the life we see.
M: Competition and extinction? But I thought it was the sin of Adam which brought death and suffering to the world.
G: Adam never existed. He is just an allegorical figure to help you understand the nature of sin.
M: Are you sure?
G: *Sigh* Perhaps I am. The father of all humanity is a bipedal ape. Genetics and peleontology will someday reveal this to you. Retroviral insertions will clearly show that I formed no man from the dust of the ground.
M: Well, this is all rather surprising...if not upsetting. What shall I tell the others?
G: Thou shalt not tell thy neighbor the truth!
M: Wait...So we cannot bare false witness but you can?
G: Moses, it is better for a mind ignorant of modern science to believe a lie than to know a scientific fact which he cannot understand.
M: When humans realize the truth, what then?
G: I will send forth Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, pseudo-scientists and paranoid apologists. All this in order to keep the blissfully ignorant in their ignorance.
M: Well, that is good to know. Anything else, Lord?
G: Someday, it will also be revealed that not only is Genesis a myth but that not even you transcribed it. That's right. A group of Hebrew scribes collectively plagiarized a Babylonian oral tradition.
M: This is too much. I'm never talking to a burning bush again...
May peace be upon thee and with thy spirit.
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