Inheriting the Wind

The “E” Word – One More Time
I am a loyal attendee of a local men’s BSF (Bible Study Fellowship) group here in South Austin. BSF is an interdenominational and fairly intensive bible study with a 7-year cycle that covers the bulk of scripture. It has been a wonderful experience, and it has done marvels for my biblical literacy, understanding, and discernment. I highly recommend it to anybody.

After that ringing and heartfelt endorsement, I am going to use this year’s study to carp a bit. The topic this year (and.every eighth year hereafter) is Genesis. BSF comes from a pretty evangelical orientation, and here in Texas I would have to say the vast majority of attendees are evangelical and fundamentalist Protestants. (“Fundamentalist” is used here in the original sense, meaning folks who adhere to “The Fundamentals,” including a fairly rigid standard of biblical literalness. It is not being used in the mainstream media sense of the word that cannot distinguish between a crazed Islamofascist dynamiter on a Jewish school bus and the Wheaton College English department.)

Anyway, there is an almost passionate rejection of both Big Bang cosmology and biological evolution. Both are frequently conflated into one amorphous entity that epitomizes modernist atheism. (In all fairness, a lot of modernist atheists I’ve met do exactly the same thing.) A friend there who knows my background said, “I keep wondering what’s going through your twisted brain during all this.” My answer was that I just wanted to get out of there alive. Part of the hostility is based, I am sure, on the “Popular Evolution” that makes up most people’s understanding of the subject. If evolutionary theory was what most folks think it is, I wouldn’t buy it either. But there seems to be an underlying anti-intellectualism in a large part of modern evangelical Protestantism that is very off-putting and counterproductive.

I just really, really don’t understand what the problem is supposed to be. What do people expect to find in the creation story? Maxwell’s equations? Whenever I read the first chapter of Genesis, I see a pretty darned good description of events by a 2nd millennium BC nomadic shepherd who probably woke up twitching after one humdinger of a vision. He did a lot better job of recording what he saw than I would have ever managed. I would probably have gotten a cup of coffee, sworn never to eat goat before bedtime again, and gone to count the sheep. Heck, it’s almost like the guy was inspired…

As far as BSF goes, my wife (who has already done this study) tells me that if I hang in there past the first few weeks of Genesis, the rest of this year is very, very good. I have to say, though, that if this had been my first year in BSF, I probably would have thrown up my hands and walked away.

Sorry for wasting bandwidth on “the evolution thing,” which has been talked to death for 146 years. Just needed to vent a bit. By the way, this whole rant was kicked off by the following posting from The Speculative Catholic, a blog worthy of note.

Brief notes for a history of the universe
Creation. Angels. Fall. Devils. Big Bang. Matter. Stars. Galaxies. Novae. Solar nebula. Protostar. Sun. Planets. Earth. Moon. Bombardment. Crust. Ocean. Life. RNA. Prokaryotes. Glycolysis. Photosynthesis. Bacteria. Evolution. Cyanobacteria. Oxygen. Iron. Mitochondria. Eukaryotes. Organelles. Sex. Multicellularity. Algae. Seaweed. Invertebrates. Sponges. Jellyfish. Flatworms. Neurons. Vertebrates. Fish. Tetrapods. Amphibians. Pangaea. Reptiles. Dinosaurs. Birds. Mammals. Flowers. Hominids. Man. Adam. Eve. Fall. Sin. Fire. Burial. Domestication. Irrigation. Cities. Literacy. Abraham. Judaism. Moses. Immaculate Conception. Annunciation. Virgin Birth. Incarnation. Eucharist. Papacy. Crucifixion. Resurrection. Church. Ascension. Pentecost. Succession. Assumption. Persecution. Bible. Conversion. Arianism. Islam. Hermits. Monasticism. Schism. Crusades. Cathedrals. Mendicants. Gunpowder. Protestantism. Electricity. Antibiotics. Atom. Moon landing. Internet.