When we had left off the last time, I mentioned that there is an interesting discussion in Genesis chapter one and two and this is where I want to continue our discussion. Some feel that these are two contradictory accounts but, as we shall see, they in fact are complementary and describe correctly the situation faced by mankind.

In Genesis 1, humans are made in the image of God and are given the command to subdue the world. And this is exactly what man has done. He has subdued the earth and has exploited it for his own benefits with all the detrimental side effects that this has entailed. Here we have the image of mankind that has become dominant, especially in the West. Religious thinking is being pushed further and further to the sidelines. The constant argument in support for this is to point to the technological successes that science has brought thereby claiming that science is, if not the only way to see the world, then it is the most beneficial one.

Genesis 2 paints a slightly different portrait where man is created from the dust of the earth into which God has breathed life. Here, the role of mankind with respect to creation is different – mankind is to guard and cultivate the world for its development and growth in God. The principal role for man here is to bring creation into a relationship with God. And this is what we do in our liturgical services. We respect the material substance of this world and relate it to God through a sacramental view of the world. The world is no longer seen merely as a source of raw materials but as giving an opportunity, a vehicle for man to come into a close and enriching relationship with God. We come to see that God is everywhere and upholds everything and that without this support from God, creation would vanish and return into non-existence. This echoes a covenantal view of creation whereby God has a special relationship with man and calls on him to bring creation to honor God. This is the view held by the Church and this is the view which has now been so strongly challenged by the views propounded in Genesis 1. And yet, if we returned to the view propounded in Genesis 2, we would see solutions arising to serious problems that face our civilization in terms of ecology and the limited resources of the earth.

What has happened in our time is that the man of Genesis 1 has become dominant and now controls our view of our role in the world. The technical achievements of our day have been so powerful that the ‘scientific’ view of our world has become the dominant default position. When we consider science and faith we can see this as a conflict between two different roles assigned to mankind. We can call them as the exclusively horizontal view and the horizontal-vertical combined view. We were already warned in Genesis chapters 1 and 2 that there were two different dimensions of the human condition and the time has come to take this seriously.

So the question arises – what is to be done in this situation?

One approach has been to denigrate science and scientific achievements as if they are detrimental to humankind. To challenge and cast aside the idea that the earth is older than 6000 years, the idea that there seems to be a progression in development of living organisms are just a few examples of the backwardness that this approach encourages which calls on people to deny the validity of the discoveries and claims made by science. But popular media such as films, novels have so denigrated the ‘backwardness’ of the attempt to ‘undo scientific discoveries as irrelevant and untrue, have become so ingrained, that this ‘solution’ will fail. It seems that everyone has some idea of what they think science says, although many of these ideas are themselves outdated and belong to the science of the nineteenth century.

The faithful can withdraw from society thereby yielding the playing field completely to the man of Genesis 1. This comes through in suggestions made by a variety of people such as Gould in biology that there is an area where religion operates and dominates and there is an area where science dictates what is and what is not, acceptable. The area where religion operates is one of opinions and feelings whereas facts are the domain of science. To buttress this position, the charge is made that religion is benighted and brings in intolerance and religious strife as attested to by the history of religious wars and opposition to medical advances.

On the religious side, this proposal by Gould may be attractive to those who see the world dominated by evil and with little hope of salvation or redemption. Ironically, they themselves see little benefit in the material world which is seen as totally fallen and corrupted and humanity’s goal is to escape this trap of materialism. This is not a new view and is one that was propounded by the Gnostics early in the history of Christianity. This view is again self-defeating and it will further ingrain the view that religion has nothing to contribute to society and should therefore be totally ignored. It will not resolve the conflict between Genesis 1 man and Genesis 2 man.

We must somehow combine Genesis 1 man and Genesis 2 man and this would be the most beneficial approach to the problem that faces us. In order to do this we must be educated in theology and in science. It is a sorry situation that people write about both of these disciplines while having an inadequate knowledge about them. Both science and theology have unique ways of approaching the study of the world and their views are not incompatible or conflictual. The reconciliation of the input of science and religion is essential for the well-being of society and if we fail in this, the repercussions will be serious and widespread.

In spite of the seeming spread of secularization, in fact, the opposite is true. The world is becoming more religious and the answer to this lies in the theories that Darwin proposed. Nature is built on the survival of the fittest, but what exactly do we mean by the fittest? The answer that Darwin gave, and the West has totally ignored, is that the fittest refers to those who have the highest success in reproduction. In the West, with the elevation of abortion to what can be called an inalienable human right, the pursuit of individual satisfaction to the detriment of any sacrifice or acknowledging our responsibility to others such as children, have driven Europe to the point where the birth rate is around 1.3 – 1.4 per woman, depending on which country we are looking at. What is needed to keep the population stable is a birth rate around 2.1. What is happening is that the populations of European countries is falling and will continue to fall and with it, the economic power of these countries will wane.

Meanwhile, the birth rate of countries where religions hold an upper hand are much higher and as a result, ironically, the world is proportionally becoming more ‘religious’. Moreover, the religion that is being spawned is not one of accommodation and compromise but one of confrontation and extremism. Religion has become a weapon of resistance against the secularization that is being promoted in the West, a resistance that the West does not comprehend, and this resistance will continue, irrespective of the efforts used by the West to staunch it. There is a cultural change occurring on the scene with effects even more profound than those of the perceived climate change but we are so caught up in the rightness of our views that we do not see that we are destroying the civilization that has been built up. We are almost ‘hell-bent’ on self-destruction, denying our historical roots and failing to see that anytime a society attacks a religious outlook it is attacking itself and condemning itself to extinction.
There is an interesting statement made by St. Anthony who was a solitary in the desert for many years in the fourth century. There is a time coming, he said, when the sane will be attacked and declared insane. What prophetic words when applied to the use of psychiatry to stop and counter criticism in the Soviet Union. We are reaching that general level now. When the European Parliament cut out of its basic statement the fact that Europe came out of a Christian background, it undermined over a thousand years of history and denied it, all in the name of some elusive tolerance which has become the universal virtue.

When we come to the point of saying that anyone who opposes abortion is inciting hatred and should be punished; when university professors such as Steven Pink are lauded and praised for their ‘liberal’ humanity for advocating the killing of children under a certain age if the parents find them ‘inconvenient’, then this civilization is well on its way to self-destruction. But I will continue with this in the next letter.

Sincerely,
Bar-Abbas