REFLECTIONS ON CREATION, ORIGINAL SIN, AND “BIG EVIL”

“As an example, the whole narrative of Adam and Eve, Paradise, the Apple, the Devil, the Fall, and most critically, Original Sin, has been proved to be nothing but a fairy tale with not a shred of historical truth. Who can believe this? For more than a century, geologists, anthropologists, cosmologists, zoologists, and more recently, molecular biologists have built a comprehensive body of knowledge demonstrating that life emerged on earth in the form of single cell organisms that through a three and a half billion year process leading to the emergence of a variety of humanoids that ultimately evolved into humans. There is neither biological nor geological evidence of paradise, or that all humans were derived from a unique couple. Quite the contrary, evolutionary development was brought about by millions of organisms adapting to their environment. Nevertheless, while we now know that the story of Adam and Eve as understood by a literal reading of scripture may be historical error, the concept illuminated by the narrative that all humans are possessed of a fundamental defect in their tendency to frequently act in ways that we define as evil, is certainly correct. Atheist may call this “the selfish gene”; we call it Original Sin. This is a sample of what you will find in the following pages. If revelation is true and science is true, then there should be no conflict between them. We might therefore be well served to interpret scripture with the aid of science. This, of course, implies that we must abandon many long cherished explanations in exchange for what may appear to be cold, hard scientific fact. If we do so, we will find that theological concepts like Original Sin may not be exactly as presented in the Bible or as interpreted by subsequent exegetes, but we will see they most assuredly remain indisputable truths. The overarching theme of this essay is the question of theodicy. However, it is a theodicy rooted in two principals: First. God cannot be known by man. Central to this thesis is the Old Testament lesson that God is unknowable. My restatement is: That between humans and their Creator, there is an unbridgeable ontological chasm which make the Creators God forever incomprehensible. Not only is this statement consistent with traditional Church teachings, but also, it is an unavoidable consequence of the recent advancements of scientific learning of which we all have become increasingly familiar. Second. The notion that many of the traditional interpretations of scripture have been made irrelevant by the development of contemporary scientific knowledge is a fundamental principal driving this analysis. From this, it would seem to be self-evident that scriptural interpretations, where applicable, should be updated. And in consequence, such teachings, when illuminated by the insights of contemporary science, may once again become congruent with today’s state of knowledge and thus become acceptable to the otherwise skeptical. “