The Bible & the Big Bang COLUMNISTS
Garvey, John
standing also must be challenged....
...Neither Gore nor Bradley was about to without God there is nothing, that God In the midst of the acrimonious con- embrace vouchers...
...good enough for your child...
...It is true that there is a limited pulling them out of those public schools...
...Reinterpretation has been part of being a believer in the God of the Bible from the JOHN GARVEY time the Hebrew Bible was first pulled together, and the attempt was made to see what God is trying to tell us...
...There is power that created the universe from ence, all it can ever find, this side of the something necessarily incomplete about nothing is revealed most completely on end, are clues, hints, things that may be it, but this is not to say that nothing is the cross...
...The THE BIBLE & THE BIG BANG first great leap of faith is to think that They don't have to jibe God is trying to get anything through to us at all...
...This movement is some- man who died a shameful death was prominent physicists reject belief with what understandable when we are de- not something we would have expectsophomoric appeals to the problem of bating the reasonableness of belief, or at ed, to say the least...
...It can't be proven...
...Would the Judeo-Christian idea of creation be challenged in any serious way...
...We protect our kids' future by ents: If the parents of poor children can anything...
...El pared for evolution, subatomic physics, or cosmology...
...It is "the assurance in mighty displays of power, and he is would be madness...
...to the religion of scientism (the late Carl our children," he said, referring to afflu- What might be called the guilty-conSagan, for example) like to say that it is ent parents, "we don't wait for new leg- science argument says to well-off parthe only way we have of really knowing islation...
...The realm be distorted by such notions as God as us...
...The picture we are given is this: Until Galileo (or Copernicus, or Darwin), our ancestors believed in a small universe with a large earth at the center and a tiny surrounding nest of spheres where stars and planets revolved, and then came science, challenging the central place of humanity, and between them evolution and physics made it possible to conceive of a universe that could be explained without God...
...The universe P the-other-guy's-face conflict the Democratic party's opposition to does not need to have a beginning in time that it's worth celebrating moments choice is an example of supporting a spefor the doctrine of creation to be true...
...we count on it...
...and there have been atheistic approaches to science, and efforts to explain the universe Commonweal 7 March 10, 2000 understanding of God's power tends to apply to anything that matters most to mous) range of phenomena...
...At the sustaining-all of those things we be- put ourselves at the service of a story end of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, lieve God to do-are not, apparently, that begins with creation and ends with Wittgenstein wrote, "It is not how the God's ideas of the same things...
...Why for something that was never a scientific horse races, polling, and in- shouldn't these parents conclude that statement in the first place...
...cally, is not a matter for theology, and we last month, Tamala Edwards of Time In this debate the opposing sides rarely should not look to science for theological magazine noted the support among address the other's best arguments...
...One of them is the uniqueness of our situation...
...The prophets T religious people often bring painted ourselves into was accepting an had to move the story forward, taking to discussions of science Aristotelian approach to divinity, with a this apparent impossibility into account, and religion...
...That the savior of all, the some believers...
...Belief opens us to something that want to have of God...
...In a recent who bend science to make subatomic ever, equate this attempt at dialogue issue of Commonweal, John F. Haught physics seem to echo the teaching of the with Christian dogma, or the idea of the says, "A theology obsessed with order Buddha or Christian mystics do an uncaused cause, or the prime mover, and design is, I believe, ill-prepared for equally simple-minded job on science, with the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, evolution" ("Evolution and God's Huand too many of us love it...
...New readings are evil (the good suffer, therefore there is least trying to make it look not unrea- part of the process...
...When theology looks of things hoped for, the conviction of found in the "still, small voice...
...Some of the ancients, while believing in a geocentric universe, did know that the earth was comparatively tiny...
...We should not, how- our encounter with science...
...mility," January 28...
...DIONHE, Jr...
...in kind from scientific understanding, by applause, "why should the parents And as Chicago's Mayor Richard Daley and we should not be shy about pointing here have to keep their kids in public has said, even the most sincere promise out the inherent limitations of science...
...It schools because they don't have the fi- to fix an ailing school system in ten years is finally about those things that can be nancial resources that you do...
...In ten years, the child counted...
...I cannot be sure that my wife loves of theology requires belief-and this is designer, playwright, punishing parent, me in the same way I can be sure that why those who claim that it can be one-who-would-do-what-I-would-do-if- the sun will rise tomorrow-that is, I can taught as well by an unbeliever as by a I-were-in-charge-of-this-mess, etc...
...By the same token, the revelaare pathetically grateful when some- gnostic, though we did accept a more tion of Jesus as the only Messiah upset thing like the Big Bang theory looks so, or less Platonic approach to the soul as all expectations, and revealed something well, biblical...
...but New Age writers ilar world view...
...If there seems to be corre- African-Americans for school vouchers The best argument for vouchers was spondence between the Big Bang theory and also that Gore and his children "are framed nicely by Edwards and Greenand the biblical doctrine of creation, it is the product of private institutions...
...Apologists for what amounts the point...
...We hope they are...
...when journalists question candidates cial interest rather than their interest...
...Not un- olitical reporters are trashed disproportionately black and brown, less you want some scientific validation so regularly for loving who do not have that choice...
...But the Edwardsis responsible for everything that is...
...consolation...
...in D.C...
...I would like, however, to challenge the Science is about the ever-more accu- Science is about the "how...
...God's convince myself that she is trying to fool believer seem to me to be seriously tonerevelation always upsets the ideas we me, that it is all a plot, that her motives deaf...
...no God, because if he existed he would sonable, with people who accept a sim- But to what extent does this apply to fix those Nazis...
...The at the world for clues about God's pres- things unseen" (Hebrews 11: 1...
...and Jesus...
...When the public schools fail is out of the system...
...field: Most parents will do anything in what Wittgenstein called a "charming" "Is there not a public or charter school their power to give their children a betidea, but it isn't very important...
...Of course, this cannot be proven...
...Given God's promises, for here is a kind of wavering without recourse to divine design, since example, the Babylonian captivity was faith, if not bad faith, that before the time of Christ...
...God of the Bible toward a more Greek light of Israel, would be revealed as a We are appropriately irritated when understanding...
...resurrection...
...find a better school, doesn't a sense of socertainty available here, but it does not There are tens of thousands of parents, cial justice demand this parent be given a Commonweal 8 March 10, 2000...
...How frontation between Al Gore and Bill Greenfield moment should not be the the universe came to be what it is, physi- Bradley at the Apollo Theater in Harlem last time the voucher question is joined...
...We look for him are not what they seem...
...Look, for example, at the joy some believers take in the Big Bang theory...
...The Bible is not a scien- prime mover...
...True enough...
...doesn't sound very good to the parent of replicated experimentally, weighed, and Later, Jeff Greenfield of CNN pressed an eight-year-old...
...and One widespread assumption is that A static view of religious under- it is important to stress the fact that ou science, since the Enlightenment, has challenged religious belief in an unprecedented way...
...The science that indicates something potentially detachable from about God's relationship to us that could the possibility that the earth is unique- the inferior flesh...
...We sensed, or known in any way...
...What if it were to fall apart, and a E.J...
...We avoided the Neo-Pla- revealing a continuity that was not at all tific text," we solemnly intone, and then tonic divinity, with its Demiurge, as too obvious...
...ter education...
...it rely fit, in all the universe, to host com- and the philosophical Christian imagi- quired a radical reinterpretation of what plex forms of life is also comforting to nation we moved away from the strange preceded it...
...it cannot idea that we need a theology that is pre- rate description of a limited (but enor- touch the "that-ness...
...One comer we not supposed to happen...
...What the teaching says, finally, is that about what we like to call "real issues...
...Our ideas of power, creation, so...
...world is, but that it is, that is mystical...
...In both the popular not otherwise have been known...
...here she was interrupted poor parents can't afford private schools...
...But, as Greenfield said, Religious understanding is different And, if not...
...version of the universe as eternal, with no beginning in time, perhaps forever expanding, then imploding, then expand- VOUCHERS ing again (as Hindu cosmology would Let's have a real debate have it) were to gain ascendancy...
...There are some important half-truths here, but they are half-truths...
Vol. 127 • March 2000 • No. 5
