My
old scoutmaster, who was also the local Rector of our parish, despite being a
bit of an irascible old tarter, held some fairly progressive views on
the subject of human history and specifically evolution. Far from the
creationists beliefs that the world had been magically kick-started into existence a
mere 6000 years ago, he was a supporter of Charles Darwin. Seeing a perplexing
disconnect between evolution and the story of Adam and Eve, I plucked up enough
courage to ask for an explanation. His response was immediate
and unequivocal. Genesis was not tied to a specific historical date, but
was a creation myth meant to represent the period within evolution when Man
(and Woman) first became aware of the difference between right and wrong
and possessed the conscious ability to make moral choices. I was
quite impressed!
According to a wealth of historic scientific
data, Man is considered to have reached his current evolutionary state several hundreds
of thousands of years ago. Indeed Louis
Leakey and his successors have found anatomical remains of humanoid fossils in
Kenya from well over a million years ago.
Religious scholars tell us that the
development and institutionalisation of most of the world’s religions took
place during the “Axial Period”. This extended from about 800BC to about 200AD.
In the case of Judaism there is no precise date. Its origins could go back as
far as 6000 years. The current year of the Jewish calendar is 5773. On the
other extreme, Islam did not appear until approximately 600 AD. Overall
however, 6000 years seems to bracket the development of the “ground rules” associated
with the monotheistic Abrahamic faiths.
However, thinking this through presents
a total enigma. The problem is in reconciling the Axial Period dates with those
associated with the evolution of contemporary human beings. Even taking worst
case scenarios, we have two dates where we are comparing the origin of
religions 6000 years ago against at least 100000 years of human existence. In
other words despite all manner of savagery, intertribal slaying, smiting, hacking
and hewing taking place over the intervening millennia, religious followers seem
happy to accept the fact that their deity of choice looked on for at least 94000 years and did
nothing! Why? Even then, in the case of the Abrahamic religions, an obscure region at the eastern end of the Mediterranean inhabited by primitive
and warring desert tribes was chosen as its seed area. One might have thought
that in order to get the process off to a flying start, God might have looked further
to the East where philosophy and civilization was somewhat more developed.
Of course this fits nicely with the
beliefs of the creationists who believe only in “instant” creation 6000 years
ago -contrary to all of the geological, archeological and biological evidence
gathered over the years. Even worse, they seem quite happy to reject all of the
capabilities of their God-given powers of thought and reasoning.
