What Kept You?

                       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.