So, I'm in Bible Lit. It's a cool class - very discussion based. It makes me feel smart, especially because my main purpose for taking the class is actually quite legitimate in comparison with some of my peers.
I'm taking the class to see The Bible as a defining literary work - one that influenced art, music and the books following. Over 40% of allusions are Biblical in nature and a lot of works are not easily comprehended if you don't know them. Anyway, it's important if you want to be an English person like me, BLAH BLAH BLAH.
SO ANYWAY.
In this class there seems to be some kind of confusion as to what it means to NOT TALK ABOUT SOMETHING RELIGIOUSLY.
I am all for Religion, but I am also a citizen of the United States and I am also Thomas Jefferson's biggest fangirl, so the Constitution is SERIOUS BIDNESS.
It is CONSTITUTIONALLY INCORRECT TO MERGE CHURCH AND STATE.
This does not mean I am condemning Religion or I hate Jesus or that I am ashamed of my faith.
America was founded on the principles of having and worshipping a God or higher being and the moral standards that came with it, so that isn't really the problem.
The problem is stupid people who think they are always right, but they aren't.
You can't say things like "I BELIEVE GOD DOESN'T WANT US TO SIN. EVAR. IT ARE WRONG AND YOU WILL GO TO HELL." when the question is "How does a creation story give a society a firm foundation?"
Acceptable answers:
- because it gives them a sense of security that a higher power is in control of what can appear to be uncontrollable events such as moon phases, seasons, etc.
- because it lends this higher being benevolance to know that they were created by them
- because it gives them a sense of moral responsibility or obligation to that higher being
AND MANY MORE.
I just want to slam my head on my desk - or their heads. GOD is an important thing, yes, but so is not taking advantage of other people's liberties, which INCLUDES THE GOD-GIVEN RIGHTS OF MAN THAT CANNOT BE SABATOGED BY HUMAN IGNORANCE.
Some people just don't get it. You can see my teacher being driven crazy by how she has to respond.
I dont know, it's obviously more important to follow God - and that is to preach his word - but I don't believe in the creation story as a literal translation on the emergance of man or our universe anyway, so it all just bugs me, and they were all going on about how evolution wasn't true, which had nothing to do with the intial subject. The point of the above is that God gave me a mind and I'm trying to use it, and I'm sick of people clouding what could be viable information because they are so hung up on the Jesus part and not the point of the class. YOU CAN INTERNALIZE THE THEOLOGICAL PART PEOPLE. OR GO TO SEMINARY. LORDY.
But now that I'm thinking about it, I want to just get my beliefs on evolution and the creation story dilemma out of the way. Creation Story: I think it's strictly metaphorical and as I said before, it was made to lend God the credit of what he DID DO, but on a more comprehendable level for the people at that time.
I'm just going to say it now so there isn't any question:
I believe that evolution is an indesputable truth that can be proven more than it can be disproven. If you think that it didn't happen, I totally respect your opinion, but you will never change my mind and in some ways you are going to look a little less intelligent in my eyes for various reasons.
1. Because it's true.
2. Because you are insulting my God.
Let me explain:
As a believer in God I am expected to think God capable of all things - I am to exhault his every work.
By denying evolution, are you saying MY GOD is INCAPABLE of taking millions of years to slowly perfect and create something so unique and precise as a human being? You don't think that MY GOD could have been so meticulous, so caring in his development of us that he literally pulled us from the ocean and poked and prodded and watched and waited and stretched our minds and our capacities and watched us struggle under his hands so that we could eventually be concious enough to be with him?
What greater art can there be? He pulled us out of 'the dust, the earth'. It doesn't specify what that was. He molded me out of a fish or a monkey? FANTASTIC. I am in dominion of them because I was among them and he selected my species because he saw my potential and the relationship we were capable of. It took him millenia to sculpt my universe and he is still growing it - he is a master craftsman whose work is never done.
So much new life is created and taken away; these galaxies that spin so precariously close the edges of destruction, who are so finely tuned and set that they are mobilized to awe me and inspire me countlessly.
Billions of years of billions of stars and He gave them all to me He gave me the capacity to study and revel in the creations of a GOD who takes his time and does it right. Who watched me develop legs, who watched me shed feathers, or walk upright. Who sparked in me a desire to be something greater. A GOD who placed, by some intricate science that cannot be recorded with such inspiration in any book or by any word of man, in me something as profoundly small as an atom and as big as Jupiter.
I can't believe that evolution didn't happen.
I can't belive that The Big Bang didn't happen, or that all these other strange and beautiful things of science COULDN'T exist.
They are a celebration, some great defining stroke of paint on a canvas that has yet to be fully interpreted.
You call MY GOD a liar. You call him a cheat - you say that he couldn't select by hand the best of each species and watch it flourish.
You say its too crazy to believe, that it is insulting to think God could do something like that because a few words you have translated from a strictly literal sense.
How could you expect anything less than what God has placed right before our eyes.
You know what else is too crazy to believe? That he would give up his son to be nailed to a cross for idiots like us.
