Et tu, Islam?
The Garden of Eden is getting pretty crowded. With creationism on the rise in Islamic countries, evolution better quick produce its own ancient texts to get people believing in science’s story of the rise of life on Earth.
And science better get a good editor, too. Because look at how the big difference between Christian creationism and Islamic creationism reveals the power of word choice. Many Christians believe the Earth is only a few thousand years old, taking the timeline of the Bible literally. Islamic creationists, meanwhile, are willing to believe the Earth is much older, a hugely significant ideological difference. And all thanks to a few choice words —
[T]he Koran, the holy text of Islam, says the universe was created in six days, the next line adds that a day, in this instance, is metaphorical: “a thousand years of your reckoning.”
See the power of the metaphor? See the power of the ancient well-placed clause, the teleological caveat? See how much easier things would have been had the founders of Western religion just written in a more open-ended style?
The concept of evolution is still in danger, though, since nobody thought to include it in early religious texts and now creationism is catching on in yet another big Western outfit.
So how to write a religion that allows for interpretation? For a broader view of the universe? If it were me, I’d do a little hemming and hawing, something like: “And so it was that the universe was created in a [coughcoughgargle] days by a great [snrffcoughflagl]. And it was good (enough).”
But I’m taking suggestions. Give me your “In the beginning”s. Allow for the wisdom of the past, but leave room for the knowledge of the future.
