Chapter Six

IN THE IMAGE AND LIKENESS OF GOD

Guess what?

Polls show that religiously observant individuals account for two-thirds of all charitable donations made annually in the United States.

The so-called “social Darwinism” of the nineteenth century ultimately led to the anti-humanitarian degradations of the Nazis.

Many conservative Christians and Jews believe that the Bible is inerrant in what it proposes to teach. But to understand what the Bible is teaching often requires that we recognize the genre or type of text in a given passage.

For example, there are many cases where the intent of a biblical author is not to present objective, scientific history in the modern sense—with fixed dates, correlated sources, eyewitness testimony, and so on—but to present the “big picture” to make a specific theological point. This is particularly true with the creation account in Genesis: most Christians and Jews understand that the intent of the biblical author was not to write a treatise on astrophysics or developmental biology but to convey a much bigger, more important, even more startling truth:

“Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and the cattle, and over all the wild animals and all the creatures that crawl on the ground.’ God created man in his image; in the divine image he created him; male and female he created them” (Gn 1:26–27).

As such, for most Jews and Christians, controversies over “evolution” and “creation” create a false dichotomy. The real issue isn’t whether evolution is a valid theory, it’s how that theory is applied or understood.

For instance, in his “Message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on Evolution,” delivered on October 22, 1996, the late Pope John Paul II pointed out earlier popes’ insistence that “there is no conflict between evolution and the doctrine of the faith regarding man and his vocation, provided that we do not lose sight of certain fixed points.”

Calling evolution “more than just a hypothesis,” the pope said that it was proper to speak of “theories” of evolution rather than a single “theory.”

“The use of the plural is required here—in part because of the diversity of explanations regarding the mechanism of evolution, and in part because of the diversity of philosophies involved,” he said. “There are materialist and reductionist theories, as well as spiritualist theories. Here the final judgment is within the competence of philosophy and, beyond that, of theology.”

Pope John Paul II didn’t endorse a particular theory of evolution, and certainly not a materialist theory advocated by neo-Darwinists. He merely pointed out the same thing that Pope Pius XII did nearly fifty years earlier in his encyclical Humani generis: that, in and of itself, “the doctrine of evolution, insofar as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter,” is not incompatible with Christian faith as revealed in the biblical texts.

Who Said It?

“So great is my veneration for the Bible that the earlier my children begin to read it the more confident will be my hope that they will prove useful citizens of their country and respectable members of society. I have for many years made it a practice to read through the Bible once every year.”

John Quincy Adams

Nor was Pius XII alone in this opinion.

One of the most prominent writers in the classic four-volume collection of articles, published in 1917, called The Fundamentals—from which the term “fundamentalist” derives—insisted that religious believers don’t object to evolution as such but rather to a theory of evolution that is atheistic and mechanistic.

“The Bible, indeed, teaches a system of evolution,” explained George Frederick Wright, in an article entitled “The Passing of Evolution.” “The world was not made in an instant, or even in one day (whatever period day may signify), but in six days. Throughout the whole process there was an orderly progress from lower to higher forms of matter and life.”¹

Scripture Says

“What Tis man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you visit him? For you have made him a little lower than God, and you have crowned him with glory and majesty.”

Psalm 8:4–5

Wright went on to say that what conservative Christians in his day objected to was a doctrine of evolution that “practically eliminates God from the whole creative process, and relegates mankind to the tender mercies of a mechanical universe, the wheels of whose machinery are left to move on without any immediate divine direction.”

Most Christian denominations and Jewish organizations today take the view that their members are free to debate the relative merits of evolution, creationism, or intelligent design based on the evidence.

And while the scientific evidence for evolution of some type seems compelling to many, there are religious groups and thinkers who have pointed to numerous inconsistencies and “holes” in the naturalistic theories of evolution, based on the principle of natural selection, presented in many textbooks. Many biological scientists now concede that the available scientific evidence (in the form of the fossil record) does not wholly support Darwin’s theory of gradual change based on natural selection, because species seem to appear quite suddenly without any intermediate steps.

Indeed, even Richard Dawkins, the atheist popularizer of evolution and author of The Blind Watchmaker and The God Delusion, concedes that “some biologists . . . have had doubts about Darwin’s particular theory of how evolution happened.”²

But these debates are scientific in nature, not theological.

“For theology, both the creationist and evolutionary hypotheses are permissible, in principle,” explains Professor Alexey I. Osipov, a leading Orthodox theologian at the Moscow Theological Academy. “That is with the condition that in both cases the Lawgiver and the Creator of the world is God. All existing species He could create either by ‘days,’ at once and in final form, or gradually, in the course of ‘days’ to ‘bring them forth’ from water and earth, from lower forms to the highest by way of laws that He built into nature.”

How Could a Flood Cover “All” the Earth?

What Skeptics Say: Genesis 8:9 says that the flood covered the “whole earth.” But we know that is scientifically impossible: If the entire earth was covered by 30,000 feet of water, enough to cover the highest mountains, there would be no place for the water to recede and it would still cover the earth. The notion of a flood covering the entire earth is scientifically impossible.

Reply: Given the recent obsession with global warming, the possible melting of the polar ice caps and rising ocean waters covering entire landmasses, the knee-jerk opposition to the historicity of the flood narratives in Genesis is ironic. Nevertheless, biblical Hebrew frequently uses absolute terms that are not meant to be taken literally. The Hebrew phrase translated in English as “the whole earth” (kol eretz) literally means “all the land,” and is used frequently to refer to people, not geography, and to local regions, not the entire planet. For example, 2 Samuel 18:8 says that “the battle was spread over the whole [kol] earth [erets],” meaning the entire region around Mahanaim, not the entire planet. 1 Chronicles 14:17 says that King David’s fame extended to the “whole earth” (kol erets), although it’s doubtful the Bible is speaking of people in ancient China or Australia. For those who accept that the flood was an actual historical event and not a mere legend, the best way to understand it that does justice to the biblical texts is as a cataclysmic regional catastrophe such as those mentioned in numerous ancient Near Eastern records, including those of Sumer, Babylonia, Egypt, and Greece. While geologists insist there is no evidence of a universal flood covering the entire planet, there were numerous prehistoric deluges of catastrophic proportions, such as when the lower Tigris-Euphrates Valley was flooded 12,000 years ago and the Black Sea region was flooded 7,600 years ago.

“Created” means we are endowed with dignity and rights

Where people of faith disagree most with secularists is not over the mechanics of creation but over a central point of Genesis that human beings are precious in the eyes of the Creator—or, as Jesus put it, “even the hairs on your head are numbered” by God (Lk 12:7).

If you’re an atheist or pagan, it is hard to believe in the inherent dignity and worth of human beings. “Miserable creatures thrown for a moment on the surface of this little pile of mud,” is how the modern pagan and atheist philosopher known as the Marquis de Sade characterized the human situation.

If human beings are merely “miserable creatures thrown for a moment on the surface of this little pile of mud,” their lives are not worth much. For that reason the marquis was one of the first modern writers to champion abortion and infanticide.

“Dread not infanticide,” he had one of his female characters say. “The crime is imaginary: we are always mistress of what we carry in our womb, and we do no more harm in destroying this kind of matter than in evacuating another, by medicines, when we feel the need.”

If you believe that human beings are nothing more than chemical accidents—random, effervescent bubbles of consciousness in a cold, indifferent universe—it’s difficult to believe that human life is inherently sacred or that human beings have rights that are anything more than mere social convention.

That is precisely why the early champions of scientific evolution quickly extended their theories into social and political realms.

The so-called “social Darwinism” of such nineteenth-century theoreticians as Herbert Spencer led to eugenics, to the belief in the “survival of the fittest,” and, ultimately, to the anti-humanitarian degradations of the Nazis.

The dangers of anti-creationist thought

Charles Darwin’s own half-cousin, Francis Galton, argued that charitable institutions such as orphanages allowed “inferior” human beings to survive and reproduce faster than “superior” ones.

The biblical belief that human beings, male and female, were created in the “image and likeness” of God necessarily carries with it certain logical corollaries—namely, that we have an obligation to our fellow man.

God says through the prophet Isaiah, “Woe to those who enact unjust decrees, who compose oppressive legislation, to deny justice to the weak and to cheat the humblest of my people of fair judgment, to make widows their prey and to rob the orphan (Is 10: 1–3).”

Christians, for their part, must confront such chilling texts as Matthew 25, which appear to make their very salvation dependent upon how they treat their fellow human creatures:

When the Son of Man comes in his glory... he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

Then the King will say to those on his right, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”

Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?”

The Bible in American History, Part VI

“I am profitably engaged in reading the Bible. Take all of this Book upon reason that you can, and the balance by faith, and you will live and die a better man.”

Abraham Lincoln

The King will reply, “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.”

Then he will say to those on his left, “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me” (Mt 25:31–43).

Faith and charity

Given biblical texts such as these, it’s not surprising that, according to the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey (SCCBS), undertaken in 2000 by researchers at the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, participation in worship services is by far the most accurate predictor for charitable giving.

According to the Gallup Organization, religiously observant individuals (only 38 percent of all Americans) donate fully two-thirds of the $280 billion donated in the United States annually—or $184 billion.³ Foundations donate $25 billion and American corporations another $9 billion.

A Book Atheists Want to Burn

When Critics Ask: A Popular Handbook on Bible Difficulties, by Norman Geisler & Thomas Howe; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1992.

Among those who attend worship services regularly, 92 percent of Protestants give charitably compared with 91 percent of Catholics, 91 percent of Jews, and 89 percent of other religions.⁴

What’s more, religious belief is more important that political ideology. The SCCBS study found that “religious liberals are 19 points more likely than secular liberals to give to charity, while religious conservatives are 28 points more likely than secular conservatives to do so.”

This doesn’t mean, of course, that religious persons are necessarily more ethical than their secular counterparts. Atheist crusaders such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris angrily insist that you don’t have to believe in God to be a good person—and indeed you don’t. There are and have been many heroic “secular saints”—such as people who volunteer with Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), Amnesty International, and other humanitarian groups—who sacrifice much to serve their fellow human beings through medical missions and many philanthropic enterprises.

But certainly we can say that that the biblical idea of man being created in the image and likeness of God has been and continues to be the most powerful motive for philanthropy in the world.