Now there are some people out there who take the Bible literally. But as Ira Gershwin wrote, “the things that you’re liable to read in the Bible – it ain’t necessarily so.” I’m not out to challenge anyone’s beliefs about how to conduct oneself in this life or about what to expect in the next one. And I don’t want to argue about Jesus’ message – at least not for now. But I would like to address those people who consider themselves creationists or “young earth” proponents and encourage them to reexamine their beliefs from two rational perspectives.

In the first place, the world is full of creation myths. Every culture has one. Whether you’re looking at the Levant or sub-Saharan Africa or the North America deserts or the Amazonian jungles or the central Asian steppes, the ancient world was full of tribal societies that speculated about how everything got started. All you have to imagine is a primitive family huddling around a cook-fire while an elder tells stories about the ancestors. Maybe s/he heard them from elders gone before; maybe s/he made them up. But the upshot is, each of these people came up with their own version of the Beginning. There’s just no way anyone can seriously believe that one particular group of people tucked away in a corner of the eastern Mediterranean world has a lock on the “true story” of creation.

But if you have a fundamentalist leaning, I know your response: it’s in the Bible; therefore it must be true. (Yes, I also went to Sunday school and learned that song: “How do I know? The Bible tells me so!”)

So secondly, I’d like to splash some cold water on that line of thought. The Bible, as we know it, was assembled from a range of sacred texts by leaders of the early Christian church, some of whom didn’t even want to see the Old Testament included. Unlike the Qur’an, which is held to be a revelation to Muhammad, or the Buddhist sutras, which are sermons of Gautama, the Bible is a vast tapestry of all kinds of writings: Judaic histories, folklore, literary works, and prophesies in the Old Testament; various accounts of the life of Jesus and letters of his first followers to early churches in the New. Those who adhere to the Bible refer to it as “the Word of God”; yet nowhere in its pages is that claim made – because it consists of bits and pieces that were written by different people over hundreds of years before the Bible was even assembled. It’s as if those early church fathers emerged from a room with the book they’d cobbled together and proclaimed, “We declare this to be the Word of God.” And so it became by popular acclaim.

In the original Star Trek series, there was an episode called “A Piece of the Action.” The crew of the Enterprise encountered a culture on a faraway planet that had adopted the customs of early twentieth century American gangsters – all because a previous starship had left behind a book called Chicago Mobs of the Twenties. People of that planet designated it a sacred book and proceeded to build their society around it. They justified their lifestyle by claiming they simply did what was written “in the book.”

That, unfortunately, is the situation with you creationists and young earthers. You take what’s “in the book” as gospel [sic] and refuse to hear otherwise. You turn your heads to objective evidence that refutes the creation myth of one isolated people – all because that myth that has been granted legitimacy by having been included in an anthology that has been proclaimed indisputable by those who do not wish to have it disputed.

You say to me, “Yes, but it’s God’s word.”

I reply, “Sez who?”