A Christian Secular Humanist
by J.G. Fabiano
For the past week I have been reading different religious articles in a local newspaper concerned with how the National Education Association is promoting homosexuality and how modern Christianity is weak and lax. I fear the religious right's image of what America should be. I also fear any organized thought which states that their's is the American way and are totally against anything that is different. As an educator I am approached with these ideas more and more every day. As a Christian I do not understand how any people can be so insensitive to the beliefs of others.
Recently I wrote an essay concerned with how evolution and creationism basically state the same thing. I wrote it in response to the concept that, as a teacher, I should put more stress on teaching my students creationist ideas. I hope you enjoy the essay and am curious how others see it. Thank you for your time and consideration.
- January, 1996
Because of the growing populations of many fundamentalist groups but more-so because our new government agrees with many, if not most, of their views, the Christian threat to our secular education systems is at an all time high. Their cry is how, "secular humanism", (the newest of the many - isms), is destroying both the educational institutions and the family structure. The fundamentalists demand a re-evaluation of what we allow our children to read and learn in our public school systems.
Even though our justice system has reversed many court decisions banning certain material labeled secular by the Christian fundamentalists, many school systems are still being assaulted by these groups by having Christian Coalition backed people enter many of the school boards across the country. They charge public education with accusations of teaching our highly motivated and open-minded school aged children scientific ideas which are opposite to traditional Christian thought. One of their favorite examples is Darwin's, "Origin of Species", which demonstrates how life as we know it today evolved from lower life forms.
The fundamentalist concept is based on the idea that man was created in God's image and that what man is, is what he has always been. Because of this idea most fundamentalists are against any form of Darwinian evolution or any theory which hints that man evolved from anything different from being created in the image of God. The fundamentalists have gone so far as organizing their beliefs in a theory called The Science of Creationism.
So, the fundamentalists and the evolutionists seem to be in direct confrontation with each other. I do not understand this. I believe the fundamentalists make their biggest mistake in equating an idea of science to something that is anti-religious, even atheistic. As a biologist, educator, and Christian I believe it is imperative to discuss why any idea of science, by definition, has to be an example of thought that is based on religious ideas.
Let me attempt to explain. Looking back eons, which are billions of years, physicists have been able, through mathematics, to show where all our origins were formed. At least back to 1.0 x 10-42 of a second. They discuss how sub atomic particles were formed and go back into the theory of the beginnings of energy and thus energy itself. In fact, these so-called secular scientists go back to the hypothesis that we all evolved from the spark of the first photon of light.
The Christian fundamentalists do not appreciate this type of thinking because they believe that this concept is the antithesis of the Christian belief that man was created in the image of God by God. This is the precise point where the fundamentalists lose sight of what the scientist and educator are striving to construe. Remember that physicists state that man can theorize and correlate how matter, and all that we know as being, began back to a micro piece of a second. Before this all scientific ideas are blind. The scientist, not the fundamentalist, states that we must have faith that at this time, in this creative mix, all being originated. If the fundamentalist wants to divide this pre one-millionth of a second into seven days, I am certain that the scientist would have little argument.
A unified theory of the origin of the universe has been worked on since the times of Aristotle. Einstein considered his life a failure because he was unable to describe a unified principle which would have explained the beginning of time. Most physicists today realize that this unified idea must be something so obvious, so beautiful, that maybe man does not have the capacity to understand its simplicity.
Man has always been intrigued by the term beginning, genesis. In man's quest to discover how the beginning originated, scientists, no matter what their beliefs are, realize that a vacuum is always established before the beginning. This vacuum is then easily replaced by that non-secular term, "faith".
Fundamentalist Christian educators are always exclaiming that they are trying to re-educate our children in the ideas and laws of the Christian Faith. But they must remember that we are all blessed with a sense of curiosity to seek one's roots and thus one's beginnings. Why the Christian Fundamentalist thought and Secular Scientific ideas are in direct confrontation is beyond all logical understanding. Scientific knowledge should never be considered an evil idea or a misrepresentation of any type of religious thought. It is simply a means of understanding what was and because of the consistency of nature, always will be.