A Comment on 'How To Answer if Your Child Asks if the Bible Conflicts With Science'

Received on Facebook from Peter Hansen commenting on the article I shared here.

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Evolutionary theory is just another mental construct, not basically different than politics, or poetry, or sports. It may be true or false in various particulars, but its value is drawn principally from the society that choses to believe it. This is the idea that children must be taught, if they are properly to understand the limitations of what their teachers are teaching them. I asked the same question when I was a boy, and the man who gave me my answer was a priest, but he was a Buddhist priest. He told me that "science" and religion address different fundamentals and employ different methods to arrive at their conclusions.

This is especially accurate in terms of attempting to apply the scientific method to the past. The past, of course, does not exist, except in our imaginations and in the mind - - or eyes, if you prefer --- of God and the angels. When this fact is fully assimilated, it becomes easier to understand that attempting to define a "truth" to the past via the scientific method is something of an exercise in creative imagination. Whether we are discussing the supposed division of species across time, the origin of the planets or the stars, or the origins of mankind, the past cannot be tested, it cannot be recreated, and to the extent it can be known, it can only be known in part.

Sacred scripture and the sacraments, being the Word of God, are not really "past" in the same way. They are present, because God is always present. Hopefully this is simpler for the Traditionalist to grasp. The Traditionalist understands that the repetition of the sacrament in its proper form allows our worship to exist outside of the ordinary constraints of days, months and years.