Well now, I was gonna' do a piece about some big multinational corporation what preys on us and our kids. But, then one night while lying awake I got interested in a talk show program. Well, I got so interested that I just stayed awake and listened to all the conflab that was a'commin' an' a'goin' back and forth there.
So, you wonder! What in the world would a country boy, preacher like Leo C. find so interestin' that would keep him wide awake in the middle of the night listening to a radio talk show?
Seems a reasonable question, so let me tell ya'll what was a'bein' bantered about there.
Recent headlines and news stories has brought out this thing about what should be taught in school. And, more to the point, it seems that the ACLU has been runnin' around the courts tryin' to keep the commandments and religion stuff out of the classrooms.
Well, that seemed an impartial thing, until one state decided that if they couldn't teach religion and the ten commandments and other Good Book stuff, that they just would not teach anything about evolution either.
So that started off the banter, 'Is the Good Book story about creation the way it happened or is the evolution thing the true story about how we all came about in the first place?'
And, so it went on, a bunch of folks called in and thought that The Bible was the 'Big Guy's solemn word on how it all happened. An' of course, some more folks called in and said it was impossible for that to happen the way it was written. An' so the argument went, an' finally the suggestion was brought up that no matter if either case was right or wrong then there should be equal teachin' of both sides of the issue or else no teachin' of either.
And, after all that long 2 or 3 hours of back and forth banter, I was wantin' to call in and give a thought or two about the matter myself, but traffic was heavy on the phone lines and before I got to say my thing, the program was gone.
So, ol' 'never say die' Leo C. tha's me, decided to get my words in somewhere, somehow.
So here we go!
Let's start our own controversial conflab, about what happened way back then. And, since I'm the instigator, here is the way I see it. Ya'll can see it your own way and write in your own comments.
First let's start with the Bible Story, since I am well versed on them stories anyway.
If we read Genesis, we find that there are actually two accounts of creation. One tells about the 'Big Guy' puttin' everything together in six days and restin' on the seventh. But, in chapter two it just says the 'Big Guy' formed mankind out of the dust of the earth and breathed the breath of life into His creation. Be that as it may, nobody was there to know what happened. Did He make one man and one woman or did He make mankind? Well later as the story goes we read of only one man and one woman. And, if we continue readin', some of the offspring found wives from here and there, not just sisters and brothers. Where did Cain go to start his offspring?
Well, as I read it, it's a nice story. But who wrote it? Did the 'Big Guy' write it all down and hand it to Adam and tell him that some day he would have to put the writings into a book called the Bible? The way the Good Book goes on, it seems nobody wrote anything until Moses wrote the laws and other stuff while he was in the desert wondering around with a few million, Crotchety, Chosen, Citizens.
So, what is the point of all this? The story is a nice story, and whoever wrote it had to start somewhere. All stories start somewhere. They have to have a point in time where the story begins and starts to make sense. Then it gets to the gist of the things that the story is about.
It seems as though the pulpit pounders like to take the story and say, see, that is how it was done. But, they miss the point. Even if the 'Big Guy' handed the story to Adam and told him to write it someday. It is still a story. In that story He never said when it happened. The story says that the 'Big Guy' found a formless, lifeless, planet in His vast universe and made something out of it. How long did it take Him to do that? Who knows? The only person at the time who knew what a day was, was the 'Big Guy' who made one. And, since Adam wasn't around until the sixth day, or period of time, then he would have been the only one to know what his first day of life was like. Adam's first day of life was the 'Big Guy's sixth day of creation. And, whatever time period happened before Adam's first day is unaccountable. Other than the fact that from Adam's time the sun came up and the sun went down and Adam called that a day.
Now I can accept the fact that the 'Big Guy' is and was smart enough to put everything on this planet together in six days, if He wanted to do it that way. And, don't come up with all the stars and stuff that seems to get into the story. they began to be seen when the earth was put into some order, and the clouds and fog was lifted. after He started cleaning up the mess here. He took this planet which was void and without form and made something out of it, and, that's what the Good Book says.
That's a reasonable story of what He did, but not how He did it. The 'Big Guy' is not bound to mankind in any way to tell us how He did something, He only said what he did. So before Adam's, first day on earth which was already a passage of time there could have been centuries, millenniums, or even eons. Since Adam was a man, a unit of mankind, he only understood what he saw on his first day of existence. Everything was already here and in place for him. And being a human, like you and I, he observed and made his own sense of his surroundings.
So how does this affect the pulpit pounders? They like to take the Good Book and tell everybody 'it's in there', and tell everybody this is the way the 'Big Guy' did it, because 'it says so'. But, who told them this is the way it all happened? If Adam got the story from the 'Big Guy' and later told his kids about it and then they told their kids, and so on. Is the tale now in print the story told to Adam? No Way! You tell a story to the guy next to you and let him tell it to someone else and so on until someone gets it back to you, is it the same story?
Well, enough of the Bible Stuff. let's take a look at the Evolution Stuff.
Seems nobody ever even thought of Evolution until some nut called Darwin started lookin' at monkeys and then holdin' a mirror to his face and decidin' he and the monkey had like features. That's an interesting story too. After all stories, as I said, have to start someplace to give them a time and place element. So all the educated nuts and other assorted wannabe's who don't want to listen to pulpit pounders, jumped on the band wagon and said see, "The 'Big Guy' never did all this cause there was no 'Big Guy' in the first place, everything happened from a cell or two that got tossed around in the 'Big Bang'.
So, that is their story. And, who is gonna prove them right or wrong? You and me, we'uns that is, were nowhere around when all that was supposed to take place. So who can prove it. And, without proof it is called a theory. It may seem that there is all sort of evidence that this could have happened, and maybe it did. But, again, Scientists are not Scientists, until the day they get their diploma from some scientific academy. The same as Adam was not a man until the day the 'Big Guy' made him and called him a man. And that day is a long many days since the first cell turned into a something, that turned into something else, and finally turned into a monkey that turned into one of us, whatever.
So, here we have two tales, one found in a book of writings not accountable to any particular person, but maybe from many persons, and the other tale from a nut that liked monkeys, and wanted them to be his uncles and aunts. You take it from here. These two tales can be called theories because they are explanations, whether reasonable or not, of how everything came about. Choose whichever one appeals to you, or maybe even start a story of your own.
Do we want to teach stories in school? Who cares(?) we teach kids nutty stories about 'Little Red Riding Hood', 'Santa Claus' and 'Snow White' so what is the difference if we tell them two stories of how we all came about? Let them hear it, grow up and then use their own judgment. Nuts to the ACLU, they just seem like so many mix master meddlers anyway. I think kids are smart enough to listen to stories, and then if they like them they can keep them, and if they don't they can start their own stories.
The 'Ol Preacher His Self,
Author of Tales From The Good Book