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Comment by solarengineer | Hacker News Reader

I often wonder how people reconcile such scientific reports with what religious texts say.

Some weeks ago, while discussing with a colleague about the human tendency for discrimination on any grounds, I'd said "After all, we humans were once apes in Africa". He responded with "Hey, I'm a follower of so-and-so religion, and our religious text says that God made everything within a week. So, please let's not discuss topics that are hurtful to me".

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Without intending to derail this thread into a boring old argument, religion isn't really about truth.

Mixture of identity tied up with other issues - the people that critically take a look a this kind of thing don't end up religious. All that's left are people that rationalize it or just don't think about it.

More egregious examples exist.

After I read the Bible the first time I had a discussion with a preacher about a theory of mine, just based on my own observation.

Genesis and Revelations are the two books of the Bible that were not written as observed. Genesis was written by Moses after the Jewish Exodus and Revelations is prophecy.

That leaves significantly more room for interpretation and metaphor, especially when discussing a subject that is so cross-discipline as creation itself. Is Genesis expected to provide cellular and DNA explanations?

I've come to call people who harp on these two books while ignoring everything in between, "Bookenders". It applies to just about anyone who is either obsessed with end-times prophecies or the idea that Genesis itself must be 100% literally interpreted (either to prove or disprove the accuracy of the Bible).

Reading the entire text is really a great exercise in perspective though. Far too few people do it.

> I've come to call people who harp on these two books while ignoring everything in between, "Bookenders". It applies to just about anyone who is either obsessed with end-times prophecies or the idea that Genesis itself must be 100% literally interpreted

Wow. This term deserves to be in more widespread circulation as it describes so many cranks who identify as Christian.

There is a lot of completely irrelevant tedium in the Old Testament outside of the Genesis and the handful of well known books. I've tried to read the whole thing a couple times, but I usually give up on the book of numbers and all the nattering on about hecatombs and priestly ritual.

I found schedule that break it into a daily dose of Old Testament, New Testament, psalms and proverbs. When you hit Leviticus it's hard to keep going but having that break down makes the daily routine a lot easier.

The idea is to interpret the larger point the text is making, and not get hung up on interpreting each detail literally.

As for your point, saying "After all, we're all children of God" means essentially the same thing.

Funny, because in my interpretation of the text (e.g. Genesis 9:3 [1]) god draws a distinct line between people and animals. Saying that we're all apes from Africa is more like erasing that line and acknowledging our kinship.

[1] http://biblehub.com/genesis/9-3.htm

Right, but the question is whether the GP was trying to make common cause with all humans or with all animals.

Thank you. The key point of Genesis is: be fruitful, multiply, and allow your descendants to enjoy the blessings of God. Getting involved in quibbles about the status of other species is exactly the anti-pattern of how to not to get a good outcome from interpreting a sacred text.

There are plenty of words written about the subject if you are interested. For example, here is a brief overview of Catholic teaching about creation and science: http://www.catholic.com/tracts/adam-eve-and-evolution

If you would like to read more, you can look up any number of scientists, philosophers, theologians, educators, etc.

Keep in mind that www.catholic.com is a website made by laypeople and not the official position of the Catholic Church. Their answers usually tilt towards the conservative side. Here's a Catholic Review article that shows a position within the Catholic Church that's more critical of the biblical narrative (and more supportive of the scientific consensus):

http://www.catholicreview.org/article/work/catholic-church-h...

This really show that the catholic position is barely an improvement on the baptist creationists. Their only point of disagreement seems to be on the time line.

> "Hey, I'm a follower of so-and-so religion, and our religious text says that God made everything within a week. So, please let's not discuss topics

OK, that's reasonable. Some people are religious, their religion is more important to them than scientific truth, and there's not much use discussing this sort of thing with them as there is little common framework to discuss within.

But

> that are hurtful to me".

What? Why would a topic be "hurtful"? Or "offensive", as you also hear a lot. That's what I don't get.

To get pedantic, humans were never apes, they share a common ancestor with apes.

And you could reconcile with your colleague, "I'm not disputing God created everything within a week; I'm just saying that all the evidence makes it look like it happened over the course of millions of years. Maybe God had some accelerated process, does your religious text talk about how God went about creation?"

To get extra pedantic we are apes. Taxonomically, humans are in the great ape family Hominidae.

We were, however, never monkeys.

Eddie Izzard points out that the French don't distinguish between monkeys and apes... and then goes on to suggest that the French translation for a line in Planet of the Apes must be interesting: "We are not monkeys! We are apes!"

Ah. Thanks for the correction!

> humans were never apes,

Humans, chimps, and bonobos form a clade; to say that 'humans were never apes' means that you have to make some tough decisions about what 'apes' are and live with the consequences.

http://www.whozoo.org/mammals/Primates/primatephylogeny.htm

Genesis chapter 2 says God formed Man from the dust of the ground. It also says "And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every fowl of the air and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them."

I find this fascinating that apparently all life has the ground in common. Science says no creator, but after a Big Bang, life evolved from sludge with Darwinism from thereon.

Doesn't the two kind of compare?

> I often wonder how people reconcile such scientific reports with what religious texts say.

I'm not convinced anyone does reconcile.

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