January 7, 2018

2018.01.07
I am the very model of a Very Stable Genius.
I have a mighty button and no problems with my penius.
I have no time for television, golf, or social media
Since my brain is way way better than the best encyclopedia.

In matters that are so obscure and far beyond our vision, we find in Holy Scripture passages which can be interpreted in very different ways without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such cases, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search for truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it.
St. Augustine.
Francis S. Collins, who was big in the human genome project, cites this, saying it's Augustine sorting through the seeming self-contradiction when Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are taken together and more-or-less literally. (Did humans or plants arrive first?)

I think it points to a major problem of religion in this country: some strains of Christianity hitched their wagon to science a long while back, and a in world after Newton but before Darwin, that kind of explanation made more sense. But when science started veering away from things that Christians clung to as "this must be true, and not just in a poetic and moral sense", some flavors of Christianity decided to double down and claim a validation in the scientific view of empirically observable facts on the ground that becomes harder and harder to justify. Augustine shows that it doesn't have to be that way.