Why is it that some Christians, namely creationists, feel that they need to attack the science of modern of biology because they think it is at odds with the Genesis creation myth, while they give astronomy a free pass. The Bible is replete with verses that are contradicted by the claims of modern astronomy. Let's look at one of them. Here, in Matthew 24, Jesus is talking about signs of the end times:
29"Immediately after the distress of those days
" 'the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light;
the stars will fall from the sky,
and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.'
(BTW, this is a reference to Isaiah, but that's not the point.)
Here are points where Jesus' words and modern astronomy seem to be at odds with one another:
1. The sun will be darkened: How exactly can you switch off this massive hydrogen-based nuclear reactor without blowing out the entire solar system?
2. The moon will not give its light: Jesus apparently did not know that the moon doesn't give its light, it merely reflects the sun's.
3. The stars will fall from the sky: Jesus seems to think that the stars are close enough and small enough to be subject to the earth's gravity, so that they would fall from the sky. He doesn't know that the stars are so far off and so huge, that for us to see them moving, they would have to be moving at an incredibly fast rate compared to our planet. Moreover, we see stars as they were many millions of years ago when the light left them, not as they are now. So, for example, for a star that is 100 million light years away to be seen "falling" in the night sky, it would have had to start "falling" 100 million years ago.
4. The heavenly bodies will be shaken: If they were, then Newton's law of universal gravitation tells us that this would send the earth spiralling out of orbit and we would all be instantaneously destroyed. No one will be left to see Jesus' glorious descent on the clouds.
Now it is obvious that either:
1. We have to treat Jesus as a man of his time, a first century man, who did not know the slightest thing about astronomy, like everyone else at his time, or
2. We must judge modern astronomy to be an affront to Christianity, because it goes against the words of Christ.
Alternatively, we can just agree to let science do the work of science (from astronomy to biology to organic chemistry to particle physics) and let religion do its thing.
What do you think?
