Creation views threaten US science

Bill Nye warns: Creation views threaten US science


Sept. 24, 2012

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — The man known to a generation of Americans as "The Science Guy" is condemning efforts by some Christian groups to cast doubts on evolution and lawmakers who want to bring the Bible into science classrooms.

Bill Nye, a mechanical engineer and star of the popular 1990s TV show "Bill Nye The Science Guy," has waded into the evolution debate with an online video that urges parents not to pass their religious-based doubts about evolution on to their children.

Christians who view the stories of the Old Testament as historical fact have come to be known as creationists, and many argue that the world was created by God just a few thousand years ago.

"The Earth is not 6,000 or 10,000 years old," Nye said in an interview with The Associated Press. "It's not. And if that conflicts with your beliefs, I strongly feel you should question your beliefs."

Millions of Americans do hold those beliefs, according to a June Gallup poll that found 46 percent of Americans believe God created humans in their present form about 10,000 years ago.

Nye, 56, also decried efforts in recent years by lawmakers and school boards in some states to present Bible stories as an alternative to evolution in public schools. Tennessee passed a law earlier this year that protects teachers who let students criticize evolution and other scientific theories. That echoes a Louisiana law passed in 2008 that allows teachers to introduce supplemental teaching materials in science classes.

"If we raise a generation of students who don't believe in the process of science, who think everything that we've come to know about nature and the universe can be dismissed by a few sentences translated into English from some ancient text, you're not going to continue to innovate," Nye said in a wide-ranging telephone interview.

The brief online video was not Nye's first foray into the combustible debate, but "it's the first time it's gotten to be such a big deal."

"I can see where one gets so caught up in this (debate) that you say something that will galvanize people in a bad way, that will make them hate you forever," he said. "But I emphasize that I'm not questioning someone's religion — much of that is how you were brought up."

In the video he tells adults they can dismiss evolution, "but don't make your kids do it. Because we need them." Posted by Big Think, an online knowledge forum, the clip went viral and has 4.6 million views on YouTube. It has garnered 182,000 comments from critics and supporters.

It drew the ire of the creationism group Answers in Genesis, which built a biblically based Creation Museum in Kentucky that teaches the stories of the Old Testament and has attracted headlines for its assertion that dinosaurs roamed alongside Adam and Eve.

The group produced a response video featuring two scientists who say the Bible has the true account of Earth's origins, and that "children should be exposed to both ideas concerning our past."

Nye, who is prone to inject dry humor into scientific discussions, said Earth is about 4.5 billion years old.

"What I find troubling, when you listen to these people ... once in a while I get the impression that they're not kidding," Nye said.

Ken Ham, a co-founder of Answers in Genesis, said dating methods used by scientists to measure the age of the earth are contradictory and many don't point to millions or billions of years of time.

"We say the only dating method that is absolute is the Word of God," Ham said. "Time is the crucial factor for Bill Nye. Without the time of millions of years, you can't postulate evolution change."

America is home to the world's biggest creationist following, Ham said, and the $27 million Creation Museum has averaged about 330,000 visitors a year since it opened just south of Cincinnati in 2007.

Nye can't talk for long about science without mentioning his current passion: speaking out against proposed government cuts to NASA's planetary sciences division. Nye is CEO of The Planetary Society, an organization in Pasadena, Calif., that promotes space exploration.

NASA's landing of the Curiosity rover on Mars last month is the kind of technological achievement that get kids interested in science, Nye said, but funding cuts would endanger future missions.

He said if Curiosity is able to find evidence of life on Mars — perhaps in the form of fossilized microorganisms — it would "change the world."

"It would change the way everybody feels about his or her place in space," he said. "And we do that for $300 million a year, which is not even a buck a person. We don't want to cut that."

On Paradise Lost

To read the poem on line, go to: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/pl/book_1/index.shtml

In Isaiah 55:8-9 God says to the prophet:

     8“For My thoughts are not your thoughts

      Nor are your ways My ways,” ...

     9 “For as the heavens are higher than the earth,

     So are My ways higher than your ways,

     And My thoughts than your thoughts

                                                 New King James Version (NKJV)

While this statement perhaps justifies the ambiguity of the story of the Fall in Genesis, it is not really very helpful to Fallen man. It suggests that the thoughts and ways of God are so different from those of man that His ways, as communicated through the priests and the prophets, must simply be accepted without explanation or justification. Unfortunately for ever-curious Fallen man, this demand is a pill hard to swallow. It is like the father who tells the child to eat his vegetable. The child asks “Why do I have to eat vegetables?” and the parent answers “Because I say so. I’m your father and I know what is best.” The father may in fact know that the vegetables are good for the child, but by forcing the child to accept the demand with so little explanation will not encourage the child to conform except under duress.

It was perhaps for this reason that the 17th century Puritan poet, John Milton undertook to "justify the ways of God to men" in the grandest epic poems produced in the English language. First published in 1667 and revised and reissued in 1672, Milton’s Paradise Lost is an imaginative retelling of the story of Eden that expands on the Genesis account, making God appear less arbitrary and tyrannical, and explaining how the Fall came to pass. The poem, mimicking the epic classics of Homer and Virgil, tells its’ story in in twelve “books” of blank verse. It has two dramatic arcs, one telling the story of Satan, the arch-enemy of God and man, and the other telling the story of Adam and Eve. The first 4 books focus on Satan. His story begins in Hell where he and his minions have been banished after their rebellion against God. Satan. Satan, beaten, but not bowed determines to continue his war against God by subterfuge rather than direct assault. He determines to ruin God’s great work by finding a way to subvert it and to this end, he undertakes a hazardous journey to the newly formed Earth. There he finds Adam and Eve in a state of bliss, and he plans to bring them down by persuading them to disobey God’s single command: to refrain from eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

One of the conclusions drawn from the Eden story is that God stands in opposition to man obtaining knowledge, that he wants man to remain in a blissful state of ignorance, guided by faith rather than reason. To this conclusion, Milton objects and focuses a considerable portion of his poem to exploring the nature of appropriate knowledge. In an earlier essay, “Of Education” Milton wrote: “The end then of Learning is to repair the ruines [sp] of our first Parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him." Milton devotes nearly a third of the poem to demonstrating that God does not oppose knowledge and makes provisions to see that Adam’s natural curiosity is satisfied in full. Books 5 through 8 presents a dialogue between Adam and the archangel Raphael covering a range of topics including the creation of the world, the war in Heaven, and the appropriate acquisition and application of knowledge.

God, aware of Satan’s intention to launch an assault on Adam’s idyllic existence, instructs Raphael to explicitly warn Adam of the imminent attack by Satan, that the attack will take the form of deceit and that Adam should resist the temptations of Satan for his own continued happiness:

     Go …Converse with Adam, …and such discourse bring on,

     As may advise him of his happie state,

     Happiness in his power left free to will,

     Left to his own free Will, his Will though free,

     Yet mutable; whence warne him to beware

     He swerve not too secure: tell him withall

     His danger, and from whom, what enemie

     Late falln himself from Heav'n, is plotting now

     The fall of others from like state of bliss;

     By violence, no, for that shall be withstood,

     But by deceit and lies; this let him know,

     Lest wilfully transgressing he pretend

     Surprisal, unadmonisht, unforewarnd. [5: 228-245]

God tells Raphael to give Adam “to know/ Of things above his World, and of thir being/ Who dwell in Heav’n [5: 454-6]. Raphael uses this platform to explain that angels and man share the power of “reason,” i.e., to know and understand, and that they differ only in how they obtain and apply knowledge.

      the Soule (says Raphael)

      Reason receives, and reason is her being,

      Discursive, or Intuitive; discourse

      Is oftest yours, the latter most is ours,

     Differing but in degree, of kind the same. [5: 486-90]

Raphael then explains the responsibility that comes with the gift of free will and again warns Adam that his continued happiness rests in his own hands.

     … That thou art happie, owe to God;

      That thou continu'st such, owe to thy self,

      That is, to thy obedience; therein stand.

      This was that caution giv'n thee; be advis'd.

      God made thee perfet, not immutable;

      And good he made thee, but to persevere

      He left it in thy power, ordaind thy will

      By nature free, not over-rul'd by Fate [5: 520-27]

Adam turns the conversation to cosmology, a matter of supreme importance to Milton’s contemporaries. Since the publication of Nicolaus Copernicus’ De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) in 1543, the controversy of whether the sun revolved around the Earth or the Earth revolved around the sun had raged across Renaissance Europe. His heliocentric hypothesis represented the first major scientific assault on the teaching of the Catholic Church that the Earth was the absolute center of the universe. The intellectual climate of the time was dominated by Aristotelian philosophy and the corresponding Ptolemaic astronomy which placed the Earth as the center of the Earth, thereby elevating the importance of Man in the vast in the vast universe. Further, the heliocentric hypothesis denied the literal interpretation of the Bible, contradicting numerous Biblical references that supported Ptolemaic astronomy (see Psalm 93:1, 96:10, Psalm 104:5, 1 Chronicles 16:30 Ecclesiastes 1:5 ). When the famed Italian astronomer Galileo defended the Copernican theory in Rome in 1616, he fell under the full weight of censure from the Church and though he was suppressed for several years, in 1632, he published Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems with formal authorization from the Inquisition and papal permission. Nevertheless, a year later he was placed on trial for heresy and was required to "abjure, curse and detest" the heliocentric opinions he supported in Dialogue. Further, he was placed under house arrest and remained so until his death in 1642. Both De revolutionibus and Dialogue were placed in the Church’s Index of Prohibited Books and remained there until 1835. And least one think that the Copernican controversy was confined to the Catholic Church, both Martin Luther and John Calvin rejected heliocentric theory in favor of a literal interpretation of the Bible. It is the “Galileo affair” that gave rise to claims of anti-intellectualism on the part of the Catholic Church specifically and Christianity generally.

Milton cleverly side-steps the Copernican controversy in Paradise Lost by having Adam explicitly ask Raphael about the movement of the stars, Instead of answering him directly (and thus forcing Milton to come down on one side or the other of the conflict, Raphael takes this opportunity to parrot Milton’s final opinion on the pursuit of knowledge:

     To ask or search I blame thee not, for Heav'n

     Is as the Book of God before thee set,

     Wherein to read his wondrous Works, and learne

     His Seasons, Hours, or Dayes, or Months, or Yeares:

     This to attain, whether Heav'n move or Earth,

     Imports not, if thou reck'n right, the rest

     From Man or Angel the great Architect

     Did wisely to conceal, and not divulge

     His secrets to be scann'd by them who ought

     Rather admire; [ 8: 66-75]

Raphael does not condemn Adam for his curiosity, but he dismisses the question as superfluous; rather than asking about how the universe works, man would do better to just stand back and admire the wonder of it. He continues:

     Sollicit not thy thoughts with matters hid,

     Leave them to God above, him serve and feare;

     Of other Creatures, as him pleases best,

     Wherever plac't, let him dispose: joy thou

     In what he gives to thee, this Paradise

     And thy faire Eve; Heav'n is for thee too high

     To know what passes there; be lowlie wise:

     Think onely what concernes thee and thy being; [8: 167-174]

Raphael shows Adam that the only knowledge he needs pursue is the knowledge that concerns his day-to-day existence. He is encouraged to be “lowlie wise,” meaning that he is to study those things appropriate to his state and station, those things that will make his happy and a more perfect creature of God. There is knowledge that God withholds from man, not because God opposes knowledgeable man, but because man’s limited intellectual capacity is unable to comprehend the knowledge that is withheld. He need not ponder the imponderable or reach for things beyond his grasp because such things can never serve a good or useful purpose. And ultimately, to pursue such elevated knowledge is a waste of man’s time; time that could be more profitably spent in simply appreciating the wonders of the universe and worshiping God for the wonders.

So thoroughly is Adam prepared for Satan’s assault, one wonders how Satan could be successful; however one important event occurs during the conversation: Eve grows bored and leaves to tend her Garden, thus she is not privy to the sundry explanations and warnings of Raphael. It is she who becomes Satan’s target and although she is warned by Adam to be on guard, she falls to his temptation. Significantly, the serpent inhabited by Satan calls the Tree “Mother of Science” and persuades Eve that he gained the power of speech by eating of the fruit of the Tree. Eve is moved more by the indignity of being denied the fruit than by a desire for the forbidden knowledge. That the lowly snake would be able to eat the fruit with impunity offends her pride and in an act of self-assertion, Eve takes the fruit and eats it. The first change is that she immediately praises the Tree in words previously reserved for God:

     O Sovran, vertuous, precious of all Trees

     In Paradise, of operation blest

     To Sapience, hitherto obscur'd, infam'd,

     And thy fair Fruit let hang, as to no end

     Created; but henceforth my early care,

     Not without Song, each Morning, and due praise

     Shall tend thee, [9: 795-801]

She comments that “dieted by thee [the Tree] I grow mature/ In knowledge, as the Gods who all things know” but what specifically has been learned is not articulated. [9: 801-4]  Finally, she begins to feel pangs of guilt, hoping that her transgression has escaped Heaven’s notice and that as a result of her defiant act, she may lose her beloved Adam.

Eve goes to Adam and confesses her crime and Adam, knowing Eve is now doomed to death, resolves to join her rather than lose her and be left alone. Adam’s transgression then is an act of love and not an act of prideful defiance.

     I with thee have fixt my Lot,

     Certain to undergoe like doom, if Death

     Consort with thee, Death is to mee as Life [9: 952-4]

So Adam eats the fruit and

     As with new Wine intoxicated both

     They swim in mirth, and fansie that they feel

     Divinitie within them breeding wings [9: 1008-1010 ]

Adam is then enflamed with carnal lust and the couple fall to “amorous play.” In this scene, Milton endorses the hypothesis of St. Augustine that carnal lust is a product of the Fall. Sated, they sleep and upon awakening, Adam feels the first pangs of guilt. He says to Eve, “we know/ Both Good and Evil, Good lost, and Evil got.” [9: 1071-2] They sew fig leaves together to hide their shame and then “sate them down to weep.” The poignancy of this sad scene is short lived, because they couple immediately fall to blaming each other for their fallen state.

Having discovered man’s crime, the angels charged with guarding Eden rush to God, but instead of chastising them for their failure to protect Adam, God explains:

     When first this Tempter cross'd the Gulf from Hell.

     I told ye then he should prevail and speed

     On his bad Errand, Man should be seduc't

     And flatter'd out of all [10: 39- 42]

God sends his Son, “mild Judge and Intercessor,” to sentence Adam and Eve. The judgment is well known and consistent with that in the Genesis account, but Milton adds on an epilogue to the banishment from Eden. God has the archangel Michael take Adam up to a high mountaintop and there the future of mankind is unveiled. Adam learns of the redemptive life, death and resurrection of the Son of God and he “is greatly satisfied and recomforted by these Relations and Promises.” [12: The Argument]

Milton’s Paradise Lost is rich in imagery and ideas, but Milton’s reflection on knowledge argues eloquently against the charges that God is opposed to the intellect. Milton’s God encourages man’s understanding of the world around him. He sends his angels to enlighten man and satisfy his natural curiosity. And even after the Fall, God sends Michael to show Adam the future of his descendants. God only seems to discourage the pursuit of knowledge that can offer no immediate benefit to man; such knowledge is discouraged not because it is dangerous, but because it is a distraction from what man should be about: the enjoyment of life and the worship of God.

What Adam and Eve gained and lost

The story of the Fall in Genesis is the essence of brevity.  Because it is so short, it leaves the reader with a multitude of questions, not the least of which is what is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?  What does its' fruit reveal?  What specifically is meant by the "Knowledge of Good and Evil?"  What do Adam and Eve gain by eating the fruit of the Tree and what do they lose?

 

One of the more popular speculations about the story of Eden is that what the Tree gave humankind was sexual awareness. This common Christian understanding has advanced the belief that the sin of Adam had something to do with sex: either sex caused the Fall or was a result of it. This theory, initially advanced by Augustine of Hippo (354-430), taught that Adam's sin is transmitted by concupiscence (intense sexual desire). In his letter to the Pelagians, Augustine wrote:

Although, if those members by which sin was committed were to be covered after the sin, men ought not indeed to have been clothed in tunics, but to have covered their hand and mouth, because they sinned by taking and eating. What, then, is the meaning, when the prohibited food was taken, and the transgression of the precept had been committed, of the look turned towards those members? What unknown novelty is felt there, and compels itself to be noticed? And this is signified by the opening of the eyes… As, therefore, they were so suddenly ashamed of their nakedness, which they were daily in the habit of looking upon and were not confused, that they could now no longer bear those members naked, but immediately took care to cover them; did not they–he in the open, she in the hidden impulse–perceive those members to be disobedient to the choice of their will, which certainly they ought to have ruled like the rest by their voluntary command? And this they deservedly suffered, because they themselves also were not obedient to their Lord. Therefore they blushed that they in such wise had not manifested service to their Creator, that they should deserve to lose dominion over those members by which children were to be procreated. [1.31-32]

Augustine made the assumption that because Adam and Eve covered their genital, realizing they were naked, in an attempt to hide those body parts that had participated in the sinful act. If eating the fruit had been the sin, they should have covered their hands and mouths, but instead they cover their sexual organs, leading Augustine to conclude that these were the body parts responsible for the original sin. While modern theology holds that the original sin stems from disobedience to God, the idea that that the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge was a metaphor for carnal sex has been a persistent current throughout Christian history.

More modern theories include those that take the fruit of the tree literally and suggest that what Adam and Eve gained by eating the fruit was the literal knowledge of good and evil, but since evil would not have naturally existed in the God-created Garden, a literal reading is that evil was created when the couple disobeyed God’s commandment and ate of the fruit. This is the premise of Jewish tradition where the Tree of Knowledge and the eating of its fruit represent the beginning of the mixture of good and evil together. Before that time, the two were separate, and evil had only a nebulous existence in potentia. The the eating of the fruit released the “yeitzer hara,” the Evil Inclination that refers to the misuse of things the physical body needs to survive, hence hunger begets gluttony, the sexual urge turns to lust, self-preservation leads to preemptive violence, etc. Thus the knowledge Adam and Eve gain is the evil they set free through the act of disobedience, the first act of evil.

A second understanding also comes down from Jewish tradition. The phrase in Hebrew: (tov V'ra), meaning good and evil, is a figure of speech known as a merism. This literary device pairs opposite terms together, in order to create a meaning, so that with the phrase "good and evil" it means "everything.” This interpretation makes sense of God’s statement “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil,” suggesting man now knows everything that God knows. This however is clearly not the case. There are still limits on what man knows, but knowledge, like evil, perhaps exists in potentia, meaning that man’s act of eating the fruit released his potential to lean and grow. Before the Fall, man had little incentive to learn and grow because all of his needs where met by God and his environment. After the Fall, man is forced to learn and grow in a new harsher environment as a result of his sin, but he has also acquired the intellectual tools to do so.

Akin to this understanding is the proposition that Adam and Eve received self-awareness as a result of eating from the Tree of Knowledge. Self-awareness is said to be that feature that most clearly separates man from all other animals. Their new-found self-awareness made them aware of their individuality and their separation from both God and the animals. As a result of eating the fruit, Adam and Eve became aware that they were uniquely different from the animals and superior to them. Nakedness was a characteristic Adam and Eve shared with their animal companions and they were ashamed of their nakedness because it too closely associated then with the inferior animal kingdom.

More importantly, in their emerging self-awareness, they became conscious of their own mortality. The awareness of the inevitability of death that compelled then (and us) to make something of life and is sometimes tied to the idea of the “fortunate Fall” and the “felix culpa” or “happy fault.” If not for the Fall, we would not know evil and virtues like compassion, integrity, and generosity would have no value. In the fallen world, choosing the good over the bad, in a world of pain, encourages us grow in virtue. We refine and ennoble our souls by overcoming obstacles and enduring disappointment and pain. It is our consciousness of inevitable death that compels us to live more deeply, to live our lives so that every minute counts. In this context, the evils man must endure are ultimately for the good.

This theory answers the question about why a benevolent and omniscient God would place the Tree of Knowledge within man’s grasp, and then enjoin him not to touch it. God is not just giving man an opportunity to prove his loyalty, but is giving him an opportunity to either live his life as an innocent and pampered child, never to grow beyond his idyllic state or to choice to live a life rife with challenges and pain, but one that encouraged the ability to choose between right and wrong, and accept responsibility for those decisions. While it certainly true that Adam lacked sufficient information to make an informed decision about his fate and the fate of his descendants, he was warned that defiance had consequence and still in an exercise of his free will, he ate of the fruit. For the secularist who may choose to see the story of Eden as an allegory, the Fall from Grace represents the fall every child must experience when it becomes aware that it must leave the Eden of primary narcissism, the bliss of being the center of the parents’ world, a world where their every need is met and where they experience themselves, for a brief time, the center of the known world. This idea raises an interesting question: if given the choice, how many of us would exchange our current existence for one of complete childhood innocence and dependency? Many can think back to their childhood and their most vivid memories are associated with their desire for individuality and independence. Perhaps this explains the real nature of original sin, not that it is something passively passed along to us by our parents, but the fact that given the choice Adam made in relative ignorance, we would follow suit to gain our independence, even with foreknowledge of the fate that awaits us.

In this view, the Fall was part of the divine plan. As Paul wrote in Romans 8:28: “… we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” Thus, from our limited human perspective looks to be evil may in the broader scope be a positive good. In his book The Case for Faith, author Lee Strobel recorded excerpts from his interview with Villanova University and Boston College professor of philosophy Peter Kreft who attempted to explain this concept with an analogy:

“’How can a mere finite human be sure that infinite wisdom would not tolerate certain short-  range evils in order for more long-range goods that we couldn’t foresee?’ he [Kreft] asked.”

“’Okay, then, imagine a bear in a trap and a hunter who, out of sympathy, wants to liberate him. He tries to win the bear’s confidence, but he can’t do it, so he has to shoot the bear full of drugs. The bear, however, thinks this is an attack and that the hunter is trying to kill him. He doesn’t realize that this is being done out of compassion.’”

“’Then, in order to get the bear out of the trap, the hunter has to push him further into the trap to release the tension on the spring. If the bear were semiconscious at that point, he would be even more convinced that the hunter was his enemy who was out to cause him suffering and pain. But the bear would be wrong. He reaches this incorrect conclusion because he’s not a human being.’”

“Kreft let the illustration soak in for a moment. ’Now,’ he concluded, ‘how can anyone be certain that’s not an analogy between us and God? I believe God does the same to us sometimes, and we can’t comprehend why he does it any more than the bear can understand the motivations of the hunter. As the bear could have trusted the hunter, so we can trust God.’”

“Dentists, athletic trainers, teachers, parents—they all know that sometimes to be good is not to be kind. Certainly there are times when God allows suffering and deprives us the lesser good of pleasure in order to help us toward the greater good of moral and spiritual education. Even the ancient Greeks believed the gods taught wisdom through suffering. Aeschylus wrote: ‘Day by day, hour by hour / Pain drips upon the heart / As, against our will, and even in our own despite / Comes Wisdom from the awful grace of God.’”

So like the bear in the analogy, we are ultimately obligated to put our faith in God, to trust that God is working for our good even in our misery and that our limited human knowledge cannot discern or even define what that good might be. While man continues to strive for greater independence, suffering draws him back to dependency on God. Like the bear, man can resist his rescuer, drawing away and snapping at the hunter, but he cannot be released from his misery in the trap until he gives in and accepts what the hunter must do regardless of the pain the extrication inflicts.

Thought questions

1.Throughout the creation story, God has pronounced everything He created as “Good.” Specifically, the passage “And God saw that it was good.” is repeated in Genesis 1:10, 12, 18, 21, 25, and Genesis 1 concludes with the statement in verse 31 “ And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.”  The word “Evil” does not appear until it is identified with the tree.  If everything God created is good, where does evil come from?  Is evil the antithesis of good?   Is “Evil” something existing outside of God, not created, but coexisting with God from the very beginning, inactive in God’s creation until “activated” by the act of the eating of the fruit?

2.What do Adam and Eve gain when they eat of the fruit?  The story only tells us that “the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.”

3.After cursing the Serpent, Adam and Eve, God says “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” To whom is God speaking?

4.Who/what is the “serpent”?  Did God create the serpent?  If so, why isn’t the serpent good?  If not, is the serpent the agent of ‘Evil” that has managed to invade the Garden of Eden as John Milton suggests in Paradise Lost?  If God is omniscient how is possible for Evil to enter the Garden without His knowledge?

5.For that matter, if God is the ultimate good, why would he place the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden at all?  Why create it in such a way that “when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, “ she was enticed to eat it?  Would a loving father place a particularly attractive, but dangerous object before his children, forbid them to touch the object, leave them unsupervised, and then punish them when they disobeyed? 

6.Again, if God is omniscient, wouldn’t He have known what was going to happen and if He knew what was going to happen and allowed it, doesn’t that suggest that the outcome was His plan all along?

Origins: In the beginning...

Genesis, 2.9 And out of the ground the LORD God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Genesis, 2.16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

Genesis, 3:1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” 2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, 3 but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” 4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. 7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. 8 And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”  10 And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” 11 He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” 12 The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” 13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” 14 The LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,    cursed are you above all livestock    and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go,    and dust you shall eat    all the days of your life. 15 I will put enmity between you and the woman,    and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head,    and you shall bruise his heel.” 16 To the woman he said, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;    in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband,    and he shall rule over you.” 17 And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife    and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you,  ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you;    in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; 18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;    and you shall eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust,    and to dust you shall return.” 20 The man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.  21 And the LORD God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them. 22 Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” 23 therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. 24 He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.

Crossway Bibles (2011-02-09). The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (with Cross-References) (Kindle Locations 297-303). Good News Publishers/Crossway Books. Kindle Edition.

The Galileo Affair

Whenever anyone wants to point to the anti-intellectualism of Christianity, the immediately point to the case of Galileo Galilei , the Renaissance physician, physicist, and astronomer famously prosecuted by the Catholic Church in 1632 for suggesting that the Earth revolved around the Sun. The so-called “Galileo affair” really started nearly a century before Galileo’s trial when with Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) published De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) just before his death. In it, he challenged the generally accepted geocentric theory of Claudius Ptolemy and Tycho Brahe. Ptolemy was a 2nd century Greek-Roman citizen of Egypt. A mathematician, astronomer, geographer, and astrologer, Ptolemy proposed a geocentric universe where the Earth was the center of the universe and all the heavenly bodies rotated around it.

Ptolemy’s theory held sway for almost 1500 years. The publication of De revolutionibus orbium coelestium in 1542 was the first serious challenge to Ptolemy and it also challenged the official position of the Church that the Earth was the center of the universe. The Church, based on scripture, held, "the Lord set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved" (Psalm 104:5) and that "…the sun rises and sets and returns to its place" (Ecclesiastes 1:5). Strangely enough, the Church did not react strongly to De revolutionibus when it was first released, and it was only the gradual acceptance of the Copernican thinking that that provoked the Church to take action.

In the late 1570’s, Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe is response to De revolutionibus developed has geo-heliocentric theory that held that the Earth was the fixed center of the universe, but that the Moon and Sun circled the Earth and the planets circled the Sun.

In this depiction of the Tychonic system, the objects on blue orbits (the Moon and the Sun) revolve around the Earth. The objects on orange orbits (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) revolve around the Sun. Around all is a sphere of fixed stars

Attacks on the Copernican system accelerated throughout the remainder of the 16th century, and by 1616, the Church was poised to ban the Copernican theory as heretical. It was at that point that Galileo entered the fray, offering a defense of Copernicus in Rome. In spite of Galileo’s effort, a decree of the Congregation of the Index was issued, declaring that the ideas that the Sun stood still and that the Earth moved were "false" and "altogether contrary to Holy Scripture", and suspending Copernicus's De Revolutionibus until it could be corrected.

Galileo was warned that the Copernican theory could not be "defended or held", and was ordered to abandon their belief. Galileo promised to obey and remained silent on the subject until 1632. He revived his interest in the subject following the election of his friend Cardinal Maffeo Barberini as Pope Urban VIII in 1623. The result was the book, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, published in 1632, with formal authorization from the Inquisition and papal permission.

Almost immediately following publication, Galileo was ordered to come to Rome to stand trial. His “friend” Urban had begun to fall more and more under the influence of court intrigue and the problem of Galileo was placed before him by court insiders and enemies of Galileo. Coming on the heels of recent criticism that Urban was soft on defending the church, he permitted the trial of Galileo to go forward. Galileo arrived in Rome in February 1633 and was brought before the Inquisition. Throughout his trial, Galileo denied belief in or support for Copernican heliocentrism, but he did admit that, contrary to his true intention, a reader of his Dialogue could well have obtained the impression that it was intended to be a defense of Copernicanism. The sentence of the Inquisition was delivered on June 22 in three essential parts:

1) Galileo was found "vehemently suspect of heresy", namely of having held the opinions that the Sun lies motionless at the center of the universe, that the Earth is not at its center and moves, and that one may hold and defend an opinion as probable after it has been declared contrary to Holy Scripture. He was required to "abjure, curse and detest" those opinions.

2) He was sentenced to formal imprisonment at the pleasure of the Inquisition. On the following day this was commuted to house arrest, which he remained under for the rest of his life.

3) His offending Dialogue was banned; and in an action not announced at the trial, publication of any of his works was forbidden, including any he might write in the future.

Galileo remained under house arrest for the remainder of his life and when he died in 1643, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinando II, wished to bury him in the main body of the Basilica of Santa Croce and to erect a marble mausoleum in his honour, but these plans were scrapped, after Pope Urban VIII protested because Galileo was condemned for "vehement suspicion of heresy". He was instead buried in a small room next to the novices' chapel of the Basilica.

The Inquisition's ban on reprinting Galileo's works was lifted in 1718 when permission was granted to publish an edition of his works (excluding the condemned Dialogue) in Florence. In 1741 Pope Benedict XIV authorized the publication of an edition of Galileo's complete scientific works which included a mildly censored version of the Dialogue. In 1758 the general prohibition against works advocating heliocentrism was removed from the Index of prohibited books, although the specific ban on uncensored versions of the Dialogue and Copernicus's De Revolutionibus remained. All traces of official opposition to heliocentrism by the church disappeared in 1835 when these works were finally dropped from the Index.

On 31 October 1992, Pope John Paul II expressed regret for how the Galileo affair was handled, and issued a declaration acknowledging the errors committed by the Catholic Church tribunal that judged the scientific positions of Galileo Galilei, as the result of a study conducted by the Pontifical Council for Culture.

In its 2000 year history, the Catholic Church has made a number of mistakes, some far more consequential and cruel that its action against Galileo, but the “Galileo affair” more than any other has been the popular emblem of Church anti-intellectualism. In the early 1870s, scientist John William Draper espoused what came to be called “conflict theory” which posited there is an intrinsic intellectual conflict between religion and science and that the relationship between religion and science inevitably leads to public hostility. Even though modern historians no longer support this idea, it has remained fixed in public consciousness.

The facts suggests while there were individuals and period in the history of the Church that were openly opposed to scientific investigation, the overall impact of the Catholic Church has been remarkably progressive. In responding to Draper’s position, James Joseph Walsh (1908) wrote:

. . . the story of the supposed opposition of the Church and the Popes and the ecclesiastical authorities to science in any of its branches, is founded entirely on mistaken notions. Most of it is quite imaginary. Much of it is due to the exaggeration of the significance of the Galileo incident. Only those who know nothing about the history of medicine and of science continue to harbor it.

The Church, in fact, has a long history of support for the sciences. After the Fall of Rome, it was the Catholic Church which gradually re-established scholarship in Western Europe through the preservation of Latin and Greek learning. The Church emerged in the Middle Ages as the central unifying force in Europe and became the founder of its first universities, which were preceded by schools attached to monasteries and cathedrals, and generally staffed by clergymen. It is noteworthy that the Catholic Church is, and has historically been, the largest non-government provider of education in the world.

In the 5th century, St. Augustine took the view that the Biblical text should not be interpreted as properly literal, but rather as metaphorical, if it contradicts what we know from science and our God-given reason . Thus, the Catholic Church does not insist on the literal truth of Bible (although this general policy was not always followed throughout the Church’s history). The Church contends that natural reason, being a God-given capacity, is not opposed to the Church's teachings and the church therefore holds that its role throughout history has led to progress of science and intuitive reasoning.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church asserts: "Methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things the of the faith derive from the same God.”

It is for this reason that the Catholic Church does not take a stand in direct opposition to Darwin’s theory of evolution. Since the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species in 1859, the position of the Catholic Church on the theory of evolution has slowly been refined. For about 100 years, there was no authoritative pronouncement on the subject, though many hostile comments were made by local church figures. In the 1950s, the Church's position was one of neutrality and by the late 20th century its position evolved to one of general acceptance.

When is knowledge a bad thing?

Forbidden knowledge is commonly not secret, rather an individual, group, or institution will use repressive mechanisms to either completely prevent the publication of information they find objectionable or dangerous (censorship), or failing that, to try to reduce the public's trust in such information (propaganda).

Knowledge may be harmful when:

• It undermines core belief, values or morals

• Something hurtful to an individual or group is discovered

• It is applied irresponsibly, without regard for or serious consideration of consequences

• It incites people to do bad things

• It is applied for the explicit purpose of doing harm

• It is a distraction from acquiring useful or more important knowledge

• It is sought and/or used for questionable motives: greed, self-aggrandizement, etc.