Samuel Taylor Coleridge Quotes

This is a very good quotation showing the point of view of religious fundamentalists that if there is no fixed statement of ethics and morality as with the word of God as revealed in the Bible, what then makes anything right or wrong and the world exists in a moral behavioral vacuum. Other religionists hold that the morality is in the metaphors and philosophy of religion and not in the literal words of scripture. Still others argue that morality and religion itself is dynamic and is constantly changing. Then there are those who build their view of morality on philosophy but which is not based on a deity—Ethical Culturalists for example {592791}. Also, there are the pragmatic evolutionists who argue that cooperative behavior has evolved in man and cultural rules—morality—is also transmitted by culture and systems of law.

There are many scientists who disagree with Johnson’s very unusual logic. They point out that it is certainly possible that God initially did not have had humans in minds, and when they evolved, decided that they were worthy of salvation history and then interfered to the extent of a virgin birth. Others would point out that just because man cannot exactly foresee the exact future pattern of evolution, does not men that a Supreme Being could not have initiated the mechanism that he/she knew would result in salvation history. The Pope and the Catholic Church see no inconsistency between Darwinism and the salvation history. Then there are those non-Christians who do not believe that God ever did introduce salvation and there are many more of them than there are Christians. Then, it is possible that God just set things in motion and had more important things then micromanaging evolution on our one planet in a universe of billions of billions. Last there are those who do not believe that there is or has been a God. Of course there is the possibility that Johnson is right, and religiously he may be, but that is not subject to scientific analysis.

This is an important quotation for several reasons. First, it demonstrates the extreme diversity of religion in America. To Swaggart, Evolution is a “Satanic Theory”. However, to most American religious leaders, Evolution, per se, is not problematic. The Roman Catholic Church has no trouble with Evolution; Catholic Universities teach Evolution as a basic part of their science curricula. Jews have no theological problems with Evolution. None of the main-line Protestant Churches have any theological opposition to Evolution per se. Yet there are other Protestant denominations who find that Evolution is in contradiction to a literal interpretation of the Bible and hence do not accept it. Second, it shows the extreme level of vituperation and disrespect that is given differing points of view by some of the extreme fundamentalists who do not have the traditional American religious tolerance for differing belief structures. Here Swaggart accuses the hundreds of millions of Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist and other clerics and laypeople who see Evolution as a well-established explanation of much of science, of being not only atheists but atheists in league with the Devil. A third factor is that this quotation is an example of a Minister telling people what is or is not science and scientifically demonstrated. If a scientist without any religious training of study were ever to render judgments on theology, most of us would laugh and see it as ridiculous. However when a cleric like Swaggert, untutored and ignorant of even basic science, makes scientific pronouncements, he (and many other fundamentalists) find that reasonable.

Bryan participated as a prosecutor in the infamous Scopes Trial in Tennessee where a school teacher was convicted of a crime for discussing the idea of evolution in a high school classroom. This view of opposition to Evolution was actually considered too liberal by many other Biblical Fundamentalists. They were just as distressed about the other animals as well as man. Evolution explicitly contradicted the literal story of Biblical creationism and therefore was blasphemy.

In the middle of the 19th century, there was an Anglican English Bishop by the name of Usher who was the first person to perform this “Biblical” analysis. Even then the absurdity of this claim was demonstrated over and over again with the science of the time. Most religious fundamentalists believe that the word “day” was really an unspecified period of time which might have been billions of years. Other religious theologians argue that the entire Genesis story was a metaphor and not meant to be taken literally. Today we know that our universe is over 18 billion years old, and the overwhelming proportions of the different animals and other life forms that have existed are long since extinct, while a few, like horseshoe crabs, are many millions of years old. New species are being created constantly. Even man, one of the more recent life forms, was well developed, had communities, and had spread over the world more than 6,000 years ago. We have archeological evidence of human life that goes back 10s of thousands of years. None-the-less, there are a number of American citizens who actually believe the 6,000 year claim, and they are entitled to their opinion regardless of how absurd it may seem to others. That is the great strength of a liberal democracy. Absurd seeming beliefs must be protected and respected. However, views that are so variant from known scientific reality may not be allowed to interfere with the teaching and public education to advocate a particular theological view and especially under the rubric of science.