| | God’s Wrath and God’s Wisdom | Like several other texts from the ancient Near East, the Bible recalls a great flood, in which virtually all of the living creatures of the earth were destroyed. In chapters 7 and 8 of Genesis, we are told that it rained for 40 days and 40 nights, that the fountains of the deep were opened, that the waters covered the tops of the mountains, that every living thing upon the face of the ground, "man and animals and creeping things," perished in the deluge, and that the only survivors were the inhabitants of the ark that Noah had built and stocked. After 150 days the waters subsided, and, some months later, when the summit of Mount Ararat was uncovered, the ark finally came to rest upon it. Eventually the land became dry again, and Noah, his family, and his company of animals were able to emerge from their refuge. Although the seventeenth-century divine, Thomas Burnet, believed that this story was literally and strictly true, in all its details, he discerned in it puzzles that called for scientific explanation. Prominent among them was the issue of the drying-up of the earth. Where did all the water go? How exactly was "the pond dried"? Burnet set himself the task of providing a convincing mechanical explanation, and, in 1681, he presented his conclusion in a learned and often ingenious book, The Sacred Theory of the Earth. It is easy to smile indulgently at the earnest struggle to show the possibility of processes that Burnet believes must have occurred because sacred scripture reveals to him that they once took place, the detail lavished on the resulting difficulties, the intricate diagrams and calculations. Yet it is a serious research project, one undertaken with integrity and honesty, and one fully representative of the early modern scientific temper. Most of the great figures who made the principal discoveries of the episode, or series of episodes, known as the "scientific revolution" — Copernicus, Kepler, Boyle, and Newton, to cite just four examples—firmly believed that one important point of their work was to display the wisdom of the Creator, to "think God's thoughts after Him." They, like Burnet, believed in two routes to God, one through the scriptures, the revealed word, divinely inspired, and one through the Book of Nature, in which the discerning eye would see, and understand, divine providence at work. ... Truth cannot be in conflict with itself, so that the two books— the Book of Nature and the Word of God in the Bible—must be compatible with one another, even when the scriptures are read literally. It is thus a proper project for the reverent investigator to address those perplexing instances in which reconciliation appears difficult— to explain, for example, how the pond was drained. For more than a century after Burnet wrote, earth science and natural history would be dominated by the felt need for reconciliation with scripture. Country clergymen explored the landscape in the vicinity of their churches, describing the plants and animals they found, and offering their reflections on the subtle ways in which the Creator had adapted them to their way of life. So, for example Gilbert White wrote in A Natural History of Selbourne, "To a thinking mind nothing is more wonderful than that early instinct which impresses young animals with the notion of the situation of their natural weapons, and of using them properly in their own defence, even before those weapons subsist or are formed. Thus a young cock will spar at his adversary before his spurs are grown; and a calf or lamb will push with their heads before their horns are sprouted." The "thinking mind" appreciates the wisdom of God in the creation. | — Philip Kitcher, Living with Darwin: Evolution, Design, and the Future of Faith, Chapter 2 – Goodbye to Genesis | Indexes/17 |
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