Around 10 years ago, during an online chat, there was a mention of God. As usual in these circumstances, I said that I don’t believe in god(s), to which the reply came:
Who made the World?
The tone and surprise in the response were as if I’d said that I didn’t believe in Henry Ford and the knee-jerk response was on a par with ‘Well, who made the Model T Ford?’. I explained that the world was not ‘made’ by ‘anyone’ but had formed through natural processes. It might have been a waste of time to continue the discussion. When trying to explain that the Bible didn’t have all the answers and that Adam and Eve weren’t the first humans, I asked about dinosaurs. The reply I got regarding dinosaurs was that the Devil had made them.
As I’ve now come to realise, when some people don’t have information on which to base an answer, they sometimes say the first thing that they think of. I’m almost making excuses for the American chat friend here, and wonder if (hope) they may have come up with another answer if given time to think about it. Or perhaps lacked the general knowledge or education to grasp the concept of evolution.
Jump forward to more recent times. When chatting to some younger members of my family, probably about school, the subject of God came into the conversation. When I said that I didn’t think God was real, my 6 year old nephew said:
Who made the world?
The difference in this case was that the child in question, in my opinion, was more able to understand that the Earth had formed naturally. This is not because it was ‘my view’ but more that we can find out the facts for ourselves. I’d hope that this sort of knowledge would be learned at school. It would be a great shame if children are going to school in Britain and being taught that God made the world, along with stories of Adam and Eve and Noah. It seems almost cruel to tell young children such things as if they are facts. They are myths from a time when we did not have answers to many questions. Let us not perpetuate these Myths of Creation, for they are no more than fantastical lies.
..teaching creationism ‘alongside’ evolution … is no more defensible than teaching the stork theory alongside the sex theory of the where babies come from.
Richard Dawkins
