EVOLUTION – fact or fiction

Here’s Bishop John Shelby Spong – a rare Christian leader much too difficult not to love and to respect. Indeed, I have the greatest admiration for this Anglican church Bishop. In his WHY CHRISTIANITY MUST CHANGE OR DIE, he wrote: In 1859 Darwin’s masterpiece, entitled THE ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES, was published. That book caused most of the remaining principles by which human life was understood in religious terms to go up in smoke. Darwin suggested, for example, that the world of God’s creation was not yet finished, directly contradicting the literal biblical text. The world, he said, was still evolving, still being created... In the books of Psalms, it had been suggested that human beings were just a little lower than the angels. But now we began to recognize that we were just a little higher than the animals. . . There was much talk in that era about something called the “missing link,” as if the various species of life were separated by a single link rather than by centuries of tiny adaptations. . .”Dust art thou and to dust thou shalt return” became not just a Lenten note of penitence, but a statement of this newly understood reality of human life. . . That strange thing called “creation science” is nothing more than the ignorant rantings reflecting a frightened and dying religious mentality.” For my part, if Christianity were comprised of men in the likes of Bishop John Shelby Spong – never would I have ever dreamed of excommunicating myself out of the religious mess. Poch Suzara