Excellent interview with Asimov who wrote so prolifically and summarized the sciences for so many of us! Such a clear and honest thinker!C ASIMOV ON
SCIENCE AND THE BIBLE
(FREE INQUIRY -- SPRING 1982)
Paul Kurtz: In your view is the Bible widely known and intelligently
read today?
Isaac Asimov: It is undoubtedly widely known. It is probably owned
by more people than any other book. As to how widely it is read one
cannot be certain. I suppose it is read very widely in the sense that
people just look at the words and read it mechanically. How many
people actually think about the words they read, I'm not at all certain.
They can go to a house of worship and hear verses read without
thinking about what the words mean. Undoubtedly millions of
people do.
Kurtz: There used to be something called the Higher Biblical
Criticism. What has happened to that?
Asimov: I am constantly hearing, from people who accept the Bible
more or less literally, that the Higher Criticism has been outmoded
and discredited, but I don't believe that at all. This is just something
that people say who insist on clinging to the literal truth of the Bible.
The Higher Criticism, which in the nineteenth century, for example,
tried to show that the first few books of the Bible contained several
strains that could be identified and separated. I think is as valid
today as it ever was. Fundamentally, there is a J-document and a Pdocument in the early chapters of Genesis and an E-document later
on. I have no doubt that as one continues to investigate these things
one constantly learns and raises new questions.
Kurtz: But by and large the public does not know much about this
skeptical, critical interpretation of the Bible. Would you say that is so?
Asimov: Yes. Just as by and large the public doesn't know about any
of the disputes there have been about quantum theory. The public
knows only what it reads in the newspapers and sees on television,
and this is all extremely superficial.
Kurtz: One thing I am struck by is that today in America we don't
have a free market of ideas in regard to religion and the Bible. You
are an outstanding exception. You have taken the Bible seriously and
have submitted it to critical analysis. Would you agree that, although
free inquiry concerning the Bible goes on in scholarly journals, and
perhaps in university classes and in some books, the public hears
mostly pro-religious propaganda -- such as from the pulpits of the
electronic church, from various religious publications, and from the
daily press -- and very rarely any kind of questioning or probing of
biblical claims?
Asimov: I imagine that the large majority of the population, in the
United States at least, either accepts every word of the Bible as it is
written or gives it very little thought and would be shocked to hear
anyone doubt that the Bible is correct in every way. So when
someone says something that sounds as though he assumes that the
Bible was written by human beings -- fallible human beings who
were wrong in this respect or that -- he can rely on being vilified by
large numbers of people who are essentially ignorant of the facts, and
not many people care to subject themselves to this.
Kurtz: Do you take the Bible primarily as a human document or do
you think it was divinely inspired?
Asimov: The Bible is a human document. Much of it is great poetry,
and much of it consists of the earliest reasonable history that
survives. Samuel I and 2 antedate Herodotus by several centuries. A
great deal of the Bible may contain successful ethical teachings, but
the rest is at best allegory and at worst myth and legend. Frankly, I
don't think that anything is divinely inspired. I think everything that
human beings possess of intelligent origin is humanly inspired, with
no exceptions.
Kurtz: Earlier you said that the Bible contained fallible writings.
What would some of these be?
Asimov: In my opinion, the biblical account of the creation of the
universe and of the earth and humanity is wrong in almost every
respect. I believe that those cases where it can be argued that the
Bible is not wrong are, if not trivial, then coincidental. And I think
that the account of a worldwide flood, as opposed, say, to a flood
limited to the Tigris-Euphrates region, is certainly wrong.
Kurtz: The creationists think there is evidence for the Noachian flood.
Asimov: The creationists think there is evidence for every word in
the Bible. I think all of the accounts of human beings living before the
flood, such as Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel, are at best very dim
memories of ancient Sumerian rulers; and even the stories about
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob I rather think are vague legends.
Kurtz: Based on oral tradition?
Asimov: Yes, and with all the distortions that oral traditions
sometimes undergo.
Kurtz: In your book In the Beginning, you say that creation is a myth.
Why do you think it is scientifically false? What are some of the main
points?
Asimov: Well, all of the scientific evidence we have seems to indicate
that the universe is billions of years old. But there is no indication
whatsoever of that in the Bible if it is interpreted literally rather than
allegorically. Creationists insist on interpreting it literary. According
to the information we have, the earth is billions of years younger than
the universe.
Kurtz: It is four and a half billion years old.
Asimov: The earth is, and the universe is possibly fifteen billion years
old. The universe may have existed ten billion years before the earth,
but according to the biblical description of creation the earth, the sun,
the moon, and the stars were all created at the same time. As a matter
of fact, according to the Bible, the earth itself existed from the
beginning, whereas the stars, sun, and moon were created on the
fourth day.
Kurtz: Yes, so they have it backward.
Asimov: They have that backward, and they have plant life being
created before the sun. All the evidence we have indicates that this is
not so. The Bible says that every plant, and every animal, was created
after its own kind, which would indicate that species have been as
they are now from the very beginning and have never changed.
Despite what the creationists say, the fossil record, as well as very
subtle biochemical evidence, geological evidence, and all sorts of
other evidence, indicates that species have changed, that there has
been a long evolutionary process that has lasted over three billion
years.
Kurtz: It's not simply biology that they are questioning, but geology,
astronomy, and the whole basis of the physical sciences.
Asimov: If we insist on the Bible's being literary true, then we must
abandon the scientific method totally and completely. There's no way
that we can at the same time try to discover the truth by means of
observation and reason and also accept the Bible as true.
Kurtz: So what is at stake in this debate between evolution and
creationism is not simply the principle of evolution in regard to living
things but the whole status of the sciences themselves?
Asimov: That is what I believe. But I have letters from creationists
who say that they don't deny the scientific method, that they are just
trying to examine the inconsistencies in the evidence presented by
the evolutionists. However, that is not what should be the chief job of
the creationists. What they should do is present positive evidence in
favor of creationism, which is something they never do. They confine
themselves to pointing out inconsistencies in the evolutionary view,
not hesitating to create those inconsistencies by distortion and, in my
opinion, in some cases by outright fraud. Then they say that they
have "proved" that evolutionary theory is false, and therefore
creationism is correct.
Kurtz: Of course you don't deny that how evolution occurs is not fully
or finally formulated.
Asimov: Certainly there are many arguments over the mechanism of
evolution, but our knowledge about the evolutionary process is much
greater than it was in Darwin's day. The present view of evolution is
far more subtle and wide-ranging than Darwin's was or could have
been. But it still is not firmly and finally settled. There remain many
arguments over the exact mechanism of evolution, and furthermore
there are many scientists who are dissatisfied with some aspects of
evolution that most other scientists accept. There are always minority
views among scientists in every respect, but virtually no scientist
denies the fact of evolution. It is as though we were all arguing about
just exactly what makes a car go even though nobody denies that cars
go.
Kurtz: What about the metaphorical interpretations? When I was
growing up, the general view was that we should accept creationism
and that it is not incompatible with evolution but is to be interpreted
metaphorically or allegorically in terms of stages.
Asimov: There is always that temptation. I am perfectly willing, for
instance, to interpret the Bible allegorically and to speak of the days
of creation as representing eons of indefinite length. Clarence Darrow
badgered William Jennings Bryan into admitting that the days could
have been very long. This horrified Bryan's followers, as it would
horrify creationists today. You can say that the entire first chapter of
Genesis is a magnificent poem representing a view of creation as
transcending the silly humanoid gods of the Babylonians and
presenting a great abstract deity who by his word alone brings the
universe into existence. You can compare this with the Big Bang. You
can say that God said "Let there be light" and then there was the Big
Bang; and one could then follow with all sorts of parallels and
similarities if one wished. I have no objection to that.
Kurtz: But aren't the stages wrong, even if it is interpreted
metaphorically? You said earlier that, according to the Bible, God
created the earth before the heavenly bodies.
Asimov: Yes. Some of the stages are wrong. But you could say that,
when the Bible says "In the beginning God created the heaven and
the earth," what was really meant was the universe. We could say
that, at the time the first chapter of Genesis was written, when people
spoke of the earth they meant everything there was. But as our vision
and perspective expanded we saw that what was really meant was
the universe. Thus, if necessary, we can modify the words. But the
creationists won't do this; they insist on the literal interpretation of
the creation story. When it says "earth" they want it to mean Earth;
when it says on the first "day" they want it to mean a twenty-fourhour day.
Kurtz: When the Bible says, "And God made the firmament," what
does it mean? Isn't that odd?
Asimov: Well, if you trace the word firmament back to its original
meaning, it is a thin, beaten layer of metal. It is like the top you put
on a platter in a restaurant. It is like the lid of a dish. The earth is a
dish and the firmament comes down upon it on all sides. It is a
material object that separates things. There are waters above the
firmament and waters below. In fact, in the Book of Revelation,
which was written about 100 C.E., centuries after Genesis was
written, the writer describes the firmament as folding up like a scroll.
It was still viewed as a thin metal plate. But we know as surely as we
can know anything at all that there is no firmament up there -- there's
no thin metal layer -- there's only an atmosphere, and beyond it a
vacuum, an empty space, except where there are planets, stars, and
other objects. The blueness of it is an illusion due to the scattering of
light, and the blackness of night is due to the absence of any light that
we can see, and so on.
Kurtz: In a metaphorical interpretation, how would you interpret
"the waters above and the waters below"? Does that make any sense? |
