Putting God in a Box

By blindly insisting the creation myth of the Semitic tribes who became the Jewish people is fact - and telling children it is a valid alternative to the Big Bang - evangelical Christians are attributing to God the lack of imagination that cripples their own view of both humanity and the wider universe.

The fundamentalists introducing creationism-by-stealth in UK schools aren't just attacking scientific fact, but spirituality itself.

By blindly insisting the creation myth of the Semitic tribes who became the Jewish people is fact - and telling children it is a valid alternative to the Big Bang - evangelical Christians are attributing to God the lack of imagination that cripples their own view of both humanity and the wider universe.

Would an omnipotent being capable of creating reality itself, from swirling galaxies to coral reefs, choose to do so by waving a magic wand? "Day one, light and darkness - check - day two, sky - check..."

Or would He begin with an infinitesimally small speck of energy that billows outwards, forming suns, planets, galaxies and eventually intelligent life? Would God miss the opportunity to sandwich dinosaurs in there?

Photo courtesy of NASA, ESA, M. Robberto (Space Telescope Science Institute ESA) and the Hubble Space Telescope Orion Treasury Project Team

But the God of Christian fundamentalists - like the Islamic fundamentalists who blow up classes full of schoolchildren - is not a God of love and beauty who revels in the light of millions of stars passing through skeins of cosmic gas hundreds of thousands of kilometres long, creating nebulae that glow in Earth's night sky.

Or a God who looks on in wonder at the sheer breadth of thought and emotion humanity is capable of.

Theirs is a deity they've cut down to size and placed in a box constructed from their own smallmindedness. A God who cares whether the guys who live down the street are sleeping together; whose name can be used to justify bigotry, misogyny, racism and petty superiority complexes.

For fundamentalists, be they Muslim or Christian, spirituality is a threat that needs to be stifled in order for religion to be used as a tool for their utterly human goals.

The introduction of creation 'theory' into schools, which began with the previous Labour administration's compromises on curriculum in order to introduce private finance into education, is intended to blinker children at an age where they stand at the brink of discovering the scope and complexity of the universe.

By straightjacketing God, Christian fundamentalists aim to straightjacket the next and future generations.

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