FROM: Right to Carrie: The Smuggness of O’Reiley.

By CJ Rachel: As a former Catholic I still pay attention to issues concerning the Church. Last week was exciting for my Catholic brothers and sisters not just because Obama was too busy lunching around D.C. with a few R.I.N.O.s to tell the church how it will conduct it’s businesses and what beliefs will be permitted, but because a new Pope was elected. The Pope has this unique position that allows him to go just about anywhere and speak to almost any situation. I hope this can continue with the new Pope because the world seems to be moving in two different directions very rapidly. There are people who want to look to government and a “leader” for everything and people who want to be self governed and look to God to lead them.  I pray that Pope Francis will stand with the latter.

Another Catholic who caught my attention in the past couple of weeks was Bill O’Reilly. He interviewed Dr. Jeffress of the First Baptist Church in Dallas regarding the new Bible series on the History Channel.  After introducing the good doctor he referred to the Bible series as “highlighting fundamentalist Christian beliefs.”  This description made my head swing around to the tellie because I haven’t heard “fundamentalist Christian” in a while and now that I think about it, I’ve really only heard it from baby boomer secular Catholics and Christians. I know that sounds like an oxymoron and yes, it actually is an oxymoron because they refer to themselves as Christians but don’t actually believe the Bible because it’s too fantastical. Anyway, O’reilly used the phrase in the usual modern way to demean the series, Dr. Jeffress & the Bible.

So he dives right in smirking and all puffed up with the same air of smugness and self righteousness that I’m used to seeing on Bill Maher.  It was extremely off-putting but I endured. He begins by inquiring about the beginning – the creation. He asks in a condescending manner:  “Adam and Eve, did they literally live in the garden of Eden and usurp the evolutionary process?”  Dr. Jeffress immediately got blown off because he answered “yes”. I wondered if O’reilly or any of the secular Catholics I’ve known have gone back into the Bible on their own with an open mind and heart or delved deeper into the arguments and evidence for and against evolution and the age of the earth once they’ve been out of school? Have they ever looked up an article by a  Christian Molecular Biologist just to explore another point of view? Most of the secular Catholics I know are conservatives and they became conservative because eventually they questioned the mantra of liberalism.  So why don’t they bother in the same manner to question what they’ve been taught regarding science and the bible?  I know the Catholics and secularists in my circle believe in supernatural phenomenon like demonic possession or ghostly activity but they can’t believe the Bible?

Anyway, back to the beginning. Something intriguing about verse 1 in Genesis, “In the beginning God created the heavens & the earth.” And verse 2, “Now, the earth was formless & empty…” The heavens & earth already existed before creation starts later in verse 3. The word “now” in verse 2 indicates there was a “then” state and the word “was” I’ve learned translates to “became”. Remember the Bible is God’s book to man concerning his story. Some speculate that our account of creation is also the restoration of earth.  Moreover, there are verses that speak of Lucifer (before he was Satan) having widespread trade (like in the heavens and on earth) but being expelled from Heaven and cast to the earth where he took one third of the angels with him. And God made a spectacle of him before kings and all the nations who knew him were appalled at him. Some speculate Satan and his angels destroyed the earth along with whatever sort of kingdoms (human or other) and nations were on it.  This would make the earth very old.

However, God created/restored everything in 6 days, He repeats that in Exodus and He repeats 10 times in Genesis everything is created to produce after its own kind. It’s not a stretch for me to believe all the genetic potential was built into each kind. We see small rapid changes and the adaptability of creatures to emphasize built in traits according to differing environments; but they don’t change into another kind. I was taught everything came from a single-celled organism in a primordial pond and through mutations there was genetic information added to the code.  This caused things to be able to change from kind to kind, and that we know this is what happened and we will find the evidence. Also, concerning evidence with the dating methods used (Potassium-Argon, Radiocarbon, Stratigraphy, etc.), scientists readily admit they get dates that vary widely and they throw out the results that don’t match their preconceived theory instead of altering their theory based on the evidence. They also tend to date samples as though they haven’t been contaminated for millions/billions of years, that everything has remained constant. I just hope O’Reilly and secular Catholics will at least consider that science and the Bible aren’t irreconcilable; if you are open to going where the evidence may take you.