Belly Buttons, Dinosaurs, and Evolution: A Look at Science and the Sacred Stories in Genesis 1-11

By Stephen J. Kelly

Belly Buttons, Dinosaurs, and Evolution explains the sacred stories in Genesis 1-11 in light of the science of evolution and the history of the stories in Genesis 1-11. The world of science and the world of faith use different criteria in their disciplines, yet properly understood, young people need not be in conflict with what they are learning in school and learning from their faith communities.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 31, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477113486

Stephen J. Kelly

Stephen Kelly received Bachelor of Science degree (Music Major) from Eastern Illinois University and a Master of Divinity Degree from Wartburg Theological Seminary. He was a parish pastor for 41 years in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America serving parishes in California and Texas. He grew up with an atheist father who was a geologist and a Christian mother who had a fundamentalist understanding of scriptures. His quest was to find the truth by studying science and religion.

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Copyright © 2012 by Stephen J. Kelly.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2012908816

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4771-1347-9

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4771-1346-2

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4771-1348-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

All Bible References are from the New International Version (NIV)

About the cover:

Artist: Eric Puckett, Hemphill, TX

Artist Statement: This is a metaphorical post-realistic piece which calls to mind single-celled organisms trying to survive in a larger environment or as a cross-analogy for the spread of knowledge.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

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Contents

Acknowledgments

Forward

Introduction

Chapter 1      A Confusing Family

Chapter 2      A Brief Look at Darwin and Evolution

Chapter 3      Myth, Mystery, and Mystics

Chapter 4      How The Bible Came to Us

Chapter 5      Genesis 1: In The Beginning

Chapter 6      Genesis 2 & 3: Adam and Eve, Sin

Chapter 7      Genesis 4 & 5: Cain and Abel, Sin Deepens

Chapter 8      Genesis 6-10: Noah and The Flood

Chapter 9      GENESIS 11: TOWER OF BABEL

Epilogue

Some Interesting Dates

Author’s Lecture Notes On Genesis 1-11

Frequently Asked Questions

References

Acknowledgments

It takes a village . . . . and it was quite a village of people who made this work possible. First it was 40 years of confirmation classes who asked the hardest questions. My general editor, Rosalie Fontenot spent countless hours reworking the manuscript for easier reading and understanding.

Barbara Hagemeister, Joann Hutton and Evelyn Zimmerman provided another set of eyes looking at the science and composition issues that were present. Finally, Duncan McNair, a high school student, looked through the manuscript to see if it communicated with youth of his generation. He gave it a thumbs up!

I am so grateful to all these people and more who encouraged me along the way. It does take a village.

Stephen J. Kelly

What’s wrong with truth is that what some people think is true, is true only because it’s the only thing they’ve heard.

Quote from an atheist turned Christian.

 . . . and you shall know the truth and the truth will set you free. John 8:32

Forward

After many years of teaching religious education to Junior and Senior High students, I have always been intrigued by the questions they ask. This is especially true when, as we have gone through the first 11 chapters of Genesis, they try to square what they are reading in their Bibles with what they have learned in school.

Adults have the same questions, but often find that information given on either science or the Bible is too technical and relates only to science or religion. This book seeks to inform at the basic level what our sacred stories in Genesis 1-11 are telling us and how they can be squared with what we know about science and evolution at the present time.

Without explanation, many of our young people feel compelled to latch solely on science and discard the Bible as either fiction or horribly outdated and not relevant.

Belly Buttons, Dinosaurs, and Evolution: A Look at Science and the Sacred Stories in Genesis 1-11 educates people of science and faith that they do not have to try to harmonize the two. With the proper understanding of both, we can all live joyfully in this world knowing that God, the creator, gave us this marvelous planet in and on which to live, and we can continue to discover with all of our scientific knowledge how it all came into being.

Stephen J. Kelly

Introduction

Everyone has a need to understand

Unknown

Did Adam and Eve have belly buttons? Why aren’t dinosaurs mentioned in the Bible? Doesn’t the Bible say that the earth and all that is in it was created in seven days? What do I do with the big bang theory and the billions of stars in relation to the Bible?

For centuries, there has been a war going on between religion and science. Some believe that it started 500 years ago as science and observations of the universe began to conflict with the teachings of the church. There is no question that people like Galileo, Kepler, Newton and, much later, Darwin began to articulate and internalize the scientific method, but we do get a hint of this as early as the fifth century when St. Augustine wrote:

If anyone shall set the authority of Holy Writ against clear and manifest reason, he who does this knows not what he has undertaken; for he opposes to the truth not the meaning of the Bible, which is beyond his comprehension, but rather his own interpretation; not what is in the Bible, but what he has found in himself and imagines to be there. This granted, and it being true that two truths cannot contradict one another, it is the function of wise expositors to seek out the true senses of scriptural texts. These will unquestionably accord with the physical conclusions which manifest sense and necessary demonstrations have previously made certain to us.

What? Well, this passage is from Augustine’s work, The City of God, and quoted in a letter to the Grand Duchess of Tuscany by Galileo when defending himself as a loyal Catholic. What does it mean? It means that science informs religion and our sacred texts. Our sacred texts do not inform science.

So this little book is written not for the scholar or academic, but for folks who sit out there and need a little volume to sort out the war which is centuries old. In some cases, the dust has settled for people like me who in the last 50 years have been educated and informed in both biblical studies and good (not junk) science.

Did Adam and Eve have belly buttons? Well, yes and no!

Chapter 1

A Confusing Family

The dinosaurs were planted by people to confuse paleontologists

Ruth Kelly, 1957

We Irish have a wonderful folk song called The Orange and the Green, a song about a man whose father was a Protestant (Orange) and whose mother was a Catholic (Green). It follows the man’s trials growing up in such a confusing family. My growing up in the middle ‘40’s and ‘50’s was a bit like that. It wasn’t orange and green; it was Christian (mother) and atheist (father).

My grandpa Kelly was a lapsed Catholic and my grandma Kelly was a fundamentalist Seventh Day Adventist. Every Saturday she hauled my dad to church until he entered Oregon State University in the middle 1930’s as a geology major. On a home visit one Saturday, Dad went with Grandma to church where he was accosted by the Pastor who demanded that he renounce that heathen science of geology and return to the Bible. Dad didn’t return to the church or the Bible after that.

My mom was a devout Lutheran which, in those days, meant a pretty literal view of scriptures. She took my sister and me to church. Dad stayed home. Once in awhile the subject of religion came up, and my first recollection was my dad asking my mom where dinosaurs came from. My mom’s answer shook me up a bit: "The dinosaurs were planted by people to confuse paleontologists. Dad laughed so hard he fell off his chair. I was going to Confirmation classes at the time (a two-year period where the Lutheran church seeks to teach the faith to Junior High people); so I decided to ask my Pastor. He said something to the effect that dinosaurs were real—not millions of years old, but created shortly before man was created, about 6,000 years ago. He quoted 2 Peter 3:8, But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day."

For a Junior High kid, that was good enough. It made sense, but I never talked to my dad about it. He was a pretty rough guy—drinker, smoker, and such. I was always worried about his salvation as I understood it as a kid. He didn’t believe and wasn’t very moral. His lack of belief didn’t affect me much as a young person, but his lack of morals did.

When it came time for college, I wanted to go to a Lutheran university, but my dad said no. That was the end of that. I went to a state college in Illinois and studied music. In addition, I took biology and physics, and it got me to thinking.

The only Lutheran church in town was a conservative Missouri Synod church that had a student center for us Lutheran students. Most of us were from the more moderate American Lutheran Church (ALC). Bible studies were spirited and very conservative, which got me to thinking more.

When I became a senior, I had made up my mind to go to seminary (Lordy, another 4 years!) which in the end answered my questions and helped me straighten out my dad once I got the courage to chat with him. I was influenced, of course, to apply to the Missouri Synod seminary in Springfield, Illinois. On spring break, I told my home Pastor my plans; and he had apoplexy when he heard the news. The very next day he packed me up in his car and drove me from the Chicago area to Dubuque, Iowa where the ALC had one of its seminaries. I really didn’t know what the big deal was. They convinced me