Apparently Christians down in Kentucky are so up in arms over the idea that dinosaurs once ruled the Earth they’ve erected a museum to prove that God just put those fossils there to test our faith. Now, me, I love dinosaurs. In fact I made a webpage devoted to my collection of old dinosaur books. So I will beat up anyone who says dinosaurs didn’t really exist to my face. Besides, if dinosaurs didn’t really exist the where did Godzilla come from? Answer me that, smarty pants!

As I understand it, creationist theory has it that everything described in the Book of Genesis happened exactly “literally” as described. The various fossils we’ve discovered were put into the ground by God, who wanted to see if we’d still have faith in what He wrote in His book if we were faced with physical evidence that proved it wrong. There are a number of variations on creation theory, ranging from rockheaded adherence to the Bible to the various anthropic principles out there which basically accept science but say that the world was still created by some kind of intelligent being or some such thing. I really don’t follow this kind of stuff. It just puts me to sleep.

One of the things I have never been able to figure out about religions is this whole concept of faith. To the hardcore creationists, the word “faith” seems to mean accepting that everything in the Bible is literally true. But the this brings up a whole ‘nother area of what we mean by “literal truth.” Does it mean that the Bible records the facts as they happened as if observed by an impartial observer on the scene? Is there even such a thing as an impartial observer? I mean, look at the Kennedy assassination. That happened less than 50 years ago in front of loads of eyewitnesses with still and movie cameras and tape recorders documenting the whole thing and we still can’t get a consensus on exactly what went down that afternoon. How are we supposed to verify that things that went on thousands of years ago occurred exactly as the people of the time said they did?

I suppose a Bible thumper would say that God is infallible, He wrote the Bible and therefore everything went down just as He said it did. This is a nice argument because there’s nowhere you can go from here. The Bible is perfect because the Bible says the Bible is perfect. End of story. But that argument does nothing for me. If a God like the one they believe in existed, even He would not be an impartial observer since He would have His own specific point of view that would, of necessity, be completely different from anyone else’s.

On the other hand, liberal Christians say stuff like, “When the Bible says the creation took place in seven days, those are really seven of God’s days and we don’t know how long those are.” This is very sweet and avoids conflicts with science. Yet it still means that we have to accept that the Bible is infallible. It’s this reluctance to believe the Bible — or any book, for that matter — could contain mistakes that always bugged me.

One of the things that attracted me to Buddhism early on was that it does not have the concept of an inerrant scripture. The Buddhist sutras were written by human beings. Some of those human beings, it may be said, were pretty extraordinary. But none of them were infallible. Furthermore, Buddhists don’t get too fussed when you point out to them that the sutras were often changed and revised during their copying and recopying over the course of hundreds of years. In Shobogenzo, Dogen even points out some canonical sutras that he says are bullshit. This did not get him in any trouble even in the 13th century because Buddhism had already developed a long tradition of questioning its own scriptures. This dates back to Buddha himself who said, “Do not go by what is written in scripture.” This, of course, certainly includes scriptures about him.

If we look at the debate between creationism and evolution in terms of our subjective experience, creationist theory may be comforting. It’s nice to believe there’s some big guy with a beard up in the sky ready to smite your enemies and snatch you up to Heaven before the End Time Tribulations. There are times even I wish I could believe in such things. But when we look at the physical world we live in, creationist theory just does not fit the evidence. I know those guys in Kentucky want to prove it does. But the only way to do that is to make your theories incredibly convoluted, invoking a God who likes to trick people and so on. We all know that nature doesn’t work like that as it plays out right before our eyes on a day-to-day basis. Why would it work that way over the course of thousands of years? Why would God bend His own rules all the time? Why would He deliberately try to fool us into believing things that would make Him have to send us to Hell? What kind of God is that?

In terms of our actual experience based upon real action in the real world, we have both our subjective wish to be comforted by ancient stories and our objective evidence that these stories aren’t true. Somehow we have to find a way to live a realistic life in the midst of that. Can we find philosophy that satisfies our need for reassurance yet doesn’t fly in the face of what we can see for ourselves is true?

Only this moment is real. The past is never real existence, whether it happened 65 million years ago or 65 nanoseconds ago. So in that sense the creationists are right and the dinosaurs are not real. But on the other hand, Buddhists accept that cause and effect is absolute, that nothing, and no one — not even God — is free from the law of cause and effect. Looking at the real evidence of fossilized Archocanthosaurus skulls in terms of what we know about cause and effect, the only reasonable explanation is that are the remains of creatures that once lived, breathed and chased Raquel Welch in a Dimetrodon skin bikini.

But if we believe that, aren’t we giving up the comforting reassurance of religion? While there is no sense in arguing with science, science is restricted to the material world. In Buddhist terms, the material world is only a small part of reality. This may sound like wishful thinking on the part of Buddhists, like we haven’t given up our fantasies of there being something beyond the world we perceive through our senses. But look at your life and you’ll find it’s true. Our real experience is never limited to just that which occurs in the material world. Our experience is always both subjective, or spiritual, and objective, or material, at the same time.

The reason the folks in Kentucky are so concerned with whether the dinosaurs really existed or not is because science scares them. They’re afraid that if science is true, the Bible must be false. And that would be a bummer because it would mean there is no God and everything we do is our own responsibility. Plus the whole deal about getting yanked up to Heaven before the Antichrist takes over the world pretty much goes right out the window.

But we don’t need to be frightened of science. For example, science says that what I call my consciousness — or my soul if you want — is just electrical energy whizzing around inside a three-pound lump of meat in my skull. That is a frightening idea if you believe in the existence of an immortal soul. But as a Buddhist I am perfectly OK with that explanation. Just because you can explain something with words doesn’t really mean you know what it is. Just look what electrical energy whizzing around inside the meat in your skull is doing right now. Because of that energy you’re able to interpret abstract shapes glowing on a piece of plastic in front of you and use them to communicate with me over enormous distances. We can even communicate with Buddha, who’s been dead 2,500 years. It’s incredible stuff. It’s mystical stuff, when you get down to it. That the so-called “mundane” everyday world exists at all is a tremendously mystical thing. The world we’re living is more worthy of worship than any God we could invent.

The problem with arguing creationism versus evolution is that such discussions can go on endlessly without any hope of reaching a conclusion. One of Buddha’s admonitions to his followers was not to get caught up in these kinds of discussions since it just wastes time. Life is short and none of us has time to waste. I find the theory of evolution entirely convincing and I have no difficulty accepting it. I don’t really have the time, patience or inclination to try and convince believers in creation science they’re a bunch of numbskulls. Still, though, it’s important to oppose the practice of teaching creation science in our public schools. Schools need to teach the highest levels of real scientific understanding, not indoctrinate their students in arcane religious ideology. I wouldn’t want public schools to teach Buddhist doctrine either. That’s not their place. Except in so far as Buddhism is realism and schools need to teach realism.

Part of my family lives in Cincinnati, and the next time I visit that area I’ll probably make a stop at the Creation Science Museum just to check out the animatronic dinosaurs. But ain’t nobody ever gonna convince me creation science is true.

Here's some plugs though...

TODAY Saturday June 2nd, 2007 at 7 PM I'll be in Phoenix at the ARIZONA ZEN BUDDHIST SOCIETY.

I'm in the June issue of LA YOGA magazine with Lou Reed on the cover.

An excerpt from my new book SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP! is in the current WHOLE LIFE TIMES magazine as well as in CONSCIOUS CHOICE magazine in Chicago and Seattle, and COMMON GROUND magazine in San Francisco.

On Sunday June 3, 2007 at 1 pm Barnes & Noble Desert Ridge - 21001 N. Tatum Blvd. - Phoenix, AZ
On Monday June 4, 2007 at 7 pm Changing Hands Bookstore - 6428 South McClintock Dr. - Tempe, AZ

Tuesday June 12th at 6PM at the VIRGIN MEGASTORE in San Francisco
Thursday June 14th, 7PM at GATEWAYS in Santa Cruz
Friday June 15th After Dinner Talk at the SAN FRANCISCO ZEN CENTER (Zazen at 5:30, Dinner at 6:30, Talk at 7:30)
Saturday June 16th 7 PM at COPPERFIELD'S BOOKS 140 Kentucky St., Petaluma, CA 94952
Sunday June 17th at San Quentin Prison (this isn't open to the public, but all inmates reading this are invited!)

AND on Wednesday July 25th, 2007, my movie CLEVELAND'S SCREAMING! will have its world premier at the EGYPTIAN THEATER in Hollywood. So mark your calendars!

Plus, the very first record by my old hardcore band 0DFx (Zero Defex) has just been released by Get Revenge Records. This 7 inch vinyl record contains our 1983 demo tape full of thrashin’ Minor Threat/Negative approach style hardcore with a drop of psychedelia thrown in for good measure. Get yours today!

Brad Warner is the author of Hardcore Zen and Sit Down and Shut Up!. He maintains a blog about Buddhist stuff. If you're in Southern California and you want to try some Zazen for yourself, he has a group that meets every Saturday in Santa Monica.