I've got ds2 all confused

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ds2 listens to Bible Stories on his cd before going to sleep. Not every night, but on a few. He also goes to a Catholic school, so will hear Bible stories there too.

Well, me and ds1 were talking the other day and he said that he didn't believe Genesis was literally true and I agreed with him, not realising that ds2 was listening. He became a bit upset and started going on how it was true. I explained that a lot of people didn't believe that it was literally true, but that it was a representation of the truth in that it was about the fall of man Explaining this to an albeit bright seven year old was difficult however and he was all muddled up

What have I done? The Catholic church is fine with evolution and one of the Catholic sisters I spoke to on retreat even said that Genesis can't be taken literally in light of scientific evidence for evolution and the age of the world etc.

I think you will have this sort of dilemma more and more often as your DC get older. I don't think that religion and science are contradictory but that they complement eachother in that science explains the what and the how and religion explains the why e.g. the big bang theory is not incompatible with God creating the world, 7 'days' means 7 periods of time if translated literally (from the Greek I think), which gives plenty of time for dinosaurs and evolution.

It's talking that kind of thing through that will encourage faith. Avoiding science vs religion questions is asking for trouble.

What I've told my kids is that when they wrote Genesis, they wanted to explain how the world was formed in a way that people would understand. They knew that God created the world, but didn't have the scientific understanding that would explain it.

I've just asked 12yo DD how she reconciles Genesis with Evolution, and she says that she believes in Evolution, but that God 'engineered' it, IYSWIM.

Oh, thank you so much. These answers make sense ds1 is already coming to his own conclusions and ds2 asked me if we evolved from fish the other day. I think we all have to come to our own conclusions and there's no 'right' answer.

Mary - you say that in Genesis 'they' tried to explain things in a way that people would understand. How come a, many people have and always have refuted/rejected Genesis and b, if the bible is inspired wouldn't god, being all knowing, have worked out an allegory that didn't age so dramatically with the development of mankind?

Or rather the development of scientific knowledge

I don't think you can take Genesis literally at all and perhaps the ancients didn't either. It represents the fall of man and I feel that it's symbolic in its meanings. We don't really know what the ancients thought or felt about it.

Paul of the new testament appears to take Adam and Eve literally.

I guess it depends by what you mean by refute/reject. And also which story you are rejecting, as there are two creation stories in Genesis. And if you take it as a story with elements of truth, rather than literal truth, then I don't think it has aged. What has changed is what people expect the bible to be. And maybe that is just part of God's challenge to us? Lets not forget that its only in the past 400 years that people have been able to read the bible for themselves (and only educated people at that). It had to be something that was visual, and the Creation description in Genesis is certainly that!