Creationist logic

There’s a lot I don’t care for about the logic process of creation scientists. I think the bible is a wonderful history book in so many ways, but on the surface, much of it seems very questionable and requires research to get your brain around. It also requires – get ready for the cliché – a leap of faith.

I’m reading the book of Genesis right now, and it’s really hard to take a lot of that stuff at face value. I’ve only gotten through about chapter 10 (the story of the Tower of Babel), and I had to stop reading and start doing some research. The general core of the story contradicts almost everything we know about the history of our planet as a celestial body and the fossil record of life on our planet. When reading about what different creationists have to say about the archeological evidence that supports these biblical stories, it seems they’re looking at the equation backward, and I can’t say I’m comfortable with that. Let me elaborate.

Let’s say you’re trying to determine where the origin of the human species came from. You would examine all available evidence that you’re capable of collecting (which is limited by the technology available to you), and that would help you determine the answer to your question. Evidence + More evidence = X.  Where “X” is the variable, the missing information that you don’t know, or in this case, the origin of the species. In other words, you look at all the things you know are true to help you answer the question that’s unknown.

The creationist logical process seems to be the reverse of this. They may have the same equation, Evidence + More evidence = X, but in this case, their answer is ALWAYS the same. X = God. So they work backward from their constant answer, only to look over the evidence to find the bits of information that best fit their already predetermined answer. Here’s an example of this:

The creationist answer to the origin of the human species is that God created two human beings: Adam and Eve. And the two of them were responsible for eventually creating every human being alive today. This act was pretty much repeated after the Flood, when Noah and his wife, three sons, and their wives were allegedly the only living humans. And they again were blessed with the task of kicking out babies and ancestoring everyone alive today. And since the bible MUST be the 100% infallible, perfect truth (otherwise the entire faith falls apart instantly) the answer to the question of the origin of the species must be God. And then the creationist must work backward over the evidence available and try to find pieces that fit this predetermined answer. However, innumerable glaring problems erupt from this equation immediately, incest being the most obvious. Adam and Eve had many sons and daughters (only a handful of which are mentioned by name), which means if those children were to eventually reproduce they would have to do it with each other, or with their parents. Yes, that means you have sex with your brother, sister, mom, or dad, and bear their children. Offspring born from that close of a gene pool have almost inevitable chances of congenital deformity, and many would be instantly fatal. Let alone if this process were to be repeated for thousands of generations. We know this for a very certain fact.


There’s of course the question of the actual origin of life and the evolution of humans from more primitive forms of life. Unfortunately we don’t have evidence of the actual act of spontaneous creation and then reproduction of a single-celled organism, and the concept is actually quite theoretical. However we do have quite a bit of evidence of species development over time through the fossil record. So a bit of holes here, however the scientific version of the equation still has the unbiased “X” at the end, hoping to fit together any and all available evidence to answer the unknown. Where the creationist already has answered “X” as “God”, and then selectively chooses their evidence trying to make the answer fit.

Now I do honestly feel that so much of the bible is metaphoric in ways that we may never understand, or so much of history has been condensed into a few short sentences that, at face value, makes no sense. It would be like taking the last 100 years of history, and summarizing with the sentence “There were great wars, and man learned to speak words over thousands of miles without a sound.” Or it’s like waking up from a dream that could have lasted an hour, but you only remember one or two completely disparate details and find yourself incapable of making any sense of it. But the way I feel about the creationist way of pre-supposing God as the answer to every mystery of the bible just to have it make sense doesn’t make me that comfortable.