My last blog post :(

Since the Rapture is happening this Saturday, May 21, and I doubt I’ll have time to write another post until then, looks like the earth will be destroyed and I won’t be around to write another blog post here. And if I survive the apocalypse, then all the Christians will have been sucked up to heaven and no one will be around to share their ideas about Christianity with me, so I’ll have nothing to write about. Or I’ll be whisked away up to heaven too and all my ponderings about God and the Universe will finally be answered. So thanks for reading, commenting, and supporting my search for the divine.

This potentially alarming (and fucking ridiculous) prediction comes from Christian radio host Harold Camping, who used his civil engineering background to feverishly compile calculations from the bible to arrive at this Saturday as the end of times. Or, as my friend Gary put it, he’s “cherry-picking random numbers from the bible, multiplying, adding, dividing, and hockey-pockey-ing them willy-nilly, until they come up with this date.” Camping claims this prediction to be 100% accurate: “I know it’s absolutely true, because the Bible is always absolutely true.” To see for yourself, here is the scientific method by which Camping predicting the date:

1. According to Camping, the number 5 equals "atonement", the number 10 equals "completeness", and the number 17 equals "heaven".
2. Christ is said to have hung on the cross on April 1, 33 AD. The time between April 1, 33 AD and April 1, 2011 is 1,978 years.
3. If 1,978 is multiplied by 365.2422 days (the number of days in a solar year, not to be confused with the lunar year), the result is 722,449.
4. The time between April 1 and May 21 is 51 days.
5. 51 added to 722,449 is 722,500.
6. (5 × 10 × 17)² or (atonement × completeness × heaven)² also equals 722,500.
Thus, Camping concludes that 5 × 10 × 17 is telling us a "story from the time Christ made payment for our sins until we're completely saved."
7. 722,500 days from Christ’s crucifixion would be this Saturday, May 21, 2011.

This prediction has become noticed by enough people around the globe to become the next official moronic prediction about the end of the world, among countless others proven to be false as the dates harmlessly came and went.

For the record, Camping self-published a book in 1992 called “1994?” in which he predicted, with 100% accuracy, the Rapture would occur in September of 1994. After that date came and went, he revised his theory by claiming to have made a mathematical error. And after that, someone else predicted the Rapture would happen on December 31, 1999, and when that didn’t happen, a bunch of other nutters predicted any number of other dates that they pulled from a large orifice on their body located between and below their hip joints.

Either that or the Rapture did actually happen on one of those dates, and, to quote Gary again, “no one noticed, because the only person who went missing was some random hermit in rural India.”

Oh and by the way, if I’m still here on Sunday, and the earth hasn’t been shaken to pieces by earthquakes, then I will be sure to write another post here soon. Whew! I knew you were scared there for a second.

The US as a Christian Nation?

It’s common these days to hear Christians proposing the idea that the United States was founded on Christian beliefs, and we are in fact a Christian nation. Rather than give my immediate opinion on this idea, I’d like to bring up the most common arguments used, and respond to them with some facts about the founding of the US and see what conclusions can be drawn.

Argument: Our nation’s motto is “In God We Trust”. It's even printed on our currency.
Response: The original motto of the US in 1776 was “E Pluribus Unum,” which is Latin for “One From Many”. It wasn’t until 1814 that Francis Scott Key first mentioned the phrase “In God We Trust” in the last (and rarely sung) stanza of what would become our national anthem. It was used on coins as early as 1864 (almost a full century after the founding of the US) and has gradually made its way onto all of our currency since. In 1956, at the height of the cold war scare and communist witch hunt, the US adopted the phrase as our national motto in order to differentiate ourselves from communism, which usually promoted Atheism. This has also had the unfortunate side effect of linking Atheism with “evil communists”, which is no more true than the Pope being Jesus reincarnate.

 You know what else is on our currency? “The Great Seal”, a very pagan symbol with a pyramid and an eye peeking out of a glowing triangle. The phrase “ANNUIT COEPTIS” appears there, which some argue is a reference to the Christian God, however the phrase is taken from Virgil's book IX of the Aeneid, "JUPPITER OMNIPOTES, AUDACIBUS ANNUE COEPTIS”, which translates as “All-powerful Jupiter favor [my] daring undertakings.” The Roman supreme god Jupiter is at the heart of this phrase, not the God of Abraham.

Argument: We are “One nation under God”, as it’s said in the Pledge of Allegiance.
Response: The original Pledge reads as follows: “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

In the 1940s, a number of Jehovah’s Witnesses refused to say the Pledge at all, claiming that the pledging one’s allegiance to a flag represented idolatry. The hand-over-your-heart gesture was actually added after WWII, because the original outstretched arm solute used for the Pledge too closely resembled the Nazi salute. It wasn’t until the 1950s that “under God” was proposed, failing several times until it was brought up to the Eisenhower administration. Eisenhower, ironically enough, had just been baptized Presbyterian a year earlier, and thought it a wonderful idea. He introduced the final successful bill that added the phrase to our pledge.

Argument: Isn’t the US founded on Christianity?
Response: The 1st Amendment to the Constitution states very clearly: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” Thomas Jefferson interpreted this with the explicit phrase “separation of church and state”. The word “God” does not appear anywhere in the entire US Constitution. The Declaration of Independence mentions the phrase “the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God”, which in no way specifically indicates the Judeo-Christian God.

The Declaration also has the phrase “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” The phrase “all men are created equal” is very much against literal bible doctrine, as the bible teaches from Genesis a very top-down hierarchy: God-man-woman-animal. And Catholic dogma even inserts priests between God and man. And “their Creator” does not specifically reference the Christian God, and could be interpreted as the earth, nature, one’s parents, or any thousands of other gods. And the fact that the word Creator is capitalized doesn’t indicate a deistic reference, any more than the capitalization of the words Right, Life, Liberty, and Happiness do.

Also many of our Founding Fathers were deists, freethinkers, and some even outright attackers of Christianity. Even their graves, tombs, and monuments have no references to Christianity whatsoever.

Argument: The statue of Moses outside the Supreme Court building shows that the US was founded on the 10 Commandments.
Response: The two tablets Moses holds are actually blank, and he sits next to Confucius and Solon, and this is all on the East side of the building, representing great law givers from the Eastern part of the world. On the rest of the building are 17 other notable law givers, including many notorious pagans, even Mohammed holding the K’oran. And on the actual entrance to the building is a scene of pagan figures that represent Order, Liberty, and Authority.

In fact most government buildings are designed after Roman and Greek styles, with pagan statues and references all over the place. And the statue of Moses is more reference to Judaism than Christianity, since his events took place well before Christ.

Conclusion: based on these very brief responses to common arguments, I conclude that the United States is in no way founded on Christianity. In fact it was founded with the deliberate and very specific absence of any religion for the sole purpose of preventing our government from interfering with our unalienable right to practice or not practice any religion we choose. I feel that all references to God added into our practices and doctrine are very baby steps in ultimately violating this covenant, which history has proven countless times only results in the removal of religious freedom. As counter-intuitive as it seems, keeping a 100% secular government absolutely GUARANTEES that no one at any time will EVER be able to change how you worship.

For a more detailed read on the subject, read this guy's blog on The US Not Founded on Christianity. He also has a great entry called Pagan America, which gives an overwhelming number of direct pagan references in US government. There are so many in fact that it's a wonder people don't think we're Greek, Roman, or Egyptian, or wonder why our motto isn't "In Gods We Trust."

Poor black kids

Is it just me, or does anyone else feel a weird vibe every time see happy white American folks doing mission trips to African villages and coming back with a photo album full of themselves hugging poor little black kids? It’s almost like the act itself and the visuals are of a token value. These missionaries feel so good about showing up in a foreign country, dressing the kids up in what always seem like private school uniforms, teaching them about Jesus, taking lots of happy photos, then coming home and sharing it with their church amidst crying squeals of cuteness from the congregation. It almost has the air of visiting a bunch of cute little abandoned puppies.

Or like it’s some kind of rite of passage as a Christian. You may already love Jesus, and you may help out in your local soup kitchen, but you’ve reached the ultimate state of showing God’s love when you visit Uganda and hug a village of poor black children for a month and post all the pictures on your Facebook.

I’ve never been on one of these mission trips, so I don’t know exactly what goes on over there. I don’t know the state these villages are in, nor these children, so I don’t claim to know anything about the work they’re doing there. I’m sure they provide food and medicine and clothes and hope and all that wonderful stuff. I’m just relaying the tone of the act itself as I perceive it. It seems so… stereotypical.

In America, right here within our own borders, about 50% of the impoverished and destitute people are white. They’re human beings, and they may not even be Christians yet (and hence in need of being “saved” like the African children), but they’re starving. And neglected. And maybe fatherless. And living in the same set of clothes for years at a time. And they’re not a 15 hour flight away to the Sudan. I wonder why you don’t see many Facebook photos of college students taking a mission trip to Kentucky and hugging lots of poor dirty white kids? Or what would be even more ironic, to see photos of a cleanly-dressed black man during his mission trip to Tennessee with 8 raggedy, dirty white kids grabbing on his leg and smiling.

Celebrities aren’t helping the stereotypical sense of this foreign aid either. How many African kids has Angelina Jolie adopted? Like 800? Madonna tried to start a private school for African impoverished girls (only to have the designated $3.8 million vanish into thin air, as well as the hopes for the school itself). And every time I see a gossip magazine in a grocery store checkout line, it’s Sandra Bullock and her little African adopted baby, fresh from the village with a necklace of colorful wooden beads around the boy’s neck, as if to make sure to say, “Just in case you didn’t get it, MY NEW BABY IS FROM AFRICA!” Hell, judging by the look on the baby’s face, even HE seems to be growing tired of the stereotype.

Let’s also not forget some big reasons why many countries in Africa are so freakin’ destitute and volatile to begin with. Residual effects of colonialism (usually by European countries) created many unstable tribal relationships, causing constant civil violence and unrest (anybody watch Hotel Rwanda?). The World Bank has caused much governmental restructuring by the incessant amount of loans to African countries and the financial slavery that inevitably results. And the abundantly valuable natural resources such as oil and diamonds are exploited by other wealthy nations, which drives a lot of the African working class into slave labor and war (a big reason why many including myself hate and boycott the diamond industry).

So instead of showing up to help in the African villages stamped into poverty by other parts of the world, maybe the entire world should just leave Africa alone for a few decades and let them be a nation by themselves. I think the African people are more apt to cope alone than any other country. They were, after all, the first modern humans on this planet capable of rational thought, and their ingenuities enabled them to survive the worst of odds and spread across the globe over the last 150,000 years. If they can do that, surely they can sort out their own tribal differences, establish their own sovereign forms of government, clean up their own drinking water, sell their own diamonds and maybe become a first world continent. So maybe the whole world should help by just chillin’ on Africa. Perhaps then there won’t be as many poor villages in such desperate need of happy white missionaries.

The testimony of a redeemed lesbian (oh, and drug addict)

Last week at church, we had a guest speaker come up and give her “testimony” about how God changed her life. It was relevant to the group they have called “Celebrating Recovery” that helps people break their depilating addictions: drugs, alcohol, sex, whatever. This girl looked about in her mid twenties and talked about how, since she was 13, she became involved in alcohol, drugs, and sexual promiscuity with both guys and girls. She continued to say how these things tore her life apart, she was homeless, a junkie, a miscreant, hated her life, etc. She went on a roller coaster with having God in and out of her life, until finally something clicked and her relationship with God helped her overcome her addictions and become “a fully redeemed woman through the blood of Jesus Christ.” And good for her, because she’s obviously not lying in a gutter somewhere dead, or an empty shell of a person trudging through addiction, but she’s living her life and happy and fulfilled.

However I was confused mainly about her dealings with lesbianism. She continued to relate her same-sex relationships with her falls back into her degenerate lifestyle. I agree that excessive anything can ruin your life, especially drugs of course, and even sex. But I honestly don’t think homosexuality is inherently a doorway to degeneracy. I personally don’t think they’re related at all, and I think there are equal proportions of healthy and toxic relationships among hetero- and homosexuals everywhere. Nor do I think promiscuity itself is wrong either – if people are single and consenting, go for it and enjoy yourself. It’s the addiction and abuse that are the additives for disaster.

Now of course her opinions are very biased because of her religious perspective, since the bible admonishes homosexuality and promiscuity in so many ways. She openly renounced her promiscuity along with the substance abuses, however she was rather vague on the lesbian part. She never openly renounced her homosexuality, and several questions started running through my head. She knows her own self more than anyone, so perhaps she’s accepted that she is naturally a lesbian and can’t change that. If that’s the case, then I think if she wants to adhere to Christian morality, she has two choices, both of which I feel are ultimately disastrous:

1) She can attempt to pursue a normal relationship with a man, get married, have kids, etc. But you can’t stay married to someone you’re not in love with or attracted to, and it just sounds like the breeding grounds for a fabulously dysfunctional and abusive family  – a scenario probably all too typical among closeted homosexuals trying to lead a “normal” life.

2) She can attempt to maintain a life of celibacy, which I think goes against the grains of general human nature. We are physical creatures bent on one purpose: to reproduce. Hence our inherent sexual nature that only kindles when intentionally suppressed. It’s this kind of deliberate suppression of a desire that leads to a destructive binge.

I’ve asked this question before, and always seem to get different interpretations, but I wonder if homosexuality is really supposed to be admonished by the Christian faith, any more than eating shellfish or wearing two different materials of fabric. If all sins are the same in the eyes of God, then every Christian alive today is going to hell. Unless some of those old laws don’t apply anymore, which of course is up to an individual’s own interpretation of the book they came from. I honestly think this girl should listen to her heart, embrace the fact that she wants to be in love with a woman and not a man, and find a solid relationship with a woman who empowers her. I think she can still love a woman and love Jesus at the same time, since he did, after all, make her this way right?

Genesis and the history of the universe

I've been reading the book of Genesis from the beginning, and I must admit it's quite challenging to me on many levels. Every time I read a particular story that sounds pretty fantastic, I poke around and see what other people have to say about it. It's lead me to put together an entirely new interpretation of the creation story than if you took the book of Genesis literally, word-for-word. After a little research, I’ve put together two basic timelines for comparison. One is the Naturalist timeline, based on as much scientific data as we have available today: archeological, radioactive, chemical, genetic, etc. The second is a timeline based on the events listed in chapter 1 of the Book of Genesis.


Naturalist timeline:

Universe forms from a single point and all matter is expelled outward.

Earth forms and solidifies from swirling nebulaic dust. Sun begins to form about the same time. Earth is a rotating celestial body, being bathed on one side with light and radiation energy from our developing sun. You could say these are the earliest “days” and “nights”.

A giant object strikes primitive earth, blowing a tremendous amount of matter into orbit around the earth, forming the earth’s only moon.

The earth’s surface cools, earth's first atmosphere is formed from volcanic activity and steam escaping from the crust. Oceans had not yet formed, as there was not enough water on earth yet.

Icy protoplanets and comets impact the earth, vaporize, and eventually settle onto the earth, covering the entire surface with water.

The first land masses appear as a result of the cooling of earth’s crust and mantle.

First life appears in the oceans in the form of single-celled organisms. Blue-green algae, archaeans, bacteria. Due to the incredibly high-energy asteroid bombardment of earth at the time, it is possible that life developed and was extinguished more than just once.

The many land masses merged into one supercontinent, called Rodinia.

Ocean is filled with all existing phyla of life, albeit in their primitive forms. Supercontinent of Rodinia breaks up into smaller land masses.

First primitive plants appear on land.

Bony fishes and other complex marine life evolves. First amphibians appear - essentially the first animals to live at least partially out of the water.

First winged insects appear. These are the first living creatures that fly through the air.

Land masses again form into one supercontinent called Pangea. Reptiles appear; along with winged insects, these are the first animals that can live solely out of water.

Dinosaurs and the first mammals appear, and follow through the 3 periods of dinosaurs: Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretacious. The supercontinent Pangea breaks up and the resulting land masses start to resemble modern-day continents.

The first birds appear in the Jurassic period. Most of modern plant life evolves during the dinosaur era.

Dinosaurs end in extinction probably due to asteroid impact or high tectonic/volcanic activity. The first marsupials develop.

The first large mammals develop and proceed to thrive successfully.

First hominids appear – these are the first primitive primates to walk upright. Australopithecus Afarensis is among the first known hominid species. Megalodon (ancient giant shark) appears in the seas.

After about 20 different hominid species, the first modern humans (Homo Sapiens) appear in east Africa. Prehistoric beasts are aplenty: mastodons, saber-toothed cats, wooly mammoths, giant ground sloths.

Human civilization develops as humans leave Africa to populate the Middle East, Asia, Australia, Europe, and the Americas. The migration is mainly fueled by the increase or recession of ice ages, which provided either an abundance or shortage of available food, and also geographically unlocked different parts of the globe.


Biblical timeline:

Universe forms. Earth and oceans form.

Light from the sun provides the first days and nights.

The sky/atmosphere develops, separating the earth’s water from the rest of the universe.

First land masses appear. The land produces all modern complex plant life.

Every other celestial body in the universe develops (or at least appears visible on earth), appearing as our solar star during the day, and our moon and other stars in our night sky.

Life develops in the oceans. Birds develop.

Life appears on land in the form of all complex modern life.

Modern humans appear on land, namely the Garden of Eden, hypothesized to exist anywhere from Iraq to northeast Africa (in between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers)

Human civilization develops in Mesopotamia until God scatters humans across the globe after the building of the Tower of Babel.


Reading these two sequences of events gives obvious notice of their differing order, and the lack of mention of many events in the Biblical timeline. The timespan of the Naturalistic timeline is about 15 billion years, with the earth forming and all life on earth developing during the last 4.6 billion years. So for each item in the list, figure anywhere from tens to hundreds of millions of years. The bible gives a timespan of 6 days. However in recent years, as more Christians accept scientific data showing the true age of the earth, these “days” have been interpreted as ages or eons, so that the biblical timeline extends to hundreds of millions of years and more closely reconciles with the actual age of the earth.

This last note about the 6 “days” or “eons” gives rise to a very important note: If you take the first chapter of Genesis literally, it doesn’t even remotely agree with an overwhelming amount of scientific data that has been discovered since Genesis was written. However if you choose to interpret the story as a metaphoric narrative, then it can be loosely reconciled with the naturalistic history of the universe. But of course this is where the whole of the faith comes to a gripping paradox: if the creation story itself must be interpreted a certain way to make sense, and is not necessarily the literal infallible word of God, then what else in the Bible can we take this way? If Genesis can only make sense when taken with a grain of salt, then it leaves the entire faith up to interpretation.

There is much in the bible that is pretty historically accurate, although sometimes a little contradictory. It was written by many different sources over thousands of years, but when brought together the core of the different stories overlap pretty well to give a fantastically detailed history of north Africa, Mesopotamia, and the Middle East over the last several thousand years. But like the history of the universe and earth, it fails to mention what was going on in the rest of the world. That doesn’t make it inaccurate, just incomplete. I don’t think it challenges the validity of the bible just because they didn’t give a detailed history of South America, I just think the people who wrote it had no idea about the rest of the world, just the parts that they were directly experiencing. But many people will say that this itself challenges the divinity of the bible. If its authors were being channeled by God’s divine and all-knowing word, why wouldn’t they write about things that no man could have truly known at the time, such as the existence and extinction of dinosaurs? Or at least the proper order of the development of life in the sea, land, and air? It could be said that the history recorded in Genesis is really a matter of the authors' perspective and limited understanding of the world. Maybe God did impart to them the infinite nature of the universe and the exact formation of the earth, but they really only understood and wrote down a small fraction of it. This still of course challenges the literal word-for-word infallible nature that the bible is supposed to uphold. However personally, I don't have a terrible problem with it if that's the case. If these people were gifted with such an overwhelming insight, I think they did pretty well with what they had to work with.

It is also safe to say that science isn’t always 100% accurate either. Just the discoveries made in the last 15 years through genetics has already shed new light on old scientific facts. However science is much more accepting of changing data then religion. Despite politics and profits, over the course of time science will always gravitate toward new and provable data to mold its most updated explanations of the universe. Whereas religion already has their answer, and they will pick and choose (or re-interpret, or ignore) data as they see fit to property reconcile with their holy doctrine.

I’ve heard it said “Science has questions that may never be answered. Religion has answers that may never be questioned.”

It’s this kind of thing that reminds me just how freakin’ small we are.


Interactive slide showing the scale of the universe

If you want to read the Genesis of the bible and believe that it literally describes the exact creation of the entire universe – all 14,000,000,000 light-years of it, every galaxy, nebula, black hole, red giant, neutrino, quark, and preon – then that’s totally your choice. Given the information that man has discovered since the time the bible was written, it might be beneficial if you take it with a slight grain of salt. It could be a vast metaphor. It could be completely made up. It could only pertain to our planet, not necessarily the whole universe because we didn’t need to know that at the time. Or let’s say God was transcending the knowledge of the universe into the meager minds of humans 4,000+ years ago – do you think there’s even a slight chance they might have missed 99% of the point, and just paraphrased the best they could?

Anyway, when you’re presented the whole of the known universe in a silly (yet impressive) little internet applet like this, I think it simultaneously brings two things to light:

One: we know for a fact that the universe is bigger and more complex than anything ever imagined by the guys who wrote the bible on dried tree bark. I mean these guys didn’t even have the vague concept of a celestial body, including the one called Planet Earth that they lived on. They had no concept of sub-atomic particles or ultra-violet light waves. So to think this simple explanation of the creation of the universe and all complex life on earth, which happens in just a few pages, can word-for-word accommodate for all that we know exists is kinda silly.

Two: I think by illustrating how much we know about the universe, it also illustrates how much we DON’T know about the universe. As I’ve discussed before, the human perception and comprehension of our reality is pretty limited. We only exist in 4 dimensions: length, height, width, and time. And we can’t even control anything about that last one, we’re just along for the ride. Yet we know there are countless other dimensions that are provable mathematically, that actually do exist, yet we will never be able to experience. At the smallest end of that “scale of the universe” chart is the theoretical quantum string. Who’s to say this isn’t exponentially more enormous than truly the smallest bit of matter, or that it doesn’t continue shrinking to infinity? And neutrinos… what the HELL are those things? They travel through matter at the speed of light and actually go back in time. All the time, everywhere, right now, as you’re reading this.

Who’s to say there isn’t something tying together every sub-atomic particle in the universe, perhaps even an intelligence that exists in every point and dimension simultaneously? If it all exists now, it had to have been created from somewhere, but who or what created it? God? Chaos?

Who. The. Fuck. Knows.

I think the concept of God goes beyond any scientific concept or theory human beings could ever dream about. And yet science has shown us innumerable things that every religion in existence fails to mention. It’s a toss-up, folks. So take your pick, and be very happy with it. But it’s not advisable to proclaim that your choice is the “truth”. It’s more like “the best conclusion you could come up with based on the evidence you were given.”

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.