Chapter 2 - My Skeptical Inquiry

Review of The Creator and the Cosmos: third in a series...

First, the Headmaster must apologize for the sarcastic tone of this chapter's review. There is simply no way to avoid it - he tried and failed. No suprise, given that he laughed out loud through the entire chapter. He finds it exceedingly difficult to treat this material with any respect whatsover, and therefore what may come off as sarcasm and disrespect to those who have not read the book, might actually be called impressive restraint by those who have.

This very short and wholly unconvincing chapter is simply meant to satisfy a requirement - the establishment of the author's "I am a converted skeptic" credentials. The author unabashedly tells us that by age 15, having researched the cosmos exhaustively, he'd drawn the following conclusion: "If the universe arose out of a big bang, it must have had a beginning. If it had a beginning, it must have had a beginner." This old classic might have a special place in the Museum of Circular Logic, if such a place existed. Taken by itself, it comes as no surprise that someone of faith might use circular logic. But taken in context of the follow-on section, the statement reveals that the author possesses one magnificent set of cosmos-sized cohones.

Up to this point, the author has painted us a misty-eyed picture of an impoverished young boy seeking the truth through his beloved books. In this subsection, we peer over the boy's shoulder as he grapples with the contradictions - here, he observes that history books show the peoples of the world taking religion very seriously, and yet here he observes that European philosophers of the Enlightenment largely discount religion. What is a poor boy to do? Of course, he looks for insight in those philosophical works, but rejects them after finding only "circular logic". At this point the headmaster, after recovering from the reflexive GASP, paused to reflect on the sheer SIZE of the cohones required to make this statement, a mere five sentences after the author penned an absolute circular masterpiece of his own.

But let's recover and move on. The boy decides that he must be fair, and thus rather than build a case on such second-hand resources as history and philosophy books, he resolves to read "the holy books of the world's major religions". He reasoned that if God the Creator were to communicate to his creations, He would do so in a clear and consistent manner, and in a way that was different from the way humans communicate. He tells us that "the first several holy books" confirmed his hunch that they were not written by a Creator, because they contained statements at odds with established history and science, and they were written in an esoteric, mysterious and vague style. He declines to enlighten us as to which holy books these were. Instead, he relates that he then stumbled upon the Bible. Seriously. It is laugh-out-loud ludicrous.

Now, we dispense with the formalities and get to the heart of the matter - the Bible. It begins to feel as though you're watching a typical porn film. (The headmaster has never seen one, but he's heard about them) The "setup" presents a thin situational drama with poor acting that leads very quickly to the action everyone is waiting for. Makes one wonder why they don't just dispense with the whole "setup" in the first place. And that's the way this book feels.

Anyway, finally we get to the "action". As you might suspect, the author found the Bible's passages to be simple, direct and specific. He was "amazed" with the quantity and detail of historical and scientific references. He claims that it took him an entire night just to investigate the first chapter, where he found that instead of "another bizarre creation myth", the chapter contained a journal-like record of the earth's initial conditions - correctly described from the standpoint of astrophysics and geophysics, followed by a summary of the sequence of changes through which the Earth came to be inhabited by living things and humans.

For anyone who's read Genesis, it seems puzzling that someone (especially someone with a PhD) might find anything even remotely resembling accepted scientific theory. God creates the sky and Earth, and darkness covers everything. Then God says "Let there be light". Then He divides the light into night and day. etc etc

The Headmaster can't go further - to do so is pointless. The wording in Genesis is certainly simple and direct, though absolutely NOT specific and NOT an accurate description of the science of big bang. You see where this is going, I'm sure. This is a setup for a) cherry-picking science to fit biblical passages; and b) cherry-picking biblical passages that suit known science; and c) ignoring completely any biblical passages that might prove contradictory or unscientific; and d) providing the necessary mental gymnastics to put it all together. et voila - we have "scientific proof" of creation, straight from the Bible.

*sigh*... If nothing else, it should be interesting to see how we get from here to there. Stay tuned...