From Life-Long Skeptic to Gullible Young Earth Creationist?

I received this comment recently from one Pedro Cuestra who presents himself as a “life-long skeptic” who has “recently come into the knowledge of the God of the (entire) bible” and so is now a Young Earth Creationist.

Dear Richard,

I recently came across your biblewheel.com and was nearly blown away with it. I say nearly because I’m a life-long skeptic who has recently come into the knowledge of the God of the (entire) bible and I don’t know enough gematria or hebrew or greek to disprove your analysis. Kudos for your work, insight and revelations to the extent that they are actually trustworthy!

Hey there Pedro,

Thanks for the kudos, but I suspect the only reason you would say such a thing is because you think my work confirms your beliefs. I get this impression because you admit that you do not actually “know enough” to evaluate the results yet you praise them “to the extent that they are actually trustworthy”. That seems like a very strange way of thinking. Why praise them at all if you can’t evaluate their validity? Later in your comments you do the opposite with well-established scientific results supporting evolution when you show extreme skepticism for no apparent reason except that the evidence contradicts your religious beliefs. This is a very dangerous distortion of judgment known as a “confirmation bias”. It is one of the primary reasons people hold to irrational and unsupported beliefs which can become full-blown delusions if you are not careful. This error is extremely common amongst Christian fundamentalists, especially those who seek to prove the truth of the Bible. I explain this in some detail in my article The Art of Rationalization: A Case Study of Christian Apologist Rich Deem.

I also appreciate your angst about Christianity and your turn to unbelief due to your own perceptions about what God ought to be like in all his omnipotence or what his inspired words should express or omit. Because we were created in His image we often like to think as if we were The God and have the temerity to doubt His creation, contradict His plans, assume His powers and, yes, mock His own personality as expressed in the bible.

Your comment is difficult to answer because it is such a dense mix of irrationality and presumption. It is irrational to speak of my “own perceptions” as if I could have some other kind. Do you have perceptions other than your own? This seems to be a variation on the common fundamentalist false dichotomy of “human logic” vs. “God’s logic.” Such locutions are irrational because fundamentalists must use their own “human logic” to justify any claims about the Bible just like a skeptic. So when you speak of my “own perceptions about what God ought to be like in all his omnipotence” you speak also of yourself. Why are you, but not I, free to judge if what the Bible says is good or true? If I have no right to make any judgments about things written in religious books like the Koran, the Bible, or the Book of Mormon, then neither do you and all discussion must cease. Your appeal to the Bible as God’s “inspired words” has no more meaning than a Muslim appealing to the Koran as such. And worse, even if the Bible were God’s inspired word, it would not mean that your interpretation of it is correct. Case in point: Biblical fundamentalists are divided over the Trinity. Some say it is a doctrine from hell, others say it is a divine truth. Therefore, it doesn’t matter if the Bible is “inspired” or not because that assumption will not resolve any of the contrary interpretations.

Your comment is also very presumptuous. You have no ability, let alone right, to judge my motives! It is especially egregious because your judgment directly contradicts what I’ve told you. I have explained my reasons for rejecting Christianity and it has nothing to do with the motives you suggest. I am judging the Bible by the same standards as any other book. If it is not valid for humans to judge the truth of the Bible then it is not valid for you to judge that the Bible is true or that it is the Word of God. You fall by your own sword. This exposes your double standard (another cognitive bias) – you seem to be saying that judgments about the Bible are valid only if they agree with your opinion! Think about that for a while. You are presuming that your interpretation is actually God’s interpretation.

It is true that I “mock His own personality as expressed in the bible” – that’s one of the primary reasons I reject Christianity. The character presented as Yahweh (God) in the Bible is not logically coherent. At times he is presented as ignorant like a mere human. He needs to “come down” to “see” what is going on in Babel (Genesis 11:5). He can’t save Judah because his enemies have “iron chariots” (Judges 1:19). He inflicted a three year famine on all Israel because of the crimes of a previous king without even telling them why, and then would not lift the famine until seven sons of Saul were murdered and “hung up before the Lord” (2 Samuel 21). He demanded that every man, woman, and child of the Midianites be slaughtered except for 32,000 sexy virgins. There is no end to this list. I can see no reason any rational citizen of the 21^st century would believe that Yahweh is the true God. Yes, I do have my my “own perceptions about what God ought to be like in all his omnipotence” and Yahweh does not measure up any more than Allah or Zeus would measure up to your standards.

I’m also a product of our secular schools and colleges which instilled in me the Darwinian dogma (never mind that current evolutionists have long discarded that dogma and are feverishly proposing neo-Darwinian explanations).

In little time at all, I have come to understand that chance had nothing to do with the universe; that all information requires a code and a designer; and that life is commensurate with painstaking, brilliant and purpuseful design, namely a Creator. So your statement (below) seems preposterous if born of ignorance or mischievous if born of ‘knowledge’:

I am quite confident that we are the product of evolution, but I don’t know how it all started, and I recognize that there is a big problem with the origin of DNA and life.

Since you seem to possess all the right analytical and thinking tools that you require please take some time to ponder about the problem of Left-Handed Chirality in Amino Acids. I’ll just get you started with this:

[A ludicrous quote from Ken Ham’s infamously ignorant and deceptive Young Earth Creationist site “Answers in Genesis”.]

Your assertion that “chance had nothing to do with the universe” indicates a profound ignorance of how the universe really works. Have you never heard of the Second Law of Thermodynamics? It is perhaps the most fundamental law accepted by all scientists, and it is a statistical law based fundamentally on chance (randomness). Or what about Quantum Physics? It is the most successful theory of atomic phenomena every developed and it is fundamentally probabilistic. Your assertion that “life is commensurate with painstaking, brilliant and purposeful design” is equally absurd. Life bears all the marks of bad design that we would expect if it had evolved without any conscious intent. Your comment reminds me of Ray Comfort’s argument that every painting requires a painter. He applies that arguemnt to animals to assert that evolution is impossible and that God had to design each and every organism. This implies that God designed all the horrific birth defects. Watch this video if you dare:

Now you tell me that my conclusion that “we are the product of evolution” seems “preposterous if born of ignorance or mischievous if born of ‘knowledge’” and support that assertion by quoting an article posted on Ken Ham’s outrageously preposterous Young Earth Creationist site? Give me a break. And worse, the article you cited commits the typical mindless creationist fallacy of quote mining! No one who was ever a skeptic at any point in their life could fail to see the absurdity of that article, unless they’ve had a stroke or some other trauma to their brain.

I am totally open-minded if you would like to present some real evidence supporting your position. But if all you want to do is pose as a “life long skeptic” and present typical mindless creationist pablum, you will not get much more of a response than this.