adam and eve

While the first model derives its truth from science and ignores any religious claims, the second alternative claims that while science is correct for the present affairs of the world, the scripts provide the ultimate truth about the creation and our past.

As neither Adam nor Eve was born of a woman’s womb, early Christian artists debated whether they should be portrayed with or without navels. A fig leaf over their lower bodies normally solved the problem for the artists, but not for theologist and naturalists.

In 1857, two years before Darwin published his theory of evolution, a British naturalist named Philip Henry Gosse, addressed this question in a book called Omphalos: An Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot. In his book, Gosse argued that both Adam and Eve had a navel, as they were created human in every detail, including the appearance of age and history of birth. In the same way, he argued, a world created by an act of creation, would have been created with the appearance of age and history.

Gosse’s argument was adopted by creationists and those with similar doctrines that propound that God created the earth relatively recently, but made it appear much older. To this day, this is one of the arguments most widely used against the scientific unequivocal claim that based on fossils and other scientific evidence, the world is extremely ancient.

Although this argument cannot be disproved scientifically, it has raised many questions. First, if the world was created with a ‘built-in’ history, why should we assume that it happened at the time described by the biblical account and not at any other time, for instance, last night or five minutes ago? After all, creation with history, which includes our own memories, could have happened at any time. Neither science nor our experience can indicate the time of such creation.

The second question is why should we assume that the creator would like to deceive us, and what might his reasons be to play such a trick? The common answer is that we, mere human, cannot expect to understand the reasons behind the deeds of a creator. The natural counter argument would be that if we can’t understand the mind or motivation of the creator, how can we be sure that it’s the ‘truth’ He told us in the scripts? Can we be so arrogant to believe that such a mighty creator owes us the truth?