I wanted to elaborate a bit on a point I made in this thread: that, in order to accept creationism, one also has to accept the premise that the Christian God is either deceptive or incompetent.

 

If God faked the fossil record & the other evidence for evolution (an argument that many creationists make), then that would make him a deceptive God. Galileo's objection also applies: why give us rational faculties and then expect us not to use them?

 

The second possibility is that God couldn't create all the animals properly the first time, so he needed multiple attempts. In other words, an incompetent God. Personally, I like to think of it as the "Time Bandits theory of God" ("It was a rush job, what do you expect? We only had 7 days after all").

 

When I've raised that point in the past, the only answers I've seen from creationists have been thoroughly absurd excsuses like "Oh, the devil faked all that stuff to trick us into sinning" or "God faked all that stuff to test our faith."

 

It's also funny that YECs frequently try to paint their beliefs as the only "truly-Christian" option - and yet creationism requires less reverence for God than a position like theistic evolution. I'd ask how YECs can justify that, but I suspect it's one of those (many) aspects of YEC/religious fundamentalism that makes more sense if you just don't think about it.