The account in Genesis about God creating all things in the world seems completely irrational nowadays. Why do some people still believe it?
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Executive summary
The claim that Genesis’s creation account feels “completely irrational” to many modern readers reflects a clash between ancient literary forms and contemporary scientific expectations; scholars note Genesis contains multiple composited traditions and served different purposes than a modern science textbook [1] [2]. People still believe it for a mix of theological commitments, interpretive traditions, cultural identity, and explicit efforts to defend the text’s factual authority by religious organizations and theologians [3] [4].
1. Genesis as literature and history: why the text resists a single modern reading
Modern biblical scholarship finds the Genesis creation narratives to be composite—two different accounts woven into the book—so that questions of genre, source, and original audience matter when assessing what the text “means” and whether it was meant as literal history in the modern sense [1] [2]. Many scholars emphasize that Genesis 1 and 2 reflect Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) literary patterns and theological aims—etiologies and temple/kingdom imagery—rather than scientific description, which explains recurring features that look odd to contemporary readers [1] [5].
2. Theological commitments that make literal belief rational inside a faith framework
For believers who treat Scripture as authoritative, the most straightforward reading is that Genesis reports God’s creative acts; some theologians and ministries argue the text should be read as historically factual and resist concordist efforts to harmonize it with evolutionary science because they see such harmonization as compromising biblical clarity and authority [4] [6]. Institutions like the Institute for Creation Research and affiliated groups explicitly assert Genesis is historically true and use that claim to anchor doctrines about sin, death, and human origins—an internal theological logic that makes literal belief coherent for adherents [3] [6].
3. A wide spectrum of interpretive options within religious communities
Believers are not monolithic: some read Genesis as literal, others as poetic or symbolic, and many occupy mediating positions that see theological truth without insisting the narrative maps onto scientific timelines—BioLogos and related scholars argue Genesis was never intended as a science manual and propose readings that harmonize faith with modern cosmology and evolution [7] [5]. Voices on conservative blogs and ministries meanwhile defend literal or near-literal readings as consistent with inerrancy and historic faith practice, producing robust internal debate [8] [9].
4. Why science and Scripture can be talked about in different languages
Comparative readers and many theologians insist the goals of Genesis and the goals of empirical science are different: Genesis addresses who created and why, not technical mechanisms, so equating its form to modern hypotheses about age or mechanisms risks a category error; commentators say comparing Genesis to contemporary science is “apples to oranges” [7] [5]. At the same time, some groups press for scientific claims from the text, producing an oppositional public debate over school curricula, public policy, and cultural authority [10] [3].
5. Social, psychological, and political drivers of ongoing belief
Beyond exegesis, belief persists because Genesis functions as identity: it anchors communal memory, moral claims, and political stances about family and society for many groups, and organizations provide research, education, and apologetics to sustain literal readings [3] [6]. Psychological factors—need for certainty, existential meaning, and in-group trust—combine with institutional support to make the narrative feel rational within those social ecosystems [8] [9].
6. Conclusion: rationality depends on the question asked and the interpretive lens used
Read as a modern scientific hypothesis the Genesis account conflicts with empirical models and so appears “irrational” to many, but within theological frameworks that prioritize scriptural authority, covenantal meaning, or different genre expectations, belief remains coherent and actively defended by scholars, pastors, and organizations—scholarship and apologetics both sustain alternative plausibilities rather than a single settled verdict [1] [4] [7].