When I was a Christian, I always found the notion of “special creation” to be problematic. I never saw—and have still never seen—evidence that required “special creation” as an explanation. (Fine tuning of cosmological constants is a slight possibility.) The only use for “special creation” was to create or defend some strange “supernatural” narrative, and the circularity of this maneuver is dizzying. “Special creation,” in other words, is only useful when trying to justify… special creation stories.
There is one partial solution for believers who want to retain intellectual integrity: evolution and development and cell biology and biochemistry provide explanations that can all be called “special creation.” I know that’s not what anyone means when they start a thread about “special creation,” but it provides some nice benefits.
- No more need to concoct ridiculous “explanations” such as the bizarre 2-person founding of a human population as described in this thread, or ID in all its nonsensical glory.
- No more risk of defining non-supernatural explanation as unspecial or even not from god. This kind of thing, which I called blasphemy back when I thought that word was an appropriate one to use, is rampant in discussions of “creation” by Christians.
- Freedom to marvel at the real world of biology (and physics and chemistry etc) and even to be moved to awe and worship by it.
“Special creation” is ridiculous.