How Does Mark Twain Criticize Creationism

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Mark Twain’s essay “The Thoughts of God” and the article from Scientific American: “Okay We Give Up” both satirize creationism – the idea of how things came to be. It is believed by both Twain and the editors of the Scientific American that people should question everything.
In Twain’s essay he uses the fly as an example to aid in his satire of creationism. First he says that “the planning of the fly was an application of pure intelligence, morals not being concerned” (paragraph 1). This is ironic because the fly is considered a very simple organism. Twain continues the paragraph by saying:
In the course of ages, for some reason or other, there have been millions of persons, but out of this vast multitude there had not been one who has been willing to explain what the want was. At least satisfactorily. A few have explained that there was need of a creature to remove disease breeding garbage; but these being then asked to explain what long felt want the disease breeding garbage was introduced to supply, they have not been willing to undertake the contract (paragraph 1). …show more content…

If the fly represents despicable things in the world, and God is the one who created all despicable things, then why do people seem to ignore the creator and focus on the created? This is what Twain is questioning: the creation of everything. Twain is saying that there seems to be no purpose to the fly, and if there was a purpose to this creation of which people think is pure evil, then this must mean the person who created it was also somewhat evil. Twain is satirizing the idea of creationism by questioning the logic behind

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