Creationism is a rapidly growing religious and intellectual phenomenon on a global scale. The late Ronald Numbers, an academic expert on creationism, explained in a 2012 speech that from the 1990s onward, creationism spread “beyond the United States and beyond Christianity to other religions to the present time where it is a global phenomenon.” Not only is creationism “booming in the Islamic world”, it “has also been adopted by other religious groups—for example, a group of Israeli and American Jews who formed the Torah Science Foundation in 2000”—and has also emerged among Hindus. Türkiye incorporated creationism into its school curriculum in the 1980s.1
My twin brother and I have written a one-stop-shop book defending a trinitarian Christian young-earth creation perspective which we are self-publishing through Amazon KDP (~163,000 words).2 Using a multi-faceted worldview-based approach, we cover essential background to the debate (pp. 8–159), rebut secular origins accounts (pp. 160–300), defend Genesis 1–11 (pp. 301–376) and discuss the outlook for secular origins and biblical creationism (pp. 377–391).3 The book took a large fraction of our spare time over a four year period; a big thank-you to our understanding families.
We argue that the Christian creationist paradigm is stronger than is commonly acknowledged, and the secular origins accounts weaker than is admitted by many proponents. We believe the secular origins account (which today comprises the ΛCDM version of the Big Bang theory, abiogenesis and the Modern Synthesis) has been in post-peak decline intellectually since the mid-1960s. The biblical creationist movement (which includes Evangelical Protestants, Seventh Day Adventists, Reformed Protestants, and some traditional Roman Catholics and Jews) began to expand dramatically after the 1961 publication of The Genesis Flood and is now approaching the “end of the beginning”.
We elected to use ChatGPT-5 as a component of the editing workflow to identify typographical and factual errors, and to identify any statements which could be classed as defamatory or consistent with hate speech.4
Each chapter and appendix (average length 6,200 words) was copied and pasted from a Word DOCX file into a new ChatGPT chat, preceded by a prompt equivalent to the following:
I’m going to paste in a chapter of my book. Check for factuality, and whether there is any defamation or hate speech concerns. Propose tweaks or corrections as required: PASTED_CHAPTER_MATERIAL
Some excerpts from a number of ChatGPT-5 responses are shown below.
Minor factual/style fixes
- “YellowStone” → “Yellowstone”.
- “Francesca Petrarca” → “Francesco Petrarca.”
- “Wittenburg” → “Wittenberg.”
- “Pederson” → likely “Pedersen” (if citing Olaf Pedersen).
Some of these typographical pick-ups were impressive because they enabled us to find and fix needle-in-a-haystack type errors.
Factuality flags & corrections (high priority)
1. Ronald Numbers episode
- The Yellowstone/petrified forest anecdote and the “at least thirty thousand years old” quotation need exact page cites [It had this]. Also, be careful stating “rejected Christianity”; Numbers described himself later as an agnostic and remained a church historian; his journey is nuanced. Edit: “Numbers later described himself as agnostic; in his Creationists preface he recounts wrestling with geological claims (e.g., Yellowstone fossil forests).” Please verify the exact quotation and page or paraphrase cautiously.
2. Augustine portrayed as a “young-earth creationist”
- Augustine did say humanity’s history was <6,000 years in City of God, but he also rejected 24-hour creation days and developed rationes seminales (seed principles). Calling him a straightforward YEC is an overstatement. Edit: “Augustine affirmed a recent creation of humanity, yet interpreted the ‘days’ non-literally and proposed instantaneous creation with later unfolding. ‘Young-earth creationist’ in the modern sense over-simplifies his view.”
3. Athanasius as Augustine’s ‘foundation’
- You tie Augustine’s project to Athanasius; fair theologically (Trinitarian continuity), but not a direct intellectual lineage for City of God. Consider rephrasing to avoid implying direct dependence. Edit: “Building within Nicene Trinitarian theology (championed by Athanasius), Augustine …”
4. Carolingian Renaissance details
- Largely fine, but “Charlemagne slept with City of God under his pillow” is likely apocryphal. Edit: “A later tradition claims Charlemagne kept City of God by his bedside; whether apocryphal or not, the work’s influence was substantial.”
This 4th point by ChatGPT-5 is questionable, although the quotation may indeed be apocryphal. In Christianity and Classical Culture (by Charles Norris Cochrane) the author states:
Besides this, Augustine is credited with having inspired, through the De Civitas Dei, a conception underlying the Medieval Church and empire; in confirmation of which it is recorded that Charlemagne habitually slept with a copy of this work beneath his pillow”.5
ChatGPT-5 helpfully discovered some arithmetic errors in the Appendix on abiogenesis probability calculations. (We did not use ChatGPT-5’s arithmetic corrections but recomputed these values ourselves using Microsoft Excel.)
Arithmetic — please fix these (important)
There are a few 10× exponent slips that propagate:
- Ten proteins from 10 “critical-AA” motifs You compute (1/20)10 = 9.77×10−14, then allow 100 variants → 9.77×10−12 per protein, and raise to the 10th power.
- Correct result: (9.77×10−12)10 ≈ 7.9×10−111 (not 7.9×10−110).
- Combine proteins + DNA segments
- With your DNA result: (2.46×10−10)10 ≈ 8.1×10−97 (fine), the product is:
7.9×10−111 × 8.1×10−97 ≈ 6.36×10−207 (not 6.4×10−206).- After multiplying by “number of rolls”
- Using your 2.9×1054 rolls, the overall probability becomes
2.9×1054 × 6.36×10−207 ≈ 1.9×10−152 (not 1.9×10−151).These do not alter your qualitative conclusion, but readers will expect the exponents to be exact in a numerical appendix. (I recomputed them carefully digit-by-digit.)
There was further advice about our upper bound calculation for the probability of abiogenesis:
Modeling cautions worth one clarifying line each
These aren’t “errors,” but brief flags will pre-empt easy objections:
- Independence: Multiplying many probabilities assumes independence among assembly events; that assumption is explicitly being used to over-estimate success odds in your favor. Say so.
- Rate assumptions: Using enzyme-catalyzed rates for prebiotic, non-enzymatic chemistry is a strong assumption (again, in favor of abiogenesis). A parenthetical remark acknowledging this will help.
- Sequence degeneracy assumptions: You grant six codon synonyms for all amino acids and three for the stop codon. That’s intentionally generous (two amino acids have only one codon, many have 2–4). One sentence noting this keeps the reader oriented. (ThoughtCo)
(We were purposefully favouring abiogenesis at every turn in order to strengthen the argument.)
As a component of the editing workflow, we believe ChatGPT-5 was valuable and cost effective. The ChatGPT responses had a respectful, “liberal academic” tone.
ChatGPT-5 did not capture all typographical errors. Both Microsoft Word and Amazon KDP identified additional typographical errors, as did layers of manual review.
ChatGPT-5 did not remove the need for human review. Our book was reviewed in depth by a veteran creationist and a theologian. In addition, we obtained reviews from a retired pastor, a retired missionary, a lawyer, a math teacher and others. All provided valuable feedback which helped us to revise and improve the manuscript.
ChatGPT-5 is a useful tool, and we plan to incorporate ChatGPT into editing workflows in the future.
For further information about Origin: Why Genesis 1–11 Trumps Secular Accounts see https://www.rechristianize.com/origin.html↩︎
Supported by six appendices (pp.392–449).↩︎
The creation–evolution debate has at times included inflammatory statements (especially from some prominent New Atheists). Because such rhetoric can cross into hostility toward those of a differing viewpoint, it is important to check debate material for potential hate speech. As examples, Richard Dawkins has described teaching children religious identity as “child abuse,” (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2312813/Richard-Dawkins-Forcing-religion-children-child-abuse-claims-atheist-professor.html) and Sam Harris has been criticised for writing that certain beliefs may be “so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them.” (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/may/07/comment.religion) These kinds of remarks show how easily the debate can shift from discussing ideas to targeting people, underscoring the need to review material carefully to ensure respectful and safe dialogue.↩︎
Norris Cochrane, C. (2003) Christianity and Classical Culture: A study of thought and action from Augustus to Augustine. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. p. 417.↩︎