Everything Wrong With Genesis 1 in the Bible
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| Bible genesis 1:1-2 |
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
Obviously, we could talk about the Big Bang and how God didn't just poof us into existence. But even if you think, as some Christians do, that God created everything at once THROUGH the Big Bang, none of this makes sense.
God created the Heavens? That's a synonym for the universe. So God created the Universe and Earth at the same time, in the beginning. Except the universe is approximately 13.8 billion years old. And the Earth is only 4.5 billion years old.
I mean, if you rewind the tape, they don't have the same starting point. And if you know anything about the early universe, darkness wasn't in the picture. For hundreds of thousands of years after the Big Bang, the universe was really really bright.
And where did this water come from that God was hovering over? The Earth didn't have water until long after it was formed. It didn't come with a built-in pool.
The early universe didn't have rain either. And God said, Let there be light, and there was light. Who was He talking to?
There were no people yet. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.
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| Bible Genesis 1:4-5 |
God called the light day, and the darkness he called Night.
And there was evening, and there was morning - the first day. God hasn't even made the Sun yet. That's not until verse 14. So where is this light coming from? And how do we get evening and morning when there's no Sun? Those words have no meaning when there's no Sun.
Also, darkness isn't a separate but equal thing. Darkness is the absence of light. Just like the cold is the absence of heat. Those aren't two different things; they're different amounts of one thing.
God apparently couldn't pass a grade school science class.
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| Bible Genesis 1:6-8 |
And God said, Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water. So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. God called the vaulted sky.
And there was evening, and there was morning - the second day. It... took god a full day to make the sky? It's empty. What was there to make? And how did we get evening and morning again? There's still no Sun! But more than all that, look at the language.
God creates this separation, this vault, but it sounds very much like a solid thing, like a roof over our heads. But there's no roof. There's no physical barrier from the rain. It's the sort of thing you would write f you didn't understand what gravity was yet.
It also sounds like a flat roof. I mean, God separated the top floor from the bottom floor. I mean, if the Earth were flat, this language might make sense. But -- spoiler -- it's not. And God said, Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear. And it was so.
God called the dry ground land, and the gathered waters he called seas. And God saw that it was good. That implies that there was a time when water covered the entire planet. And then God mopped it up into one location. But our planet was never entirely water.
There was a time when it had no water. So there was never any water to gather. Then God said, Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds. And it was so.
The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning - the third day. Again, evening/morning/no Sun.
Doesn't make sense. But how do you make plants that bear fruit and vegetation when you can't have photosynthesis because, again, there's no Sun?
And how come the land has to produce all this stuff now? So much for the God of Creation! It's like the Bible says: He created land, then thought, "okay, I'm done now. They can do the rest of the work."
Also, by this account, the first living things in the universe are plants and trees, which are above ground. That's not true. The first forms of life were entirely in the sea.
And they were single-celled organisms, not complex plants with the sort of sex organs that would allow them to produce seeds. And God said, Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth. And it was so.
God made two great lights: the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from the darkness.
And God saw that it was good. Finally! We get the Sun! And the moon! But wait. The moon is described as a "lesser light." And if you know anything about the moon, it's that it doesn't give off light. It reflects light from the Sun. So what is the Bible talking about?
And the idea that the "Greater light" -- the Sun -- governs the day while the moon governs the night doesn't make sense either. It's not like the Sun goes away at night. That's what toddlers think. And even though we might not be able to see the Sun, it is still there.
When it's nighttime for us, it's daytime for someone else. So there's no real separation between the night and day. It's always sunny somewhere. Also, if God made these two lights, where does one go when it's off duty? God never tells us.
Also, the Sun and the moon were not created at the same time. The Sun is really old. The moon is not. The moon didn't appear until a billion years after the Earth was formed, and the Earth formed long after the Sun arrived.
And God supposedly made these two lights to separate light from the darkness. But God also did that back in verse 4... so did he just separate light from darkness twice? Did an all-knowing God get amnesia? It also says God set the lights in the "vault of the sky."
But the Sun is not in our sky. It's not in the Earth's atmosphere. Remember, we revolve around the Sun, not the other way around. Those verses also say God made the stars.
But think about that. God made our Sun. God made the Earth's moon. And then God created all the stars? Do you know how many stars there are? I know people joke about how Carl Sagan said "billions and billions" -- he never actually said that phrase -- but there are really billions and billions of stars.
So God made the Greater light, and the Lesser Light, and then, like an afterthought, made several billions of something else. And the Bible just glosses over all that in a single sentence.
And by the way, the Sun is a star! Saying you're creating the Sun, then the stars, that's like saying you're gonna go shopping for some Lucky Charms, but then you might have to make another trip to buy some cereal. Like... you did that already.
And if God made the stars to give light to the Earth, how come we can't see all those stars? At best, if you're in certain parts of the world and you get to witness a truly starry sky, you're not seeing all the stars. You're not seeing billions and billions of stars.
They definitely are not lighting the Earth. And why are these stars giving light on Earth? I thought God already said, "Let there be Light." And I thought God already separated the light from the darkness. But now he's making light again? Like, dude, get it right the first time.
You're God! And I thought God already created the Heavens in the first sentence of Genesis. If stars weren't a part of that, then what exactly was in those Heavens?
If you left out the biggest ingredient in a recipe, you don't get credit for making the thing. It's also a bit ironic that God created signs in the sky, because that's something astrologers believe, and plenty of Christians say astrologers are blasphemous.
If you're putting your trust in an astrologer, you're not putting your trust in God, and that's supposedly bad! And there was evening, and there was morning - the fourth day.
Well, at least we have a Sun now. It took four days to get the actual first day. And God said, Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.
So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird, according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
God blessed them and said, Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth. And there was evening, and there was morning - the fifth day. Again, God didn't even make those creatures.
He let the water do it. How lazy can you be? But if you look at this timeline, God made living creatures after he made plants. That's not right. That's not what the fossil record shows. Or any other piece of evidence. It's the other way around.
And God said, Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.
And it was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds.
And God saw that it was good. God didn't make these creatures either. He let the land do it. Lazy! But if we're talking about creatures that move along the ground -- insects, reptiles, things like that -- they were around for hundreds of millions of years before those other wild animals.
And they all originated in the sea, not the land. Also, livestock? We domesticated cattle. They never lived in the wild.
Then God said, Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and overall the creatures that move along the ground.
Let "US" make mankind...? Who's us? Who else is hanging out with God doing all this? Are there other Gods He's not telling us about?
And how do we get to rule over these other creatures, when, if you accept science, the fish and the birds and the wild animals were around for millions of years before humans ever entered the scene?
It's a very cocky thing to say, "you know all these creatures that have been around for millions of years? I rule them now. I've been around for like one day." It's like Christopher Columbus saying, "I discovered this land... that these native people have been living on for generations."
As a vegetarian, this verse is also terrifying because it's been used as justification for why we can slaughter animals, and shoot birds, and just be cruel in general. After all, God said we rule over everything. Who cares about climate change? The Earth doesn't rule us. We rule it!
So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. I know this verse has been used by conservative Christians to reject evolution. God created us as is, therefore even the thought of evolution is blasphemy.
And yet all the evidence ever found, ever, says we did not just arrive on the scene like this. That line is also used to justify their awful treatment of transgender people. They say trans people don't even exist because God created this binary.
But just for the sake of argument, if God created mankind in His own image, and they came out male and female, what does that say about God? Is God somehow both? And it also sounds like God created males and females at the same time.
Yet later on, literally a chapter later, we learn Eve was created from Adam's rib. He came first, then her. Which is it? God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.
Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.
Telling two people to fill the Earth is just wildly uncalled for. It really places an inhuman burden on the woman who basically can't do anything other than being pregnant and pray for octuplets every time.
I know death doesn't even exist yet in this narrative, but still. Give Eve some rest. I would so much rather have a God that says "Fill the Earth... eventually.
But here's a condom if you just want to take a break for a bit." Then God said, I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.
And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground - everything that has the breath of life in it - I give every green plant for food. And it was so. If that's true, then why are so many plants poisonous?
There's a reason parents don't tell their kids to run in the garden in the backyard and eat whatever they find. Not all of it is good or healthy.
If anything, if all plants are ours for the taking, does that mean God is pro-marijuana? God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning - the sixth day. Was it good, though?
I mean, God designed a world where death could enter, and we could suffer, and the animals would turn on each other and become predators and prey. And climate change could occur. It's not a utopia.
Not even then. The word Eden has become synonymous with perfect but the whole place was still a breeding ground where eventual chaos could thrive. God could've used that seventh day to create a buffer of some kind. But He rested. Thanks for nothing.
There is a group called Answers in Genesis -- they're the ones behind the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter -- that believes everything we need to know about our origins is contained in the Book of Genesis.
But just from the first chapter, it's easy to see that the answers are not in Genesis. There are only more questions.
Next part: Everything wrong with Genesis 2 in the Bible
Read more of this series
"Everything Wrong In The Bible" series chronology:
Genesis: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
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| By Hemant Mehta |
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