Every good story begins at the beginning, and this one is no exception. What better place to start a book about the Bible, than with the Bible’s opening sentence?
Now, as you might have guessed by my About Me and AtheistsWeekly.com article, the Bible and I part ways fairly quickly – to be exact, somewhere between the third and fourth words of the Bible’s opening verse.
To begin, the Bible opens with the phrase “in the beginning”. I am in total agreement with this. This is one of the two most popular theories on the subject (either the universe had a beginning or it didn’t), and it happens to be the one that both I and the Bible favour. Up to this point, I am a big fan of the Bible.
However, it is with the fourth word of the Bible that I take exception and from that point on, my viewpoint grows ever more distant. But, after all, what kind of an atheist would I be, if I granted God even a toehold in this story? In fact, it is my objection to the concept of God that spawned the entire thesis of this blog. If God exists and he has authored a book, then it should be a pretty good one. There should be no contradictions, errors, or logical flaws; it should be clear, easy to read, consistent and accessible; and, it goes without saying that it should be morally irreprehensible.
Unfortunately, the book that is purported to be God’s official communication with humans contains all of these flaws, in abundance. And these flaws are in evidence in the opening scene, probably more than any other.
As the Biblical curtain draws open, the scene shows nothing – no physical universe and no heaven. The first article of business is to get this empty space filled. Therefore, God creates these two things. He then goes on to populate the universe with living things, including plants, animals, and humans.
Knowing God, he naturally has to do things the hard way. Consider the order of creation:
- Day 1: Created light
- Day 2: Created the sky and separate water above and below the sky “firmament”
- Day 3: Land and sea separated, plants and trees created
- Day 4: Created the sun, moon, and stars, and installed them in the firmament
- Day 5: Created aquatic animals and birds
- Day 6: Created land animals and humans
- Day 7: Day off
That was quite a week. In early times, the Bible was taken at its word, meaning that all of this took place in seven literal days. Over time, scientifically astute humans began to realise that not only was this not possible, but there was ample evidence that life and other creations were far older than allowed by the Bible.
Therefore, to fix this problem, enterprising Christians reinterpreted the word “Day” to mean a longer period of time - perhaps a thousand years, or maybe even seven thousand years. Others came to realise that even this interpretation didn’t work, so “Day” began to mean an era or epoch. You will notice throughout the Bible, that whenever it makes a statement that is either impossible or ridiculous, the statement becomes “symbolic”.
Obviously, that technique becomes necessary very early in the book. It continues to be essential right up to the last chapter of Revelation.
Now, take a look at the order of creation. Notice that the first thing that God created was light. That was a good idea. Unfortunately, he forgot to create the main light source for the earth – the sun. I assume he used giant heat lamps to make up for the oversight. Also notice that he made plants before he made the sun - mostly frozen vegetables, I suspect.
The wording of this portion of the Bible is also rather odd. God consistently calls the sky a “firmament”. This is a strange choice of words. I can’t think of anything distinctly less “firm” than the sky. He then considerately arranges the sun, moon, and stars in the sky in such a position that they can be the most useful to humans.
Apparently, the Bible writer had an earth-centric view of the universe, and did not fully understand the role of the sun in providing heat, light and energy. Perhaps God should have spent less time gluing up stars, and more time destroying evidence. He left a lot of fossils and geological evidence that contradicts his story.
Overall, the creation account is riddled with errors that force the reader to relegate this entire chapter to the myth bin. In fact, this chapter is such an easy target, that I think I will skip the rest of it entirely, and move to the next Bible chapter, where we can have a little more fun.
Stay tuned for Part 2 (next Thursday, 26th August 2010), where I will discuss the Adam and Eve hypothesis.
