An in depth look at Genesis 1: A response

In the last few days I have been having a discussion here and here on the issue of beliefs and my contention has been we never really just wake up and believe something. This was in response to her saying she isn’t an atheist because, you guessed it, she has chosen not be.

This discussion has grown to the point of her explaining how evolution and genesis do not conflict. It this latest post that we will respond to here.

The bible I keep at home, The African Bible, a publication of Paulines East Africa, states in its introduction to OT,

the books of the Pentateuch do not record historical facts…. but traditions of a people about the origin of the universe, the world and all it contains

and that is how we will treat it especially because in this case we think the Catholic church is right.

She tells us it is resolved that the universe had a beginning and this beginning was created by a god supernaturally. I don’t know about you, but I have many issues here;

• what is god?
• what is to create?
• how do you create supernaturally?

Before we continue, I would digress a bit. In my native language, the word to create does not exist. We have to mould. The translation of Genesis would read

in the beginning god moulded the earth…

this is not a creation out of nothing but rather, a god using what was to achieve its ends. I don’t think her giving Hebrew translations of the word beginning and create helps matters in this case. We still where we began with terms that haven’t been explained.

I contend that

Genesis 1:1 tells us that God supernaturally initiated the universe, this I believe is the cause of the Big Bang. It does not however tell us that God is detailing what is forming

makes no sense. It is not an explanation of an event and is in itself in need of explanation. Why the BB requires an external cause hasn’t been shown to arrive at the conclusion that a god did it.

Her explanation of Genesis 1:2 that makes it conform with what we know of the early universe requires an active imagination and a level of credulity. She tells us

All of these descriptions are congruent with scientific descriptions of early earth – cloaked in dense atmospheric gases, dark and covered with water.

which I leave to you science people to tell me whether this is the case.

From here, things get very murky. She tells us

Most importantly is the story’s perspective that is given is this verse. God is on the surface of the earth and thus what follows will be described not from a cosmic position looking in but from an earthly vantage looking out.

which yours truly is unable to make any sense of. But that isn’t even the problem, we are in deeper waters when she tells us

This is not saying that God is creating the light from no source as is often wrongly asserted. The sun already exists as a function of the universe created in verse one. This is referencing things from an earthly vantage and that is light being made available to earth’s surface for the first time.

One, she is not being truthful. The bible records in Genesis 1:16-

¹⁶ And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

¹⁷ And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,

¹⁸ And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.

¹⁹ And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

unless she means to say that god was on earth sometime between 0 and 8 minutes before the suns rays reached the earth. And if we are take her assertion, then days wouldn’t have passed. At least not earth days, maybe god time is different.

Her next claim that morning and evening don’t mean what they mean makes the whole story unintelligible. If these mean beginning and ends of events, then, pray tell me, what does

And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.

mean? What does the directive in later verses to observe the Sabbath refer to? Are we right to infer from her explanation that day refers to periods that we could have been born in the first period where we should just work and those who are to honour the sabbath will be born in a future period?

She writes [bold in the original]

This difference in language is important because it confirms that there is no conflict between evolution occurring naturally and the idea that God made the world. Another important thing to note is that the Jews did not believe the order of the days, or events, mattered. But rather were meant simply to be a list of things that God did, establishing him as supreme over all creation.

We say, this is the height of exegesis to try to reconcile an absurd story to what we know now. Before Darwin, am sure such an exegesis did not exist anywhere. How she knows the Jews ideas of days is not known to me. Maybe it is in the bible and I missed it, I would need a reference.

In her next paragraph she decides to bullshit us. She tells us about v 1:26-27 that

God is letting man be made. We have asah here at the beginning. This is congruent with man forming naturally through evolution.

which is bollocks. The good books says

²⁶ And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

²⁷ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

how then does this become god letting man be made? How is this congruent with evolution?

And lastly she now introduces the faith canard. The one word that you can use to explain anything. She tells us

In his own image. This is where faith gives value to man that evolution alone does not. Apart from the infusing of God’s image into mankind we are mere animals. We have no more intrinsic value than a dog or a horse. This is not about consciousness, ability to feel pain, or even the use of intelligence for things like the making of tools. God is spirit. Thus his image is spirit as well. The part of us that is like God is our spirit. This is the part that accounts for things like art and music, ritual, the burial of the dead, and worship. These things are unique to the human experience and yet exist in all human cultures. These things are an expression of our spirit which was made in the image of God.

which first reminds me of the life of a dog but more importantly, the question one must ask, is what happens in the event one has no faith? Does this mean this is man/woman is not created in the image of a god? Is it faith that injects the image of god into the person? And at what point in the evolutionary chain did this happen? Did it happen during the Sumerian civilization? Did it occur when we had Homo erectus, or is it later like at the time when the Neanderthal roamed the earth?

One truly needs a magic decoder ring to arrive at

This is not Adam and Eve. This is mankind in general. Male and female are made at the same time and no distinction is given to any difference in how they are made – unlike Adam and Eve who are described later as being formed in specific and different ways.

Finally she tells us

Chapter 2. It should be noted that at the time that Genesis was written there were not chapters and verses. These were inserted later for reference purposes and they sometimes cause an unnatural divide in a story. Such is the case here.

which she hopes closes the argument that there is a contradiction between the two creation stories. In fact, it is one creation story spanning two chapters. Chapter 2 is a summary of what god was doing in Chapter 1. I hope this convinces all the heathens who keep saying these are different stories and by different authors.

At the end, we now know

The universe was supernaturally created; mankind was made human through the supernatural creation of spirit. The components of the universe and all of the contents therein, including mankind, were made through natural evolutionary processes.

and with that, can all the biologists go take their bibles. The answers are right there, written sometime in the past by as my friends like to call them, goat herders in the Middle East. You really have to be great in Oogity Boogity to believe such crap!