1 – In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
So God existed before the “beginning”. How does that work? I understand that God is supposed to be without time, but there had to be a beginning. God had to be created at some point.
2 – And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3 – And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4 – And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
5 – And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
I’ve had problems with this section going back to when I was a Christian. Several places in the Bible “light” is used to describe good while “dark” is used to describe evil. Looking at this verse from a non literalist point of view I think maybe the separation of light and dark is the separation of the good people from the bad. Good people of course would be those that are writing the Bible, bad would be those that don’t follow it. But good and evil are relative terms. What’s good to me may be evil to you.
Following on the same non literal point of view then God didn’t create light and dark, but was only used as a method to separate the “good” from the “bad”.
5 – And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
6 – And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
7 – And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
8 – And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
Like verse 1, God had to be somewhere. If He didn’t create Heaven until the second day then where is He while creating everything?
27 – So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
We are created “in his own image” but obviously not with the same mentality. Why else would Christians always use the mysterious ways argument?
And how come He creates a female here, but also creates a companion out of Adam’s rib later? When were females created? Or is this man different than Adam? It would certainly explain where the women that Adam and Eve’s children married came from.
28 – And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
It is a dangerous place to live when people think that it is God’s will for them to subdue others. Think of all the wars that have been waged, and are still being waged, because of the assumption of God’s will. Apparently Bush knows that God wanted him to attack Iraq and depose Sadam Hussain, but we can never know God’s will on why children get sick.
Why is this version of a creation myth any more valid than the hundreds, if not thousands, of other creation myths that are dismissed as fictional? Why should I take this one as fact? And a heads up for anyone answering this, “because it’s in the Bible” is not a valid argument here. As soon as humans became literate creation myths were written down. If you’re planning on using the Bible as historical fact then you better be ready to explain why it’s more valid than any other book.
It almost seems, and this goes back to creating females here and later out of the rib, that two creation stories were merged.
