In The Beginning - My questions about Genesis 1

In The Beginning

 

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

 

“The heavens and the earth” was all that the people who wrote the text knew about.  There was the earth with its seas and lands and winds, and then there were the heavens – all those lights in the sky that no one could understand.  Clearly this phrase is meant to include everything – both in this world and outside it.  They meant the universe.  But this statement does not explain anything.  They’ve introduced a new character into the story without explaining who He is, what manner of being He is, or where He came from (the rest of the Bible is also strangely mute on these issues).  If God was present at the beginning, he must have been created in that same instant, as part of the heavens and the earth, because if He existed before that point, then it clearly wasn’t the beginning.  And if He did exist before Creation, what did He do with no universe around Him to govern?

 

 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep.

 

So He created the earth, but it had no form.  How could a solid body like the earth have no form?  It either exists or it does not.  And what does the phrase “without form and void” mean?  Does it mean “the earth had neither form nor void”?  A void is nothing.  It makes no sense for something to “have” a void or not have one.  Or does it mean “The earth was without form and the earth was void”?  But God had created the earth in the first line, so saying it is void is nonsensical any way you interpret it.

 

  And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.”

 

What is the Spirit of God?  Isn’t He already a spirit?  Is there any difference between God and the Spirit of God?  How can we say that God “hovers” over the ocean?  Is He not omnipresent?  Was He not present everywhere?  And since when did the waters have a face?

 

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 

 

Why did God speak at all?  Does He have a tongue, lips, and teeth to make speech?  There was no one to hear Him.  And he had just created the entire universe without uttering a word, so it was clearly not necessary for him to speak in order to create.  Was he mumbling to Himself?

 

And God saw that the light was good. 

 

What does it mean that the light was good?  How does light have a moral value?  He had just created it.  It has whatever qualities that He imbued it with.  If it is good, He was fully aware of that before He created it.  And does that therefore imply that dark is bad?  If so, why did He make so much of it?  Only a tiny fraction of the universe’s matter gives any light at all – not to mention the 78% of the universe that isn’t even matter.  [This is part of another crucial question the Bible never addresses – if it’s bad, why did He create it at all?]

 

And God separated the light from the darkness.

 

What can this mean?  Where did the darkness come from?  He hasn’t created any darkness yet.  Was it there from before the beginning?  How can one create light and not have it be “separate from the darkness?”  They can’t be blended.

 

God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.

 

This is mere nomenclature, but if He’s using words, what language does He speak?  This is before the creation of humans, so no languages yet exist.  The Bible was written in Greek, so can we assume that God called the light iméra?  Or was it the Hebrew word yom?  And if God gave this name to light, why do humans contradict Him and insist on calling it other names, like light?

 

And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

 

Well, to be precise, from evening to morning is actually the first night.  Evening implies that the sun went down, but the sun doesn’t exist yet.  What then is the source of the light?  Let’s assume it’s just God’s holy radiance.  Still, it wouldn’t have an evening unless His light goes out every few hours.  Incidentally, this implies the pre-existence of time from before “The Beginning.”  Or He created time at the same time (whatever that even means) and didn’t think to mention it.  Give Him a break, it’s been a busy Monday, and everybody hates Mondays.

 

 And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.”  And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so.

 

This is meaningless.  An expanse of what?  There is no land yet.  Are we to visualize two bodies of water stacked vertically with a space between them?

 

And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.

 

Okay, this is really unclear about Tuesday’s work.  In the first verse it said He created the heavens and the earth.  So isn’t this part of the job already done?  Or maybe the first verse was an introductory summary – a preview of upcoming attractions.  Now we’re into the detail work, where He actually creates heaven, apparently the space above the ocean and below some other bunch of water.  This mass of water is never mentioned again, left hanging over our heads (and His, since He resides in heaven). 

 

And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so.  God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.

 

Now wait.  He’s already created the ocean, and clearly it must have a planet underneath it to hold it up, to provide gravity so the deep has a face, and to provide a frame of reference so He can hover over it.  So what’s happening in this verse?  How does moving all the water to one place create dry land?  Either it formerly covered all the land and He’ll have to un-create a bunch of it to lower the water level, or He has to make a big pile of water somewhere that we haven’t noticed yet.  But He’s omnipotent, so He can do what He likes.  Again with the good.  It sounds like He stands back and snaps His holy suspenders in satisfaction at what a good job He’s done.  But He’s infallible, so by definition everything He does or makes is good – even the evil bits.

 

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.

 

This is more or less acceptable, ignoring the needless repetition (“seed-bearing plants” and “trees that bear fruit with seeds in it” being the same thing).  It does leave out all the plants in the ocean, and all the non-seed-bearing plants like conifers and ferns and mosses and lichens (and of course all the plankton and fungi and the bacteria and viruses the authors hadn’t discovered yet).  I guess He’s okay with creating a lot of plants before He creates a sun so they can grow.  And where do they get organic nutrients to consume?  There wasn’t any soil yet.  Not to mention no pollinators so the plants can reproduce.  And what did the poor carnivorous plants eat?  It must have been a hungry Wednesday all around.

 

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. 

 

Now this can only refer to the stars, right?  But He already separated the light from the darkness (somehow) on Monday.  And since there was no sun or moon yet, the lights He placed in the sky did nothing to separate the day from the night, and the stars do next to nothing to give light on the earth.  He must have been stumbling around in the darkness, bouncing off the brand-new trees.

 

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 darkness. And God saw that it was good.  And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.

 

We’ve already had day and night for three days now, but okay, finally on Thursday we’ve got a sun to create evening and morning – again.  But how does the moon govern the night?  Half the time there is no moon at night because it’s up in the daytime with the sun.  We notice it more when it’s up at night, so that’s probably what God meant – it governs some nights each month.  I guess that's good.

 

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.

 

So far, so good.  Now we’ve got zooplankton to feed on the phytoplankton He forgot to create yesterday.  I worry that the flightless birds have been left out – where did the poor kiwis, ostriches, and penguins come from?  But things are picking up now – it’s now Friday, the day God created weekends.

 

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.

 

Whoa, whoa.  What livestock?  There can’t be any domesticated animals yet because God hasn’t made anybody to domesticate them.

 

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 over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

So God created mankind in His own image, in the image of God He created them;
male and female He created them.

 

This verse makes no sense at all.  First, what does He mean by “us” and “our?”  Other Gods?  Mrs. God?  I can only assume He means the “royal we,” though up to now he's always used the singular - which makes sense since he's the only sentient being in the universe.  But now he's plural, or at least royal.  But my real problem with this is that the authors emphasize that man looks just like God (and thus vice versa).  Why then do we look so different?  Even if God was only talking about Jews (who invented the stories for the Bible), there is a huge variety in the appearance of Jews.  Is God short or tall, dark or light, thin or fat?  He can’t look like all of us.  We are all different.  Which one of us looks like God?

And how did He create women in His image too?  Does He look like a man or a woman?  Does that mean God is large-breasted or small?  How can both genders be in His image?  But this verse is clear in one thing – the men He created look just like Him.  Therefore, God looks Jewish, which might be a problem for Christians who despise Jews even though they worship one.

This clearly says that God looks just like us men.  He must have a penis then.  Whatever for?  For the nubile Goddesses?  Nope, not in this religion.  There is only one God.  Then God is forever a virgin and floats around with a useless penis waving in the celestial breeze.  It’s also hard to imagine Him using it to urinate.  Are there even restrooms in heaven?  And is the Holy Penis circumcised as all good Jews should be?  Who performed the bris?  The same holds true for the Holy Navel.  He must have one, because He looks just like us, but it’s as meaningless as the Holy Anus, and all the other organs He has no need for.

But back to Saturday afternoon’s work.  God gives us dominion over the fish of the sea – but not mollusks, crustaceans, echinoderms, or marine mammals.  But at least the animals that don’t move along the ground, such as arboreal, sessile, and subterranean animals – they’re safe from us.  And “birds of the air” lets insects and bats off the hook, as well as flightless birds.  Tell the dodo it doesn’t have to worry about us.  Oops, too late.

 

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.”

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.

God saw all that He had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.

 

 Again, God is being very careless with His lists.  He gives us every green plant for food, but doesn't mention that a good proportion of it them are inedible or poisonous.  And what about non-green plant food - bananas and tomatoes and whatnot?  Then there are the millions of species of animals that don't eat plants, green or otherwise.  They have to eat each other, making this paradisiacal garden less than Elysian for the vast numbers of prey species, of which we are one.  He is leaving out vast parts of “creation” and leaving much open to later interpretation and litigation.  Maybe that was intentional - remember, He presumably created lawyers, too (again, one has to ask why).

 

Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.

By the seventh day God had finished the work He had been doing; so on the seventh day He rested from all his work.  Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it He rested from all the work of creating that He had done.

 

I don’t know about you, but I've always had a problem with an omnipotent God who can create an entire universe, but then gets tired and has to rest.  I mean, c’mon.  He can create billions of galaxies and quadrillions of habitable planets and all their infinitely varied biota, but then He’s pooped and needs a lie-down?  How can we worship an all-powerful being who needs naps?  I’d like a God with a little more staying power.

 

The Bible doesn’t go into it, but maybe there was a reason God was so pooped out by the weekend.  In addition to the listed labors, He was busy with a lot of details He didn’t tell us about and let us discover for ourselves.

He created trillions of fossils of millions of different kinds of plants and animals that never lived and buried them in the rocks.  The ones that were simpler and less diversified He always put lower down so it looked like they were older.  Then He created more complex and more diversified fossils of more plants and animals that never lived so they would look younger, and buried them above the ones that looked older.  He was careful to never once put the younger-looking ones below the older-looking ones.  Some of the fossils were very detailed, with scales and feathers and internal organs and eggs and nests and footprints that all looked incredibly real and would convince even the dullest that they had once lived and breathed, but God was doing it all to fool us into thinking the earth was billions of years old.  Actually, all these fossils were exactly the same age because they were all created on the same day.  God is really tricky.

He also made the rocks in layers and put sand and shale and volcanic ash in different layers, so it looks like they were deposited over millions of years, although He made them all in one day.  He also knew (He’s omniscient) that one day we would develop advanced technology for dating the fossils, so He made each one with just the right amount of each isotope so each layer appeared to be younger than the one below it.  In fact, He put radioactive isotopes everywhere.  He knew that someday we’d be able to measure how long it took for each isotope to decay into another, so He carefully put just the right amounts into every rock and even every meteorite, and of course on the moon, so that every measurement would reveal the exact same age of 4.54 billion years.  He put magnetic stripes on the floor of the oceans so it would look like the continents had been drifting apart for millions of years.  He also put just the right amounts of hydrogen and helium into the sun so it would look the same age.  He wanted everything we looked at to give exactly the same wrong answer.  It seems cruel and meaningless, but He works in mysterious ways.

He then made phony ruins and carvings and tools and weapons and cave paintings and hid them all over the world and carefully made each one so it would look thousands or millions of years old.  He put the wrong amounts of carbon-12 and carbon-14 into every fossil and piece of wood, so it would look like they were old.  He went into the DNA of every living thing and left traces of ancient ancestors and evolution that all made a coherent picture of life changing over billions of years.  He made the DNA of similar species similar so it would appear that they were genetically related, even though He’d made each one separately.  He made our fetuses look like those of other animals so it would look like we used to be like those animals.  He gave us organs (appendices) and structures in our bodies (tail bones) that no longer have a function and made it look like we used to be different.  He hid whale leg bones inside their bodies.  He put sea shell fossils high on the mountains to make us think the earth had been changing for millions of years.  That was all fake too. 

It is quite an elaborate hoax.  He knew we’d figure out how far away the stars are and that the speed of light is a constant, so He had to adjust the spectra of all the stars and galaxies so it would look to us like they were thousands or millions of light years away and billions of years old, when actually they were all created on Thursday and none could be more than 6,019 light years away or we wouldn’t be able to see them yet.

He didn’t make a single mistake – not one fossil in the wrong layer, not one isotope ratio out of synch, not one star out of position or with the wrong spectrum.  He ensured that every device and test, every technology we developed would yield exactly the same results and come to the same conclusions – and every one would be completely wrong.  Every time we developed a new kind of telescope and thought we were looking farther out into space and the past, He was there before us, setting everything up to fool us again.  Now we’ve detected galaxies that appear to be twelve billion light years away, and still we haven’t seen behind God’s little trick.  Or his motive for trying so hard to fool us.

What a joker.

There’s also all that water he left hanging up there above the heavens.   I still worry about it.

It's About Time

Did you ever have one of those "lost" nightmares in which you find yourself having no idea where you are?  You're wandering through an unfamiliar landscape, with no memory of how you got there.  You may be trying to find something - your car, your home, a loved one - but nothing is familiar and you have no way to learn where you are or where to go.  It's a terrifying and helpless feeling.

It might happen when you're awake.  You wake up in a strange room and for a moment you don't know where you are.  It's dizzying, disorienting.  When you remember you're in a hotel or guest room and the mystery is explained, it comes as a huge relief.  We have a very deep-rooted need to know where we are and how we got there - without it we are literally lost.

For most of the major passages of our lives - going to school, our relationships, our careers - we remember how it started, the decisions we made, the events that occurred.  Everyday activities - cooking a meal, going to the bathroom - have an inception, an idea, a decision, a series of activities, and a conclusion.  How could it be otherwise?

How strange then that our experience of life is just like those nightmares.  We don't remember being born, or meeting the members of our family, or our first meal or our first sleep.  We find ourselves in the midst of activities we don't remember starting.  We just gradually came awake already alive, interacting with our environment, playing a game at the same time we're learning the rules.  It's not that we "hit the ground running" - we were running before we can remember.  We have some memories of early childhood - a few disjointed images like snapshots in an album - but our personal origins rely entirely on hearsay: our parents or older siblings tell us there was a time when we didn't exist and then we were born.  But we have no memories of those events.  We're also told that at some point we're going to die - everyone and everything - and nothing can be done to avert it.  Mostly we just try not to think about that.

Similarly, we humans as a species have no memories of our origins.  Today we have books and electronic records of the past; before that were epic poems and oral histories; and before that, superstition and creation myths.  Just as we each know, intellectually, that we were once infants, we know that once we were not yet human.  We find ourselves in the midst of a society we did not create, following the arc of a history we did not plan, playing our part, great or small, in the history of humanity.  To what end?

And no one seems to think it odd that we should all find ourselves in this position, like waking up to find ourselves running in the middle of a race, passing people, others passing us, runners dropping out, others appearing.  No one knows where or when the race started, how long it is, or where it ends.  Is there a prize, a goal to be achieved?  Are there rules no one told us?  Are we close to the front of the pack, or nearing the back?  And why are we all running?

Is this another one of those "lost" nightmares?