Genesis 1

I already know this one is going to be a doozy! Creation myths are FUN.

Day 1: So the universe started out as...water? Water and wind and darkness. Where is the wind coming from? Does this watery universe have pressure differentials? Interesting...has god created gravity yet? If not, how is the water staying in the "void"? But, suffice to say, there is water in a windy void, and now there's light. God creates light first, which is the logical move here, but how does he create light exactly? The inference is that he's creating the sun (because he separates the light into "day"), but he hasn't even created the sky yet! So is this just kind of a coming-from-everywhere kind of light that later will meld with the sun? Innnnteresting...

Day 2: The sky is a dome...fair enough. If you assume a flat world, that makes sense. Given our spherical world, however, it's a dubious description. And the sky separates the waters on earth from the waters not on earth. I assume this is basically what's holding the clouds up, which kind of makes sense. But what about beyond the dome? Funny that no mention is made of that. Last I checked, there's a whoooooole lot more universe out there!

Day 3: Okay, so god doesn't actually create land here, he just pushes some of the oceans around to make the dry land visible. Where did the dry land come from? Was it always there, like god and the mysterious water? Apparently.

Day 4: Ah, so now god gets around to creating the lights in the sky to separate day and night, even though he already created light and separated day and night on day 1! Also, the moon is considered a light in its own right, albeit the "lesser" one, but of course the moon is just reflecting sunlight. Science FTW!

Day 5: Fish and birds. Nothing too exciting here. "Be fruitful and multiply" to the birds/fishies.

Day 6: Animals on land, alright! And then us! This is odd...why does god say "Let us make humankind in our image." Is that the royal we? Is god obliquely referring to his bizarre threefold nature? Or perhaps a holdover for more polytheistic traditions? Well, at least he gives us dominion. Serves those animals right.

In this chapter we get a very straightforward and somewhat enlightened view: "in the image of god he created them; male and female he created them." None of this nonsense about women sucking. In fact it echoes of "All men are created equal," but of course that sentiment doesn't last long in the bible!

So that's pretty much it for Genesis 1. It's so mindboggling that people think this is a literal account of history. It doesn't make one damn lick of sense! When I was little I stumbled across this very problem right away. Where were the dinosaurs? What happened to all the time? And as a little girl I came up with the idea that god's days don't have to be the same as our piddly little days. Seeing as he didn't even create the sun until day 4, who's to say that each day was millions of years? Plenty of time for dinosaurs to roam about before man is created. Which just goes to show the kind of mental acrobatics you have to go through to make this make sense...and we're only on the first chapter!

I am trying to read this with an open mind, but this part is just plain silly.

Until next time!

Cheers