Chapter 2 starts back at the beginning, with the creation of heaven and earth. Then God makes man “from the dust of the ground,” and puts him in the Garden of Eden. After some time, God creates woman from the rib of the man. All of this is in direct contradiction with the previous chapter, of course. Apparently there are 2 creation stories that contradict each other in the same holy book, who knew?
So God has put Adam and Eve in paradise, but there’s a catch…in this paradise, made by God especially for Adam and Eve, God also put a tree, which apparently serves no purpose other than specifically to tempt Adam and Eve. If they ate from it, they would die.
I imagine creating a paradise for my cat...a room, in my apartment, filled with catnip plants, fish to eat, bits of string to play with, etc. But then I decide to store my poisoned catnip plant of knowledge in that room too, for no good reason. Then I’d explain carefully to the cat that it can have all the catnip it wants, except for this specific catnip. How much sense does that make, when I could just...not put that plant in that room? Or I could even have made a... broccoli of knowledge. You know, something cats don't like anyway. Not that hard.
I have to ask… couldn’t God have just put his tree somewhere else? Or just not made the tree in the first place? Or not made his creations, Adam and Eve, so gullible?
If you’re interpreting this story metaphorically, I suppose it’s OK…but there are people who really think this literally happened! As a literal history, this makes no sense at all.
So Chapter 3, Adam and Eve are in the Garden of Eden, with the tree that they are arbitrarily forbidden to eat from. So of course the serpent tempts Eve, Eve eats from the tree, and gives some to Adam too. Then they hear God walking around and yelling, “Where are you?” so they hide. (Walking? Saying “where are you?” God doesn’t sound so omnipotent in this part) God finds them and learns what happened, and curses the serpent to crawl around on its stomach (what was it doing before, I wonder?), woman to painful childbirth and perpetual servitude to man, and man to labor and toil. Then God made them some nice clothes and sent them away. And he puts a Cherub and a big flaming sword there as guard.
I find it interesting that in Chapter 2, God tells them that if they eat from the tree of knowledge, they would die. Well, they ate, and they didn’t die…did God just lie to them? Maybe it was referring to the point that they were made mortal when they were kicked out of Eden, and so they were made so they would die at some point.
In the new catholic edition of the bible, it actually says that if they ate from the tree, they would die on that same day. Well, that obviously didn’t happen. Which version are we to believe? In one, God is just sort of vague…yeah, you’ll die, but I’m not saying when. In the other, God outright lies to them…if you eat, you’ll die on that same day, which they didn’t.
Isn’t it weird that we have 2 versions of the bible (which 30% of Americans believe is the inerrant and literal word of God), in the same language, that each say such different things?
Showing posts with label creation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label creation. Show all posts
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Genesis 1: Creation
Ah, one of the bits I’ve read before. Before I get into it, here’s a summary of what science has to say on our origins…
13.7 billion years ago there was a big bang, and shortly after that, everything was so hot and dense that it existed as energy, and high-energy exotic particles. Then particles like protons and neutrons formed, and later they combined to make hydrogen and helium. Hydrogen and helium collapsed under gravity to stars and galaxies. Heavier elements were formed in stars, those stars exploded at the end of their life. Those heavier elements went on to form other stars and planets. Our sun was formed about 5 billion years ago, and the earth about 4.6 billion years ago. The earth was initially liquid, molten metals, and as the planet cooled a solid, dry crust formed. Water was trapped as steam in the crust, which escaped to form clouds of water vapor. As the earth cooled, water rained down from these clouds to form oceans. (And possibly more water from comets?)
The first single cells appeared about 3 billion years ago. Multicellular organisms first appeared in the ocean about 580 million years ago. The oldest land plants and invertebrate animals date to about 400 million years ago. 300 – 65 million years ago were the dinosaurs, during this time there were also small mammals and birds. 65 million years ago the dinosaurs were wiped out, and mammals began to diversify. The first tool-using hominids appeared about 2.5 million years ago; modern man has existed for about 100,000 years.
For more information, I suggest wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_history_of_life
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Big_Bang
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Earth
Now, the genesis creation story goes:
Day 1: heaven and earth, then light
Day 2: firmament (the atmosphere?)
Day 3: separating the ocean from the land, then plants
Day 4: the sun and the moon
Day 5: ocean animals and birds
Day 6: land animals, then humans (male and female at the same time)
Day 7: rest
Amusingly, God talks to himself in the plural on day 6… “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness.” If this is really just one god, why is he talking to himself like there’s more than one person there? The first example that comes to mind of someone else who does that is Gollum, from lord of the rings. Maybe this is the mysterious trinity, which I’ve never had adequately explained to me…it’s just that God has multiple personalities.
So this clearly does not match up with the scientific account at all, if you interpret it literally. You could theoretically reconcile the two, if you assume that God set everything in motion, and then let it unfold according to science, that “day” doesn’t mean a literal 24-hour day, and if you reorder the events of Genesis…
God separated day from night on day 1, but he does it again on day 4, citing his desire to separate night and day as his motivation to create the sun and the moon…what? Cosmology tells us that the stars are formed before the earth; Genesis has the earth on day 1 and the sun on day 4. Genesis also has plants before the sun, which makes no sense because plants need sunlight for photosynthesis to survive. It is also likely that the first plants did not arrive until well after the first ocean creatures. And so on. The question is, why bother? Why not just assume that this story isn’t true?
Why would an all-knowing God invent natural laws and set the universe in motion, allowing future events to unfold according to those natural laws, then write a creation story where the chronology of it gets all mixed up? Didn’t he know what was going to happen?
If the creation story was written by a man, and not dictated by God, then maybe whoever it was just got it wrong. But if that’s the case, why take anything in the Bible seriously? If we assume that this part was written by a man who messed it up, how could we possibly know which parts (if any) are true?
13.7 billion years ago there was a big bang, and shortly after that, everything was so hot and dense that it existed as energy, and high-energy exotic particles. Then particles like protons and neutrons formed, and later they combined to make hydrogen and helium. Hydrogen and helium collapsed under gravity to stars and galaxies. Heavier elements were formed in stars, those stars exploded at the end of their life. Those heavier elements went on to form other stars and planets. Our sun was formed about 5 billion years ago, and the earth about 4.6 billion years ago. The earth was initially liquid, molten metals, and as the planet cooled a solid, dry crust formed. Water was trapped as steam in the crust, which escaped to form clouds of water vapor. As the earth cooled, water rained down from these clouds to form oceans. (And possibly more water from comets?)
The first single cells appeared about 3 billion years ago. Multicellular organisms first appeared in the ocean about 580 million years ago. The oldest land plants and invertebrate animals date to about 400 million years ago. 300 – 65 million years ago were the dinosaurs, during this time there were also small mammals and birds. 65 million years ago the dinosaurs were wiped out, and mammals began to diversify. The first tool-using hominids appeared about 2.5 million years ago; modern man has existed for about 100,000 years.
For more information, I suggest wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_history_of_life
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Big_Bang
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Earth
Now, the genesis creation story goes:
Day 1: heaven and earth, then light
Day 2: firmament (the atmosphere?)
Day 3: separating the ocean from the land, then plants
Day 4: the sun and the moon
Day 5: ocean animals and birds
Day 6: land animals, then humans (male and female at the same time)
Day 7: rest
Amusingly, God talks to himself in the plural on day 6… “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness.” If this is really just one god, why is he talking to himself like there’s more than one person there? The first example that comes to mind of someone else who does that is Gollum, from lord of the rings. Maybe this is the mysterious trinity, which I’ve never had adequately explained to me…it’s just that God has multiple personalities.
So this clearly does not match up with the scientific account at all, if you interpret it literally. You could theoretically reconcile the two, if you assume that God set everything in motion, and then let it unfold according to science, that “day” doesn’t mean a literal 24-hour day, and if you reorder the events of Genesis…
God separated day from night on day 1, but he does it again on day 4, citing his desire to separate night and day as his motivation to create the sun and the moon…what? Cosmology tells us that the stars are formed before the earth; Genesis has the earth on day 1 and the sun on day 4. Genesis also has plants before the sun, which makes no sense because plants need sunlight for photosynthesis to survive. It is also likely that the first plants did not arrive until well after the first ocean creatures. And so on. The question is, why bother? Why not just assume that this story isn’t true?
Why would an all-knowing God invent natural laws and set the universe in motion, allowing future events to unfold according to those natural laws, then write a creation story where the chronology of it gets all mixed up? Didn’t he know what was going to happen?
If the creation story was written by a man, and not dictated by God, then maybe whoever it was just got it wrong. But if that’s the case, why take anything in the Bible seriously? If we assume that this part was written by a man who messed it up, how could we possibly know which parts (if any) are true?
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