Genesis Chapter 3 - The Fall

And welcome back. I trust you are all doing well? Good, I’m always pleased to hear positive news.

Today I’m going to talk about Chapter 3 of the Book of Genesis. This is the fun one, as we will talk about the Original Sin, the Expulsion from Paradise, and the Curse that God leaves on man and the earth.

Now first I’d like to say, I do try to be objective when I talk about this stuff. But being human, I fail miserably. Anyone who says they are absolutely objective and have no bias whatsoever is lying through their teeth. Hell, even Jesus was biased, but that’s ok.

Secondly, before I start, I’d like to do a quick recap of the first two chapters.

In Chapter 1, (in order) we have:

Day 1

1 Heaven and Earth

2 God moves upon the Waters in the void without form

3 Light without source

4-5 Divides the light from the dark, and starts the rotation of the earth without form.

Day 2

6-8 God creates the firmament and calls it heaven, dividing the water above from the water below.

Day 3

9-13 God commands the earth to grow grass, and seed and fruit bearing plants.

Day 4

14-19 God creates the stars, the Sun and the Moon. And says they are to be used for signs, seasons, days, and years.

Day 5

20-23 God says for the waters to bring for all the moving creatures of the deep, and birds that fly through the air, then tells them to get their groove on.

Day 6

24-31 God tells the earth to bring forth all the cattle and things that creepeth. Then God says to whoever “Let us make man in Our image.” He then makes man and woman at the same time, tells them they have dominion over the earth, and proceeds to tell everyone they are vegetarians.

Day 7 is actually in Chapter 2, verses 1-3. God, after making everything and presumably jotting down a few notes for his divine plan of eternity, takes a nap and then tells everyone that it’s a jolly good nap day, and everyone should do it.

So on to Chapter 2, where we get a second story of creation, starting with Verse 4.

Day 1

4-25 On the day of creation there were no plants, and no animals, for two reasons. There was no water, and no man to tend the earth. But there is mist (water) and God creates man out of Dust, and breathes life into him. He then creates the Garden of Eden, and out of the ground creates the trees and plants, including the Tree of Life, and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (henceforth referred to as the Tree of Knowledge). He then places Man in the Garden and tells him he can eat anything in the garden, except the tree of knowledge. God then creates all the beast and cattle, and has Adam name them. After none of them seem to strike Adam’s fancy, God puts Adam into a deep sleep, takes a rib, closes him back up, and makes a woman out of that rib. Adam goes “Yay! Mine!” and they are both naked but don’t care.

So that’s the gist of it. If you want to know more, then read the previous articles that talked about these two chapters. The verses, and my responses to them, are there.

Genesis 3--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1 Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

2 And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:

3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

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The Serpent is an interesting character. In terms of mythology, the Serpent is a trickster, a fairly common one at that. Gilgamesh having his powers stolen by a serpent is one example. I would like to note, however, that while many believe that the Serpent is Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub, or any other names that refer to the evil one, there is no indication here of that. As far as this seems to be concerned, the Serpent is just a talking lizard.

So the woman… Ok, look, she hasn’t been named yet. Right now it’s just Adam and The Woman, but that’s going to get old fast so I’m going to go ahead and use her name (although I could do an entire article just on her name alone).

So Eve, we can assume that Eve is walking through the garden and comes across this Serpent. (I’m trying very hard not to call it a snake, because it’s not technically a snake yet. It’s more like a lizard right now)

The Serpent says to Eve, “Did God tell you not to eat from that tree?” I imagine he’s speaking in much the same way Eddie Izzard does his impressions.

And Eve replies, “Why yes, yes he did. We can eat from any tree here, but not that one.”

Genesis 3----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

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So here, again, I imagine Eddie Izzard (hilariously funny comedian) saying “Oh… that silly God. You’re not going to die, God knows if you eat from the tree, and good from evil.”

There is something I’d like to point out here. The Serpent says that eating from the Tree of Knowledge will make Eve know good and evil. In other words, good and bad, right and wrong, etc., which means that beforehand, Eve had no knowledge of Right from Wrong. She was essentially naïve, and wouldn’t know if it was wrong to listen to the Serpent.

Genesis 3----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

7 And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.

8 And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.

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So Eve looks at the tree. She decides it’s pleasant to the eyes and should be desired. Not too sure if she wants to eat the tree or hump it, with those choices of words, but she eats the fruit of the tree and feeds it to Adam, who also eats it. Suddenly they go “Holy shit, we’re naked!” and quickly sew some leaves together to make clothes. This is interesting because it goes back to the idea that before eating from the tree, they simply didn’t know right from wrong. They didn’t know it was wrong to be naked, they didn’t know it was wrong to disobey God or that perhaps the Serpent was untrustworthy. But once they did know, they even hid from God when He was walking through the garden.

Genesis 3----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

9 And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?

10 And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.

11 And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?

12 And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.

13 And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.

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When the Omnipresent, Omnipotent, and Omniscient God walks through the garden, he doesn’t know where Adam and Eve are. So that we have an equal understanding, let’s define those words.

om•ni•pres•ent/ˌämnəˈpreznt/

Adjective:

(of God) Present everywhere at the same time.

om•nip•o•tent/ämˈnipətənt/

Adjective:

(of a deity) Having unlimited power; able to do anything.

om•nis•cient/ämˈniSHənt/

Adjective: Knowing everything.

So with these three words we see that an Omnipresent God is everywhere, and so he should know where everything, including Adam and Eve, is located, regardless of them hiding. An Omniscient God knows everything, including Adam and Eve’s location. And an Omnipotent God should be able to just make them appear right there in front of him. Yet it seems in this verse, he can’t do any of that. He has to ask where they are.

So Adam says he hid, because he was afraid. He was naked, so he hid himself.

God asks, “Why would you hide? And how did you know you were naked?” An Omniscient God would know the answer. Here he does seem to know, as he asks Adam if he ate from the tree that He said not to eat from. Perhaps He’s giving Adam a chance to own up to his mistake, but again, being Omniscient, he should know Adam’s response.

So Adam proceeds to push the blame onto Eve, saying that it was the Woman God had given him, and she gave him the fruit from the tree, and he ate it.

God turns to Eve and says, “What have you done?” To which Eve replies, “It’s all the Serpent’s fault, he confused me.”

Genesis 3----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

14 And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:

15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

16 Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

17 And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;

18 Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;

19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

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Now we see a string of curses that God lays down for this terrible transgression. He curses the Serpent to crawl on its belly, eating nothing but dust. And he puts enmity, or hostility, between Eve, her children, the Serpent, and the Serpent’s children.

He then curses Eve with terrible pain accompanying the act of bringing life into the world, and that her desires will be her husband’s desires, for he is to rule over her.

And to Adam, because he was foolish enough to listen to his wife, he curses the ground so that it brings forth thorn and thistle, and he must labor intensely for each morsel of bread all the days of his life until he returns to the ground from whence he came.

(But wait, didn’t God say Adam would die the very day he ate from the tree?)

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20 And Adam called his wife's name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.

21 Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them.

22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:

23 Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.

24 So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

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Here, Adam finally gives Eve her name. He calls her Eve, because she was the mother of all living. God was kind enough to make coats for Adam and Eve before kicking them out though, so there’s that. Here, again, God says (to someone) that man is become as one of us, and seems to warn them about the dangers of letting them get their grubby mitts on the Tree of Life. So he drives man out, and placed Cherubims and a flaming sword at the east of the Garden of Eden so that man can’t come back for the other Tree.

This story is one of the big ones that I have an issue with, because it sets a certain theme for the rest of the Bible. God is supposed to be all knowing, all powerful, and everywhere, yet he seems to be glaringly blind to what’s right in front of him. If he was all knowing, then he would have known that Adam and Eve would have eaten from the tree regardless of what he said. So why didn’t he put the tree out of reach, say a very high cliff. Perhaps he couldn’t? Which means he’s not all powerful. And if he was everywhere, he would have been right there with the Serpent while he was tricking Eve into eating it and known that she’d fall for it, which means he could have stopped it unless he wasn’t all powerful, everywhere, or all knowing. I’ve been told that God was testing Adam and Eve, but why? Again, all knowing, he knew they would eat from the tree. He also knew the part the Serpent would play, so why even make the Serpent?

In a previous post I compared this to common sense in that I, a mere mortal, have the common sense not to give my child a loaded gun. It’s a very bad idea. Yet this is essentially exactly what God does.

Hitler was an Atheist!

While I don’t consider myself an atheist, my current stance towards religion often has me labeled as an atheist. As such, I often hear many of the Christians’ arguments against atheism, and quite frankly, they are often amusing.

There is one in particular, though, that is less amusing and more confusing. The argument usually goes something like this:

Atheistman: Can you explain to me why there is so much torture and pain in the Bible?

Christianman: No, but Hitler was an atheist; look what he did!

Now, let’s take a look at this. Atheistman has asked a question, one that I’ve asked myself over the years, and instead of answering it, Christianman has totally ignored it with the argument that Hitler was an atheist. This is a pretty common occurrence, and it seems a lot of Christians are hell bent (if you’ll pardon the phrase) on pegging Hitler as an atheist as though somehow it makes all the things in the Bible unimportant.

The problem with this argument is that it doesn’t hold a drop of water. And to see why, we have to take a little stroll through history.

Adolf Hitler, born April 20, 1889, was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party. It was this group that was the precursor of the Nazi Party. His father, Alois, was Catholic to an extent but was somewhat religiously skeptical. Adolf’s dear mother, on the other hand, was a practicing Catholic. According to an interview with a British correspondent conducted years after the Great War, Hitler claimed a mysterious voice told him to leave a section of a crowded trench during a minor barrage. Moments after he left the area, a shell fell on that particular spot. Hitler saw this experience as a message that he was a uniquely illuminated individual who had a special task to fulfill.

In the early 1920s, a Catholic priest and journalist by the name of Bernhard Stempfle was seen to be one of Adolfs inner circle, a man the soon to be Führer would confide in regularly. Hitler was also quoted in several speeches, stating:

“The folkish-minded man, in particular, has the sacred duty, each in his own denomination, of making people stop just talking superficially of God's will, and actually fulfill God's will, and not let God's word be desecrated.”

"I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so." – This one was said in private, so would be difficult to argue as political propaganda.

“Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.” – Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler

In his April 12, 1922, speech, published in My New Order, he makes his feelings towards Christianity abundantly clear with such phrases as:

In boundless love as a Christian and as a man, I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison.”

Now at this point, you might hear the “No True Scotsman” fallacy. This basically means that you will get told, “No True Christian would ever do what Hitler did.” And maybe that’s true. Maybe he was a wackjob that just thought he was getting messages from God. But even if he wasn’t getting those messages, and only thought he was being told what to do by God, it would still make him a believer and not an atheist.

Genesis Chapter 2 - Eden

Previously, on The Outcast:

So, I’ve already done the whole expulsion from paradise thing.  In that post, I compared God to a father who leaves a loaded gun in his children’s reach and tells them not to play with it. And while I do stand by that post, and the analogy, it was pretty generalized. So after doing the first chapter of Genesis line by line, I’ve decided to continue that method and go on to Chapter 2, which deals with the aforementioned subject.

When we left off, God had just created everything. As we saw, he seems to have some pretty mysterious powers - light with no source, higher organisms without the lower organisms to support them, and a shell of water above the sky. In Chapter 2 of Genesis, we see that 6 days of work following an eternity of sitting around doing nothing can be pretty tiring, so God decides to take a nap.

Genesis Chapter 2-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.

2  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.

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Exactly how long he rests for is unclear, but I’d imagine you’d be ill prepared to run a marathon after a sedentary lifetime.

Genesis Chapter 2------------------------------------------------------------------------------

3  And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

4 These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens,

5  And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.

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Now we see one of the first things God does, presumably after he’s rested. It seems he had such a great nap, he decided to make the seventh day the napping day for the whole world, and so he blesses and sanctifies it. It actually gives his reasoning for this: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

Interestingly, the very next line says something that would seem to be contradictory. The first chapter clearly says it took six days to create everything, yet Chapter 2, Verse 4 says, “In the DAY the LORD God made the heavens and earth.” As I mentioned in that post, there are two creation accounts, this is the start of the second one.

Then the pattern of contradiction seems to grow. The plants of the fields and the herbs of the fields did not grow, it says, for two reasons. God had not made rain, and Man wasn’t there. Yet in Chapter 1, it clearly says that the plants and herbs were indeed growing before God created Man.

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6  But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.

7  And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

8 ¶  And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.

9  And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

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I’d like to point out that God is, again, repeating himself.  He already created all the food bearing plants in Chapter 1. The only thing seemingly new here is the Tree of Life, and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  [Note: Although I cannot verify this personally, as I don’t read Hebrew, I’ve been told that the original text says something closer to the “Tree of Knowledge of Everything” not the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.”]

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10  And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.

11  The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold;

12  And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone.

13  And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia.

14  And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.

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Ahh, more details. We like details, because details are specific. Vague information tends to be harder to understand, but details are clear.

What we see here is, basically, a map. From the Garden of Eden, water flowed, and that water split into four rivers. The Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel, and Euphrates. The great thing about rivers is that while their course will change a little over time, they don’t usually change so much that they are completely unrecognizable. The Nile, for example, used to run right in front of the Great Pyramids, but they don’t any longer, yet we still know it’s the Nile. So, where are these rivers?

Well, the Euphrates is a name that is still used for a river today, although it used to be called Prath. The Euphrates starts in Eastern Turkey, flows through Syria and Iraq, eventually joining the Tigris before flowing into the Persian Gulf. And since we know from the Bible that these rivers originate in Eden, we can assume that Eden was in Turkey if the other three rivers match. So let’s take a look.

How about the Hiddekel River? Well, this one is actually believed to be the Tigris River, which I just mentioned. So, two for two, right? Nope. See, the Bible is very clear about this; these rivers begin in the same place. And while the Tigris and the Euphrates do start in Turkey, they don’t start in the same place and don’t even meet each other till near the end of their journey into the Persian Gulf. But that’s okay, right? One little detail isn’t a big deal. They just got the direction of the water wrong, and Eden is actually where the two rivers meet instead of the source. So maybe the other two rivers will meet there too.

And this is where we run into another problem. Once again, the Bible says these four rivers are connected. So even if they got the direction wrong, then there should still be four distinct rivers where they meet, but there’s only two. The Tigris and Euphrates. The truth is, the other two don’t seem to have ever existed, and the ones that people try to say are those rivers aren’t even possible because they aren’t connected, as the Bible says they should be.

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15  And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.

16  And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:

17  But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

18 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.

19  And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.

20  And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.

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Now, while God made the seventh day a blessed and sanctified day, he hadn’t made any rules for it yet. That comes later. Here we see the first rule of God, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

After setting up the two known and two missing rivers, God took Man and placed him in the garden. So far, he is the only man in existence, which God decides is a bad thing even though before, right after creating this man, he had no problem with it since he said it was good. So God now says “I will make him an help meet for him.” A rather confusing wording, but basically God said he’s going to make a woman for Adam. God then creates every beast of the field (which happened prior to creating man in Chapter 1) and tells Adam to name them. You would think God would get the order right, it’s not as though this is the end of the book. It’s Chapter 2, the chapter right after this all happened.

Let’s take a quick look at Verse 16 and 17. This is part of what I covered previously, so I’m not going to go into detail here. But it does set a certain tone. The thing to look at here is that God put man in the garden to tend the garden, but then forbade Adam to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, yet not the tree of life, which was also in the garden. At this stage, Adam is a mindless automaton just doing what he’s told; his reason for existing is to tend God’s garden, and God knows that eating from that tree would make Adam think about other things, like the fact that his wangdoodle is hanging out for all to see. And yet, he sticks the tree in the middle of the garden where Adam can get to it, something an all knowing god would know not to do for reasons that we’ll see in Chapter 3, and I’ll explain in greater detail there.

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21 ¶  And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;

22  And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.

23  And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.

24  Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

25  And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

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Here, the second human is created. God puts Adam to sleep so he can take a rib, and then takes that one rib and creates an entire woman. I shouldn’t have to point out the problems this brings up, but I’m sure someone will read this and go “What’s wrong with that?” So here we go.

As we understand genetics, the “sex chromosome,” more commonly known as X or Y chromosomes determine our gender. If you have two X chromosomes, you are female, but if you have one X and one Y, you’re male. But as we’ve seen with our own attempts at cloning, it is incredibly difficult to even get an exact copy, let alone one of the opposite sex. The other issue with this is something called Deleterious Recessives. These are when certain genetic traits, like a tail or full body fur, manifest themselves in later generations. It’s rare, but it does happen. But in the case of God, taking Adam’s X chromosome, copying it, and splicing it with itself would create a whole slurry of these traits. She could have a tail, big ears, claws, full body hair, and hand like feet, because even at this time those traits would be present in the DNA. Luckily, Adam didn’t know any better since he was a good little boy and didn’t eat from the tree, or he might have run screaming from the sight of Eve.

There is one last thing I’d like to address here. There is a common misconception that’s being going around for a long time, and as much as I hate to admit it even I believed this. The belief is that males have one less rib, or one less pair of ribs, then women do. This is because God took a rib from Adam. To put this succinctly, it’s flat out wrong. Both men and women have 12 pairs of ribs.

Genesis Chapter 1 - Creation

Many philosophers, scientist, and holy men throughout the ages have tried to answer one question. This one question permeates history and has inspired many great things. That question is: “Where did we come from?”

There have been many attempts to answer this question, ranging from the Big Bang theory to Creationism, but there is one that people continually bring up even though there is no scientific basis to it. I would like to talk about that one.

I refer to, of course, the Biblical story of Creation in the Old Testament book of Genesis. It begins, logically, in the beginning with Genesis, Chapter 1, Verse 1, where we see the following text:

[Note: There is actually a second account of Creation in the book of Genesis, which is in Chapter 2. I’ll be talking about that there]

Genesis 1-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

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Now let’s take a moment to think about this line. Before this point, there was nothing except God.  Not because it’s the first line of the Bible, but because when you think about this rationally, this line is telling you that there is nothing, not even the base elements that make up the atomic structure, before this point. God poofed them into existence.

More than that, though, is that God existed before this point. How long? A day, a week, a year, a millennium? That’s the tricky thing when you talk about things like eternity. Most Christians will say god has always existed, since even before the universe was created. Problem is, there is a lot of “always” before the universe was created. So God sat around in a true void, not even thinking. Then his first thought was to create a universe, which probably was something along the lines of “Holy Me, this is boring.”

Genesis 1-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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.

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So right after creating everything, God goes for a swim. Makes sense, after an eternity of doing nothing, creating the universe is probably a pretty hard exercise. I’d probably go for a swim too.

Genesis 1-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

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This is the first obvious scientific blunder. Visible light is created by electrons within atoms in an excited state returning to the ground state (a lower energy configuration). I won’t go into the physics of it, but the basic point is that for light to exist, it needs a source. And so far, there is no source.

Genesis 1-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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.

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So we have light (still no source), which is only just now divided from the darkness (how light and dark can exist without being separated in the first place is a mystery), and now we have what seems to be rotation (night and day cycle), all of which was done in the first day.

Genesis 1-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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.

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So on the second day God creates Heaven, which was also created on the first day with the very first line of the book. God divided the water so that some of it would be above, and some of it below Heaven.

Genesis 1-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called He Seas: and God saw that it was good.

11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

12And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

13And the evening and the morning were the third day.

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Here we see God has created the land, and called the waters “seas.” It is on this day that we finally see life on earth as God orders the land to produce grass, herbs yielding seeds, and fruits. There are no animals, and nothing about the lower end of the food chain without which all this would not last. We can assume that the plants get sustenance from photosynthesis, since God was kind enough to create light, although we still don’t have a source for that light.

Genesis 1-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:

15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.

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.

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Here, we finally see a source for the light. According to the Bible, God created two lights, the greater of which would rule the day, and the other ruled the night. This refers to the sun and the moon, and brings us to another scientific blunder. While the sun is a great source of light, the moon isn’t. And while it’s true on a clear night with a full moon, you can still see pretty well, this is because the moon reflects light. It doesn’t actually create light, as the Biblical account implies.

Genesis 1-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.

23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

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Here we have God adding life to the waters, and birds that fly through the air. An interesting side note, the original text that now commonly is translated as “whale” was translated as “sea monsters” for centuries.

Genesis 1-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and everything that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

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.

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.

29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.

30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

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In this last section of Genesis Chapter 1, we have God creating all the animals that live on land. He also creates the first two humans. One thing I’d like to point out is the words God himself uses. He says “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” Make no mistake; the Bible clearly indicates that these words are His words, indicating that there were other gods at this point in Biblical history.

So, that is the end of Chapter 1, of the Book of Genesis.

“But wait,” you may be saying. “What about the seventh day?”

Well, the seventh day is not actually in Chapter 1, but it is the first line of Chapter 2, which I will do another day. Chapter 2 will also bring us the other story of creation, with some stark differences, a common theme throughout this holy book.

Thank you for reading it this far, and I welcome any comments you feel like giving. Just remember, civility up, name calling down.

New Page

Well, I started this page on Facebook, and I'm glad I did. For a long time I've been unsure about religion, but I could never quite say why. Sure, I knew all the normal lines, the oppression of people throughout the ages for religious causes, contradictions in the Bible, the seemingly endless supply of hypocrisy, and while all those things are true I never took the time to put them into my own words.

And really, I've barely scratched the surface. But one thing I've found is that I'll need a certain flexibility that Facebook lacks. You can't search old posts, nor can you edit them. And if they aren't long enough, you can't link directly to them. I'm still going to use The Outcast page on Facebook, but I'm also going to be posting here as well.

Posts are going to come quickly at first, as I get this blog caught up with The Outcast on Facebook, but once that's done it will be back to 1 post a week for now. I am considering bumping it up to two per week, but we'll see.

Definitely keep an eye on the Facebook page for now though. Over the next two weeks I'll be finishing up a series of posts dealing with Adam and Eve. It should be interesting, and I hope you enjoy it.