Day 3

I’m finding it difficult to keep a positive outlook when every verse seems to defy logic and rational though… Well, here goes day three:

·       Gen 9:1 To Noah- “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth…”

The only humans left after the flood are Noah, his wife, their sons and their son’s wives (ALL descendants of Adam & Eve). Talk about keeping it in the family! With such limited genetic information to pass from one generation to the next (not to mention there has been thousands of years of inbreeding already) it’s a wonder modern man can tackle the mysteries of the universe let alone form coherent sentences.

·       Gen 9:2-3 “The fear and dread of you will fall on all beasts of the earth… everything that moves about will be food for you.”

Finally! Mankind can eat meat! Only took several thousands of years! Perhaps in another thousand, the animals will be able to eat meat as well??? Oh, the suspense!

·        Gen 9:12 “Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood.”

Not ALL life, just some of it… over and over again. Is he not merciful?

·        Gen 9:13 “I have set my rainbow in the clouds and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth”

I bet god was pissed when the gay community adapted this as their sign… Then again, he knew they would? Does this mean the gays are god’s chosen people?

·        Gen 10:2 … Gomer is a biblical name?!? No, really it is. I’m not making this up! Wait, don’t tell me… Bubba and Cletus are too?

·       Gen 11:5-9  Now this one is a doozie!

The people of the world at this point spoke one language. They come together and decide to build a city and a “tower that reaches to the heavens.” god comes to earth and sees what they’re building and says “If as one people speaking the same language they have done this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us (who is this US again? More than one god perhaps? god’s reference to “us” happens a lot.)go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.

What a jerk! There I said it. Did he feel threatened? Is this some form of biblical union busting? That was just a dick move no matter how you want to look at it… but, god is good?

·       Gen 16:2-3 “The lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave…” Sari took her Egyptian slave and gave her to her husband to be his wife…”

Slavery, adultery AND polygamy are endorsed by the bible?!? It must be, for the bible tells me so!

·       Damn… god is making personal appearances left and right. Why then and not now? Instead of being able to sit down to breakfast with god and hear his mighty word, all we get are garbled religious images that appear on pieces of toast. Is god outsourcing work these days? The quality and personal touch seems to have really gone downhill.

·       Gen 17:10  Apparently circumcision is a decree from god…  Serve thy god through genital mutilation… great…  Abraham was circumcised at the age of 99?!? Brutal!

Don’t know how much more I can stomach today. I’ve had all I can stands and I can’t stands no more. Till next time!

But I Digress…

I’m going to stray from my examination of the bible for a post in order to investigate an idea I had many years ago. My recent readings jarred this long-lost memory, which is something I now find novel, but thought it would be fun to flesh-out anyway. 
 

Growing up, I reached a point, as most of us do, that I was struggling with the concept of god and to a certain extent religion. As I gained more knowledge about the world, through personal experiences, observations and of course through my schooling, I came to accept the theory of evolution as something that just made sense. Since evolution is taught in a purely scientific context, I hadn’t given any thought as to any influence it may have on the discussion of religion and the god hypothesis. To me the two were completely compatible.

 Now, one thing you must understand is that, while I did believe in god, I wasn’t particularly religious. What I mean is that I under stood god to be the creator, but somehow managed to escape the dogma and indoctrination of religion to the point that I was blissfully unaware that my particular belief wouldn’t be supported by the religion that I was born into. This left my mind free to fill in the gaps with reason and evidence that is present in the physical world.

So, how did my view that god and evolution were compatible work?  Well, I saw god to be an observationalist deity, one that simply set the universe in motion and sat back to enjoy the show. Think of god as the ultimate curious mind, watching in amazement as life and the universe evolves in unexpected ways, not daring to interfere so as not to influence the process. This sort of laissez-faire approach would allow for evolution and all the other wonders of the universe to occur.  

Of course this wouldn’t be a god of Christianity, or Islam or any of the other faiths of this world. Such a being wouldn’t dare impose its will. Of course this being wouldn’t be omniscient either. That would ruin the majesty and excitement of watching events unfold. Would you really read a book or watch a movie if you already knew the outcome?  

I’d imagine this being isn’t very bashful. It doesn’t have to hide. Perhaps this god simply awaits discovery, which of course can only happen through the scientific process. Scientific advances just haven’t reached that point yet.

How does this being exist? Well, because its omnipotence demands it! Ah, now that’s a kink in the hose, because, as of now, that requires faith to believe. But, perhaps that’s a question we won’t be able to tackle until science advances to the point of being able to discover the being we’ve labeled god. Who’s to say there’s only one for that matter?

Of course this is all fantasy, the creation of a mind that was seeking answers and willing to ponder the possibilities. It was a wonderfully optimistic view, one that was sadly crushed by my 7^th grade English teacher. Somehow evolution was brought up during discussion in class and she stated that you can either believe in god OR evolution. When I asked why one couldn’t believe in both, she yelled at me in anger “Because you can’t!”

 As crushing as this was at the time, it was by no means a deciding factor in my views of religion and the god hypothesis. Unlike overnight religious converts, I don’t think non-belief is such an immediate process. It’s one that seems to develop over time through the process of natural discovery and galvanized by free thought.

Ah, that was fun. Well, enough with the personal stuff… back to the task at hand!

Day 2

Trying to straighten things out and wade through the information is exhausting. This is truly taxing on my sense or reason and logic. However, must forge on. Here is day 2:

·         Life expectancy in biblical times was amazing! See below:

o   Adam lived to 930 years old

o   Seth (son of Adam) 912

o   Enosh (son of Seth) 905

o   Kenan (son of Enosh) 910

o   Methuselah 969

Don’t we now know the life expectancy of that time to be significantly shorter? Not only were these men able to surpass modern man’s life expectancy, but they were able to procreate well into their 800’s. Too bad all their offspring (except for Noah) are going to be killed by god. Longevity and an incredibly healthy sex-drive would have been great traits to pass down the gene pool.

·        Gen 6:3 “My spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are corrupt, their days will be a hundred and twenty years.” So, god arbitrarily cuts the life expectancy from 900+ years to 120… and it still surpasses modern humans?

·       Gen 6:7 “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I created--- and with them all the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground…” Now they’ve done it! The humans have gone and pissed off god. First of all, as an omniscient being, he knew this was coming and literally had thousands of years since the time of Adam to prepare emotionally for this upset… not that I’d believe an omnipotent being would be so emotionally feeble… But I digress. So, god is pissed and decides to commit genocide on the entire human race. In addition, he’s going to kill all the animals? Why?!?

Looking at this from another angle, even though the ten commandments weren’t handed down yet, an omniscient being should be well aware of the commandment he will impose on the humans that says “thou shall not kill.”…Does that make him a spiteful hypocrite?

·       Gen 6:13 “I am surely going to destroy both them (the humans) and the earth.”

If god is going to destroy the earth, why even have Noah build the ark in the first place? Where would the ark sail without an earth? Does the fact that the earth wasn’t destroyed demonstrate a limit to god’s power or did he simply lie to Noah? If god is really omniscient, then he knew he wouldn’t destroy (or wasn’t capable of destroying) the earth, so why say that in the first place?

·       Gen 6:19 to Noah: “You are to bring into the ark two of ALL living creatures (a pair), male and female.”

Gen 7:2 “Take with you 7 pairs of every kind of clean animal--- and one pair of every kind of unclean animal.”

Got that? No? Good! god is apparently terrible with giving instructions.

·       Gen 7:4  Noah had only 7 days to build the ark AND collect all the animals? Oh, those are biblical days, not modern days? So, then the average life expectancy of that time has now increased to several modern millennium… now I really feel cheated.

·       Gen 7:6 Noah was 600 years old when the floods came…

Wait, didn’t god reduce the life expectancy to 120 years? Noah really did ALL that work by himself at 600 years old?!?

·    Gen 7:12 “And rain fell on the earth for 40 days and 4o nights”

… So now it rains!

On a side note, I wonder if the command for “2 of all living creatures” (Gen 6:19) or “Pairs of ALL creatures that have breath of life in them” (Gen 7:15) included sea creatures? This seems to be an arbitrary if not confusing command, but they would be included in “ALL living creatures.” Seems to me that they would have no problem surviving a massive flood. Is it just me, or is god really inept at giving clear and meaningful instructions?

·       Gen 8:13 Noah and his family spent an entire year on the ark?!? The upkeep of having to clean after the animals must have been a daunting, if not perpetual task.

·       Gen 8:20 “Noah built an altar to the lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it.”

      Gen 8:21 “The lord smelled the pleasing aroma…”  Wait… Noah sacrificed and burned animals, and the scent of burning flesh was an aroma god found pleasing? That’s dark!

Day 1

I’m not even through Genesis yet and my head is swimming with questions. Glaring inconsistencies and contradictions are popping up left and right. These are the questions that have been raised thus far:

·        If god creates day/ night (light/darkness) on the FIRST DAY, but doesn’t create the sun and moon that will “govern the day and night” until the FOURTH DAY, then how can there be light let alone multiple days before the creation of any source of light?

·        If in Gen. 2:30 god gives all animals of the earth “every green plant for food”, what happened to the carnivores with their specialized teeth that are designed for consuming flesh? If we’re to understand that god created both herbivores and carnivores at the same time, yet ALL animals ate only plants in the beginning, how did the carnivores survive and why design a group of creatures that is meant to consume something other than plants?

·        In Gen. 2:6 god did not send rain, yet streams wandered the whole surface of the ground? Were these streams saltwater perhaps? What we know of freshwater is that most of it comes from rainfall.

·        Jumping ahead to Gen. 2:9, god creates the garden of Eden, growing trees from the ground (apparently without rain or freshwater) yet in Gen 2:5 shrubs and plants couldn’t grow because god had not yet sent rain.

·        Back to Gen 2:10 Eden has a river flowing through it to water the plants, again we have to assume this is all salt water, which makes a curious choice considering we know salt water to kill plants.

·         Gen 2:11… Why is there a need for gold in Eden?

·        Adam & Eve: Gen 2:23:  “This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, she shall be called ‘woman’”. So, they should be genetically identical, which would make Eve a man, despite any arbitrary label Adam gives it/her. Assuming Eve is actually a woman, one can logically assume they are very closely related genetically (brother and sister), yet god commands them to “be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.”(Gen 1:28) Is god advocating incest?

·         Gen 3:6 Adam is suddenly Eve’s husband? When did they marry?

·        Gen 3:9 god called to the man “where are you?” Gen 3:10 “Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” (question posed to Adam only after Adam reveals that he knows he’s naked) Gen 4:9 “Where is your brother Abel?” Would an all-knowing, omniscient being really be so ignorant?

·         Adam and Eve only gave birth to sons, so how does Cain have a wife?

·        If the biblical lineage looks like this: Adam and Eve…> Cain/Able…> Enoch…> Irad…> Mehujael…> Mefhushael…> Lamech and each subsequent generation only gives birth to a son, then is Eve the mother of all six subsequent generations in addition to being the wife of each? If not, then why are the only two women mentioned (Adah and Zillah, both married to Lamech) six generations apart from Adam and Eve? Where did these two women come from and why is Naamah (Zillah’s daughter) the only mention of female offspring up to this point? Why is it important to note female offspring now as opposed earlier?

And this concludes my questions for day one. It kind of reads like a soap opera, huh?