Genesis 1-6

Initially I intended to only post a review on a weekly basis, but I seem to have written quite a bit, so I've decided to not really stick to a schedule. I will post up a review when I feel that I have typed enough to warrant a post. So, without further adieu, let's get started.

Chapter 1: There has already been a lot of criticism in regards to this chapter, so I'll try not to dwell too much on any of the more popular critiques and try to mostly just bring up the things I noticed for myself, not the things I've read about before.

Obviously the first big issue is the first line. God supposedly makes the heavens and Earth in the beginning, but anyone with even minor knowledge of cosmology can tell you that there are roughly 9.5 billion years between the big bang, which for all intents and purposes is the beginning of the universe, and the formation of Earth. On the first day, God also makes light, but the sun is made three days later. On the third day, God makes plants; take note of this for the next day. On day four, God creates the stars, the sun, and the moon (which is called a light source, despite the fact that the moon simply refracts sunlight). The obvious issue here is that every star in the universe is made not only simultaneously, which we know now is bogus, but that our system's star was made three days after Earth, while current observations have revealed the sun to be about 30 million years younger than Earth.

Anyway, back to the plants. On the fourth day, God shines the light from the sun down onto the Earth. This means that for an entire day, plants existed on Earth without a light or heat source to sustain them. There is also obviously the issue that the time between Earth's formation and the appearance of the first land plants is four billion years, not three days.

Chapter 2: Pretty much right off the bat we have an inconsistency between this chapter and the last one. Near the end of the first chapter, we have this verse:
"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." (Genesis 1:27).

Four lines later, at the end of the chapter, the sixth day ends. So on the sixth day, man and women seem to have already both been created. Chapter 2, however, begs to differ. Maybe I should keep a contradiction counter for the whole Bible. Anyway, chapter 2 starts off where the first one left off. It's the seventh day and God rests after a long week of work (I don't quite know why an omnipotent god needs to rest, but I'll try not to start with the assumption that God is omnipotent, as the book hasn't specifically stated so yet, and I don't know if it ever will.), and he goes on to bless the seventh day.

Now is where we get our contradiction. Some unstated amount of time after the seventh day, God makes man out of dust... but didn't he already make man on the sixth day [1] (that's the contradiction counter)? So then God decided he needs to give Adam an assistant to maintain Eden (because apparently he can't use his divine magic to just make it never grow out of control), so he summons all of the animals around Adam and lets him name them, and Adam decides that none of the animals would make a good assistant. So, rather than just use his divine powers to make a new human to assist Adam, God decided that he instead needed to knock Adam unconscious, tear out one of his ribs, and transform the rib into a woman to serve man.

"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. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh." (Genesis 2:23-24)
As a closing note for this chapter, I'd like to know how Adam knows what parents are since he was just formed from dust a moment ago. Parents don't exist yet

Chapter 3: So in the last chapter, God commanded Adam not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, because if he did he would die on the day that he ate it. Chapter 3 opens with a serpent convincing Eve to eat from the tree by stating that God lied (which he actually did, so I have to side with the serpent on this one), and rather than dying, what it would actually do it give them the knowledge of the gods (note that this is plural, I'll go into more detail about how Christianity is polytheistic at the end of this post) of good and evil. The first issue I have right off the bat is that somehow Eve knows that God commanded them not to eat from the tree, despite the fact that the declaration was made prior to her creation, but I'll just go ahead and assume he either repeated himself or Adam relayed the rule to her, so let's move on.

So, Eve takes some of the fruit and shares it with Adam, and they both eat it and their eyes are metaphorically opened and the knowledge of good and evil is downloaded into their brains. With this new information comes shame, so they immediately sew themselves some aprons from twigs to cover themselves up. What I find odd about this is that if being naked was evil, why did God allow them to walk around naked all this time? Why clearly lay out the rule about not eating from the tree, but not tell them to wear clothes?

After explaining that the serpent talked her into eating the fruit, God curses it by taking away its legs and making it eat dirt (even though serpents don't eat dirt). This marks the first of God's hereditary punishments. The next punishment goes to women, who must now experience extreme pain during child birth, and then God curses the ground to grow thorns on plants so that humans won't eat from those select few plants. I really don't understand the logic here since we still have plenty of plants that we can eat. The chapter ends with God evicting Adam and Eve from Eden.

Chapter 4: Not too much to be said on this one. Adam and Eve have two sons, Cain and Abel. Cain offers some plants to God and Abel offers some livestock, and God likes Abel's offering better. Out of jealousy, Cain kills Abel. God then asks Abel where Cain is, and then asks what Cain has done because he can hear Abel's blood crying out from the ground. This seems to imply that Abel has gone to some sort of underworld, not heaven. God then banishes Cain from Eden, and he takes his wife (which was never mentioned before, but I assume must also be his sister) and moves east. The next several verses then detail the names of the next several generations, and at the end of the chapter Adam and Eve have yet another kid (Seth). Apparently even though they already have great-great-great-great-great grandchildren, they're still fertile.

Chapter 5: This chapter just details the next several generations that descend from Seth. In this line there are two people mentioned (Enoch and Lamech) who also appear as descendents of Cain the previous chapter [2]. Despite not saying much, we still get a contradiction out of this chapter. The chapter ends with Noah, who is stated to be 500 years old.

Chapter 6:  "And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years." (Genesis 6:3)


Only three lines after stating that Noah was 500, God declares that there is to be an age limit on humans, that they shall live no longer than 120 years [3].

"And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." (Genesis 6:5)

"These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God." (Genesis 6:9)

The first quoted passage explains that man, and every thought had by man, was evil. The second quoted passage claims that Noah was both just and perfect [4].

The rest of the chapter details God telling Noah his plans for mass genocide and instructions to build an ark, on which he shall take two of every "sort" of animal, as well as himself, his wife, his kids, and their wives. While it should be obvious, I will still point out the fact that given the specifications of the ark given to Noah, it would be impossible to cram two of every species of animal onto it, let alone all the food for the trek ahead and to manage to keep it afloat with all that weight. If you need a visual, here's one:

That is straight from Answers in Genesis, and if you think two of all of the millions of species on Earth could fit in that thing, you are surely out of your mind. If you wish to make the typical argument that it was only two of every "kind" of animal, not species, I refer you to the infamous Bill Nye - Ken Ham debate, where Ken Ham made this argument, and Bill Nye calculated that if this were the case, we would need to see an average of 11 new species evolve every day to account for the number of species we have now versus if only about 7000 "kinds" of animals survived after the time that the flood supposedly occurred, and even if the number is shrunk down to 7000, I still don't think that they could all fit on the ark, again, let alone with food for all of them for the duration of the flood.

Contradictions and science aside, however, what has to be the absolute worst thing about this chapter is the utterly detestable evil of God's character. Upon judging all of humanity to be evil (save for eight, apparently), God decides not only to obliterate all humans (save for eight, apparently), but all animals save for only two of every "sort". Punishing all creatures for the actions of one (which are never even elaborated upon, so I would very much like to know what it was that they were doing that God deemed so evil that he must commit mass genocide) is utterly detestable and sickening to the highest degree. This is surely not a god worth worshiping.

Afterthoughts:  After only six chapters, I have come to the conclusion that Christians are wrong about five main claims about the god of the Bible.

1) There is only one god. Christianity is monotheistic.

This is alluded to be wrong on the first chapter with this verse:
"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness" (Genesis 1:26)

It is essentially confirmed in the third chapter with two different verses.
"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." (Genesis 3:5)
"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:" (Genesis 3:22)

Note the usage of plurals. The verse from chapter 1 and the second verse from chapter 3 have God saying "us", as if he is speaking to other gods. The first verse from chapter 3 has the serpent specifically state that there are in fact gods. Plural.

2) God is omniscient (all-knowing).

I find this one to be disproved in chapters 3 and 4. After eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge, Adam and Eve suddenly gain shame and decide to make clothing for themselves. I'll need to quote six verses for this one.

"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.

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

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

 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?

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

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." (Genesis 3:8-13)

In the next chapter, after killing Abel, Cain is questioned by God, and these two verses follow.

"And the LORD said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother's keeper?

And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground." (Genesis 4:9-10)

The mere fact that God has to question Adam, Eve, and Cain about anything at all, rather than simply confronting them because he already knows, shows me that God is most certainly not omniscient. If he still is omniscient, he is surely a condescending ass, which would counter the next point.

3) God is all good.

This one is really the easiest to disprove. I already went over this in the final paragraph of my chapter 6 review.

4) Good is what God says is good.

If you wish to be of the heinous sort who say that it's only good if God says it is good, not just because we say it is good, I refer you to essentially the entire first chapter of Genesis. Repeatedly throughout the chapter, lines will end with "and God saw that it was good.". This shows me that there is some sort of evaluation on God's part to determine if something is in fact good. It is not good simply because he says it is good, he still must see if it is good or not.

5) God is omnipotent (all-powerful)

This is surely the most substantial of all Christian claims. While the events of chapter 1 would make it seem as if God is omnipotent, the events of the following chapters seem to depict him as significantly less powerful. While chapter 1 describes God simply creating things with willpower alone, the very next chapter shows him having to use existing materials to create humans. From dust he makes Adam and from Adam's rib he makes Eve. Could he not simply have created them from nothing like he did the stars?

The next bit of evidence for this is in chapter 6. Upon determining that humans are evil, rather than simply willing the evil humans to no longer exist, God must use a worldwide flood to destroy mankind (and all other animals).

Intoduction

Greetings, reader. My name is Justin Bird, and as should be obvious, I am an atheist. While I highly doubt anyone other than the people I hand this link out to will ever stumble across this blog, I shall nevertheless provide an explanation of my reasons for writing this blog, as well as my background that has led me to this. Let’s get the background out of the way first, as a common question asked by theists always seems to be why an atheist is an atheist. If you wish to skip my background and get straight to the introduction, just read the last paragraph.

I was born with multiple heart defects which required me to have three surgeries during the first couple years of my life. After the last surgery, which happened the same week I turned two, I was a bit traumatized, and according to my mother, I wasn’t the same happy kid that I used to be until quite a long after afterwards. Shortly after my release from the hospital, my parents and I were at church one Sunday. I, being just a little kid, was mumbling to myself, and apparently a priest felt that I was being disruptive, and asked my father to take me outside until I quieted down. My father got rather mad that I was essentially getting kicked out of the church (albeit momentarily) when a place like this should be praising Yahweh that I survived my heart defect, not booting us out. My father’s response to this was to leave the church with me and my mom and never come back. This thankfully freed me from ever having to be brought up with church as a tradition, though of course my parents were still Christian, though by no means extremest or fundamentalist. My mother would read a children’s Bible to me and my brother, I vaguely recall grace being spoken at a select few special meals, and God and Jesus were talked about in passing. Nothing too extreme, but I did have a Christian upbringing.

The summer than I turned eight, we moved to a new city. I know that my brother started middle school that very next school year, and that it was some time during middle school that he started to question religion, so I would have been between the ages of eight and ten during this time. At first, he came to a sort of deistic view, describing his idea of a god as essentially an all-powerful toddler, who much like a child playing with building blocks, constructed the universe, but with no particular purpose. He shared this idea with me, and it kind of just stayed in the back of my head. This was the first time that I had ever heard any idea of God that wasn’t the god of the Bible. This was the first time that it ever even occurred to me that there was the possibility hat the Bible wasn’t truth. I had been raised to believe it was, and before that point I used to think everyone was a Christian. While the idea did stay in my mind, at the time I simply dismissed it as random musing on my brother’s part. I didn’t realize at the time that he was questioning religion.

Fast forward to the summer that I turned twelve. This was when I first started to use the internet (my parents were paranoid about viruses and didn’t let us on the computer unsupervised. I guess they eventually got over it.), and it certainly opened up my eyes. I stumbled across a conversation between a Muslim and a Christian. At first I thought this was some sort of cult, a very small false religion, surely. That is how my mind tried to justify this. But then I looked it up. I found not only that this religion had hundreds of millions of followers, but that there were thousands of other religions across the world. This was the first time I ever learned that there were actual fully-formed religions other than Christianity. Before this point I had known about cults and ancient mythologies, but I had never really heard about other modern religions. It was in that moment that my religion shattered, and in that moment that I became an atheist. I realized that there was no evidence at all that Christianity was true. If there was, surely these other religions wouldn’t exist and that everyone would be a Christian. I could see no reason to believe that only one of these thousands of religions was true. It seemed much more likely that this was mass delusion. None of them were true. Even if there was a god out there somewhere, it surely couldn’t be any of these gods, else there would be evidence to support it, and it would surely be common knowledge. While of course I still recognized that a deistic god could exist, there was no reason to believe it. Over the course of the next year, I researched. I found scientific studies that disproved claims made the Bible, and this gave me the confidence to be more vocal. I would openly tell people at school that I was an atheist when they brought up God, and the vast majority of the time it got them angry at me, even causing one girl to punch me simply because she overheard me talking to my friend about why I was an atheist.

As vocal as I was at school, however, I never told my parents. By the time I was in middle school, there was no more Bible reading and references to God were so few and far between that it hardly seemed worth mentioning… until my brother came out to them as an atheist. My mother was shocked, and when I also stepped in to say I was atheist as well, she acted like she failed as a parent, exclaiming that she doesn’t know how she possibly could have raised two atheists, and of course the typical “Where did I go wrong?”. For a while I was angry with her that she would have this view on it. I had always thought of her as a fantastic mother. She didn’t do anything wrong. She always encouraged me and my brother to read and think critically. We were simply doing as she taught us, and our critical thinking is what had brought us to atheism. Eventually, however, she came to accept it, and has since then actually abandoned Christianity and adopted a deistic view on the universe. She still insists on being spiritual, and for now I consider this to be a very large step, so for now I’m not going to question her beliefs.

I am unsure of exactly what my father believes. I know he is still a theist of some sort, but his views also seem to be evolving. He used to be against homosexuality because of the Bible, but now says he doesn’t care, and that everyone should be free to marry whoever they want. He knows I am an atheist and he has said in regards to it that everyone is entitled to their own beliefs, so since he isn’t pushing anything on me, I won’t bring it up. I think he may need the promise of an afterlife.

Now, as to what this blog is and why I am making it. I have never read the entire Bible, or even one book from start to finish. I have only read passages. I will begin reading the Bible (King James translation), from Genesis to Revelation upon finishing this entry. Every Friday I will make a post detailing my thoughts and critiques of what I have read that week. As for the reason, it’s rather simple. Theists often claim that certain passages are taken out of context as fuel for an argument, or that since a person hasn’t read the entire Bible they don’t know what they’re talking about, or best of all, if we read the Bible, we’ll be Christians. So, I shall read the entire Bible. Nothing can be taken out of context if I read the entire thing, I most certainly will know what I am talking about, and… well I guess only time will tell on that last claim, haha.