[Shaun @ Tru6]

Or another title may be, "the dumbest post I'll ever make"

OK, so I'm 37 now and was just looking through some old computer stuff to help the Brandeis Crew in an alumni fundraiser. yes, a Mac SE30 circa 1993 will still start-up. And I found the text below, my first letter to a good friend (still a friend, actually even part of G9Girl) in our discussions on religion and specifically, evolution. She's a new-age style Christian for which I have the greatest respect as she actually lives what she believes, and truly, truly follows Christ's teachings. The amount of community service she does, both with and without a Christian tone is inspiring.

Caveats:
1. Haven't really read this again, just glanced through it now
2. I was 19, raised Catholic, going to a Jewish University where for the first time in my life I felt like a minority
3. If you are going to comment, criticize, etc., please at least read through the whole thing.

Should be fun and entertaining all around. BTW, be really glad I'm not posting my old poetry! And with that...


Hi Kellee,

Well, I have reread the two pages of Genesis that tell the stories of creation. My first thought was it was strange that only two pages are ascribed to the creation of the universe and everything in it. Going through the text, here is my interpretation with notes.


First account of creation:
Day 1: God creates the heavens and earth, the earth being a sphere of water, although the text gives the earth as a formless void, with water. A void, by definition, is nothing.

Day 2: God then creates light, but without the existence of the sun or any other celestial body to give light. We have to wait till Day 4 for these things.

Day 3: God creates a vault or arch. It should be noted here that ancient peoples believed that the vault was solid. Clearly, this is a description of the creation of what we would call the atmosphere.

Day 4: God creates every celestial body known and unknown. This is interesting in itself and certainly there can be no answer to the question, “Why did God create a universe so large that its size is as inconceivable to the human mind as a divine being is. The Milky Way, a rather small galaxy contains over 400 billion stars alone, our sun being one of them. There are many hundred trillion galaxies in the universe.

Day 5: God creates fish and birds.

Day 6: God creates every other animal to ever inhabit the earth. He then creates human beings, in the image of himself. We are not sure of God’s true image, and certainly cannot call him male, since men and women do look decidedly different. What is God, male or female, both or neither. Certainly, male and female sex organs and secondary sexual characteristics are different enough to cast doubt on what image he created men and women.

Day 7: Took a break.

In the second account of creation, there are no specific days mentioned here, just a series of events, with a completely different order from the first account.
God makes heaven and earth. Here, the earth is, well, solid earth with no water. But, a flood was coming to completely cover the earth. God then creates man from dust. God then plants a garden and puts man into it. God then creates all animal life on the planet and asks man to name every single creature. Aside from the obvious absurdity of naming every animal on the planet, it is important to note here that neither the Bible nor any other ancient text mentions dinosaurs. Since we know dinosaurs to have existed, it is hard to believe that they would have been overlooked in stories, etc. Essentially, if dinosaurs shared the earth with man, something we know not to be true, man would have at a minimum drawn dinosaurs, and certainly kept the dinosaur names alive aurally if nothing else.

God then puts man to sleep, pulls out a rib (ouch) and makes a woman from it. That is truly strange!

I want to now turn to the question, a large one, “Can the Bible be trusted to accurately describe the beginning of the earth, the universe and everything in it?”

First, I think that since the two stories contradict each other in terms of timing and what was actually created, that both should be dismissed. Furthermore, since they are very similar to stories of creation that are older than biblical texts, they appear to be simply duplicates of earlier peoples’, ones who believed in many gods. Those two aside, the simplicity and brevity of the description of “how it all got started” jives much more with the primitive nature of early man than an actual description of divine events.

end, see reply for more