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This website is being renovated throughout 2008. Pages and the content of pages will continue to change until the end of the year and there may be some inconsistencies and missing links. Please do not quote from or link to specific pages (apart from the home page) without contacting the webmaster first. In the beginning The confused Christian creation myth By © Martin Foreman Word Count: 794 words Publication date: July 9, 2006 Same old same old in the news last week. The White House continued to trample over freedom, justice, democracy and the Constitution in the pursuit of presidential power. And Americans were deprived of the world’s greatest sporting championship because the networks won’t tolerate any spectacle that allows no commercial breaks for forty-five minutes. It was a slow week for me too. In my bedtime reading I finished Ian McEwan’s Saturday, a moving and powerful novel about a London surgeon, and looked for something in a lighter vein. I picked up an old favorite: the Bible. In younger, more innocent days, I took the Old and New Testaments very seriously, but the more I read them today, the more absurd they appear, right from the very first sentence. As I’ve often pointed out, the original Hebrew tells us that not one, but several, gods (Elohim) create heaven and earth. While the primary story of the OT is the history of the chosen people, an ongoing sub-plot is the rivalry of several divine siblings. It only ends when Yahweh, the most violent of the three, prevails over Asherah and Baal. But let’s move at a slower pace. In Genesis 1:1 (chapter one, verse one) the Elohim create the heaven and earth. So far, so good, but in the second verse there’s suddenly water, which the Gods don’t appear to have created. They respond to this new element by creating a firmament in the midst of the waters and redistributing with the waters underneath it. By verses nine and ten they’ve created a second heaven and earth. We’re not told what happened to the first set. Maybe it was returned to Home Depot. And we still don’t know what happened to the waters above heaven. Maybe they’re scheduled for one gigantic eternal thunderstorm. The mysteries pile up. Light was created in verse three and the sun in verse 16. Excuse me? Where did light come from before the sun was created? Did God knock up some kind of temporary neon arrangement? Answer there is none. By the time we get to Adam and Eve the narrative breaks down completely. In chapter one, the first man and woman – who are nameless - are created together on the Sixth Day, after the creatures of the sea, air and land. Chapter two, however, makes no reference to the seven day timetable. It insists that Adam was created before the animals and Eve was only conjured up when the Gods saw that Adam needed help. It’s not clear what kind of help was needed, but I am sure that we could all make some suggestions. Anyway, A and E set up home in the Garden of Eden, where all they do is eat fruit. There’s more confusion here. Genesis 2:10 tells us “a river went out of Eden to water the garden” – but we’ve just been told the garden is Eden. And Ethiopia and Assyria do not share the same water basin despite the assertion in Genesis 2:11-14. Let’s blame these errors on poor sub-editing and move on… Chapter three tells us how Eve is tempted by the serpent to eat the forbidden fruit. She then persuades Adam to do the same. Suddenly they both realise they’re naked. Any other young couple would consider this a significant step forward in their relationship, but Adam and Eve aren’t that bright. When the Gods find out (they’re supposed to be omniscient, but hey, you can’t keep your eye on every ball), they lose their cool and kick them both out of Eden. In case being expelled from paradise isn’t punishment enough, the Elohim curse the land off which they will live, predicting it will bring forth thorns and thistles. There’s an interesting point here. Why did the Gods create sex if they didn’t want men and women to enjoy it? Some intriguing hints come up later in the Old Testament, when the squabble between Yahweh and his siblings comes to a head, but the question is never properly answered. The years fly by in chapter four. Eve has a couple of sons. The Gods praise second-born Abel but don’t have much good to say about Cain. Cain gets jealous and kills Abel. C becomes a vagabond and hooks up with a nameless woman who gives him a son. (Genesis gives no details, but we assume that despite their failure with the first pair, the Elohim have been busy creating more people.) Five generations pass and then we skip back to Eve who suddenly drops another son. Then we’re into chapter five and the long list of Adam’s male descendants and how many years each lived. By this point, the book has done its work. We can’t stop yawning. It’s time to go sleep.
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If God existed, he would... admire the beauty of a universe that he did not create recognize that eternity is meaningless deny both heaven and hell disown all men and women who speak in his name denounce the harm caused by religious "morality" help the human race to thrive without him If God existed, he would be an atheist.
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