"THE SPACE TIME CONUNDRUM"
- Thomas Paine, Age of Reason, Part 1
Page one. This is where we find Genesis, first
book of the Old Testament. It is said to
be written by Moses and contains a written account of his death and other
events that occur long after his demise.
(Talk about ghost writing.) Most literary scholars believe that Genesis was
written by at least three different parties, and that it is mostly an
inconsistent patchwork of Babylonian, Egyptian and Hebrew myths dating from
about the tenth to fifth centuries BC. By and large, it is a tale of sin and
man's failure to walk the line, resulting in his subsequent alienation from
God. For some reason, this all powerful entity, who allegedly created the
Earth and balance of infinity from nothing just can't get his pesky humans to
obey the house rules.
Genesis begins with the three most famous words
in literary history, "In the beginning..." But is it really the
beginning? Now Moses (or whoever) does not toss an exact date at us here, but
if you were to start at Joesph and work you your way backwards through all the
begetting to Adam, we come up with a little more than 6,000 years. Without
getting to technical here, let's just say that there are a few radio active
isotopes that beg to differ with this figure . A figure that is merely off by
about 4.5 billion years. It has been said that believing this juvenile age for the Earth is the equivalent of believing that the distance between New York and Los Angeles is 7.2 yards. When you consider that it would take you 31 years, 251
days, 7 hours, 46 minutes and 39 seconds just to count to one billion, you
begin to see how bad an accountant Moses would make.
If you live in the United States, you have to somehow live comfortably knowing that 40-50% of your fellow citizens believe in this young age for the Earth. And that those same citizens have the right to vote and make other important decisions that may effect you and your country. But I digress. The scope of this essay is not to
enter into scientific or social dissertation, I simply lack the faculties. Like Socrates, I am just
smart enough to realize that I am dumb. Having said that, I will be compelled
from time to time to point out some of the glaring, elementary blunders
perpetrated in the Bible's text. So, back to this business of creation...
Genesis continues basically with God turning on
the lights, dividing said lights from the darkness, naming the "lighty" part day,
the darker part night, swishing water about, and dividing up from down. The up
part he names Heaven, the down side gets divided once again by dirt and becomes
land and the balance of the water he names the seas. All of this gets hammered
out in two days and in his own obviously biased opinion, God decides it's all
"good." Day three dawns and God decides to spruce the place up with
some shrubbery. He lays down grass, spreads around seed bearing herbs, and
plants fruit trees whose fruit bear their own seeds, (screw you, Monsanto.) and
because landscaping is a such a ball busting job, God then calls it a day.
On day four we find God back to the business of
sorting out outer space and it's illumination for the purpose of delineating
days, nights, years and the seasons. He then tosses in the Sun and the Moon at
this point, "And God made two great lights; the greater to rule the day,
the lesser to rule the night." And almost as an afterthought: "He
made the stars also." We arrive at Genesis 1:19 as day four winds down
with God assessing this sun for day/moon for night arrangement and predictably
declaring it also "good." But it's not good. It's painfully bad
actually. Besides a gross miscalculation of the Earth's age by orders of
magnitude, there are some basic science problems here that would make a fourth
grader blush. . For example, God whips up light and dark after water, yet
before the Sun. Unless your the type of person who spends most of their time
following the trials and tribulations of the Kardashians, you may be aware that
the reason we have night and day is because of the Earth's rotation as it follows
it's heliocentric orbit around the sun. You may also know that the Sun is much older than the Earth, and the Earth's water for that matter. Should we mention the small detail that 2,600 years before Adam and Eve were said to be created , the Chinese people already had an established culture, written language and their own written history?
So on to Genesis 1:20. Now things really heat up as God
creates life for the first time. Oddly, he starts with whales, or at least out
of “every living creature that moveth,” they
are the only creatures that are referred to by name. They
are followed by, or simultaneously made with many other creatures when God
says, “Let the waters bring forth
abundantly the moving creature that have life, and fowl that may fly above the
Earth in the open firmament of heaven.” God reflects for a moment on these
creatures and yep, you guessed it, he called them “good.” He then blesses all of these creatures in Genesis 1:22 and then spices things up
by instructing them all to “be fruitful,
and multiply.” Now the creatures of the world begin to beget and fill the
seas and land. This brings us to Genesis 1:23 which informs us that day five is
now in the book or, good book as it were.
As day six begins, God answers the question, “Where’s the
beef?” by conjuring up cattle, creepy-crawly things, and presumably every else
past whales, fish and birds. (With the exception of marsupials, which are omitted from the Bible because
the authors are unaware of their existence, or even Australia for that matter.) Do I have to tell
you what he thought about these things when he was done?
Well cue the dramatic music because day six is also the
day God creates man! In Genesis 1:26 God says, “Let us make man in our image,
after our likeness: and let him have dominion over...” wait, what? Did he say
“OUR”? Did God create a mouse in his pocket? Who the hell else is with him?
Does this refer to the Holy Trinity mumbo jumbo? As far as I remember from
religion class, aside from frequent beatings, past God himself, one of those
guys would be a ghost. The other would be Jesus- who wouldn’t be born yet for
about 4,000 years. We know from paintings and other imagery that Jesus looks
like Brad Pitt in “Legends of the Fall” and that God, an older white haired
version thereof, but what the hell does the ghost look like? Anyone? Alright,
moving on...
Where were we? Oh yeah, Genesis 1:27, which sounds more
like Dr. Suess wrote instead of Moses. It goes, “So God created man in his own
image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”
Which reminds me of, “They come out of a box, Thing 1 and Thing 2, They do not
say much, Just How do you do?” Sorry, I could not resist. So God blesses Thing
1, er, I mean Adam and Eve and tells them to also ”Be fruitful and multiply,
and replenish the Earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fowl of the
air, and over every living that moveth upon the Earth.” In other words, get it
on!
And what better way to get in the mood for populating the
entire planet then kicking back and mellowing out with some tasty buds? We
shall see very shortly that this God of the Old Testament can be petty,
vindictive and very cruel. And when he’s not acting like a teenage girl, He is a
blood thirsty genocidal maniac. Yet, at this moment, he is a most benevolent
benefactor and gracious host to the very first humans. He has instructed them
to fornicate and make sustenance of any creature on land or sea that they may
desire to eat. He then tells them, more or less, that they can get stoned, and
not in the traditional biblical way.
Dude, pass the Genesis 1:29 where it is written, “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 which is the fruit of a tree yielding
seed: to you it shall be for meat.” Take note government officials who sanction
the wildly ineffective war on drugs, the very book you swear upon in court in
sentencing a man to jail for smoking a plant, contains permission from God himself
to freely make use of all herbs! Further permission to partake in what we now
call schedule one activity is extended to all animals in Genesis 1:30, “And to
every beast of the Earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to everything that
creepeth upon the Earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb
for meat: and it was so.” Behold, the first “party animals.”
Chapter one of Genesis ends as day six fades out, and
God, who is looking back on all he has made, the Earth, the seas, the heavens, (complete
with day and night lights.) and upon man and beast alike, who are free to eat
whatever they like while fornicating and getting high, decides that it is all
indeed, “Very good.”
In chapter two, God decides to take a siesta. Apparently,
this business of fabricating the universe is very tedious work, such that God
blesses the seventh day and declares that it be “sanctified” and hence forth
used as a day of rest and Bingo.
This brings us to the conclusion of the infamous story of
how God created everything. Scientifically speaking, it is wildly inaccurate to
say the least. Yet nearly half of the people in this country and others all
over the world buy this story , and do so with hook, line, and sinker. They
have to. It is the very foundation of their faith. They also willingly
subscribe to the inane notion that rather than reveal himself to the cultured
people of the world, God chose to bestow his wisdom upon illiterate goat
herders. It is the nature of the book though. The Bible is bursting with stories
so fantastical that not even if she had lost all of her money gambling, J.K.
Rowling wouldn’t use any of them in a Harry Potter book for fear of being to
unrealistic.
In Petersburg Virginia, there is a 70,000 square foot
Biblical theme park called “The Creation Museum.” It features a display with
children playing with dinosaurs in a laughable attempt to assuage the daunting
time line problem dinosaurs present for the bible. Some “scholars” have
suggested that they are mentioned in the Bible, living side by side with man.
This despite having existed and succumbing to extinction millions of years
before man walked the Earth. Perhaps prehistoric cave artists universally
thought that horses and cows made for the most interesting subjects to paint
and spared us the more mundane images of giant reptilian monsters. Of course,
if you find this notion too silly, you could always side with the “Young Earth
Creationists” who contend that dinosaurs never existed at all, and that their
bones were placed in the ground by Satan to test our faith.
Ugh.
Now, at this point as we finally finish page one, either
God forgets that he made man already, Moses is just really terrible at
dictation, or more than likely the narrator back pedals here to bring us some
of the more amazing details of man’s initial assembly. Whatever the reason,
after this declaration in Genesis2:4 “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” it is written, “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.” So, presto-magico, a mist shoots up from the ground and waters the
earth and then, “...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.”
Well, Darwin be damned! We should take note that God is now being referred to
as “Lord” which may be indicative of the multi-authored piecemeal construction
of the Bible. Or perhaps it could be quite possibly that God, who created the
world with tenants, has become the first “landlord.”
As we finally finish with the absurdity of page one and
prepare to move on to page two, I am reminded of a quote from the late and very
great Christopher Hitchens, “That which can be asserted without evidence, can
be dismissed without evidence.” Sage advice indeed as we are about to learn of
a magical garden with a talking snake, a tree whose fruit makes the awareness
of nudity shameful, and angels with flaming swords. We shall also see why it is
a very bad idea to disobey God.
Until then, may Zeus preserve you!
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