Atheist Bible Study 1: Genesis

[GrandizerII]

Let's have a Bible study for atheists. After reading a particular passage from the Bible, I will be sharing my thoughts on it in threads like this. Feel free to share your thoughts on any verse or passage in the book that this thread corresponds to. Theists, of course, can chime in as well.

FTR, I will be personally using the NIV for these threads, as I feel they do a fair job with the translation, and it's in modern English (as opposed to the archaic language of the KJV).

First Bible study thread is on Genesis, first book in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. Probably my most favorite book in the whole Bible. Why? Because it does have some really entertaining stories to read, and unlike others, I love reading lists of names with brief stories about some of them. While the ancient Greek and Norse myths had much more fascinating stories, none of the stories in this particular book of the Bible actually bore me. I think going though Genesis (again) is going to be an enjoyable experience for me.

My first post here will be on Genesis 1 and the first three verses of Genesis 2, which is all about the seven days of Creation. I just had a read of this passage a short while ago, and the first thing that comes to mind here is how easily digestible the passage is. In fact, virtually every passage in Genesis is fairly easy to read (for me, at least).

Of course, from a modern scientific perspective, there are clearly quite some falsehoods in this passage. But as an atheist, I have no burden to try to explain away these falsehoods. That's all on literalist Christians. As far as I'm concerned, it's a very nice cosmogony myth story. Not the best, but still beautiful and interesting, providing us with a window into the scientifically naive but creative thoughts of the ancient.

The passage starts with God creating the heavens and the earth. There is no mention of what happened before that, if there was any "before" to that. Interestingly enough, there is nothing here that explicitly says God has always been, despite what some commentaries and children's Bible books tend to say. Another thing I find interesting is that God had already created the heavens and the earth from day one, and yet there is an apparent contradiction to this a bit later in the passage. Some people argue that the first couple verses in Genesis 1 are an overview summary, with the rest of the chapter expanding on it. I have to strongly disagree with this, as the flow (at least in the English translations) doesn't seem to suggest this at all. Also to consider is mention of the waters in the first couple verses. Did God create these waters, or have they always been? And did they occupy every part of space (covering the whole of the heavens and the earth)? Even in modern language, it's hard to tell what exactly is going on here.

Then God creates light, separating it from darkness. Seems like light is treated here as some distinct entity that can somehow be "peeled" away from darkness. Is darkness really being treated here as the absence of light? Whatever the case may be, light was created, and thus night and day came to be, and the first day passes. But when exactly did the first day in this context start? From the very beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth? Or when he created light? Maybe when he first created light, he kept it inseparable from darkness for the duration of the first evening, and then separated it from darkness to indicate morning? And, yes, I know, light without suns and stars, right? Seems like the ancients had a very different conception of light than we moderns do.

I'm going to cut it here for now, and continue my commentary on this passage later today (since I have work soon). Just thought I'd get this going now nevertheless.

Based on a suggestion sent to me via PM, I'll be including a link to the Bible passage under discussion every time I make these posts. So here's a link to Genesis 1:1-2:3.

Now continuing from the OP:

The next day, God makes a vault that separates the water above it from the water below it. This vault he calls the sky. Now I'm not sure exactly why the ancients believed that there was a mass of water above the vault, but I'm guessing it was their attempt to explain the fall of rain from the sky, or shall I say, from above the sky. And in fact, in a later passage in Genesis, it seems like this is what they actually did believe. They weren't completely wrong here, but the scientific answer is that rain results from the clouds within the sky. To be fair to them, they didn't have the scientific knowledge we have today, so the best they could do is make observations with their naked eyes and derive conclusions from them ... and fill in the gaps in knowledge with creative yet intuitive thinking. This also explains why they saw the sky as a vault of sorts, instead of layers of atmosphere surrounding a round planet. Anyway, that was the second day.

On the third day, God gathered the water beneath the vault to one place, revealing the earth underneath. I say "reveal" here instead of "create/make" because, according to my understanding of the first verses in the chapter, God had already created the earth. Thus, we have the land and the seas. Then, on the same day, God created plants of various types (including fruit-bearing trees), making the world greener and a more beautiful place.

But there was no sun yet ... even though there was already light. So on the fourth day, God created the sun and the moon and the stars. These were all placed within the vault of the sky, the sun being the greatest of the lights, and the moon being a lesser light. Fair enough ... that was their understanding. But one thing that confuses me here is how exactly do these lights separate light from darkness. I don't know, and they never explain in the text how this happens.

On the fifth day, God created fish (and other sea/aquatic creatures) of all kinds, and birds ... lots of them. And he really blessed them good. Cool, things are starting to become more vibrant now.

Next, on the sixth day, God creates the land animals (you know, elephants, lions, wolves, that kind of stuff), and crawly types (probably referring to insects, spiders, snakes, and such). Also, livestock (cows, sheep, goats, etc.). Finally, God created men and women, all in his image and likeness. And is it any wonder? Man and woman, after all, look so graceful and eminent and thoughtful compared to the animals, that they had to have been created in the likeness of a god. After encouraging them to be fruitful and multiply, God grants them authority to rule over all the other living things on earth, and made sure everyone was happy eating just green plants. It was a world that lacked suffering and cruelty, and it was indeed good.

Now satisfied, God decides to have some rest on the seventh day, making it a holy day of observance. It's the ancient Israelite's attempt to explain why they observe the Sabbath.

So that's the summary(?) of the text.

Some things to note here:

In an indirect sense, there is a teleological argument that could be gleaned from the text. Whatever God made, it was good (and this is stated multiple times in the passage). The whole world looked to the ancient as if it was one massive work of art only the amazing divine could have come up with. Later on, in the New Testament, the Apostle Paul attests to the existence of the divine by appealing to the observed wonders of, and in, this world. The ancients looked at the greenery of the trees and the plants, at the liveliness and vibrancy of living beings in the waters and in the skies and on the land, at the fascinatingly distant celestial bodies in the sky, and at each other and themselves, and could only conclude that a magnificent being, or family of beings, were behind all this.

Another thing to note is that the God of this passage, creator though he may be, isn't the classical god of philosophy but rather a god with physical form who modeled humans in his own image. Later interpreters would, of course, spiritualize this to mean God made humans in his spiritual image, giving them the capacity to think and know things, to reflect, to have morals, and all that.

All in all, still a beautiful read, even as I read this as an atheist. After all, I still remember with fondness that world of fantasies I would always enter as a little kid whenever I was reading the first few chapters of Genesis. There is something surreal (a sense of mysticism) about reading an ancient passage purportedly inspired by the divine and telling "little kid me" a wonderful story of creation of everything in existence around me, with only the mighty God ever having witnessed such a grand event.