wmech
2005-05-22 17:50:11 UTC
Bible inconsistencies and pure myths.
1.. The Genesis 1 creation account conflicts with the order of events that
are known to science. In Genesis, the earth is created before light and
stars, birds and whales before reptiles and insects, and flowering plants
before any animals. The true order of events was just the opposite. 1:1-2:3
2.. God creates light and separates light from darkness, and day from
night, on the first day. Yet he didn't make the light producing objects (the
sun and the stars) until the fourth day (1:14-19). And how could there be
"the evening and the morning" on the first day if there was no sun to mark
them? 1:3-5
3.. God spends one-sixth of his entire creative effort (the second day)
working on a solid firmament. This strange structure, which God calls
heaven, is intended to separate the higher waters from the lower waters.
1:6-8
4.. Plants are made on the third day before there was a sun to drive their
photosynthetic processes (1:14-19). 1:11
5.. God lets "the earth bring forth" the plants, rather than creating them
directly. Maybe Genesis is not so anti-evolution after all. 1:11
6.. In an apparent endorsement of astrology, God places the sun, moon, and
stars in the firmament so that they can be used "for signs". This, of
course, is exactly what astrologers do: read "the signs" in the Zodiac in an
effort to predict what will happen on Earth. 1:14
7.. God makes two lights: "the greater light [the sun] to rule the day,
and the lesser light [the moon] to rule the night." But the moon is not a
light, but only reflects light from the sun. And why, if God made the moon
to "rule the night", does it spend half of its time moving through the
daytime sky? 1:16
8.. "He made the stars also." God spends a day making light (before making
the stars) and separating light from darkness; then, at the end of a hard
day's work, and almost as an afterthought, he makes the trillions of stars.
1:16
9.. "And God set them [the stars] in the firmament of the heaven to give
light upon the earth." 1:17
10.. In verse 11, God "let the earth bring forth" the plants. Now he has
the earth "bring forth" the animals as well. So maybe the creationists have
it all wrong. Maybe God created livings things through the process of
evolution. 1:24
11.. God gave humans dominion over every other living thing on earth. 1:26
12.. God commands us to "be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the
earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over ... every living thing that
moveth upon the earth." 1:28
13.. All animals were originally herbivores. Tapeworms, vampire bats,
mosquitoes, and barracudas -- all were strict vegetarians, as they were
created by God. 1:30
14.. "God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very
good." He purposefully designed a system that ensures the suffering and
death of all his creatures, parasite and host, predator and prey. 1:31
15.. In Genesis 1 the entire creation takes 6 days, but the universe is at
least 12 billion years old, with new stars constantly being formed. 1:31
16.. Humans were not created instantaneously from dust and breath, but
evolved over millions of years from simpler life forms. 2:7
17.. After making the animals, God has Adam name them all. The naming of
several million species must have kept Adam busy for a while. But animals
were not created instantaneously from the ground, but evolved over millions
of years. And we still don't have names for all of them. Ten thousand new
species of insects are discovered and named each year. 2:18-22
18.. God curses the serpent. From now on the serpent will crawl on his
belly and eat dust. One wonders how he got around before -- by hopping on
his tail, perhaps? But snakes don't eat dust, do they? 3:14
19.. Because Adam listened to Eve, God cursed the ground and causes thorns
and thistles to grow. Before this, according to the (false) Genesis story,
plants had no natural defenses. The rose had no thorn, cacti were spineless,
holly leaves were smooth, and the nettle had no sting. Foxgloves, oleander,
and milkweeds were all perfectly safe to eat. 3:17-18
20.. "There were giants in the earth in those days." Well, I suppose it's
good to know that. But why is there no archaeological evidence for the
existence of these giants? 6:4
21.. Noah is told to make an ark that is 450 feet long. 6:14-15
22.. Whether by twos or by sevens, Noah takes male and female
representatives from each species of "every thing that creepeth upon the
earth." 7:8
23.. God opens the "windows of heaven." He does this every time it rains.
7:11
24.. All of the animals boarded the ark "in the selfsame day." 7:13-14
How do you get over 2,000,000 animals to board an arch in one day?
How do you feed all these animals for a year?
25.. The flood covered the highest mountain tops (Mount Everest?) with
fifteen cubits to spare. 7:20
26.. "The windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was
restrained." This happens whenever it stops raining. 8:2
27.. Noah sends a dove out to see if there was any dry land. But the dove
returns without finding any. Then, just seven days later, the dove goes out
again and returns with an olive leaf. But how could an olive tree survive
the flood? And if any seeds happened to survive, they certainly wouldn't
germinate and grow leaves within a seven day period. 8:8-11
28.. When the animals left the ark, what would they have eaten? There
would have been no plants after the ground had been submerged for nearly a
year. What would the carnivores have eaten? Whatever prey they ate would
have gone extinct. And how did the New World primates or the Australian
marsupials find there way back after the flood subsided? 8:19
29.. Noah kills the "clean beasts" and burns their dead bodies for God.
According to 7:8 this would have caused the extinction of all "clean"
animals since only two of each were taken onto the ark. 8:20-21
30.. "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth." Although this
would have been good advice for the mythical Noah, it is deadly advice for
humankind as a whole. Overpopulation is one of our greatest problems, yet
there is nothing in the bible to address it. 9:1
31.. According to this verse, all animals fear humans. Although it is true
that many do, it is also true that some do not. Sharks and grizzly bears,
for example, are generally much less afraid of us than we are of them. 9:2
32.. "Into your hand are they (the animals) delivered." God gave the
animals to humans, and they can do whatever they please with them. This
verse has been used by bible believers to justify all kinds of cruelty to
anmials and environmental destruction. 9:2
33.. God is rightly filled with remorse for having killed his creatures.
He even puts the rainbow in the sky to remind himself of his promise to the
animals not to do it again. But rainbows are caused by the nature of light,
the refractive index of water, and the shape of raindrops. There were
rainbows billions of years before humans existed. 9:13
34.. Some creationists believe that this verse refers to continental
drift, which, they say, began to occur during the days of Pelag (which means
"division"), about 100 or so years after the flood. But many other
creationists disagree. 10:25
35.. "The whole earth was of one language." But this could not be true,
since by this time (around 2400 BCE) there were already many languages, each
unintelligible to the others. 11:1, 6
36.. God worries that people could actually build a tower high enough to
reach him (them?) in heaven. 11:4
37.. According to the Tower of Babel story, the many human languages were
created instantaneously by God. But actually the various languages evolved
gradually over long periods of time. 11:9
38.. The ridiculously long lives of the patriarchs. 11:10-32
39.. "And they returned to the land of the Philistines." But the
Philistines didn't arrive in the region of Canaan until around 1400 BCE --
600 years after Abraham's supposed migration from Ur. 21:32, 26:1, 21:32,
21:32, 8, 15, 18
--
Bill
1.. The Genesis 1 creation account conflicts with the order of events that
are known to science. In Genesis, the earth is created before light and
stars, birds and whales before reptiles and insects, and flowering plants
before any animals. The true order of events was just the opposite. 1:1-2:3
2.. God creates light and separates light from darkness, and day from
night, on the first day. Yet he didn't make the light producing objects (the
sun and the stars) until the fourth day (1:14-19). And how could there be
"the evening and the morning" on the first day if there was no sun to mark
them? 1:3-5
3.. God spends one-sixth of his entire creative effort (the second day)
working on a solid firmament. This strange structure, which God calls
heaven, is intended to separate the higher waters from the lower waters.
1:6-8
4.. Plants are made on the third day before there was a sun to drive their
photosynthetic processes (1:14-19). 1:11
5.. God lets "the earth bring forth" the plants, rather than creating them
directly. Maybe Genesis is not so anti-evolution after all. 1:11
6.. In an apparent endorsement of astrology, God places the sun, moon, and
stars in the firmament so that they can be used "for signs". This, of
course, is exactly what astrologers do: read "the signs" in the Zodiac in an
effort to predict what will happen on Earth. 1:14
7.. God makes two lights: "the greater light [the sun] to rule the day,
and the lesser light [the moon] to rule the night." But the moon is not a
light, but only reflects light from the sun. And why, if God made the moon
to "rule the night", does it spend half of its time moving through the
daytime sky? 1:16
8.. "He made the stars also." God spends a day making light (before making
the stars) and separating light from darkness; then, at the end of a hard
day's work, and almost as an afterthought, he makes the trillions of stars.
1:16
9.. "And God set them [the stars] in the firmament of the heaven to give
light upon the earth." 1:17
10.. In verse 11, God "let the earth bring forth" the plants. Now he has
the earth "bring forth" the animals as well. So maybe the creationists have
it all wrong. Maybe God created livings things through the process of
evolution. 1:24
11.. God gave humans dominion over every other living thing on earth. 1:26
12.. God commands us to "be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the
earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over ... every living thing that
moveth upon the earth." 1:28
13.. All animals were originally herbivores. Tapeworms, vampire bats,
mosquitoes, and barracudas -- all were strict vegetarians, as they were
created by God. 1:30
14.. "God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very
good." He purposefully designed a system that ensures the suffering and
death of all his creatures, parasite and host, predator and prey. 1:31
15.. In Genesis 1 the entire creation takes 6 days, but the universe is at
least 12 billion years old, with new stars constantly being formed. 1:31
16.. Humans were not created instantaneously from dust and breath, but
evolved over millions of years from simpler life forms. 2:7
17.. After making the animals, God has Adam name them all. The naming of
several million species must have kept Adam busy for a while. But animals
were not created instantaneously from the ground, but evolved over millions
of years. And we still don't have names for all of them. Ten thousand new
species of insects are discovered and named each year. 2:18-22
18.. God curses the serpent. From now on the serpent will crawl on his
belly and eat dust. One wonders how he got around before -- by hopping on
his tail, perhaps? But snakes don't eat dust, do they? 3:14
19.. Because Adam listened to Eve, God cursed the ground and causes thorns
and thistles to grow. Before this, according to the (false) Genesis story,
plants had no natural defenses. The rose had no thorn, cacti were spineless,
holly leaves were smooth, and the nettle had no sting. Foxgloves, oleander,
and milkweeds were all perfectly safe to eat. 3:17-18
20.. "There were giants in the earth in those days." Well, I suppose it's
good to know that. But why is there no archaeological evidence for the
existence of these giants? 6:4
21.. Noah is told to make an ark that is 450 feet long. 6:14-15
22.. Whether by twos or by sevens, Noah takes male and female
representatives from each species of "every thing that creepeth upon the
earth." 7:8
23.. God opens the "windows of heaven." He does this every time it rains.
7:11
24.. All of the animals boarded the ark "in the selfsame day." 7:13-14
How do you get over 2,000,000 animals to board an arch in one day?
How do you feed all these animals for a year?
25.. The flood covered the highest mountain tops (Mount Everest?) with
fifteen cubits to spare. 7:20
26.. "The windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was
restrained." This happens whenever it stops raining. 8:2
27.. Noah sends a dove out to see if there was any dry land. But the dove
returns without finding any. Then, just seven days later, the dove goes out
again and returns with an olive leaf. But how could an olive tree survive
the flood? And if any seeds happened to survive, they certainly wouldn't
germinate and grow leaves within a seven day period. 8:8-11
28.. When the animals left the ark, what would they have eaten? There
would have been no plants after the ground had been submerged for nearly a
year. What would the carnivores have eaten? Whatever prey they ate would
have gone extinct. And how did the New World primates or the Australian
marsupials find there way back after the flood subsided? 8:19
29.. Noah kills the "clean beasts" and burns their dead bodies for God.
According to 7:8 this would have caused the extinction of all "clean"
animals since only two of each were taken onto the ark. 8:20-21
30.. "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth." Although this
would have been good advice for the mythical Noah, it is deadly advice for
humankind as a whole. Overpopulation is one of our greatest problems, yet
there is nothing in the bible to address it. 9:1
31.. According to this verse, all animals fear humans. Although it is true
that many do, it is also true that some do not. Sharks and grizzly bears,
for example, are generally much less afraid of us than we are of them. 9:2
32.. "Into your hand are they (the animals) delivered." God gave the
animals to humans, and they can do whatever they please with them. This
verse has been used by bible believers to justify all kinds of cruelty to
anmials and environmental destruction. 9:2
33.. God is rightly filled with remorse for having killed his creatures.
He even puts the rainbow in the sky to remind himself of his promise to the
animals not to do it again. But rainbows are caused by the nature of light,
the refractive index of water, and the shape of raindrops. There were
rainbows billions of years before humans existed. 9:13
34.. Some creationists believe that this verse refers to continental
drift, which, they say, began to occur during the days of Pelag (which means
"division"), about 100 or so years after the flood. But many other
creationists disagree. 10:25
35.. "The whole earth was of one language." But this could not be true,
since by this time (around 2400 BCE) there were already many languages, each
unintelligible to the others. 11:1, 6
36.. God worries that people could actually build a tower high enough to
reach him (them?) in heaven. 11:4
37.. According to the Tower of Babel story, the many human languages were
created instantaneously by God. But actually the various languages evolved
gradually over long periods of time. 11:9
38.. The ridiculously long lives of the patriarchs. 11:10-32
39.. "And they returned to the land of the Philistines." But the
Philistines didn't arrive in the region of Canaan until around 1400 BCE --
600 years after Abraham's supposed migration from Ur. 21:32, 26:1, 21:32,
21:32, 8, 15, 18
--
Bill