Genesis 1:16-18

Dr. Hogwash (JA0702SA)

Affording the obvious blunders dreamed up by Yahweh for the first 15 passages, we must stop and seriously examine the passages of Gen1:16-18.

The passage is as follows:

¹⁶God made two great lights-the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. ¹⁷God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth, ¹⁸ to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good.

In order to understand the exact problems with this passage let us disassemble it and review it piece by piece.

GEN1:16

God made two great lights

Here Yahweh is said to have created two great lights, which we must assume are the Sun (Sol) and the Moon (Luna). The sun, as we know, is a star. We also understand that the planets of our solar system revolve around it. The sun sits at the center of our solar system and it’s very powerful gravitational pull in effect swings the planets around it. This effect is similar to swinging a bucket around in a circle or the effect of swinging in a swing.

Realize that the light that we see from our sun is but a tiny fraction of the actual energy that the star produces. That is to say, that if god created the universe and we are the reason for his creation, as it is implied by our supposed greatness and apparent likeness to god, then god created a very inefficient light source for our single planet. This does not mean that the sun is inefficient, on the contrary, the sun is an excellent furnace. But, if we take the context of man being the center of the universe, then yes, the sun is inefficient, because most of it’s energy is sent into space, and lost. It is the equivalent of a man hording billions of dollars in money. It’s all about flash, and pomp, without any need to fill. It’s over kill.

Now add those billions of other stars you see in the night sky. Zillions of tons of wasted energy every moment, just so that we can look up at the sky at night? That hardly seems likely.

Some might say that god did this all to glorify is power. But I say that’s hogwash. For if god were so megalomaniacal, then where has he been in last 2K years? Some creature that could do such amazing things as making stars, and stars solely for the sake of just seeing them, would most assuredly require that this greatness never surrender, and constantly need the reaffirming of its creation. And if you read the rest of Genesis, you will see that the writers of the bible assumed this as well, by the constant interruptions god plays on his creation. But, after the advent of science, god has disappeared, leaving us with his creation. Odd?

The other great light created by Yahweh at this time is the Moon. Which turns out to be a planetoid that revolves around the earth, and not an actual light source at all. In fact, the light we see radiating from the moon’s surface is sun light that has been reflected back into space by the sun’s very powerful radiation. Obviously we must assume that god understood the difference between a planet and a star and would have made sure as to inform his ‘holy’ writers of this inherit difference at the time of writing. But since this is not the case, we must therefore assume that the writer had no idea about the difference between a star and a planet and assumed some kind of idiots logic to justify the purpose for the moonlight. An example of this 4bc logic would be: During the day men need to see what they are doing, so the light that god created for the day is very bright. But during night, men need to sleep, but sometimes need light, and since the need for light is constant, god gave man ‘nightlight’ as a way to distinguish it from ‘daylight’.

The greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night.

Here is that exact example of -4^th century logic at work. One light to govern the day(The Sun), must mean that somehow day and night are intentionally distinguishable and not nearly the affected motion of the planet as it revolves around its axis. This is an important distinction and should be made clear. The mentality of this passage is that there is something ‘cosmically’ different between day and night. The writer is implying that god made “Day” and “Night” as two separate entities. This is a bogus argument. The reality is that Day and Night are nothing more than the rotation of the planet about its own axis. This means, that from God’s standpoint (looking down on us) there is no day or night, as there would be none for people standing on the moon looking down on the planet earth. Not to mention the planet itself would not have a concept of day and night. Day and Night, are therefore only obvious to those that actually sit on the planet surface, unaware of its rotation and assuming that the sun is ‘rising’ and ‘falling’.

The lesser light that governs the night does in fact sometimes rise during the day. Surely Yahweh would have made sure that the night governor was to stay within its realm and not to encroach on good old Sol’s domain. But since the moon is in fact orbiting the planet it is allowed to do what physics requires of it. Did the writer just not ever see it during the day, or is he attempting to misinform the reader?

He also made the stars.

I often times imply that passages were added after a situation arose where a question about the text was raised. This passage is a good example. Making the stars is a pretty big deal and you would have thought that it would have dictated a passage heading all to itself. It could be that later writers were stricken with the obvious dilemma of the creation of the stars and in order to sedate the little old ladies they simple added these five words where it seemed most appropriate. The problem is that these five words are quite possibly the most damning against the whole of the bible.

Stars as we now well know, are actually large gaseous balls of molten elements. A star is a huge nuclear furnace, where hydrogen is fused together to form heavier elements. As the star ages the heavy elements become heavier and sink toward the center of the star. Our sun, as explained earlier, is a star. We now know that stars are very far away. In fact they are so far away that we can’t measure the distance with classic lengths, like miles or kilometers, because the numbers would be so astronomical that they couldn’t be worked with. Instead we use a system of measuring their distance by the fasted known substance in the universe: light.

Light is so fast that it takes less than 9 minutes for it to travel from the sun to the surface of the earth, which are 93,000,000 miles apart. We measure by how far light can travel in a year: which is about 5,880,000,000,000 miles.

In the night sky our nearest neighbor (Alpha Centari Cen C) is on the order of 4 light years away, that’s:

25,284,000,000,000 miles

In order to give you the idea of how far away that is, in the seventies we launched some probes into space, those probes are just reaching the out limits of our solar system.

The bible, if it is to be believed, must be the word of god. That means that god could not make up lies or twist the truth or offer contradictions to his own creation. If the bible is really the word of god, then we must assume that the genealogy of Adam is correct. That if we use the ancestry offered to us from the works in the bible we know that the planet is only really about 5 to 10 thousand years old. And since it says in this passage that god created the starts and Sun and Moon, than it wouldn’t be to much of a stretch to assume that god created the universe at about (or after) the creation of earth.

What then of the stars? If the bible is correct then the stars a contradiction to creation. The stars show us that the universe is much older than the bible claims. Some Christian scientists would attempt to blame the devil for this, as they have with dinosaur bones, and carbon dating. Since neither dinosaurs nor carbon14 appear in the bible, it easy for the Christian scientist to argue against science fact. You see they assume that the devil is constantly filling the world with false data and thus keeping god’s creation confused from the truth…that being, of course, that Yesu Ben Mary was god.

But since in this case, the text of the bible clearly states that Yahweh created the stars, then we have to beg this question to be answered. If god created the stars at the same time as he created the earth, then how is it possible that we see the light of stars that are hundreds of millions of light years away? If god created the earth only ten thousand years ago, then the only light we should see in the night sky should be no more than eleven thousand years old. Any light older than eleven thousand years took time to arrive here. This even takes in the effects of gravity or any other anomaly that could effect the speed of light. The fact is, light from stars millions of years old is visible in the night sky.

If god created the universe 10 thousand years ago then he must have created the illusion of an older universe by offering up ‘old’ light at the beginning of it all. This raise more questions than it answers.

Could it be that god intentionally created a paradox? But for what purpose? To further flummox us into disbelief? The problem with this logic is that if god intentionally deceives his own creation, then anything god says would have to be taken as a lie. This would mean that Yesu Ben Mary was quite possibly a lie as well. Anything written as the word of god would have to taken as possibly false for god would have begun creation with deception.

Could it be that god un-intentionally created a paradox? This is just as damning and dangerous as the first statement. If god accidentally did it then we have to assume that god is not all power, nor all knowing, because he could not create the universe in a manner where he was in control of the creation. I don’t know about you, but such a creature is very dangerous. After all, are we just a whim of it’s fancy, a fancy that is unguided and out of control?

The point of this is obvious. If god created the universe 10 thousand years ago, then he made a mistake, either in the writing of the bible, either in the creation of ‘old’ light, or either in his apparent control.

God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth.

Assume, again, that this passage was written by someone in the 4 century bc and put yourself in his place. Believe that you are the center of the universe. Believe that god, loves you, and put you there on the planet intentionally. Now look up at the night sky and say, “This is all for me!” This is basically what the humans that wrote the bible are saying. That the light of sun, moon, and stars, is in fact a gift from god to light our nights and our days. That they are not celestial bodies that exist for their own greatness. No, there are just ‘tools’ for us to stare at and wonder at god’s greatness…of course, that is, god’s greatness for the sake of us.

This sort of belief denies the glory of the creation. It instead, focuses on the individual. Why did god create the stars? For us. That mentality is the reason for a lot of our major social concerns. It is that mentality that dictates our wanton destruction of nature.

To govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness.

This is quite possible the dumbest thing I’ve ever read. Darkness, is defined as without light, or the absence of light. The night sky is dark, because the earth rotates and part of its surface goes into the earth’s shadow. While that happens another part of the planet rotates into the light. Therefore, the planet is never in darkness any more than it is in light. There is no separation of light from dark, not really. The only reason we see this distinction is because we are slow and tiny creatures. Imagine, if you will that you were able to run about 1,000 miles per hour. If you could, you would be able to run in day light for every. Because you could run at the speed that world revolves and therefore would be able counter the rotation of the planet. Or imagine that you are Russia. That is, the country itself. You are this monstrous land mass, that is so large in fact, that the sun never sets on it. That on the east coast of Russian, when the sun is setting, it is dawn on the west coast. If you were Russia, you would not understand this concept of dark and light.

The reason we see dark and light, hot and cold, top and bottom, up and down, is because we are small, slow creatures. We perceive all these things through our senses and therefore, if you know anything about perception, you must realize that the truth of day and night are just part of the duality of man, and hardly necessary for a deity.

Together

What this passage is attempting to explain is the creation of day and night. It uses these heavenly bodies as the way to mark the passage of time (which we still do). If that was all this passage was doing, then I would be fine with it. But the truth is that this passage is suppose to be the word of god and such a word is infallible. But it is obvious that the passage is full of error, then is it safe to assume that his passage is not the word of god? If that is the case, then would it be safe to assume that there are other passages in the bible that are not accurate? And if that is the case could I assume that there are enough inaccurate stories in the bible to ‘alter’ the meaning of the bible and allow for it to be interpreted in-accurately, both in the past and the future? If this is the case, would it be prudent to assume that the bible is not accurate and contains ‘some’ true, versus the present theory that the bible is completely truth?