The Answers Probably Aren't in Genesis. Pt.1

In this series of articles I plan to have a deeper look into Genesis and evaluate its claims about the creation of the world and the universe. 

Genesis is a key book in the Bible, one that Creationists so fervently refer to and base their assumptions on, as seen in such typical theistic radicals like Ken Ham and Wendy Wright. Genesis, with all its fantastical stories, is the basis for something called Creation Science; which is a branch of Creationism that ‘strives to use legitimate scientific means both to disprove evolutionary theory and to prove the creation account as described in Scripture’¹. As others have textbooks on subjects from which they learn, so this is the Creationist’s textbook in a way. Though we should not regard it as a textbook in the traditional sense; Genesis is not a comprised of peer-reviewed and agreed upon information that we know is [currently] accurate. The origins of Genesis can be traced back to tenth century BCE² and one can make a reasoned argument that other than in translation, the text would have seen little revision or updating from that time until now.

I do not plan to tackle this evaluation of Genesis by a direct and exhaustive comparison with modern science so much as I plan to judge the text based on its own merits and failings. For instance, one could not judge Harry Potter’s magic by the modern laws of physics and biology, in this context it would be, as Wolfgang Pauli sharply put it, ‘not even wrong’*. I will be going through Genesis systematically and I will deconstruct the text and aim to find out its meaning, because there is meaning within the words, just perhaps not the meaning so often implied by Creationists and other perhaps less radical theists

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To dismiss out of hand the Creationist’s world-view would be intellectually dishonest of me; one cannot simply come to a conclusion without first understanding the facts about why a person might believe something. Those facts are all around us; those facts that the Creationist believes are all the evidence they could ever need for the existence of God on the one hand and proof of creation on the other. It is easy to see why they believe this too.

The natural world is magnificent. 

There really is no denying its amazing majesty, from the grandeur and magnitude of things like the Grand Canyon and the larger animals and fishes to the intricate and wondrous microscopic world inhabited by all number of tiny creatures. What’s more is why, to the Creationists, the evidence is so overwhelming; how could all of this not be designed when it looks so well put together, everything seemingly so perfectly suited for its purpose? 

The Bible offers one explanation for this and, to many, a very persuasive one; it starts out as it means to continue with the supposedly irrefutable fact that God created everything - the pinnacle of intelligent design.

So let's take an objective look at this first, and arguably, most important book in the Bible because it is very relevant to the Creationists and other Christians alike on two fronts; it provides the creation story and provides indisputable evidence for God's existence and power. 

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Genesis opens with a bold statement;

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" 

(Gen 1:1).

From this opening line the expectation of belief is immediately and explicitly presented to the reader; there was nothing before this event apart from God because he just had to be there, otherwise how would he have created the heaven and the earth? 

There is a beautifully unbroken piece of circular reasoning in these first few words of the Bible; God must exist because he made the heaven and the Earth, therefore everything that exists is proof of God (Hempel’s Raven paradox springs to mind here, itself being an exercise in inductive reasoning - something which theists employ almost irrespective of contradicting evidence; a confirmation bias). The opposing side of this, as most Creationists put forward, is the position that if it was not God then it was random events that caused the creation of the Earth. This argument is three fallacies rolled into one; a straw man, a false dichotomy and an argument from personal incredulity; it misrepresents the nature of the creation of the Earth to make the argument for God seemingly more credible – unguided things could not make a complex planet/life; it proposed that there are only two possibilities (God or random events) when there are more than that and it makes the argument, from the false dichotomy position, that random events could not have possibly brought about the creation of the Earth because it’s too improbable (Hoyle’s junkyard tornado**).

Sadly there is no explanation of how God did this; how did God create the heaven and the earth, what did he use? It could have been written, for instance, that God collected all the dust and rocks from the universe and created the Earth from it, which would be more plausible. Also, as implied by the first line, God is already there (wherever ‘there’ is) then *poof* - we have the heaven and the Earth.

What is also implied, or perhaps assumed, is that it this blink of an eye God created the entire universe as well. Though the meaning of the word 'heaven' here isn't explicit and two options are available and should be weighted as to which one is more probable (assuming the passage is trying to describe something real); the first is that ‘Heaven’ is the atmosphere surrounding the planet Earth, or ‘Heaven’ is the entirety of the universe as a great big blank canvass waiting to be filled. The problem here is that heaven is used again, a little later in regards to a ‘firmament’ (Gen 1:8) but we’ll come onto that in due course.

It seems we are looking at cosmic terms “the heaven and earth”. The Earth at least is a celestial body so from this we can make the reasoned assumption that ‘heaven’ is the universe, or galaxy, at least. There is one last option; it could be Heaven, as in the place you supposedly go when you die as long as you are a good person - sorry Westboro Baptist Church-goers, although morality is often agued as subjective, in many ways I’m pretty sure God would have much to say about hating on innocents. Oh, nope, he drowned them all in a flood one time; men, women, children and animals, indiscriminately.

This God, who apparently is pre-existing in this void before the universe is created, raises the question of where did God come from? This question highlights the problem with the Creationist’s argument for irreducible complexity so often deployed against evolution, among other things. It falls down in the face of a God who is, by definition, irreducibly complex. God suddenly decides to create the universe and the Earth from nothing, what is more is that it is not explained why or, more importantly, how God did this – he just did. 

Genesis 1:1 is the Creationist's 'Big Bang' if you will,

 just lacking the theory.

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Thank you for reading as always.

Writen by A.R. Bell (2015)

#LogicShotgun

@ARB_itrary

Part 2 of TAPNIG will look at Genesis 1:2 and the problems with translation and interpretation.

* Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958), a noted theoretical physicist, is quoted to have said of a theory or position that was so wrong it was not even falsifiable and as such did not belong in the realm of science, although often posing as such, that it was “not even wrong”. - Peierls, R. (1960). "Wolfgang Ernst Pauli, 1900–1958". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 5: 186. And; http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Quotations/Pauli.html

** Fred Hoyle (1915-2001) proposed that “the chance that higher life forms might have emerged in this way is comparable to the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.” It should be noted that Hoyle was a noted Astronomer, Fellow of the Royal Society and atheist. – Burbidge, G (2003) “Sir Fred Hoyle. 24 June 1915 - 20 august 2001 Elected FRS 1957” Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 49: 213. (http://rsbm.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/49/213)

1 Petto, Andrew J.; Godfrey, Laurie R. Scientists Confront Creationism. New York, London: Norton

2 Brueggemann, Walter. Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy. Minneapolis: Fortress.