7 Days

What better way for me to start off this fantastic space for clear and logical thought than with the creation of the whole goddamn place we've all come to know and love? Earth! What a concept, huh? I mean, obviously God only decided to pay extra-close attention to this world because of our incredibly important role as the divine species or maybe it was how building up a whole planet from nothing tires out the omnipotent. Either way, we should see just how all this life came to fruition. It's right there in the Bible if you care to know the answers to every question you've ever asked. Let's begin.

The First Day
"The first recorded Words of God that we have are "Let there be light" (Genesis 1:3 NIV). The sun was already shining brightly, but God made the earth's thick new atmosphere allow diffuse light to penetrate to the surface. And so it was that the light was made separate from darkness. The first day of earth's creation was literally the first "day" as someone on earth's surface would experience it - a period of opaque light, and a period of darkness." (Genesis 1:3-5)

Hey, why not right? We've got this sun just hanging out, wasting it's light on nothing so let's direct it at an object. If for no other reason than so God can see what the hell he's creating. You might ask who God was talking to when he let loose that fantastic opening to any Universe, "Let there be light!" Well, we should all know by now that the religious are quite often known to speak to themselves in prayer or in meditation, whatever you may call it. This is a completely natural act and in no way constitutes delusion or insanity. If he had said, "I have done as you asked Satan, there is light.", God may have been hauled off to the asylum. Let's continue.

The Second Day
"The separation of the waters. There was yet no liquid water, no oceans. All of the water was in the form of a vapor, a worldwide super-fog, extending a number of kilometers/miles up from the very hot (above the boiling temperature of water) bare-rock earth's surface (the earth's core remains molten right to the present day). God's "hovering over the waters" in verse 2 describes His being above that gaseous-water atmosphere, not a liquid ocean. God then caused most of the water to condense onto the cooling earth which simultaneously formed a whole-planet ocean and cleared the sky." (Genesis 1:6-8)

You thirsty? Boom. Try some of this. It's called water and it's pretty fucking awesome. I'm just glad he decided to change it from its gaseous state to a liquid or else I'd be parched as hell. Also, who could deal with an entire ocean's worth of humidity in the air? Uncomfortable! Side-note: Did you notice the hint at something that may be a great place to put all the sinners? Talk about a clever deity. He must have been planning that one from the start. This has been quite a 9-5 for our diligent creator. Anyways, another day, another step closer to a kick-ass planet. Moving right along.

The Third Day
"The first appearance of dry ground. The further cooling of the surface set in motion a process of natural contraction, uplifting and motion of the crust (the process continues today, called "plate tectonics"). The earth changed from a smooth one-level molten "cue ball" to a planet with an irregular surface with ocean basins and continental landmasses. With dry ground available, the first plants were made to grow in great abundance." (Genesis 1:9-13)

I don't know if you've ever tried to walk on molten lava, but it's tricky. It's kind of like that weekend office team building retreat where you have to walk across hot coals. Our calloused feet is the reason a non-believer may call attention to this so-called impressive showing of will and belief. It's obvious to a follower of Christ that one's faith is what allows us to traverse the perils of the smoldering embers. Even God knew we wouldn't be able to walk on that lava so he decided to cool it all off in a day or so. He's just that good. Okay so we've got flora. Fauna has to be next, right?

The Fourth Day
"With the sky now clear, the sun, moon and stars were dependably visible. They were to "serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years." The sun marked the day (sunset to sunset), the moon the month (new moon to new moon), and the stars the seasons (constellations are seen in particular seasons e.g. "Orion" is visible in winter in the northern hemisphere, which is summer in the southern hemisphere)." (Genesis 1:14-19)

Well, damn. I was wrong. God was actually pretty lazy on the 4th day. He didn't really do much except maybe get things moving i.e. the Earth's rotation around the sun and the spin upon its own axis. It's like a shove, really. All day for this one effortless nudge? Whatever you say, Bible. As far as the stars shining, that's kind of a cause and effect. I'm not going to count that as an item to check off on his to-do list. Now let's get something down there to hang out in this place.

The Fifth Day
"Great numbers of birds and sea creatures. God blessed them and said, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth." (Genesis 1:20-23)

Alright! We've got some birds. Great. I assume he tossed in some sharks, whales, sea anemones, etc. We've got life, people! I don't know if I'd gloss over this the way the Bible does. You've gotta milk it and grab the readers by the throat. "Fucking great whites! Do you know how many teeth God had to make?!" That kind of thing. Maybe I'm just a better writer than the the all-powerful creator of the cosmos. But anyways, he got these animals sexin' and went back to sleep.

The Sixth Day
"Vast numbers of land animals. Man. From the man, woman (humans today are just now discovering how to genetically alter fertilized embryos, and even to create one human from the tissue of another - known as "cloning")." (Genesis 1:24-31)

Wait a second...is that..us? Hey! We made it! I was beginning to think He cared more about the lava and tectonic plates than He did those He created in his own image. He made a dude(Adam. Thank god he wasn't born addicted to crack or anything like that) He then snagged the rib out of that dude and made a chick(Eve). So there they are. Living it up in the Garden of Eden and everything's great and always would be. Right? I haven't read any further into the good book than that so I'm going on the assumption that nothing unwanted or undeserved would ever happen to our protagonists. Okay, that's pretty much everything. Land, air, sea, and animals. I'd say He earned this 7th day respite.

The Seventh Day
"The Sabbath Day. "By the seventh day God had finished the work He had been doing; so on the seventh day He rested from all His work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it He rested [orceased] from all the work of creating that He had done." The day that is the basis for The Fourth Commandment." (Genesis 2:2-3)

Keep holy the Sabbath. Understandable, right? Not really. This one's kind of a sneaky move on his part in that it creates the perfect excuse for everyone to forget about everything they had planned all week and stop to honor him for hours on end. Thanks for giving me all this God, but now you want me to give you back 1/7th of it? Not to mention all the time I have to spend sleeping, there goes another 1/3 of every day. Oh, and I'm almost constantly eating, going to the bathroom,shaving, clipping fingernails, etc. The way I see it, if you wanted us to spend all this time praising you, you shouldn't have given us all these stipulations for living. But I digress, 7 days, one crazy-ass week, and it's done. By the way, when you break it down into a lot of other equal periods of time it sounds less impressive. Less 'holy.' 1/52 of a year seems kind of arbitrary. 10,080 minutes? Why couldn't He have completed it in 10,079 minutes? I guess it was never a race so that's a point in His favor. But why spend any time on it at all? Why not complete it before He started it? And why tell us about the 7 days afterward? Not a very modest creator.

Genesis sets itself up for mockery. When you're trying to present the facts for an absolute, all-powerful deity, why give Him such slow, comically dwarfed abilities? Why is He restricted to the cycle of a day when we on Earth are the only ones that are affected by the Earth's spin away from the light of the sun? It seems if we were truly the reason all this was created, then all that there is would be completely available to us. There wouldn't be a majority of space that completely lacks the ability to sustain life. There wouldn't be planets without water or plant-life to provide oxygen. Also, a valid point is just how unlivable much of our own wondrous planet really is. Volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, earthquakes, freezing cold, intense heat, the majority of the planet submerged in water. For a world created with us clearly in mind, He apparently had no fucking idea what we needed to survive. This hardly seems to me to be someone or something worth devoting time of sheer admiration or wonder to. He did a rather poor job and should be treated as such.

The thing about this entire introduction to God/genesis/Christianity thing that really gets me is the simplicity of it all. It's so easy for a child to comprehend and then have a rapid, unscientific, understanding of the world around them. The truth of it is assumed. Once you know this, you have nowhere to go but further into Christian dogma and superstition. It's appeal is its absolute explanation for how things came to be and why we are here...but that lends not an ounce of credence to it. Evolution swiftly separates the placement of animals on the planet from the fiction it came from. They were not simply 'created' and immediately set upon their instinctual goal of eating, mating, and survival in general. Through the slow and non-sentient process of adaptation and natural selection they came to evolve to what animals we now see today. People seem to truly despise the thought of us coming from a primordial ooze as it were, but I much prefer that to the tribal and archaic postulations religion imposes upon us to this very day. What a fantastic thing it is that we are able to actually observe and comment upon the world around us. That we can shake loose the shackles of a way-of-life that enslaved so many before us and has no true purpose among civilized people of the 21st century.

The moral debate is obviously a great one, but even if the placement of Christian theology upon the masses drove them to be more generous, caring or loving (which is in no way proven and tends to be shown as quite the opposite) it does not lend an bit of truth to God's existence. I believe religion to be an oppressor of free-thought, an enemy of progression that the world would be far better off without. Moreover, I believe we must take religion off of it's pedestal and let our criticisms be heard. If you have doubt, let people know it. If we can expose a religious leader of hypocrisy and immorality or criminal behavior, we must do so. Time has and will continue to teach us of the wrongs committed by those who profess to know all the answers. Their piety does not provide them with any immunity or placement above any other. Remember to always use your critical and logical faculties and to never stop questioning things, especially those things which do not require evidence to exist.

Or maybe you can find solace in this?

"The question of whether the seven days of creation were literal days, or symbolic of stages of development is actually irrelevant to the undeniable reality that Creation happened. The observable universe, the earth beneath our feet, and every one of us exist. Who needs more proof than that?"

http://www.keyway.ca/htm2002/sevncrea.htm

I do.

David D.

"I am so made that I cannot believe"