If I, as a Bible believing Christian, listen to the Bible hating, atheist, and non-Christian speaker, I find that they usually take some very silly, superficial, and even made-up opinions on what Genesis says concerning the creation of the Universe, and push it as the true and correct narrative. These people are really either, too comfortable and lazy to go and read the Bible for themselves, or due to their poor investigative methods, unable to grasp the simplest of explanations from the Bible.
But fight for their narrative, they will. I will prove this statement in this thread, because when I will be done, you will see many Bible attackers continue to fight with hair-splitting semantics.
I will put it in one question (as it was framed by Zakir Naik in 2000)
“If the God of the Bible was unable to explain how He created the Universe, how can we trust anything else He said?”
And this was what drove me to investigate for myself when I wanted to make fools of the Christian, their God, and their Bible.
The questions posed by the Atheist, and copied by the Muslim in their vigorous proselyting, was:
1. How was it possible that God created the Earth before the Sun, Moon and stars if the Bible say they were created on the 4th day, when science today knows that the Sun and Stars are part of the Universe and was created before the Earth.
2. Why does the Bible say everything was created in 6 days (6 000 years ago), when science today knows that the universe took billions of years to take its’ current shape?
3. If Christians believe these ‘Days” in Genesis to be thousands of years each, they will have to explain how plant life survived from day 3 to day 4 without any sunlight?
I loved these questions, and I was so sure this will be my evidence to proving the Biblical God as erroneous in science, and a mythological idea.
Every time I see a new thread opened by the atheist on this topic, I can only shake my head in disbelief. Not to the person who posts these allegations, but to myself for the reasons to why I needed to know what the atheist wanted me to belief. I soooo much needed their observations to be true!!!
I needed their evidence that the Bible was at fault…
So that I could soothe my conscience with “evidence” that my atheism was solidly on a foundation of “Science”.
Well, it took me about 3 weeks to lose that fight!
So, Lets see what I found!
The Bible say:
1. In the beginning God created the Heavens and Earth.
2. The Earth was without shape, empty, and it was a dark and wet collection where the Spirit of God hovered above.
3. Then God said “Let there be Light!”, and it was evening and morning. Day 1.
4. Then God divided waters above a “Firmament”, from waters below this firmament. Day 2.
5. God then separated Land and Sea and made plant life. Day 3.
6. God made the great and lesser light to be signs of time, seasons etc. Day 4.
7. God made animals in the ocean and Birds that could fly. Day 5.
8. God made Land animals, and Man. Day 6.
Now, before we look at this description on what Genesis says God did, it is important to agree that the above summary is correct.
I will give a few hours to allow anyone to correct me if they disagree.
Not quite. let's go into a bit more detail.
1. God created the heaven and the earth.
2. The Earth was without form and void. Darkness was on the face of the deep.
So the Earth existed at this point, but didn't have form and was 'void'. There is a question about what constitutes 'the deep'. This is answered in the next line.
3. The Spirit of God moved over the face of the waters.
So, already we have an Earth with water. This is *before* there is light. This alone excludes the interpretation of this as the Big Bang (where the light would have been 9 billion years before the formation of the Earth along with water). Also notice that the waters have a face (a surface), which shows we are not talking about clouds or atmospheric water. This is liquid water.
4. God said 'let there be light' and is a separate action separated the light from the darkness.
This suggests thinking of light and darkness as substances, NOT that darkness is simply the absence of light.
5. God called the light 'Day' and the darkness 'Night'.
Problematic since day and night are aspects of the rotation of the Earth, but the sun has not yet been created.
6. There was an evening and a morning--the first day.
This is evidence *against* the interpretation that thousands of years transpired between the days of creation: there was an *evening* and a *morning*.
7. God creates a firmament to separate the waters. The firmament is called 'heaven' and there are waters both above and below.
This goes back to an ancient way of looking at the universe. In this view, the Earth was a bit of land in the middle of a wide 'ocean' with a dome covering it (the sky). This was a very common view around the Mediterranean basin. it appears that the Bible holds this view, calling the dome 'heaven' instead of 'sky' and having water both above and below it.
By the way, the water above the firmament becomes relevant for Noah's flood since some of the flood waters come through the 'gates of heaven'.
This is the second day, again with an evening and a morning.
8. The waters under heaven are brought into one place and dry land appears.
Again, this is in line with the common view described above. The dry land is called Earth and the waters below heaven are called Seas.
Now, the Earth brings forth grass, herbs and fruit trees.
This is an important step, but it should be noted that flowering plants (both grass and fruit trees and many herbs) were a fairly late type of plant that did not arise until the middle of the time of the dinosaurs. In particular, the sun and moon would have been quite long in existence by the scientific view by the time flowering plants came about. Also, animals would have been in abundance.
This is the end of the third day.
So, at the end of the third day, we would have day and night, but no sun or moon. We would have dry land with grass and fruit trees, but no animals as yet. Heaven would be a dome over the Earth separating water above and below.
How does this compare to the scientific views? Not well at all.
First, there is no firmament. There are no waters above separated from waters below. Flowering plants would not have existed prior to animals and the sun and the moon. Seasons would have been long established.
9. Now, lights are placed in the firmament (heaven) to determine the seasons, signs, and years. Two greater lights were also made, one to rule the day and the other to rule the night. Stars were also made.
It was known in ancient times that the position of the sun in the sky (relative to the stars) changes over the course of the year and is related to the seasons. A year is defined (in the ancient mind) by one grand cycle of the sun. The phases of the moon were used to mark off months. And, in fact, many cultures used the moon as the basis of their calendar, not the sun.
So this represents the time that it was possible to start marking off time using astronomical observations.
Notice the stars and the sun were not made until this day, NOT prior to the formation of the Earth. They are placed in the firmament (sky, heaven). Again, this was a very common view: that the stars are points of light on the dome covering the Earth and the sun and moon are also on this dome.
Anyway, I think I will stop in my analysis at this point. I can continue, but I think it is quite clear that the Biblical views and the modern scientific views are VERY different on a number of vital points.