CREATION ADDENDUM

Over the last few months I have been exploring different creation stories from around the world.  I have delved into just a handful of them as there are far more than I have time to write about.  From the Christian account of creation in Genesis to the Maori story of Rangi and Papa I have noticed a vague similarity, some are striking and some are thin and some of these similarities seem to be influenced by the missionaries.  Others bare their resemblance to others due to the simple act of observation.  With the obvious exception of the scientific "story" which I clearly wrote as a tongue in cheek look at the facts, these stories, by our current understanding of how things work, are ridiculous just so stories if not entertaining.  There is not one of then that could hold up to any kind of critical thinking including common sense nor is there a shred of evidence to support any of it.  The best that the believers of creation myths can hope for are the apologists that stand up for their unshaking belief by making unsupported claims and adding made up scenarios to a book or story that never existed in the first place.  

  
It is true that believing in God(s) is a matter of faith and what is patently clear is that faith is dependent on where you were born if not where you were raised.  You may believe that a few gods fought with each other and made the earth out of dead god parts and that human kind was created to serve the gods as slaves.  You may have faith that the heavens and the earth were placed here by the hands of God himself about 6000 years ago.  If you are one of faith then you will have a deep seated belief that which ever of the myriad stories you feel is the truth you will undoubtedly be of the opinion that all the other creation myths are complete rubbish and nobody in their right mind could believe such bollocks. 

At the times these stories were made up the universe was only as big as one could observe and answers for how we got here were not readily available so the explanations our ancestors came up with were supernatural and that made sense to our uninformed minds.  A deity was the only logical explanation of the way things were and how we were created and such a deity deserved our warship.  I can just imagine the conversation between an ancient philosopher at the dawn of human intelligence and an innocent child finding out about the world.

Child:  "How did we get here, how did we become us?"
Philosopher:  "We'll, in the beginning... Um, god created the heavens and the earth.  Yeah, that's what happened."
Child:  "What is god?"
Philosopher:  "Don't ask so many questions."

As I have already said, there are many religions in the world but not enough time to go into them all so I'm going to concentrate on the biggest (by percentage) of these religions; Christianity.  There are, of course, just as many sects within Christianity as there are religions in the world but for this exploration I'll lump them all under the one umbrella religion of Christianity.

Through the millenia we developed the skills to collect more data which came together to form the basis of our knowledge.  Yes, this knowledge has changed over the years with the discovery of more evidence and by testing our understandings; this formed the back bone of the SCIENTIFIC METHOD.  As the centuries went by we found more natural answers and needed less supernatural answers but there is still a great number of people in this world that are holding tight to their traditions and faith. 
  The simple fact is this; Man invented God.  This invention is obviously an extraordinary claim and that requires extraordinary evidence which, after all this time, has not been forthcoming.  The burden of proof for God lies firmly on the shoulders of those that claim there is such an entity and not the job of science or atheists to disprove god.  

While looking carefully at the creation of the world according to god in the first 2 chapters of Genesis I asked some questions and pointed out some obvious problems.  I quickly found that there were too many problems to cover in the quick overview of those chapters and I like to address a couple of them now.

We have an increasingly comprehensive collection of fossils showing the progression of life of hundreds of millions of years showing that the hand of God was not needed for us to be here today.  This clearly contradicts the Genesis account of creation so how does it all fit together?   I have heard the argument that God placed them there to test our faith but as far as I can see, that is just post hoc rationalization because I saw nothing about God placing fossils anywhere in Genesis.  Another hypothesis was put forth that most of the dinosaurs died out because of the great flood and the fossil records come from this flood.  How does that explain the different fossil layers?  Well, according to the hypothesis, the animals that died were buried in layers according to size in the silt that was carried by the flood waters to which there is no evidence at all.  This apologetic myth is further explained by Ken Ham in WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO THE DINOSAURS which gives the vaguest of explanations with, again, no evidence to back him up but the bible which is a clear case of argument from authority.  The passages he quotes are really just grasping at straws and very much up to interpretation.

It appears to me that creation only lasts about a page and a half and says nothing more than "God created the heavens and the earth" and everything living thing that is on the earth.  That's it.  Full stop.  End of story.  Basically, if you were to pick up the bible today with no preconceived ideas about how we got here you would look at Genesis 1 and laugh your ass off.  Seriously.  Even if you are christian... if you had never been indoctrinated into the whole creation thing you would look at the first page of the bible and say "You expect me to believe that?"  OK, that is purely objective but that is exactly what the Catholic, Christian and a few other small religions are asking you to do.  I'm not joking.  Lets face it "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" is what we are meant to believe if we are to be saved... there is of course the Jesus thing but lets put that aside for now.

We are supposed to suspend our disbelief so we can accept that God created the earth in 6 days.  That begs the question, if God is omnipotent, omnipresent, all powerful and infallible why did it take God 6 days to create everything?  If he is who he says he is it should have been done in the blinking of an eye.  If he is who he says he is, then he need not rest as he does not get tired.  It just doesn't add up.  But back to what is actually written.  Creation just happened.  You want to know how it was done?  Yeah, sorry, you'd be questioning the god almighty and you're really not supposed to do that!  But wait, how about;

 Thessalonians 5:21 - test them all, hold on to what is good.

Arise the skeptic and the downfall of religion.

There are some recurring themes in the creation stories that you just can't ignore including the "something from nothing" and the "eternal god" subject.  The former is part of the argument creationists have with evolutionists which, by the way, has nothing to do with evolution in it self but it is part of the BIG question of how the universe came to be what it is.  This poses another question, where did God come from?  Ostensibly nothing, isn't that what the creationist argument is objecting to, something from nothing?    Understand, evolution is the mechanism from which we get all the species of the earth and, ultimately, us.  There is a whole other science dedicated to how life got started in the first place and yet another on how the universe started which I will cover in future posts.

I write this blog because it is a passion of mine to explore the myth of god and along the way I may even learn some cool stuff.  It takes a lot of time and energy to write so if you enjoy reading this blog please make a donation by clicking the DONATE button on the right or click on the image of my book KING: A Supernatural Twist Of Fate to buy a copy so I can put more time into creating a better blog.

Thank you all

Justin