Saturday, 18 July 2009

The Genesis Enigma


A new book claims it is astounding that biblical Genesis describes the stages of "creation" in the right order, matching the theories by modern scientists.

This isn't so surprising as it appears. It only looks it if we assume Genesis was authored by the primitive early Israelites. Those tribal brigands who invaded and massacred peaceful Canaan were indeed not great thinkers.

However many Israelites were later taken into slavery to Babylon which DID have highly sophisticated scholars, where Israelites learned some knowledge. Many of these better educated Israelites then returned to Israel under Cyrus.

The Magi and other scholars of Babylon invented geometry we still use today - 60 seconds/ minutes, angles etc. They gave us our first recorded literature as well via their own ancestral culture, the Sumerians. In fact one of those books, by Enheduanna, told of a messiah who descended to hell for 3 days to hang dead on a tree - only that messiah was female.

Much of the early books of the Israelite Bible are based on Babylonian myths - Eden, Noah, Babel. Like the Greek philosophers we know better, the Magi well knew analytic logic so the order of the origin of the universe could have been worked out.
Impressive? yes. Mystery? no.

This new book also quite clearly distorts in order to fit facts to its argument. Day 4 for example has God creating the stars and the sun and the moon. As the author admits this is a facer as Light, day and night, already exist from Day 1.
An ingenious but unlikely theory is put forward that at this point evolution developed sight - so beings could SEE the sun and moon. Apparently this sequence does fit.
But I doubt if early science (deductive logic) could go that far and the argument here sounds artificially distorted. It's arguing back from what we know now - or rather what we theorise now.
We should not forget that evolution is only a theory, not a fact. A good theory, but just a theory. It doesn't fit all the facts. It just fits a lot more than other theories do.


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