Day Six - Genesis

The Epic of Gilgamesh is one of the earliest known pieces of literature. The story recounts the life of a man named Gilgamesh who is quite nearly god-like. This Sumerian poem is much, much older than any currently practiced religion today. Having developed in the Fertile Crescent where flooding was unpredictable and frequent, the following makes complete sense. Interesting parallels can be drawn between parts of the bible and the ancient story of Gilgamesh. I will be returning to the passages in previous posts because they also have much in common with this ancient poem.

Gen 3:1 NOW the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

• In the Epic of Gilgamesh a snake steals a magical plant and hides it. This plant can give eternal life to Gilgamesh, and he pursues it. Similarly, the snake and the plant are symbols that are used in both stories and in both stories the result is the same, the participants lose their immortality.

Gen 2:25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

• In the early parts of the Epic of Gilgamesh, Enkidu is a part of nature, wild, innocent, and free. His innocence is lost when he has sex with Shamhat. Shamhat states after they have copulated that he has become "wise" and "like a god". Interestingly, Genesis presents this as a negative transition while the original story of Enkidu illustrated advancement and positive growth.

Turning to our current chapter

Gen 6:7 So the LORD said, I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the ground, man and beast and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.

• The story of Noah and the Flood is even more relevant to the Epic of Gilgamesh in that it shares so many common threads and events as to suggest it is a literal copy of the same story being re-written for a new god.

Gen 6:5 The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

• In both stories, the divine is angry with people.

Gen 6:13 And God said to Noah, I have determined to make an end of all flesh; for the earth is filled with violence through them; behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

• In both stories, the main characters are warned of an impending flood.

Gen 6:14 Make yourself an ark of gopher wood; make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch.

• In both stories, the main character is told exactly how to build a boat to save the creatures.

Gen 6:18 But I will establish my covenant with you; and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons' wives with you.

• In both stories the main character brings his family and couples of animals onto the boat before the flood.

Gen 8:7 and sent forth a raven; and it went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth.
Gen8:8 Then he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters had subsided from the face of the ground;
Gen 8:9 but the dove found no place to set her foot, and she returned to him to the ark, for the waters were still on the face of the whole earth. So he put forth his hand and took her and brought her into the ark with him.
Gen 8:10 He waited another seven days, and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark;
Gen 8:11 and the dove came back to him in the evening, and lo, in her mouth a freshly plucked olive leaf; so Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth.
Gen 8:12 Then he waited another seven days, and sent forth the dove; and she did not return to him anymore.

• In both stories the main character releases three birds to find out if the flood is over.

I find it fascinating that so many people watch the first Matrix movie and assume it is a story about Jesus and Christianity. The story of Gilgamesh could just as easily been the source for inspiration for the script. The writers even go so far as to use the name of Gilgamesh's boat, the "Nebuchadnezzar" as the name of the ship that Neo ends up on. To more clearly illustrate the striking similarities I will include a passage from the Epic of Gilgamesh where Gilgamesh is using the birds to determine if the flood is over. Compare this to the previous bible passages from Genesis 8:7 to 8:12.

When a seventh day arrived
I sent forth a dove and released it.
The dove went off, but came back to me;
no perch was visible so it circled back to me.
I sent forth a swallow and released it.
The swallow went off, but came back to me;
no perch was visible so it circled back to me.
I sent forth a raven and released it.
The raven went off, and saw the waters slither back.
It eats, it scratches, it bobs, but does not circle back to me.

---

Summary
Reading the previous passage from the Epic of Gilgamesh it is easy to see that the poem is the basis for the story of Noah and the ark. Knowing this, would you truly believe the story of Noah to be a truthful representation of history? Even if you could say that since it was repeated, that this must be corroborating evidence. You must remember that the story that is recounted by the poem is clearly a fantasy tale and shares more in common with the beliefs of ancient Sumerian gods and their champions than any real historical events.


Note: I would like, if anyone should find any inconsistencies in my facts, to be notified of any issues that may arise. I do not wish to be viewed as having an unchangeable position. On the contrary, I would welcome new information that could possibly alter my view of the world. My only requirement for this information is that it fall into the definition of the word "fact." If it is not backed up by even one piece of solid evidence, then your information becomes hearsay and cannot be trusted as accurate and valuable data. Kinda like the bible.

Day Five - Genesis

Looks like a short one today folks. Chapter 5 is more of a short account of lineage. I suppose that doesn't really mean it will be any more realistic or truthful than the previous chapters though.

Gen 5:3 And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begot a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth.

• Adam lived "an" hundred and thirty years. But wait, there's more, he didn't die then, he only became a baby daddy.

Gen 5:5 And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died.

• "Nine hundred and thirty years." Oh My God. I wish I could live a thousand years! How exactly do the writers expect us to believe that our ancestors, who had no medical knowledge, no medicine, no readily accessible food, no domesticated animals, no tools, no weapons, and barely any clothes lived a thousand years? No. No logic here.

Gen 5:23 And all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and five years.

• More examples of old aged people.

Gen 5:27 And all the days of Methū'selah were nine hundred sixty and nine years: and he died.

• More old people.

Gen 5:32 And Noah was five hundred years old; and Noah begot Shem, Ham, and Jā'peth.

• Noah. I know that name don't I. Oh yea, this is one of those people that "creationist" believers actually believe existed. We must be approaching that part of the story that tells of amazing events of supernatural overirrigation.

---

Summary

Ok, so this chapter is a bit boring and tedious. It does tell us a few things though. The writers, who were obviously mortal, wanted immortality, as most mortal beings do. As it was a desire of theirs, they dreamt that it was in their ancestors, and therefore in them to live long drawn out lives. Wishful thinking left in by the writers of their own religion. Of note is the use of names that exist in other creation myths of other, older, religions. I find it odd that so many of these previous creation myths are today seen, even by religious people, as old nonsense. I will leave that for a later post, however.

Next up, Noah, and his amazing story of things that never happened!

Day Four - Genesis

Today we discuss the birth of Adam and Eve's children. I hope I am not being permanently scarred for my efforts to decipher this odd and backwards looking book.

Gen 4:1 AND Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bore Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord.

• Is this incest? It would seem so. How interesting.

Gen 4:2 And she again bore his brother, Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.

• Okay, so incest times two.

Gen 4:5 But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell.

• But, why did god disapprove of his offering? Was the fruit not tasty? If he offered something in earnest, why would god start a fight like this if not only because he wanted to start a fight?

Gen 4:14 Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hidden; and I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that any one that findeth me shall slay me.

• Who's going to find him? There are 3 people left on the whole of Earth! Cain and his father and mother, the incestuous Adam and Eve! Isn't incest a sin?

Gen 4:17 And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bore Enoch: and he builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch.

• Where the crap did this woman come from to marry Cain? The only woman alive to bear children is Eve! So, this must be a daughter of Eve, and therefore, Cain's sister! Again with the incest!

Gen 4:19 And Lā'mech took unto him two wives: the name of the one was Ada, and the name of the other, Zil'lah.

• Right, so following the previous passages down, all these cousins till this guy marries two women. Isn't that a sin, they do it in Utah don't they, it's called Polygamy. I'm seriously getting mixed signals from these people, in one minute they are talking about the solemn bond between a husband and wife, next minute this guy marries two women!

Gen 4:25 And Adam knew his wife again; and she bore a son, and called his name Seth. For God, said she, hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain slew.

• I ask again, where the crap did all these other people come from if Eve has only had three children? Where the hell did Cain's wife come from?!?! Also, I'd like to point out that the name Seth is also the name of an Egyptian god, this is an important fact considering what happens to Seth in the bible shares... a common thread to a story about the Egyptian god Seth.

Gen 4:26 And to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enosh: then began men to call upon the name of the Lord.

• I'm afraid I have to ask it again. Where are these other women coming from? Who did Seth have sex with to conceive Enosh? The only woman mentioned other than Cain's wife is Eve. Did he have sex with his Mother, or an undocumented sister? Oh the humanity! All the incest in this chapter! So, if we are all decedents of Adam and Eve, we are all brothers and sisters by blood. This means that every time any one of us human beings has sex, it's incestuous. Does this mean Christians are ok with incest?

---

Summary

Okay, this chapter is really disturbing to the modern mind. It starts with Adam and Eve having incestuous relations. Even if you believe that they are not related because god created them separately and they were not born from the same mother, you have to acknowledge that all of the rest of the population is descended from them. This quite simply means that from the first children till modern times, all sex has been incestuous. I think if anyone were to interpret this story as an accurate portrayal of history and creation, one would have to wonder how that person views incest in modern society.

Day Three - Genesis

Today we continue with our journey through Genesis. I had to use more verses from this chapter due to the significant impact to our culture and the impact to the story that follows. My apologies for making this a long one.

Gen 3:1 NOW the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

• Ho, hum, talking snake. Did all of the animals talk, or just the snake? And, being 2 days old, how exactly did the snake know how to speak English? And who told the snake about the tree of knowledge? Questions, questions, questions, no answers here...

Gen 3:3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

• She's talking back to the snake. No, really, she's talking to a talking snake. Please, please, please tell me that there aren't any people who actually believe this is literal.

Gen 3:4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die;

• How exactly does the snake know she won't die? Who told him that? Did he already eat from the tree? More damn questions and no answers. Let's keep going.

Gen 3:6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

• So, she shared food that she thought was good and desirable with her husband. The horror!

Gen 3:7 And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.

• Okay, who taught these naked newborns how to sew? I mean, c'mon, these people are 3 days old.

Gen 3:9 And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?

• Okay, stop here. He just asked Adam where he was. Does anyone else see the problem here? He's supposed to be god. He should already know where Adam is. Seems there is yet another blatant example that this text is written by and from the point of view of a human being.

Gen 3:11 And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?

• Here we go again with the same problem as before. If he was god, and godlike, he should already know this, why is he asking Adam? Could be because he is acting like a father? Could be because he is written with the standard patriarchal model that is commonly used to describe gods? Seems there is a significant amount of *Anthropomorphism going on here.

Gen 3:14 And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou has done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.

• Okay, now god is talking to snakes. Oh no! The snake is cursed! He has been cursed to...  crawl on his belly all his days. Wait, but snakes already crawl on their bellies, that's what makes them snakes. If it had legs, it would be a lizard. Let's not forget the dust part; I have yet to see a snake that eats dust. Mostly snakes eat small rodents and lizards.

Gen 3:16 Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and they conception; in sorry thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

• Am I to understand that while the snake's punishment for disobeying god is to remain as it is, basically no punishment at all, but the punishment for the woman is to suffer during childbirth and be a slave to her husband for all time? How unbalanced and unfair is that.

Gen 3:17 And unto Adam he said, Because thou has hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorry shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;

• Adam is cursed to... grow and eat vegetables.  As a man, I can say I feel unjustly put upon.

Gen 3:18 Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat of the herb of the field

• Eat of the herb of the field. Oh, no, the humanity!

Gen 3:22 And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever;

• The text says "one of us." Once again with the "us" as if god is not alone, or maybe god has some kind of multiple personality disorder. Another possibility is that this story was written by people who were more familiar with religions that contained multiple gods.

Gen 3:24 So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way of the tree of life.

• I'm pretty sure that we have mapped every square inch of this planet with satellite imaging. We have explored every square inch of the Middle East and nearby areas. No guardian cherubim or flaming swords have yet been discovered. I am pretty sure that if someone were to discover such guards, they would tell someone about it.

* Anthropomorphism is a term coined in the mid 1700s to refer to any attribution of human characteristics (or characteristics assumed or believed by some to belong only to humans) to animals or non-living things, phenomena, material states and objects or abstract concepts.

---

Summary

This story is very imaginative. While the metaphors and symbolism are packed in so tight that there is barely room for anything else. The behavior of god in these verses is distinctly non-godlike. The punishments handed out were unbalanced and in one case, not even a punishment at all. I never liked this part of the story because it's written to explain why women should be subservient to men. It shows how women are the cause for all suffering. Women suffer during childbirth because of something Eve supposedly did in the Garden of Eden. It's outdated nonsense written by tribal people who needed to enforce their control over women. Worst of all, it's a boring part of the story.

Day Two - Genesis

Day of Rest

One large and glaring question presents itself about the creation story of Genesis. The first question I would ask is, why did an all-powerful, all-knowing, omnipotent God need 6 "days" to create the universe and the earth? Also, if the sun was not present for half of the week it took to create everything how did the "day" get measured? Finally, why exactly does the all-powerful god need to rest? Did he get all tuckered out from all the running about *making things backwards? Honestly, the story reads as if it were written after the 7 day calendar was already in place and the writers of the story of Genesis needed a reason to justify the calendar and the day of rest, which was likely already in practice at the time this was written.

Gen 2:7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

• Dust, nostrils, breath of life, soul. Sounds really, really familiar... The words and the story of Adams creation share most, if not all, of its themes with stories dating back to Samaria and Babylon. I suspect that the "land of Eden" was actually a reference to the highly fertile lands between the two rivers that bordered Sumer. In this sense, even far-fetched stories of creation have a small foundation of truth; the first recorded history thanks to writing was done in cuneiform which was developed in Sumer.

Gen 2:8 And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.

• Why eastward? Was there some reason god need to go to a place on earth and then proceed eastward to build something? This sentence is very revealing in that it is written from the point of view of a human being, not a god. A god needs no compass if he/she is everywhere.

Gen 2:16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat;

• What, he can't eat from vines? No potatoes, corn, cabbage, or wheat? Oh, its metaphor... But...

Gen 2:17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat ofit; for in the day that thou eatest thereof shalt surely die.

•  Ok, so let me get this right. The tree of "good" and "evil". So god didn't want Adam to know good or evil. I can understand not wanting Adam to know about "evil", but not wanting him to know about "good"? What's that about? I thought god would want everyone to have been good. There is another meaning here though. Some believe, as I do, the original meaning of good and evil was similar to "searched high and low" as if to simply mean "Tree of knowledge of ALL." The tree contains knowledge, or more precisely its fruit. Without saying it directly, this story puts forth the idea that knowledge is bad, and god doesn't want us to have it. So in effect, the bible says you shouldn't seek knowledge. Many believe that by eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge of all, Adam and Eve sought to be like god, and that was the sin. There is merit to the idea that religions do not want people to seek knowledge. Knowledge is often the first step to losing religion. Knowledge often leads one down a path of learning toward critical thinking and logic. These skills often provide the foundation for an individual to seek more than the "because I told you so" or the "because it says it in the bible" kind of answers. But let's not linger too long here, I could write a book on this subject alone.

Gen 2:19 And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.

• Adam named every creature. That not only must have taken a really, really, really long time, but someone should tell god, he missed a few... million. Species are still being discovered today, new species, in places that we didn't even think life could exist. This is another gloriously narcissistic nod to human superiority over all things.

Gen 2:21 And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;

• So he can make the universe from nothing, light from nowhere, Adam and all the animals from nothing but dust, but he needs a rib from Adam to make a woman? Oh, metaphor again? Ok, so let's see, Eve is from Adam's flesh. According to custom that makes her his sister or daughter. Just keeping score here folks. So yea, moving on.

Gen 2:22 And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.

•  So here he says he makes her from the rib. Apparently he did this away from Adam, cause he had to bring her to him. Maybe he was afraid Adam would get sick and throw up or something.

Gen 2:24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife; and they shall be one flesh.

• Hold on, I'm sorry but I see a problem here. Father? Mother? We haven't gotten that far yet! Somebody please tell the writer of this story to wait till Adam has sex with his sister before anyone gets to be a father or mother! Oh, and I giggled a bit when I read "cleave unto his wife", cause it was funny.

Gen 2:25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

• And so they were, naked and created as they were. Brother and sister, or father and daughter. I'm not quite sure how family ties work on cloning. Being unashamed as they were because they knew not evil, or good. But even not knowing good or evil Adam had been able to name all, I mean a very few, of the animals on the newly created earth.

* Many things in nature are inconsistent with the idea of intelligent design. Evolution does not follow a plan, and many times parts and forms have evolved to be less than stellar adaptations to a problem. As an example, the rods and cones that detect light in a human eye are actually facing backwards, this causes a much lower fidelity and sharpness of picture. The eye of an octopus is the opposite, and the octopus has a much clearer and sharper view of the world. Would you call this "intelligent" design?

---

Summary

Chapter 2 ends with a kind of cinematic feel, Adam and Even hand in hand as the newly created sun sets on the newly created horizon and all the newly created animals bed down to sleep for the first actual night for all the animals of the earth. The story sounds kind of pretty if you think about it that way. It is unfortunate that we have access to things like the fossil record and carbon dating. We can see, quite plainly that the earth is much older than humans, and that human beings obviously evolved through a long, slow, natural process. It was a nice thought though.

Day One - Genesis

So, page one, paragraph one, sentence one. It begins today. Let's begin with the individual statements that I have copied word for word from my copy of the bible. These were chosen based on their impact to the story and their commonality in popular use and quotation. Pardon my sarcastic humor, but the points are valid.

Gen 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

• Oh My God. He made everything. The Heaven and the Earth. No, wait, that's not everything, there is a whole universe out there. Unless the mention of Heaven means the Universe, in which case, when did he make Heaven?

Gen 1:3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

• Boom, he made light! But...  where is the sun, unless he meant he created the sun and the sun is light, but I thought he already made the whole universe. So the universe was made, including the stars and the sun but there was no light from the burning balls of hydrogen gas? Maybe he meant he just made Heaven. Oh, I'm so confused already!

Gen 1:16 And the lesser light to rule the night.

• Ooh, I know. The moon! But wait, its not a light. Its the reflection of light from the sun. But they wouldn't have understood that when they made this stuff up. I mean, wrote the bible.

Gen 1:19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

• Whew busy day, so the earth, moon, stars, and the whole of the universe, including this... light got made in one day. I'm impressed, I think...

Gen 1:20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

• Woohoo! Life! Umm, hold on a second. He said "fowl". That means birds. No, that can't be, since birds evolved from Dinosaurs. Birds didn't even exist in the fossil record until 150 million years ago, and we know from carbon dating the rocks that our planet is made from that the Earth is much older than that. So...  this doesn't make any sense.

Gen 1:22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let the fowl multiply in the earth.

• Again, with the birds. Either it took 3.8 billion years between when he made the first cell in the ocean till when he made birds, or something is wrong here. I suspect that when this book was written, the tribal and uneducated people who wrote this text could not have known that birds were not as old as the earth. This alludes to the idea that the story is made up by tribal people.

Gen 1:24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after its kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after its kind: and it was so.

• Cattle? He made Cattle? According to the fossil record, mammals including the genus Bos did not exist for another several hundred million years after birds, so that's correct in a way I suppose. However the "Cow, Goat, Sheep" and other typical "cattle" that the general word refers to did not take the form humans domesticated until less than 75 million years ago (being generous here).

Gen 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

• "Us"? "Our"? Who exactly is this "us" that god seems to be speaking of. Is he some sort of hive mind, or does have some kind of friend or family over for dinner? And this self-glorification and justification of the writer who obviously wrote this passage in order to explain why they felt they owned the whole planet is plain to see.

Gen 1:31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

• Six days. He made this in six days? This cannot be reconciled with geologic data. This cannot be confirmed in any way by the known laws of physics or chemistry. The earth, as we understand it took 4.5 billion years to form, coalesce, spawn life and evolve to the point where beings of sufficient logical capacity could come to question their own existence.

---

Summary

This story so far has left little to go on. Assertions of events with no evidence to confirm their validity have been presented. In all actuality the story continues to fly in the face of all the known facts about our existence and where we came from. We know the age of the earth by measurements of the universe and the world around us. We know the order that organisms came to evolve and live. We know how the land came to be, how the water came to be, and where the light comes from. Light is a byproduct of the fusion that takes place within a star, our star called the Sun is a yellow star which has been producing light for a measurable time period.

Our planet is formed of known substances, which have a similar composition to the materials ejected from the last major explosion event from a previous sun-cycle. The moon shares such similar composition as to suggest that it is made, literally, from the same material as the earth, and the studies of the moon's orbit, mass, and shape back that up. Water is possible from the accumulation over millions of years from deposits made by ice-comets which were being pulled in from the outer asteroid belt for millions of years after the earth cooled. Landmasses have been changing shape and moving about for billions of years due to tectonic plate movement.

Lastly, our own evolutionary path which is plainly visible in the evidence left behind says not once, but by hundreds of thousands of instances of proof, that we, as a species evolved alongside all of the other species of ape, and that we belong to the same family and genus of mammals dating back to the development of warm-blooded animals by natural evolutionary processes.

The story does, however, have merit. Not as a truthful representation of history, but as a look into the mind of a primitive and tribal culture who needed answers about the world around them. The literary contribution of the bible and in particular, the first passages of Genesis is profound throughout history and literature.

Also worth noting:
The creation myth asserted in the bible is not unique. The story shares most, if not all, of its major points with not one, but many other cultures and religions of the time before the bibles writing. This shows that the people who wrote this text did not provide much, if anything, new to the stories that were already being used by other primitive cultures and religions that came before. Having said this, it should also be said that repetition and mimicry does not equal validity.

I am an Atheist

a·the·ist/ˈeɪθiɪst/ Show Spelled[ey-thee-ist]

–noun

a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings.

---

Origin:
1565–75;  < Gk áthe ( os ) godless + -ist

—Related forms

an·ti·a·the·ist, noun, adjective

pro·a·the·ist, noun, adjective

—Can be confused:  agnostic, atheist, deist, theist.

---

Yep, that means I don't believe in god, or anything that any religion has to say about supernatural stuff. It does not mean I eat babies.  It does not mean I hate the world, or that I am immoral. It doesn't mean anything other than what the word means.

I was not always of the opinion that god does not exist. Once, I wanted with all my heart for there to be a god. When I was young, about seventeen or eighteen, I went looking for god. My mother and father had raised me as a christian in the deep bible belt of southern Texas. Though not strict enough to go every Sunday, my mother did insist that the family go on the 'important' days. I'm sure many people know about that, seemed that's just what everyone did. God only demanded you were there on Easter, or any of the other major holidays.

Growing up I never really questioned it, just dreaded it mostly. But as I got older I had experiences where I would ask, no beg, god to help me. "Please, just this once, I'll go to church if you make this happen." It never seemed to work. So the seeds of doubt came, and I began to look harder. I started reading. I read bits of the bible at first, but it wasn't giving me the answers I wanted. I went to churches and asked the priests and preachers, but nothing was ever simple.

I went to church alone, without my parents. I'm sure they thought I was crazy for going by myself on regular Sundays. I joined other churches, such as a Mormon church I attended for a few months. I read in the library about all the other religions that the world had to offer, thinking that maybe one of them had an answer. I won't go through all the details but after reading the whole of the bible, asking every religious figure I knew, and even going so far as to seek out different religions, I had found more questions than answers.

I realized, slowly, that there were no answers. It was a sham, and the institutions that claimed to know the meaning of life, where we go when we die, where we come from, and why we are here, knew nothing but parables and myths. My detailed questions to the people who were supposed to know these answers were answered only with metaphor and fables.

Eventually, exhausted and tired of searching, I gave up. I have spent the last 14 years without faith in anything supernatural. As the years passed and I read more of my new favorite subjects, Biology, Astronomy, Physics, and Chemistry I found many of the answers I had been searching for. If only I had known then that I was quite literally looking in the wrong place.

I have learned many things, and now, returning to college in the middle of my life, I am finding even more answers in the sciences and history classes that are required courses for any degree. If these answers are here, I wonder, and they are taught to everyone who attains even the most basic degree, why then do so many people still cling to the superstition and impossibly false beliefs of religion?

Many books have been written on the subject. I've had many a discussion about this with friends and family. I'm sure some people will argue their position even if they know they are wrong simply because they are stubborn and need to be right. Some hide their lack of belief for fear of rejection from family and friends. Some know that if they confess their doubts they could lose their job, or their political station. Why do atheists have to hide?

Recently I was informed that my view of faith is wrong. That if I would only read the bible with an open and humble heart I would find god. So I discussed the idea with some friends and came to the conclusion that I will, in fact, read the bible again. But this time I won't just read it, I will blog it.

Here is my goal: I will read everyday, or as close as I can come to everyday for one section of the bible. As an example: Genesis 1:1 to Genesis 1:38 and the next day will be Genesis 2:1 etc. I will then interpret what the passages say. At the end of a major story or chapter I will summarize what the chapter means as I read it.

I will post each day that I read, and each time I will attempt to interpret the passages. Maybe, just maybe, I will find that elusive god that everyone seems to know all about.

Maybe I will find god, or maybe I will have a few good laughs at a silly old book.

---

Notes:
My bible is: Oxford University Press, New Scofield Reference Edition, Holy Bible/Concordance, printed 1967, original printing 1917.

I am going to try leaving comments as open as I can, but if the comments are hateful or threatening, the comments will become moderated to preserve the openness that this blog is intended to represent. Please comment and discuss while remaining respectful.