Author: Corey Carroll (corey@sdf.lonestar.org) Title: Genesis creation story contradictory

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Author: Corey Carroll (corey@sdf.lonestar.org)
 Title: Genesis creation story contradictory
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Here's an interesting thing for creationists, JWs especially.
With respect to the two creation accounts in genesis.

Interestingly, the _Life : How?_ book uses the first creation account
in showing what the Bible has to say about 'how we got here'.  It goes
through the six 'days', commenting that the days could have been long
periods of time.  However, it completely neglects the account starting
with Genesis 2:4.  On page 34, _Life_ says:

    Chapter 2 of Genesis apparently adds some details.  However, it
    is not, as some have concluded, another account of creation in
    conflict with that of chapter 1.  It just takes up at a point in
    the third "day", after dry land appeared but before land plants
    were created, adding details that were pertinent to the arrival
    of humans-Adam the living soul, his garden home, Eden, and the
    woman Eve, his wife. -- Genesis 2:5-9, 15-18, 21, 22.


Argh.  I'm going to have to drag out my Bible again.  This is all the
book has to say about the obvious contradiction between the two creation
accounts.  If an inexperienced, non-skeptical, non-critical thinking
layperson reads it, it appears to refute the claim of contradiction.

However...look at this:

Account 1:
----------

Day 1 - Day, night created.
Day 2 - Waters above and below.
Day 3 - Dry land appears.  Land plants appear.
Day 4 - Luminaries are visible. (sun & moon).
Day 5 - Sea life, then flying creatures appear.
Day 6 - Land animals, then man created.


Account 2:
----------

verse 5-  no bushes or vegetation or man on the earth.
verse 7-  man created out of dust.
verse 8-  Garden of Eden planted, and man put there.
verse 9-  God makes trees grow out of ground.
verse 15- man placed in Eden, required to cultivate it.
verse 19- God was forming every wild beat of the field
          and every flying creature of the heavens, and
          brought them to Adam to see what he would name
          them.
verse 22- God creates woman from Adam's rib.


Now, if account 2 was to pick up after the third 'day', then it would
have to be consistent with the other days in account 1.  However,
it CLEARLY DESCRIBES the creation of man *BEFORE* the creation of
land animals and birds!!

I propose that no matter how you look at it or try to dress it up,
the two creation accounts contradict each other.  The second
account clearly details God creating the animals *after* he
created man.  According to this reading of Genesis, if there were
any fossils of animals that occured before man, then this creation
account would be falsified.  And we know of hundreds today.  The
second account predicts that there would be *NO* animal life before
the creation of Adam.  We should expect to find plants, man, and
then the lower animals in the order of appearance in the fossil
record.  But we don't.  As a matter of fact, you don't even need
to date the fossils exactly.  All you need to do is show the order
in which they were layed down.

The first thing that comes to mind is that it would have been
highly unlikely for the remains of Adam to be fossilized.  So
perhaps you could interpret the second account in the following
way:  First, plants appeared, then a man appeared, but since
there was only one of them, he didn't fossilize, (or we have
never found his fossil yet), and then the lower animals appeared.
Adam's progeny were developing along these lines too, so the
apparent presence of humans after the creation of animals could
be explained away as Adam's descendants.

Oops.  That might work, but think about this.  According to
the revised predictions, the development of man should parallel
that of the animals.  Now.  Adam was reputed to have lived at
least 800 years (Any Biblical scholars want to put a date on this?).
Also, the second creation account shows God forming all of the
separate "kinds" of land animals and birds during Adam's existence.
Why would this be?  Because Adam had to name all of those "kinds".
He couldn't have named any animals when he was dead.  (Indeed, I
wonder how long it took Adam to name all of the animals.  Did God
show him every single created species?  Or just representatives
from each family, for instance?  How long would this take?!?)

Now, look at what we have.  According to the second account, all
of the created land animals and birds were created within a time
span of a few hundred years at the most.  However, paleontology
assures us that the different layers of rocks were laid down over
MILLIONS of years!  There is no way of reconciling this account
with the fossil record.  The fossil record shows the gradual
evolution of new species over a period of millions of years.  It
simply couldn't have happened within a few hundred years, or even
worse, six days!  Also, if the second account were true, we should
expect to see fossils of Homo sapiens coexisting with *all* of the
land animals and birds.  But we don't!  Homo sapiens is a recent
entry to this world in terms of geological time (250,000 years).

Why can't the Witnesses admit that the second account contradicts
the first one?  Why?  Why?  Why?  The account clearly shows that
animals were created after man...it doesn't even mention sea life,
for that matter, also.   Of course, the Witnesses pick the first
creation account, because at least the order of things agrees to
some extent with the fossil evidence.  My theory is that whoever
compiled Genesis knew of both creation accounts, and he preserved
both of them, even though they contradicted each other, for the
sake of preserving the myths of an ancient culture.

The first account can be made to look like it agrees with
fossil evidence, if you change the 'days' in Genesis to
geological epochs.  However, creationists would have you believe
that each creation was created as a fixed species, immutable
and forever unchangeable.  I know that speciation has been
proved, directly and indirectly.  All this goes back to the
idea of 'fixity of species' the people like Linnaeus held, but
when Darwin came along, he offered a much more reasonable
explanation for the variety and amount of life forms on the
earth today.

What are we to believe?  Did god create all of the basic families
of life, for instance, and let evolution take over from there?
Did Adam have to name all of the anthropods and crustaceons and
bacteria and protozoa and fungi etc etc etc?  If so, then he also
could have created the Hominidae family, of which we are a member,
and let evolution eventually produce apes, Homo erectus, Homo habilis,
and Homo sapiens.  Did God create AIDS at the time he created Adam,
so that he could punish homosexuals 6,000 years later?  Did he
create the 'water canopy' so that he could flood the sinful earth
4,300 years ago?

It is these and other crazy contradictions which have caused me
to reject "scientific creationism" as an explanation for the origin of
life and its diversity.  I think creationism is insanity.