FIRMAMENT - from the Vulgate firmamentum, which is used as the translation of the Hebrew raki'a. This word means simply "expansion." It denotes the space or expanse like an arch appearing immediately above us. They who rendered raki'a by firmamentum regarded it as a solid body. The language of Scripture is not scientific but popular, and hence we read of the sun rising and setting, and also here the use of this particular word. It is plain that it was used to denote solidity as well as expansion. It formed a division between the waters above and the waters below (Gen. 1:7). The raki'a supported the upper reservoir (Ps. 148:4). It was the support also of the heavenly bodies (Gen. 1:14), and is spoken of as having "windows" and "doors" (Gen. 7:11; Isa. 24:18; Mal. 3:10) through which the rain and snow might descend.

A solid sky? Very scientific. If Popular not Scientific language is used, then why not assume that ‘create’ is the popular way of describing evolution? If it is a scientific account, then where is this solid barrier, through which rain comes down and which the stars are in? The stars are in the firmament (Gen 1:16-17), the water is above the firmament. Stars have been seen 10 Billion light years away, so the water must be beyond that. That seems a little strange. Yet, in Isaiah 40:22, God looks down on the inhabitants as ‘grasshoppers’. There is no way that a God who lives in heaven above the firmament could be said to look 10 billion light years and see us as grasshoppers. 10,000 feet would be closer.

As an aside, looking at the claims that the Bible and Science do not contradict, I find the description in Rev 6:12-17 very beautiful, a very powerful symbol. The stars falling to the Earth like figs dropping from a tree, leaving the sky blank so that it can be rolled back like a scroll, and revealing Heaven just above it. Which, of course means that man cannot hide from the Glory of God. Very poetic, and a good passage to use as a background to understanding the Genesis account, but it shows how little the Bible has to do with Science. It was in the 19^th Century that a Vatican astronomer (I forget his name) using the spectrums from stars discovered that they were just like the Sun. The stars falling like figs. Now, if this is a sign of the second coming of Christ, then we have Billions of years to wait, while the stars reach here, and the soon one reaches us, it won’t fall like a fig, more like a bowling ball onto a pea. Where in the Bible does it say that the Stars are a long way away? That they are Huge balls of Gas?

Bible Believers’s who say the order of creation follows the order of evolution are wrong. Single cell animals came first, photosynthesis next, then sea animals, then land animals, then birds, then mammals and whales (sea monsters?) then man.

The last thing God created before his rest day (or rest age, maybe he rested for millions of years) was Man, that point is very clear. Man was the Apex of creation, so why is the order reversed in Gen 2:18-19:

18: Then the LORD God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him."

19: So out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.

This is in direct contradiction with Gen 1.

Then, of course, there is the question of the fall. God creates man, and grows a special garden for him to live in. Very nice. Then he puts right in the middle of the garden two trees, which he is told ‘not to touch’. One of the trees will confer on the consumer the knowledge of right and wrong, so man is clearly amoral. He has NO knowledge of right and wrong. Why were the trees put there? Why not fence them in, where they cannot be touched by someone who, by definition, will not understand the command ‘do not touch’. My daughter at two years old was told not to touch a fence I was working on in my back garden. She wanted to ride her bike over it, and even though I had clearly told her not to, she did. Now, if I was a loving father like the Lord is, I would follow his example and punish her and her children ad infinitum for not obeying my command, but promise her that after a few thousand years I will allow her descendants to be forgiven, but only if they admit they are all guilty of my daughters error, and if they tell me how wonderful I am and how loving and forgiving I am. Of course I will also need a barbaric murder to occur as recompense for the fence.

When man does eat the fruit, God punishes him (and, of course offers ultimately to save him. This is comparable to kicking a blind persons stick away and then expecting praise when you help him home). Man is also told that the very day he eats the fruit, he will die (Gen 2:17). The serpent says you will not die. Adam lived over nine hundred years. Who was telling the truth? The Hebrew word used for Death is muwth (pronounced mooth) which canot be defined as ‘spiritual death’, as I have heard some Christians argue.

This all happened 6000 Years ago, and my children are being punished for it. Gods concept of merciful and just is obviously too subtle for me. I hate the thought of my children following my mistakes, so how could I respect a God that forces them to endure punishments for one amoral persons little slip up. Why didn’t God forgive Adam? Why didn’t he just teach Adam a little bit of ‘right and wrong’. Just enough to understand ‘Do not touch’.

In Gen 3:22, God says that man will be like "one of us". What, like a God? Who is God talking too? Other Gods? This shows that the great God is just a man who knows right and wrong and lives forever, as that is what Adam will become, and that is ‘like one of us’. God is obviously frightened by the thought. Heaven forbid! Not the only time God is frightened of man, what about Gen 11:6 "Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 7: Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech." Here God is talking to something else again "Come let us go down" and it shows Gods fears, because if Man can build a big city, then they can achieve ANYTHING! What a thought.

Now, onto the Noah story. Gen 5:29 Says that Noah will bring relief from hard work. Isn’t drowning a little severe for someone who just wants a tea break? The first place that hard work is mentioned is in Gen 3:17-19. So, Noah was not a relief from that. That is the eternal punishment. The whole statement seems very odd.

Where is the evidence for the giants mentioned in Gen 6:4. Surely they would be found in the same place all the dead animals from the flood have been found in, and of course who were the ‘supernatural beings’ in Gen 6:2?

The Lord said in Gen 6:3: "My spirit shall not abide in man for ever, for he is flesh, but his days shall be a hundred and twenty years.", and yet, accepting Noah and his direct family as exceptions, after the flood in Gen 11:13 –22 people living well beyond 120. This is inconsistent, a contradiction in fact.

Now, the flood itself. Using the age of the universe given in Appendix 1 we can calculate the date of the flood.

Noah born in 1056 AU.

Gen 7:11 - Flood started when Noah was 600

So, the Flood started 1656 AU

BC date = 4173 – 1656 = 2517 BC.

This is a remarkable statement. At the time there were flourishing civilisations in Mesopotamia, China, Egypt. The worldwide flood must have been so insignificant that none of these civilisations show a break of one year and starting again from scratch. It also shows that the genealogy showing Noah’s sons are the founding fathers of these races a little ludicrous.

What animals were taken on board the Ark? Were dinosaurs allowed in? Gen 6:19-20 says:

19: And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark, to keep them alive with you; they shall be male and female.

20: Of the birds according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping thing of the ground according to its kind, two of every sort shall come in to you, to keep them alive.

Each of these is a distinct species.

Were these on the Ark? This is only a small selection of the different kinds of dinosaur around. If they weren’t on the Ark, where were they? Did they all die in the flood? That would have been against the lords command about EVERY kind of animal. How could all these dinosaurs fit on the Ark?

What about fish. Were they on the Ark? What was the salinity of the sea? How did sea fish survive? How about whales? If they were all kept alive because they lived in the sea, what about Trilobites, Ammonites, Icthyosaurs, Sea scorpions?

If the extinction of the dinosaurs is the time of the flood, then what about the other extinctions. There have been four of them:

When are these discussed in the Bible? The dinosaur extinction was distinctive in another way. There is a distinct boundary, the K-T (or Cretaceous-Tertiary)boundary Which can be identified all around the Earth. There are no dinosaur fossils found above this boundary. It has high levels of Iridium, an element very rare on Earth, and in North America and the Carribean there are crystals of shocked quartz. There is also an underground crater discovered by accident by a petroleum mining company in Mexico. This all points to a large meteor crashing into the Earth onto the Yucatan peninsula. An event so important would of course be noted by a book describing the history of the Earth from its creation. So why isn’t it?

Then, of course the more usual questions of how did Noah collect Polar Bears, Kangaroos, Penguins, Dodoes, Giant Tortoises, Kiwis, Lemurs, Duck billed Platypi? In what way were they transported to the Middle East? What about all the foodstuffs for the How did all the diseases survive? Which of the occupants of the Ark carried the Venereal Diseases? Who carried TB? Small Pox? All of these cannot survive outside their host. Even flu cannot survive more than a few weeks without contact with a suitable human. What about parasites?

What about all the plants? They all had to be kept alive for a year. All the flowers, plants, trees. How did they survive the deluge? Maybe they were kept alive by miracle, like the olive tree obviously was, unless it grew VERY quickly for the dove to find a fresh leaf to bring back to Noah.

The story of Noah is so obviously a myth, borrowed from the Babylonian Tablets of Gilgamesh, that only people desperate to hold onto their faith despite logic/reason/evidence could believe in it. This is not just name calling. There is the principle of Occams razor. This is the idea that it is probably the simplest ideas that are true, its like cutting off the deadwood.

Which is simpler?

1. The Noah story is a myth
2. Noah did an amazing feat of animal husbandry, keeping the whole biomass of the Earth alive for a year on a raft after collecting them together, and then them all finding their way back to their ecological niches, where there would be no food for them. without a single trace of evidence for the flood in 2517 BC even though there were civilisations that were flourishing prior to and after that date without any disruption. No evidence of the flood occurring in the polar ice caps, the geological record or anywhere else.

(i) Is obviously simpler. The only way of accepting (ii) is to think of way out ideas purely to justify faith in a book. A strange position to take. If there was any supporting evidence for (ii), then that would be a different story.

The next major inconsistency is the Tower of Babel

The age of the Tower of Babel

Gen 10:25 Says at time of Peleg all the people were divided

Born 1755 AU = 3981 – 1755 = 2226 BC

Died 239 years later = 2226 BC – 239 years = 1987 BC

So, the time when the Tower of Babel was built was between 2226 BC and 1987 BC.

Now, how can that be, when there were different languages before that. The Sumerians had a different language to the Egyptians, who had a different language to the Chinese and of course a different one to the people in America. These languages have histories from before this date.