"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."  Thus begins the first chapter of the first book of the Bible – Genesis 1.  It goes on to tell how God created the entire cosmos in only six days. 

     Genesis 1 says that plants were created before the sun,[1] which is impossible, since plants need sunlight to exist.  It says that earth was created before the stars,[2] which is also impossible, since planets are born from the heavy metals forged in stars.  It also claims that daytime was created before the sun,[3] which is bizarre even from a primitive ancient viewpoint, for one would think that the ancients could have easily concluded that daytime is caused by sunlight. It also says that trees came before fish, and that birds came before "creeping things" – both statements being contrary to the fossil record.

     The ancient Hebrews conceptualized the cosmos very differently from the way modern science does.  Their concept of the cosmos was wholly incongruent with science, and unfortunately for creationism, it was the premise on which Genesis 1 was written. 

     Genesis 1 mentions "the firmament" nine times.  What is the firmament?   According to Hebrew cosmology, the firmament is a solid structure which separates the oceans of heaven from the atmosphere of the sky, and thus keeps the oceans of heaven from falling on us.[4]  If this were accurate, then the mission to the moon would have needed a submarine.  There are floodgates in heaven which open up and pour these oceans into the clouds.[5]  The clouds are like bags that transport rain for distribution.  It is considered miraculous that the clouds don’t burst like water balloons under the weight of the water.[6]  Other types of weather, such as snow, are contained in the warehouses of heaven.[7]  From these absurdities, it is clear that the Hebrews did not understand evaporation, and therefore invented other means to explain precipitation.

     Their understanding of basic astronomy was also entirely lacking.  The Bible says that the stars are actually angels who live inside the firmament.[8]  Thus, since rainwater is above the firmament, and stars are within it, rainwater is right above the stars.  The stars are not light years away in outer space.  No, they are right here close to home shining in our rainwater!  The firmament rotates around the earth, and with it, all the heavenly bodies.  Therefore, the sun, the moon, and the stars all rotate around the earth,[9] contrary to Copernicus.  The firmament, together with all its heavenly bodies, is supported by pillars in the sky.[10]  If this were true, there would be a lot more plane crashes.

     Their understanding of geography was equally flawed.  According to Psalms, in the beginning, water covered the entire earth, but God set a compass on the ocean to draw a circle where dry land would be.  The waters receded at his command, and so dry land was born.[11]  Notice that there is only one continent, and that it is in the shape of a circle.  This is what is meant by the passage "God sits on the circle of the earth."[12]  Many creationists quote this passage in order to "prove" that the Bible told us the earth is round.  Thus, they reason, the Bible must have been divinely inspired, because everybody else at that time thought the earth was flat.  But "the circle of the earth" has nothing to do with the earth being a sphere as we know it today.  Rather, the term applies to the circle of dry land, a continent on the earth, not the whole planet earth.[13]

     Their understanding of what's inside the earth was also wrong.  They believed that the circle of dry land is supported by pillars under the dry land.[14]  Underneath the dry land, the Hebrews supposed an underworld called sheol housed the dead.[15]  They thought ocean water extends around the bottom of the land.  These waters below the land were believed to seep into the underworld.[16]  From the underworld, water was thought to gush up in springs, thus making rivers and lakes.[17]  These springs are "the fountains of the deep."[18]  Thus, aquifers come from ocean water. 

     Genesis 1 is hopelessly inseparable from this pervasively ignorant and unscientific cosmology, for it presupposes that these absurdities are correct.  We can see this from the statements within it, such as the stars being in the firmament, the waters being above the firmament, the dry land appearing after being submerged in the void of the deep – all of these notions stem from the erroneous cosmology described above.  Thus, any literal interpretation of Genesis 1 is entirely untenable and patently absurd.  This is true regardless of whether or not evolution is a viable alternative.  Even if Charlie Darwin were entirely wrong, we must still discard all literal interpretations of Genesis 1.

          How many creationists insist that rainwater resides above the stars, or that springs come from the ocean, or that the sun revolves around the earth?  Not many.  Therefore, since they do not insist upon a literal reading for these points, then why do they insist that "every living creature brings forth after its own kind,"[19] as Genesis 1 says?  For if they admit that Genesis 1 is wrong about astronomy, geology, geography, oceanography, meteorology, and every other branch of science, as indeed they tacitly already do, then why do they insist that Genesis 1 is correct about biology?  Thus, they are inconsistent in their application of the literalist doctrine, for they have singled out one branch of science to attack, namely evolutionary biology, while tacitly admitting Genesis 1 is literally wrong about all other branches of science.

Click to read more about how we know Genesis 1 is a forgery.

The creationist narrative in Genesis 1 is contradicted by many ancient Christian texts.  Instead of an Almighty Creator God, ancient Christian texts espouse that the universe is born from blind arrogance and stupidity.  The angels caused evolution to occur from species to species.  There are many gods, (or aliens?), and the Christian God is just one among them.  Satan the Devil writes scripture, and thus the Bible was polluted with Genesis 1.  Archaeology and modern scholarship demonstrate that Genesis is indeed corrupted.  Cavemen walk with Adam and Eve.  Esoteric prophecies reveal the coming of Christ, and also reveal the dark forces that govern the cosmos.  Such are the ancient Christian writings.

Science vindicates the truth of these ideas.  Evolution often happens too fast for Darwin’s theory.  Gaps in the fossil record indicate that some kind of unnatural force acts together with natural selection.  Astrobiology reveals that intelligent life probably evolved long before us.  The fossil record reveals strange clues that aliens abducted species and transported them across oceans, and that DNA from diverse lineages was combined to spawn hybrid species.  Evidently, aliens influence evolution, and they are the gods of the world’s religions. 

This is not fiction.  All these facts are thoroughly documented in the links above.