Genesis is a Jokesis!

Genesis is a Jokesis!

• Did God "gab" the world into being? Did His glossolalia fill the void? If so, in which tongue did He dictate Creation? Literalist Hebrew scholars assume that the book of Genesis contains the first recorded syllables of God's speech, "Let there be light!" (in Hebrew). Literalist Moslems insist that Arabic is the language of Allah (God), and therefore it is an insult or worse to translate their holy book, the Koran, into foreign tongues that are not the language of God. While Hindus claim that the Sanskrit syllable, "AUM," encompasses all the vibrations of Creation.

Personally, I do not pretend to know what language God used to call forth Creation. It appears that only angels were listening to God's speech at the time, and I hesitate to declare if these were Hebrew, Islamic, or Hindu angels. Therefore, I find it easiest to assume that creation by the "word" of God is merely a poetic description of how God "called" the cosmos into being. But if the description of God "speaking," and the record of His alleged "words," is poetry, what does that say about how the rest of the story in Genesis should be viewed?

- E. T. Babinski

• And God said, "Let there be light." And the light causeth cancer.

• God created everything out of nothing but the nothingness still shows through.

• Work for a week, then 6000+ years on holiday - isn't God lazy?

• Genesis says that after God created everything He "saw that it was good...and rested." In short, God was satisfied with his own work, and that is fatal.

• The world is proof that God is a committee.

• If God lived on earth, people would knock out his windows. - Yiddish saying

• Maybe God is a kid playing SimEarth?

• According to Genesis, chapter one, the "sun, moon and stars" were "made" (asah), and "set" (natan) in the heavens "to provide light, and for signs and seasons" after the earth was made. So, the "earth" existed before the "sun, moon and stars!"

Did our lonely planet twiddle its continents as it waited for the sun to be created, which would grab our earth with its superior gravitation and girdle our planet round its fat fiery waist; waited for the moon to be created to fuel the earth's tidal engines; waited for billions and billions of gargantuan flaming balls to be created, whose light extends in all direction to the farthest reaches of the cosmos (and which do not merely exist to "light the earth" and "for signs and seasons" on earth)?

According to the same chapter of Genesis, even vegetation and "fruit trees" were created before the "sun, moon and stars." As if God had decided, "Fifty-billion galaxies, including the sun, planets and many moons of the solar system must remain uncreated; in fact all the empty space in the cosmos must remain unfilled, until I have fashioned some orange, banana, and coconut trees on earth." Talk about an earth-centered creation account!

Other "earth-centered clues" include the way that the earth and all that lives on it took "four days" to create while the rest of the cosmos, like the "sun, moon, and the stars also," only took "one day" to create. So the Creator spent "four days" on the earth and only "one day" on the rest of the universe?

All of this leads me to doubt that the Hebrews ever viewed the earth as one among many "planets" or viewed the stars as "distant suns, or, distant `lamps' equally as `great' as the sun." The ancients simply viewed the "earth" as the "lower half" of creation, with the "upper half" being the "heavens" in which the sun, moon and stars were "made" and "set" to light the lower half. It's a flat world after all!

- E. T. Babinski

• Speaking of the creation of man, did you know that there is only a 2% difference between the overall genetic makeup of man and chimpanzee? I can see God, on the sixth day of creation. On the last minute of the sixth day of creation. He's been goofing off all day. He still hasn't created man. Then he looks at his watch. "Oh Meeee! Wait, I've got an idea. Where'd I put those chimpanzee genes?" (God searches His pockets.)

- E. T. Babinski

• On the sixth day of creation God was walking alone through the garden of Eden and thought "What this place needs is someone to cultivate and keep it (Gen.2:15)." Then God spied some chimpanzees in a tree and thought, "Hey, what if I monkeyed around with this creature's genes? If I changed just 2% of its DNA I think I might be able to come up with a passable gardener."

(God goofed, making Adam the first "Martin Gardner," whose thirst for knowledge couldn't be satiated by merely thumbing through a Farmer's Almanac. He had to taste the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge. Mr. Gardner is an ex-fundamentalist Christian, the author of Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, and, The Whys of A Philosophical Scrivener. He was also the mathematical puzzle columnist for Scientific American magazine for several decades.)

- E. T. Babinski

• In the Bible it says Adam named the animals. Did he go around saying, "You're `Fred,' and you're...hmmmmm...`Barney?'" Probably not.

On the other hand, did Adam's names resemble scientific nomenclature? Did Adam divide every living thing into its phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. Did Adam start the branch of science known as cladistics, which studies everything it can about a living thing's anatomy and genes before fitting it into it's proper category?

No, I don't think Adam did that either.

So maybe Adam gave the animals colloquial "artsy sounding" names?

In any case, why should I be interested? We don't use Adam's "names" anymore. Besides, if I ever run into Adam or his immediate children in the next life I don't want to waste time arguing over whether a pig ^. .^

should be called a "pig," or must be called a "dooble-hizpot," because that's what "Father Adam" named it "in the beginning."

Creationists think the story points to Adam having had a "super brain," able to invent names for millions of creatures in a matter of days or hours, and remember which creature each name belonged to. Yeah, but could he do it again on a TV talk show, for us all to see, like Harry Lorraine the "memory expert" did, who memorized the names of every audience member, and then recalled them all on sight a little while later?

Then again, what's the point of God having Adam "name" all these creatures, especially ones that Adam was not likely to see or encounter again, like creatures deep in lakes, oceans, caves and burrows in the earth, or high up on mountainsides, or in the tallest branches and leaves of tree-canopied rain forests, or for that matter, having him "name" creatures so tiny that no one would even know they existed until after the microscope had been invented "six thousand years" [sic] hence?

The Hebrew tale about "Adam's naming of the animals" tells us more about ancient Hebrew ignorance of the breadth and depth of the biological world (or more about their mythic thought patterns) than about "Adam's super brain."

And what about naming all the plant species? The Bible says nothing about that. I guess even Adam's "super brain" had its limitations. Yet since Adam was given "every green plant to eat" and couldn't eat any of the animals "in the beginning," wouldn't it have been more useful for him to start off by naming all the plants rather than all the animals? Or did Adam point out food to Eve by saying, "See that `dooble-hizpot' over there? That green stuff it's munching is really good, I tried some yesterday."

Too bad good old Adam couldn't keep focused in the forefront of his "super brain" the one thing worth remembering according to the Bible fable, which was, "Do not eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge." But then how could a "super brain" resist the temptation to ingesting more "knowledge?" Sounds like a sting operation to me.

Needless to say, creationists take this stuff very seriously, as in the July 1995 "Impact" article #265, "Could Adam Really Name All Those Animals?" by William J. Spear, Jr., part of a series of "Vital Articles on Science/Creation" produced and distributed by the Institute for Creation Research, and mailed out to probably tens of thousands each month. Spear says that God used something similar to modern day VR (virtual reality) technology, i.e., when God "formed every beast of the field and fowl of the air out of the ground...and brought them unto Adam to see what he would name them." (Gen. 2:19-21)

I'm tempted to add a final word about this "vitally scientific" ICR article, but I can't. Some stuff just writes its own punch line.

- E. T. Babinski

• Unless the Lord God was looking for a helpmeet for Adam, why did he cause the animals to pass before Adam (as it says in Genesis chapter two)? And why did he, after the menagerie had passed by, pathetically exclaim, "But for Adam there was not found a helpmeet for him"? It seems that Adam saw nothing that struck his fancy. The fairest ape, the sprightliest chimpanzee, the loveliest baboon, the most bewitching orangutan, the most fascinating gorilla failed to touch with love's sweet pain, poor Adam's lonely heart...[So God decided to make Adam a helpmeet out of Adam's own side.] Imagine a Lord God with a bone or bloody slice of flesh from Adam's side in His hand with which to start a woman, trying to make up His mind whether to make a blond or a brunette!

- Robert Ingersoll

• When Adam was a single man
  
  He couldn't find a mate.
  
  While all the other animals
  
  Could riffle up a date.

  
  This agitated Adam,
  
  Handsome, tall and slim,
  
  Seeing two of everything
  
  But only one of him.

  
  But when the Lord came by one day
  
  And took Adam by the hand,
  
  He asked him to name the animals
  
  In air and sea and land.

  
  "From all the animals I made,
  
  I expect you to choose a mate,
  
  Some charming little female
  
  With whom you can have a date."

  
  But when the job was finished
  
  Poor Adam stood alone,
  
  There was no mate that he could date,
  
  None he could call his own.

  
  Now Adam was disconsolate,
  
  He began to fret and grieve.
  
  It was then the Lord got busy
  
  And made him Mother Eve.

  
  Just think what might have happened
  
  To folks like me and you,
  
  If Adam had selected as his mate
  
  A female kangaroo.

  - Sam Hill

• In the garden of Eden sat Adam,
  
  Massaging the chest of his madame.
  
  He giggled with mirth,
  
  For he knew that on earth
  
  There were only two boobs,
  
  And he had `em!
• Adam (right after Eve was created): "Hey God, I've got more ribs. You got more women?"
  
  Adam (a year later): "Hey God it's not funny anymore, I want my rib back!"
  
  God created man, but I could do better.

• - Erma Bombeck

• You think Oedipus had a problem? Adam was Eve's mother!
• If Eve was created "from Adam's side" she must have been tiny! But he loved her. How big of Adam.

• - E. T. Babinski

• If Eve was created from Adam's "flesh and bone" was she, in a manner of speaking, "cloned" from the DNA in Adam's blood and bone cells? A female clone would look almost exactly like the male original, and bear a greater resemblance than any sister does to her brother. Talk about self-love! Makes incest look tame by comparison! Clone yourself a marriage partner! Hey, it may become the wave of the future and it's Biblical! "Flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone," clone of my clone.

• - E. T. Babinski

• God said, "It is not good that man should be alone. Let us make him an help meet." Yet so far was she from helping him at all that she deceived him, and was in part the cause of his and her own fall.

• - The Roman Emperor Julian in his critique of Christianity, Against the Nazarenes (of which all the original copies were destroyed by Christians who would not put up with criticisms of their beliefs; mere fragments of Julian's work have survived in a Christian apologist's attempted rebuttal to Julian's embarrassing insights)

• If Adam and Eve were the only two people around, and God told them to multiply, then their sons and daughters must have had some interesting arguments before bedtime over who gets to sleep with whom. Talk about sibling rivalry! If only God had had enough foresight to create another pair besides Adam and Eve. Then we wouldn't all be descended from the incestuous children of that first couple. Of course, another pair would have made the snake's job harder, having to convince four people, not just two, to eat the forbidden fruit, and the story would have dragged out longer.

• - E. T. Babinski

• God the "Father" threw his first two children out of his house (or garden) after their first indiscretion, and barred their way back with a flaming sword. I don't know a single father on earth who'd treat his children like that after only their first indiscretion. What did God expect from "newborns" (as well as "newlyweds")? Or did Adam forget to floss after "eating" the precious piece of "forbidden fruit?" My, how horrible!

• Actually, Genesis, chapter one, is about how man got swindled out of eternal life. Adam and Eve are hustled from the garden by a frightened deity after they've tasted of the tree of knowledge "and become like one of us" [like "gods," or like "God," depending on your translation]. Better evict them before they take a bite out of the "tree of eternal life," and become even more like gods.

  Such myths were invented to explain why man was so superior to the animals in having a "god-like mind and amazing creative abilities like speech," yet still suffered the ignominy of death along with all the other animals. Hence, myths arose about man being "cheated" out of the other god-like quality he wished he had along with his intelligence, namely eternal life.

  Speaking of having "god-like" qualities, Genesis plainly states, as many theologians have pointed out, that man was created in God's literal physical image: "When God created man, He made him in the likeness of God...[And] Adam became the father of a son in his own likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth" (Gen. 5:1,3). Ancient near eastern peoples also told tales about how the gods found human females physically "beautiful" (compare Gen. 6:2), supposedly resembling the gods' own "beautiful" faces? So, there are examples even in the Bible where "God" is depicted in an all-too-human fashion reminiscent of other ancient deities like Zeus or Apollo, to whom the ancient Greeks believed they bore a physical resemblance.

  - E. T. Babinski

• The story of the fall of man in Genesis seems originally to have been one of the sardonic folktales of the Near East that explain how man once had immortality nearly within his grasp, but was cheated out of it by frightened or malicious deities. We have earlier versions from Sumerian times on that are less rationalized than the one in Genesis...The Genesis account permits itself a verse (3:22) in which God seems to be telling other gods that man is "now one of us," in a position to threaten their power unless they do something about it at once, with a break in the syntax that suggests genuine terror. [So Adam and Eve are hustled out of paradise by a frightened deity before they can "eat of (the second tree) the tree of life" and "live forever" as fellow gods. - ED.]

• - Northrop Frye, The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (Harvest, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983, p. 109

• Psalm 115:16 says that God "gave the earth to the sons of men," but, "the heavens are the heavens of the Lord." They certainly are if you believe the story about how God punished mankind for trying to reach heaven by building a tower, "a tower whose top will reach into heaven" (Gen. 11:4), i.e., the infamous "tower of Babel."

• "And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. And the Lord said, `Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they propose to do will be impossible for them. Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.'" (Gen. 11:5-7)

  This "God" sounds a bit frightened - not as much as in Genesis, chapter 3, but still frightened - in this case, that man will "reach heaven" by "building a tower."

  What I want to know is how tall was the "tower of Babel?" Was it taller than a Babylonian ziggurat? Taller than the pyramid of Cheops? Taller than the Twin Towers of Manhattan? Taller than the tallest mountain on earth? Reaching higher into heaven than mankind's deepest space probe? Just where does "God" draw the line between the "earth" and things that "reach into His heavens?"

  The "tower of Babel" must have been taller than the tallest "tall tale" ever told by Mark Twain for God to have "come down" to take a look at it, fearing it would "reach heaven," and then confuse our language.

  Heck, we're at the point where we name our heaven-going spacecraft after pagan gods, like "Gemini and Apollo," and then leave our footprints on "God's" moon in "His heavens!" And God won't "come down" and raise a ruckus again? Maybe Bible lovers who are busy picketing abortion clinics should shift gears and get busy picketing NASA before something "really bad" happens.

  - E. T. Babinski

• I doesn't matter to me whether Adam and Eve were created with or without "bellybuttons."

• I want to know, were they created with anuses? Did they use leaves to wipe themselves? Was Adam sometimes just out of reach of leaves and had to ask Eve to find him some nice soft ones?

  What about fecal odor? Did their farts smell? Did their underarms smell from the excrement of bacteria? What about foot odor? (Did God feel the least bit obliged to give them the recipe for soap?) Did they burp?

  In other words, wouldn't Adam and Eve have been ashamed of a number of things long before they were "ashamed" to discover they were "naked?" And what does all this imply about the "perfection" of the Biblical God's creation?

  Even in Genesis it says that God cursed woman by "increasing or multiplying" her pain during childbirth, which implies that God had already designed pain and suffering.

  - E. T. Babinski

• How can God be perfect? He's not. It shows in his work. Take a look at a mountain range. Every mountain different. Different height, different shape. Leaves are all different. He can't get two fingerprints the same. He's had a billion years to work on that. Can't even give one person two thumbs the same. And everything He makes dies. So He needs a lot of help. He's only third in command. The guy that we think is "God," third in command, He's the western marketing manager. That's all. The real God is too busy, are you kidding, He's throwing gas balls around the firmament. "Don't worry about earth man," He says, flinging another huge gas ball, "What is it, a planet? Oh well," He says, tossing another, "Earth, right? Ha, ha. I'll betcha it's Sunday, that's the day, my one day off, and they all crowd into church, `Blahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblah,' day off my ass.

• - George Carlin (from his comedy routine on "God")

• Mosquitoes were designed by God to make flies seem better.
• AIDS is a virus. Pat Robertson is the punishment from God.
• If AIDS is a divine punishment then lesbians are God's chosen people.
• The good Lord never gives you more than you can handle. Unless you die of something.
• I doubt any God who inflicts pain for his own pleasure

• - McCoy (on Star Trek)

• There is no devil, it's just God when he's drunk.
• There is no God, it's just the devil when he's sober.
• A Bible lover once accused me of "denying God's presence."

• I answered, "He doesn't make it very well known to most of us, except of course to lucky old doubting Thomas. Instead, everyone on this planet is equally blessed in being able to detect the undeniable `presence' of earthquakes, tornadoes, genetic defects, diseases, hunger, boredom, ignorance, and strife, praise God!"

  - E. T. Babinski

• "Fear of God" is third to "Fear of Spiders and Snakes," and second to "Fear of Public Speaking."
• My greatest fear is being stuck in heaven for eternity with a bunch of televangelists.
• Wisdom begins where the fear of God ends.

E.T. BABINSKI