Part 20

It cannot be too clearly and forcibly insisted upon that no fall necessitates no redemption, for the proposition is self-evident, and thus incapable of contradiction. If, therefore, we find the story of the creation and fall, as given to us in the first three chapters of Genesis, to be credible and reasonable, then our duty, upon another occasion, will be to examine the evidence for and against the subsequent theories of the religion, in order to discover whether they also are credible and reasonable. If, on the other hand, we find the story to be incredible and absurd, it will be our duty to reject the whole Christian scheme that has emanated from it. Our business at the present time is with these fundamental doctrines of creation and the fall, and our sole object is the elucidation of the truth, no matter whether it should be palatable or not to our minds. No sensible man can desire to retain that which is not true, for no system that is not founded on truth can be of any permanent service to the human race, but must on the contrary produce most pernicious results.

Having thus clearly explained my premisses, I shall now proceed to the examination of the first three chapters of Genesis, and shall divide my text into the two natural divisions suggested in the authorised version. The first chapter and first three verses of the second chapter contain what is known as the Elohistic narrative, so called on account of the deity being throughout designated Elohim—אלהים, the plural of Eloh (אלוה), or Elyah (אליה), a compound word made up of El (אל), a ram, and Yah (יה), an abbreviation of Yahouh (יהוה), the future tense of the verb Hahouh (הוה), to be. Eloh literally means ‘the ram will be,’ and is used to signify the ram-sun, the sun-god, or the sun in the zodiacal sign _Aries_, at the vernal equinox; the plural form, Elohim, being used to signify the ram-suns, or the six summer months of the year, in which the ram and the sun are together, from equinox to equinox. El signifies ram, or god, alone, or without the sun, in the winter period, and is always used to designate the evil principle, the wicked god, or the winter period, in contradistinction to Eloh, the ram-sun of the vernal equinox, and Elohim, the ram-suns of the summer months, the good principle, or the good gods. In this first narrative of the creation Elohim is rendered ‘God’ in the authorised version, though in other parts of the Bible it is rendered ‘gods,’ ‘men,’ or ‘angels.’ The remainder of the second and the third chapters contain the second, or Jehovistic narrative, so called on account of the deity being designated throughout, Yahouh, or Jehovah (so pronounced by Christians) Elohim (יהוה אלהים), rendered in the authorised version ‘the Lord God.’ That these two accounts were not written by one person will become clear enough as we proceed in our examination, in which the rendering of the authorised version will be strictly adhered to.

According to the first narrative, god (Elohim) created the heavens and the earth and all they contain in six ordinary days, and rested from his work on the seventh day. It has been asserted by some zealous but not over scrupulous Christians that days of twenty four hours’ duration were not meant by the writer, but that the word יום (day) signifies an enormous lapse of time; but it is quite clear to anyone with average intelligence that an ordinary day was meant, or else there would have been no use in saying that the evening and the morning were the first day. Moreover, we are distinctly told in Exodus XX. 10, 11, that we are to keep the seventh day as a holiday, “for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day.” We therefore have here the creation of the world, with day and night, but no sun, in one day, which we must admit at once is an absurdity, for it is beyond all doubt scientifically proved that this world could never have existed for one moment without the sun round which it revolves, and our common sense tells us plainly that without a sun there could never have been days and nights, or evenings and mornings.

On the second day we are told that god created the firmament, and called it heaven, and that this firmament separated the waters above from those below, which clearly proves that the writer had no other conception of the universe than that it was limited above to the height of the clouds, and bounded below by the earth itself. The third day was set apart for the gathering together of the waters into seas and rivers, and for the creation of the vegetable kingdom, which again is contradictory of all known scientific facts, for there was still no sun in existence. At last, on the fourth day, the sun was created, as also the moon and stars, all being placed in the firmament, between the clouds and the earth, for the sole purpose of acting as lamps and marking time for this world. The writer evidently imagined that the only object of the heavenly orbs is to light up this world, to divide our day from our night, and to limit our seasons, being, apparently, ignorant of the fact that our days and seasons are regulated by the motions of the earth itself, quite irrespective of the movements of the celestial bodies. He was also clearly under the impression that the sun was, after our earth, the largest body in the universe, the moon being next, and the stars the smallest; whereas the sun is five hundred times larger than the earth and all the planets and their moons put together; while the earth is about forty nine times larger in bulk than the moon; and some of the stars are immensely larger than our sun, and all of them, moreover, suns themselves.

It is sufficiently evident from this account that the world had been in existence for three days and three nights before the sun was made, and that vegetation had in the meantime been produced, which is, we know, an absurdity. There are some ingenious individuals who have declared that this is quite possible, for there are, they say, lights that are unconnected with the sun, and that the writer evidently alluded to these faint glimmerings; but I assert confidently that, leaving out of the question the light derived from the stars, so far as we know from science, there is no light known which is not either directly produced from the sun, or a reflection of the sun’s light from some other object.

On the fifth day were created fishes, birds, and mammals in the form of whales. Now there has been so far no creation of land animals except birds, and yet the writer declares that whales were made, being clearly quite ignorant of the fact that whales are not true fishes, but mammals, belonging to the sub-kingdom Mammalia, to which belong also horses, cows, apes and men. Whales were not evolved until long after creeping animals, such as lizards, serpents, etc., and took to the water again after having been, in the parent form, long accustomed to dry land, just in the same manner as did the walrus, porpoise, sea-cow, dolphin and seal, all of which are mammals. It was not until the next (sixth) day that creeping animals were created, according to Genesis, and yet we know well enough that they slowly evolved from molluscs, or soft-bodied animals, at a very early period, ages before such species as whales and cattle existed. On the very same day, according to the narrative, god formed an androgynous, or hermaphrodite man, having two sexes, and being the fac-simile of himself. Many ancient races believed that their god was androgynous, and no doubt the writer of this account held the same opinion, regarding the good principle of the summer months, or Elohim, as a bi-sexual and reproductive deity. If this be not the correct view of the matter, it would be interesting to know which of the two sexes the god of Genesis partakes of.

On the seventh day god rested from his work; but we do not find any record of his having done anything to cause fatigue, except giving utterance to his fiat day by day.

This story is so palpably absurd as to need no argument to prove it so, were it not for the fact that certain crafty persons, seeing the utter impossibility of reconciling it with science and reason, have seen fit to invent new interpretations of the original, in order to give it an appearance of truth. One sect maintains that the days were epochs, and not ordinary days, which, if it were true, would merely augment the difficulty by making the earth to have existed, with vegetation, for ages instead of days, without the sun; but we have already seen that this theory will not hold ground for a moment.

Another more cunning class of religionists have propounded the hypothesis that the whole story is meant to be an epitome of what occurred at the origin of the universe and life, and that ordinary days were really meant, and purposely utilised to epitomise long periods of time, as was customary with ancient writers, who frequently availed themselves of poets’ licence in this manner. This theory is _primâ facie_ a plausible one, and has, no doubt, satisfied many restless and thoughtless spirits amongst us; but in reality it differs but little, if at all, from the preceding hypothesis, both leaving us in much the same position. They declare that the very same order is maintained in the narrative as that adopted by scientists; that both agree that the earth was formed first, and then, in the following order, vegetation, fishes, birds, beasts of the field, and man. We know well enough, however, that the sun is absolutely necessary for the existence of the vegetable kingdom; that birds did not appear before reptiles and worms, but long after them; and that placental mammals made their appearance, not before creeping animals, and kangaroos, opossums and others of the marsupial species, but many ages after them.

In direct contradiction of this fable in Genesis, we learn from science that our solar system once existed in a condition of highly attenuated nebulous vapour; and that in the course of millions of years this huge chaotic mass of matter, with its sum of force or energy, subject alike to the laws of gravitation and transformation, gradually condensed, and became moulded into cosmic order, forming in process of time a number of rotating spherical nebular masses, in a state of intense heat, owing to the shock of their recently united atoms. These spheres gradually cooled by radiation, consequently contracting and becoming possessed of a more rapid rotary movement, throwing off from their equatorial regions large rings of vapour, which in their turn also condensed, and, under the influence of the same two laws, formed separate spheres for themselves. Thus gradually came into existence our sun, planets and moons.

In the course of time, as our earth cooled down, large volumes of water were precipitated on the surface, causing an enormous wear and tear of the now solid rock of the earth’s crust, which eventually gave rise to depositions of various kinds of earth grits, in layers, one above the other; which strata have been divided by geologists into periods, according to various peculiarities observed in the course of their deposition. In the earliest of these periods, owing to the gradual change that took place in the relative proportions of the atmospheric gases, and to the great decrease in temperature, a peculiar combination of the molecular atoms of the earth’s substance took place, which resulted in the formation of an albuminous substance, called protoplasm, possessing the power of absorption, assimilation, and reproduction by fission, or, in other words, developing the property called life. Under the influence of the laws of heredity and selection this primordial germ of life gradually developed into higher and still higher organic forms of existence, from Amœbæ to Gastrœada, or molluscs with mouths; next to Vermes, or worm life; then to Vertebrata, or back-boned animals; through fishes; amphibians, living both in and out of water; reptiles, from which eventually evolved birds; and marsupials; up to placental mammals, such as whales, quadrupeds, apes and men. The gradual evolution of these species occupied many millions of years before the date of the creation in Genesis (B.C. 4004), during which period the face of the earth underwent manifold and great changes.

Now, in the name of common sense and reason, does this hypothesis agree with and corroborate, as it is said to do by some divines, the 1st Bible story of creation, in any manner at all? I maintain that the man who replies in the affirmative does an injustice to his reasoning faculties and outrages the common sense of his fellows. The theory of creation is absolutely opposed to that of evolution on every point.

Now let us examine the second narrative, as given in the second and third chapters of Genesis. Here we have a direct contradiction of the story in the first chapter; for we are told that god created the earth, the heavens, vegetation and man, but not woman, all in one day. We are also told that there had been no rain upon the earth, and yet that “there went up a mist from the earth,” which we know is impossible. “But,” say the orthodox, “everything is possible with god.” The reply of the evolutionist is, “Can god, then, make a stick with one end only?” God next planted a garden, in which he placed his newly made man, after giving him instructions to eat of every tree within it, except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the fruit of which was not to be touched, and the penalty of disobedience being instant death. Then, in fresh contradiction of the first narrative, beasts of the field and birds were created, after man; after which Adam, the man, named them all; but how he acquired the power of speech necessary for such a feat is not recorded. For absurdity the next part of the narrative exceeds all that has preceded it. God created cattle and birds in abundance, but yet could not manufacture a suitable partner for the man; so he adopted the strange device of taking from Adam’s body, while he slept, one of his ribs, with which he made a woman. Now it must strike every thoughtful man and woman that this act was the very acme of stupidity, for surely it would have been far easier to have created the woman at once by another fiat, or to have created a spare rib with which to make the woman. To attribute such conduct to the great author is surely the height of irreverence.

It is quite evident that both these stories were not written by one author, and that both cannot be true, for they totally contradict each other, and are written in quite different styles, the deity himself being differently designated in each. We are told by certain parties that if we do not believe these stories we shall most certainly be roasted for all eternity; and indeed the New Testament distinctly bears out this fearful fiat. According to this, every man in the whole world who has been unfortunate enough to hear these two accounts read, and who is endowed with sufficient intelligence to discriminate between a pop-gun and an elephant, will inevitably perish; for it is impossible for any sane man to believe two such contradictory statements. It is not within the power of any man to do so. You might just as well demand of a man that he must believe that a brick and a pan-cake are identical articles. He could not do so, no matter how hard he tried.

Compared with these fables, how ennobling, grand and sublime is the theory of evolution. We behold the great and mysterious energy of universe operating in a manner calculated to inspire our minds with wonder, awe and admiration. The truly marvellous development of ourselves from a chaotic nebula of attenuated matter, through all the varied and manifold stages of existence, with their beautiful and useful properties, is indeed an overwhelmingly convincing evidence of the existence of an omniscient and omnipotent, although absolutely inscrutable author; and I doubt much whether anyone ever approached this subject with an honest desire to be guided by reason in his search for truth, who did not experience this profound reverence for the unknown author. Can we believe that these two narratives in Genesis are also calculated to inspire such a sentiment in the minds of those who are fairly well educated and amenable to reason? What kind of a deity, think you, is this god of Genesis? The concluding portion of the 2nd narrative will at once inform us.

This story is well known to all of us, and is a very remarkable one, for we learn from it the startling fact that the serpent, or devil, was the greatest benefactor to the human race, and, moreover, truthful; while god was the greatest enemy the race ever had, and was guilty of falsehood and treachery. God placed this man and woman in the garden, in front of a very strong temptation, pointed out the temptation to them, and threatened them with instant death if they yielded to it. This god is supposed to be omniscient, and therefore knew well enough before he placed them there that the poor creatures would fall on the very first temptation. Can we conceive more glaring injustice and diabolical cruelty than this? Now the serpent knew very well that they would not die if they ate the fruit, but that, instead, they would become wise; and eventually he persuaded them to eat. Who spoke the truth, god or the devil? Did the man and woman die on the day they ate the fruit? Far from it. That day, were there any truth at all in the narrative, would have been the grandest day ever known to man; for by the eating of that fruit was made known to him the difference between good and evil, that he might be able to seek the one and avoid the other; his benefactor being the serpent, or devil, the circumventor and conqueror of god.

But notice further on how impotent this so-called almighty deity really was. He exclaimed in fear, “Behold, the man is become as one of us [which was precisely what the devil predicted] to know good and evil, and now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life and live for ever, therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden.” Now how easy it would have been for an omnipotent creator to have annihilated his own work, and thus cleared the way for a fresh start. It would be interesting to know who the “we” were that the writer refers to, if not an androgynous deity or a multitude of gods or goddesses.

What was the consequence of this sin of Adam and Eve? Every man and every woman ever born upon this earth is guilty of this sin, and will eternally burn in hell fire, says the Christian church, unless they believe that this circumvented god became a man, lived on this earth, and died the death of a criminal, in order to give satisfaction to himself for the outrage committed on his divine majesty by three of his creatures. The countless myriads of human beings who have inhabited this earth during the six thousand years (according to Bible chronology) that the world has existed, are all and each under this fearful curse, although they had no more to do with Adam’s sin than the man in the moon, and had no power to prevent it. These people have been brought into the world, whether they liked it or not, and are subject to this penalty, the enormous majority of them being inevitably doomed to eternal torment; for there have lived many millions of people who never even heard of the Bible, its gods or its scheme of redemption. We may go farther and declare that all are inevitably doomed, for we cannot conceive that anyone can believe such a story as that of the fall. No one will venture to assert that infants and idiots can believe anything, therefore there is no hope for these unfortunates, whatever chances there may be for others.

As the expression of the infantile imagination of primitive man, after emerging from his brute ancestry, and commencing to exercise more fully his reasoning faculties, these fables are easily understood; but as the writings of men who had been inspired by the almighty power to record a true account of the origin of nature and man for the use of others, they must be at once rejected by all reasonable and thoughtful people as gross absurdities. We can easily understand how the mind of primitive man pondered over the strange mixture of good and evil in the world, just as the awakening mind of a child would do to day; how the mystery would be explained by the analogy of the celestial movements; and how, as the result of the infantile reasoning, the good principle became associated with the mental conception of a venerable old gentleman, who planted a garden, and performed the principle part in the drama just described from the third chapter of Genesis.

Tho whole story bears the strongest marks of being the production of an infantile intellect. The simple manner in which the writer tells us that the man and woman sewed fig leaves together and made aprons for themselves is sufficient evidence of this. We cannot believe that Adam and Eve went through the many processes necessary for the production of the needles and thread, with which to sew their leaves together. Then the conversation between god, as he took his stroll in the garden in the cool of the evening, and Adam and Eve, is just what we should expect from the crude imaginations of our early ancestors; as also is the manner in which the man placed the blame on the woman, and she in her turn upon the serpent. The curse, too, is precisely in the same style; first the serpent, then the woman, afterwards the man, and lastly the earth itself being brought under the divine anathema. No less apparent is the absurdity of the writer stating that Adam called his wife Eve “because she was the mother of all living,” when there were then no other human beings in existence; and declaring that god made coats and breeches (see “Breeches Bible”) of skins, when as yet death had not entered into the world. Such fables cannot be accepted as true history by the intellect of the nineteenth century.

That we suffer for the sins of our fathers is unfortunately too true; but that we shall eternally frizzle for them I declare, without the least hesitation, to be a vile falsehood and an insult to our intellects. The vices and diseases of our ancestors are undoubtedly reproduced in ourselves, as are their good deeds and lofty sentiments; and we again transmit these properties to our offspring. We have, in fact, the power of rendering happy or miserable those who follow us, and making the general state of society somewhat better or worse. Our great mental attributes were not surely evolved within us for no purpose, and to lie dormant, but that we should exercise them and use them for the moral and social improvement of ourselves and our fellows. But to imagine that we shall suffer again in some other condition of existence, because of our fathers’ sins, is the height of insanity.