| > I find it interesting that the story of "Genesis" in the Bible basically goes through the order of operations for how the universe formed (aside from a couple of the days out of order...but it is very close). As a Christian but decidedly not a biblical literalist, that's...just not true, without a whole lot of strained appeal to metaphor informed by knowing the answer you want it to get to. Genesis has two mutually incompatible creation stories, and while the reference to "days" means this has to refer to the first one, its not really true of either of them. I mean the first one has creation in this order of days: (1) Light, day vs. night (2) separation of the waters (which, incidentally, appear to preexist creation, as they don't get created anywhere) into waters above and waters below, divided by a "firmament" which is named Heaven. (3) Gathering of the waters below the firmament into one place (the Seas), producing dry land as side effect. And the creation of grass, herb-yielding seed, and fruit trees on the land. (4) Creation of the Sun, Moon, and stars. (5) Creation of sea and avian animals. (6) Creation of (non-avian) land animals, including man. That's more than a couple days out of order. |