Learned theologians, working backward through the genealogies of the Inerrant Bible, have dispositively established that the earth was created on this date in the year 4004 BC at 9:00 AM (Greenwich Mean Time).
Science has in fact established that the age of the earth is approximately 4.5-billion years, and there is something sad and weirdly quaint about the image of scholars who, relying upon the preposterous claim of inerrancy and studying the genealogies, grew old and stooped and gray trying to identify the exact day of Creation. It’s an innocent stupidity, though, with a sort of sweetness about it.
But what should we think of the moderns who have no excuses for peddling this bilge? A modern pastor has been to seminary, he has studied comparative religion and knows there are tens of dozens of other creation tales, and he knows Genesis is a poorly edited mash-up of much older pagan tales, too.
From China:
In the beginning , the heavens and earth were still one and all was chaos. The universe was like a big black egg, carrying Pan Gu inside itself. After 18 thousand years Pan Gu woke from a long sleep. He felt suffocated, so he took up a broadax and wielded it with all his might to crack open the egg. The light, clear part of it floated up and formed the heavens, the cold, turbid matter stayed below to form earth. Pan Gu stood in the middle, his head touching the sky, his feet planted on the earth. The heavens and the earth began to grow at a rate of ten feet per day, and Pan Gu grew along with them. After another 18 thousand years, the sky was higher, the earth thicker, and Pan Gu stood between them like a pillar 9 million li in height so that they would never join again.
When Pan Gu died, his breath became the wind and clouds, his voice the rolling thunder. One eye became the sun and on the moon. His body and limbs turned to five big mountains and his blood formed the roaring water. His veins became far-stretching roads and his muscles fertile land. The innumerable stars in the sky came from his hair and beard, and flowers and trees from his skin and the fine hairs on his body. His marrow turned to jade and pearls. His sweat flowed like the good rain and sweet dew that nurtured all things on earth.
From the Mayans:
In the beginning were only Tepeu and Gucumatz. These two sat together and thought, and whatever they thought came into being. They thought earth, and there it was. They thought mountains, and so there were. They thought trees, and sky, and animals. Each came into being. Because none of these creatures could praise them, they formed more advanced beings of clay. Because the clay beings fell apart when wet, they made beings out of wood; however, the wooden beings caused trouble on the earth. The Gods sent a great flood to wipe out these beings, so that they could start over. With the help of Mountain Lion, Coyote, Parrot, and Crow they fashioned four new beings. These four beings performed well and are the ancestors of the Quiché.
In their day, each of these fantasies were the belief of the best and most educated men of their societies.
The modern pastor knows that reason and science, which have profited humanity so spectacularly, say that Genesis is wrong — and daily he uses tools whose mere existence prove it.
Does he stand in his pulpit and bellow for Genesis then because he is such a witless, unthinking fool that he actually believes it? Or is he a coward and cynic who does what is expected of him by witless, unthinking fools?
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