Genesis, Chapter 1

Here it is. The beginning of the book. Well, in all fairness, it's also the beginning of everything. The whole universe and how it got here crushed into a single line: God created everything. Except it's a little more complicated than that.

Very first news flash: there is God. Just the one god, mind you, because all the other religions that didn't end in pools of blood had a bunch of gods so that there was something for everyone. But this one god's got it all in one nice neat package. He creates everything, including the whole Earth. Except the Earth was without form. So, he didn't create it--he just mostly thought about creating it.

Already I like this guy. Big plans--still, I've got some DotA to play.

And where on the void called Earth there was water (which really doesn't make sense cause it's a void) there was darkness because of course there was--light can't reflect off of a void then land in our eyes--if our eyes were there to see it which they were not.

More importantly, said water was wicked deep and there was no light there--not entirely unlike today where the deeper you go in the ocean the less light there is until there is no light at all.

Then he made light--except in the deep, of course.

Now, apparently light is good and has to be separate from the darkness. Except at dusk and dawn where they nod at each other during the shift change.

Then he named the light Day and the darkness Night. I assume he also named the evening Evening, the dawn Dawn, beer-o'clock, 4:20, and all the halves-past.

Exceptions were probably made for night lights, street lights, LED Christmas lights, lightning bugs, actual lightning, airports, urban luminescence, and the moon but they left that part out because it's a snoozefest.

At this point, we finally get to land. It's important to remember that unlike what you would think would happen--where you'd start with the yummy gooey warm center of a planet and then work your way outward--God went in reverse. He made oceans, then land, then goo because this is a guy who likes a challenge.

Then god called the Earth "Heaven". Why? We don't know. Clearly back when he made Heaven and then the Earth three paragraphs ago, that was a slightly different Heaven. Heaven 1.0, if you will.

From time-to-time, the Christian bible is going refute itself within column inches. We gotta roll with the punches here. There's no reason to write this blog if the Christian bible isn't a challenge.

Back to our new favorite deity, he whips up gravity, dry land (again), the twigs that go with the land, avocados for guac, and a bunch of other "good" stuff.

Importantly, we establish right up front that God decides what is "good". This will be extremely important later (See "Genesis, Chapter 19", when he burns two heavily-populated cities to the ground with fire rocks because anal sex makes him weepy and you start thinking to yourself, "What the fuck?").

Now, God makes two great lights: the sun and the moon. The sun is always doing it's thing, but the moon craps out every 28 days or so. So really it's more like one and a half lights.

Just to recap: God made the light and then made the light again, made Heaven and then made Heaven again, and made a metaphorical brownie by suspending melted butter in mid-air, sliding the crust under it, and then injecting the cake part into the center like a Yodel.

This is the point where we start getting into the nitty-gritty. Fish, birds, and whales (which are not fish, google it) all spring forth and each only ever has sex with it's own species--which is why ligers, boysenberries, donkeys, bananas, whatever comes from honry macaques and sika deer, grapefruit, and golden-crowned manakins are all mythological.

If it creeps, crawls, stomps, or flies, God made it on Day Four and it definitely didn't have sex with anything it wasn't supposed to.

Now, God loves him some critters. After all, have you ever seen a video of a rabbit eating a raspberry? Most of you aren't here anymore because you're looking for videos of raspberry-addicted rabbits. This is all I'm saying. Still, there was just something missing. So God says out loud to himself because he hasn't created anyone else yet to hear it, "Let's make dudes. And more importantly Self, the dudes have gotta be in charge of the fish, birds, and cattle--which man didn't breed. Cattle just always were. They didn't need to be trained or bred to not kill the dudes or anything. All me."

Now may be a good time to mention that God apparently refers to himself in the plural--mostly because he's just by himself all the time and it's a good way to keep sane. Although, if you met someone on the street who said "We were just at the store." and you said "Oh, you and who else?" and they said "What?" and you realized after a spirited debate about pronouns that they thought they were two people you'd probably go out of your way to never speak with them again.

And since we're clarifying the pronouns, I think it's worth noting at this point that I will be referring to God as a "he" despite the fact that Genesis fails to settle the matter because only a dude tries to cook a metaphorical brownie in reverse. Women read instructions.

Anyway, when it comes to whipping up a new species, God(s) had run out of ideas. Think about it: birds, ants, both kiwi, marijuana, hemp, coffee, heroin, poison ivy, emus, and kangaroos--the guy's gotta be tired, right? So for his last creature he phones it in.

"Fuck it, I'll make them just like me", he says.

Now we're not entirely sure what "like me" means. Could be bipedal. Could be "able to make a void". Could be indecisive and willing to take up smoking in order to fit in with the cool kids. Doesn't really get into that so you shouldn't care.

At this point, God(s) says to the people, "Go bone the shit out of each other", which should explain why Christians are super-obsessed with preventing you from having sex at all costs, why priests are asked to go their whole lives without seeing even themselves naked, and why popes enjoy banquets of chestnuts.

He also told the humans to "Subdue the Earth", which means fill the oceans with plastic and turn up the thermostat so it looks more like Venus.

This first chapter of Genesis covers exactly six days. The lesson of this chapter is simple: you can't just whip up an entire universe in one big bang. You gotta nurse it a little. Massage the code until it's just right. Work out the kinks.

The six-day mark is important because God(s)--the all powerful deity who can create days for days--takes one day off for "rest". That's why your local liquor store is closed on Sundays. Even God(s) doesn't get plowed for seven days straight, you lush.

Thus ends my first blog post. I hoped this helped you better understand religion and the Christian bible. Tune in next time when we discover all the crazy shit that happens on Day Eight.