9And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry [land] appear: and it was so.
10And God called the dry [land] Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that [it was] good.
11And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, [and] the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed [is] in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
12And the earth brought forth grass, [and] herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed [was] in itself, after his kind: and God saw that [it was] good.
13And the evening and the morning were the third day.
Here we have the first sign of life, albeit plant life. While it is a beautiful notion that there has always been grass and trees, biology will tell us otherwise. Just like animals, plants have evolved. Check out this link for info on plant evolution. Biologists have been able to classify the different plants that would have been seen in different eras, starting with the Paleozoic. Suffice it to say, grass and trees were not among the first plants on Earth.
14And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
15And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
16And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: [he made] the stars also.
17And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
18And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that [it was] good.
19And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
Although God has already created light, he is now actually creating the Sun. That begs the question: where was light coming from before? Most people are rational enough to believe that the difference between the light during the times we call night and day are caused by the Earth's rotation on its axis. The hours of daylight change depending on where the Earth is in its orbit around the Sun. So, if there was no Sun until the fourth day, how was there light and how were plants able to grow?
It is true that thanks to our orbit, we do have seasons and can navigate based on the stars. Stars, though, are much older than their shiny facade would have one believe. According to Wikipedia:
Most stars are between 1 billion and 10 billion years old. Some stars may even be close to 13.7 billion years old—the observed age of the universe. The oldest star yet discovered, HE 1523-0901, is an estimated 13.2 billion years old. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star, 06/07/10)
God was correct in that the moon is younger than the Earth (about 4.527 billion years old), however it isn't a source of "light" in the same way that the sun is. The moon reflects the sun's light, as any elementary student can tell you.
20And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl [that] may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
21And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that [it was] good.
22And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.
23And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
God is one intrepid creator. Imagine making WHALES first. That is a lot of work. Forget the single cell organisms, lets go big or go home. According to current abiogenesis theory (origin of life), the first organisms on Earth are thought to have been prokaryotes. Prokaryotes are single cell organisms that lack a nucleus. The oldest fossils thought to represent microbial life are around 3.5 billion years old. That is 1 billion years after it is believe that the Earth was formed. Of course, once we have life, we can have evolution. Whales are thought to have evolved around 50 million years ago.
24And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
25And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that [it was] good.
Does that include dinosaurs? Or did God hide those fossils and bones to be playful?
26And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
So far, Genesis has maintained a very Earth-centered attitude- Earth first, then the rest of the universe. Now we have a "saved the best for last" attitude and justification for humanity's dominion over all things.
27So God created man in his [own] image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
What does it mean to create something in one's own image? Do we all somehow resemble God physically, or is this meant to be about consciousness?
28And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
29And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which [is] upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which [is] the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
30And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein [there is] life, [I have given] every green herb for meat: and it was so.
31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, [it was] very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
God created the Earth. He created the Sun and the Moon. He then started in on plants and animals. Lastly, he created humans so that we can use up all of these wonderful resources he made for us and procreate. What a giving God! Why did he do it though? One critique of Atheism is that it means life has no purpose. According to this chapter of Genesis, the only purpose for life is the creating of more life. That doesn't sound too different from biology to me.
