Never mind how many decades ago I took college astronomy. Suffice it to say that I needed a refresher. Rather than waste time on lightweights such as Brian Cox, Phil Plait, and Neil deGrasse Tyson, I turned to the Science Book of science books—that is, the Bible.
All I can say is that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is danged lucky that most people who believe in the Bible don’t bother reading it. Otherwise, everyone would know that the sky is a firmament separating heavenly from earthly water. The sun, moon, and stars are fixed in said firmament, much like ceiling lights. If the firmament’s existence became common knowledge, think of the embarrassment it would cause astronomers, astronauts, and astrologers.
Just kidding. Nothing embarrasses astrologers.
Not that NASA need worry. That tidbit about the firmament comes up a full eight verses into Chapter 1. Most Bible-thumpers I meet skip straight from “In the beginning” to “you shall not lie with a male as with a woman,” sometimes making a brief stop at “for God so loved the world.”
It boggles the mind: try to calculate the tax dollars and the international cooperation that surely went into making the masses swallow lunar landings, space telescopes, Voyagers 1 and 2, and Mars rovers. Hoaxes, all of them! Space-bound rockets would have bounced right off the firmament. Or, worse, they would have punched a hole clear through it, sending heavenly water cascading down. Imagine what that would have done to God’s water pressure. I shudder to think how the fellow who turned a woman to salt for looking over her shoulder and killed a dude for touching the Ark of the Covenant might retaliate if we ruined his shower.
Do not be taken in if you break out a pair of binoculars and espy a U.S. flag on the moon. For the artist in on the conspiracy, it was a simple matter to climb a ladder and paint a tiny flag on the permanently affixed moon.
Genesis also disabused me of all that bunk about how hydrogen molecules coalesced into stars that fused and spewed heavier elements. Earth had its start not as space dust but as a formless, water-covered void. Covering a void with water was quite the miracle, considering that void is another word for nothing. In the interest of science, I tested what happens when you pour water over nothing. Several carefully controlled scientific trials later, I had only a wet kitchen floor to show for my trouble. (Do not try this on your own. I’m a professional.)
Next, God divided the water and found not void but dry ground, a feat that would have impressed David Copperfield (the magician, not the Dickens character). God called the dry ground “land,” and in it he planted plants, which he called “plants.” He told the plants to get busy making more plants. Two days later, God made animals, which he called “animals,” and told the animals to make like the plants, that is, to get busy making more animals. Ergo evolutionary biologists are wrong: the chicken, not the egg, came first.
Dry ground came in handy for more than just plant-planting. God grabbed a handful of it and formed it into a man. Then he grabbed a handful of the man and formed it into a woman. “God created mankind in his own image,” Genesis tells us. Which makes me wonder. Does God trim his nose hairs? How about his toenails? Does he poop? Wipe? If God is female, does she shave her legs? Wear a bra? Has she gone through menopause? Is she paid only 82 percent of what male gods are paid? What if God is trans or nonbinary? Would Christians have to execute an about-face and rail against cisgendered people?
On Day Four, God created the sun, moon, and stars “to give light on the earth.” He then set about separating the light from the dark, an idea that came to him while sorting laundry. If you wonder where the light of “let there be light” fame came from way back on Day One, I advise caution. In Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, an account no less historically valid than Genesis, Smerdyakov asked about that and was rewarded with a slap and epilepsy.
Beware heretics who would have you take Genesis science figuratively. The lights-in-the-firmament thing is definitely literal. Think about it. Come apocalypse time, how else could the heavens roll up like a scroll and the stars fall from the sky?
Lest I be guilty of undue snark, please permit me to take something back. I concede, with apology, that the Dickens character might indeed have been impressed.