Get Your Own Dirt

There is an old joke that goes like this:

The scientist approached God and said, “Listen, we’ve decided we no longer need you. Nowadays, we can clone people, transplant hearts and do all kinds of things that were once considered miraculous.”

God patiently heard him out, and then said, “All right. To see whether or not you still need me, why don’t we have a man-making contest?”

“Okay, great!” the scientist said.

“Now, we’re going to do this just like I did back in the old days with Adam,” God said.

“That’s fine,” replied the scientist, and bent to scoop up a handful of dirt.

“Whoa!” God said, shaking his head in disapproval. “Not so fast. You go get your own dirt.”

When I was a kid this joke was always told with Satan as the antagonist, but when I Googled “get your own dirt” every single result on the first page had scientists as the antagonist. Seeing as how Christians seem to deny science at every opportunity, whether it be climate change, evolution, homosexuality, or the Big bang, I suppose I really shouldn’t be surprised. Apparently science is the ultimate enemy now, not Satan.

In regards to the Big Bang, my last post, What Banged? To Heck with Peter Heck Part 4 got me thinking about something I had never considered before.

When I first told my family I was an atheist one of the first questions I was asked was “if you think the Big Bang created the universe, where did that matter come from?” The Christians ultimate trump card right? But why exactly do they think they have the upper hand? We know what happened milliseconds after the Big Bang, but we don’t know what happened at the moment of, or immediately before the Big Bang itself. We don’t know if the tiny little pinpoint of singularity quietly popped into existence before exploding into the universe. Or if that little singularity quietly existed for all eternity before, for whatever reason, exploding into the universe.

What I want to know is why the onus on atheists to prove how the universe could create itself out of nothing, when Christians have no more ability to prove that the universe did in fact come from nothing.

If you ever get asked how the universe could create itself from nothing, turn the tables on them, and ask them to prove that it did. There is absolutely no reason to waste time trying to prove how something was accomplished, if it can’t be proven that it has ever actually been accomplished.

So what does it look like, scientifically, for the universe to suddenly pop into existence as a tiny little singularity before exploding in the Big Bang? How did God do it? If the Big Bang is what it looks like when God creates the universe, we can describe that scientifically, so scientifically how does matter spontaneously appear. Now I imagine most theists will blow the question off with a “God is all powerful, he just did it,” but don’t let them get off the hook with that. And this is why.

Verse 1: God creates the heavens and the earth

Verse 2: God says let there be light and there was light

Verse 6: God said let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters                                      Verse 7: And God made (or fashioned) the expanse

Verse 9: God said let the waters be gathered into one place and let land appear… and it was so

Verse 11: God said let the earth sprout vegetation… and it was so

Verse 14: God said let there be lights in the expanse                                                                       Verse 15: And God made the two great lights

Verse 20: God said let there be fish and birds                                                                                Verse 21: so God created fish and birds

Verse 24: God said let the earth bring forth living creatures                                                    Verse 25: And God made the beasts of the earth

Verse 26: God said let us make man in our image                                                                         Verse 27: So God created man in his image.

With the exception of light and plants, Every time God says “let there be” he goes through a second step of actually making or creating that thing.

In Genesis 2 we get a second, more detailed story about the creation of man and woman. We are to believe that God created mankind in the likeness of God himself. But when God, who supposedly has the power to speak things into existence, wants to create the most important thing in the universe, we know that creation process involves shaping man out of dirt. He didn’t speak man into existence, he crafted man out of matter that already existed. When God and Adam are actively considering bestiality, God forms all of the beasts of the field and birds of the sky out of earth, out of matter that already existed (which is weird because the birds at least were supposed to have been created the day before, but that is beside the point). When God goes to create Eve, he changes things up a bit and crafts her our of a rib bone, out of matter that already existed.

Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis teaches that you must use the Bible to interpret the Bible. So in order to interpret Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth.” We need to look at other instances of God “creating” and we see that when God creates, he uses pre-existing materials. That should lead us to believe that in Genesis 1:1. when God creates the Heavens and the Earth, he is also using pre-existing materials.

Is this a legitimate question or am I way off the mark? Let me know in the comments.