Notice what Richard Dawkins, professor of zoology at Oxford University and professed atheist, has to say about the biblical account:
“Nearly all peoples have developed their own creation myth, and the Genesis story is just the one that happened to have been adopted by one particular tribe of Middle Eastern herders. It has no more special status than the belief of a particular West African tribe that the world was created from the excrement of ants” (Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design, 1986, p. 316).
Some 5,000 years ago, the Sumerians of Mesopotamia left accounts of their creation myths inscribed on cuneiform tablets. The Sumerians conceived of the earth as flat and the sky as a canopy of clouds and stars. They believed earth and sky were created by two gods: An, the male sky god, and Ki, the female earth god. They lived in a kingly court in heaven, with An, the supreme god, surrounded by four subordinate creator gods. Below them were a council of seven gods and, finally, the 50 remaining minor gods. All physical occurrences could be interpreted by the priests as the result of the particular mood or whim of one of these gods. Although these deities were considered immortal, their supposed conduct was anything but divine. They were depicted as often fighting among themselves, full of petty envies and lusts and subject to hunger and even death.
A few centuries later the Babylonians conquered the Sumerians and modified these myths to exalt their own civilization. Now it was the Babylonian god Marduk who was in charge; he formed the heavens and earth by slaying a sea monster goddess, Tiamat. According to the Babylonian creation account:
“The god Apsu and the goddess Tiamat made other gods. Later Apsu became distressed with these gods and tried to kill them, but instead he was killed by the god Ea. Tiamat sought revenge and tried to kill Ea, but instead she was killed by Ea’s son Marduk. Marduk split her body in half, and from one half he made the sky and from the other half he made the earth. Then Marduk, with Ea’s aid, made mankind from the blood of another god, Kingu” (Life: How Did It Get Here? 1985, p. 35).
The first civilizations of the Fertile Crescent had similar creation accounts, but the only one free of outrageous myth and with a moral and perfect God is the biblical version. In contrast to the crude polytheistic struggles found in such ancient myths, the Genesis account is smooth, systematic, rational and scientific.
Notice astrophysicist Hugh Ross’ reaction on first reading the biblical account of creation:
“It was simple, direct, and specific. I was amazed with the quantity of historical and scientific references and with the detail in them…. Instead of another bizarre creation myth, here was a journal-like record of the earth’s initial conditions—correctly described from the standpoint of astrophysics and geophysics—followed by a summary of the sequence of changes through which Earth came to be inhabited by living things and ultimately by humans. The account was simple, elegant, and scientifically accurate…both the order and the description of creation events perfectly matched the established record of nature. I was amazed” (The Creator and the Cosmos, 1993, p. 15).
It is natural to conclude, as nations gradually distanced themselves from the true Creator God and sank into immorality and polytheism, that their understanding of the creation became corrupted and eventually was used to prop up their political, social, philosophical and religious outlooks.
Vernon Blackmore and Andrew Page write:
“Today the difference between Genesis and the Babylonian account is evident. The first speaks of one God creating the world and mankind by his own command; the other describes chaos and war among many gods, after which one god, Marduk, fashions humanity from clay and blood….incautious scholars talked of the Bible account being a copy of that from Babylonia….they argued, Genesis should be consigned to the category of legend, and ….The Old Testament is not a poor reflection of more ancient Babylonian or Canaanite tales….[but] The opening chapters of Genesis stand unique.” (Evolution: The Great Debate, 1989, p. 130).
