My take on the Bible #1

1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

It is generally accepted by anti-theist that there are two creation accounts described in the opening book of the Bible, theist do not do not always agree. Either way you look at it the story in Gen 1 conflicts with the story in Gen 2:4-25,,,the order of events are entirely different.

As I read it, "in the beginning" means that heaven and earth were created together, but scientific evidence does not and cannot support this. According to studies generally accepted by the scientific community our solar system formed about 4.5 billions years ago, which means that the Universe must be at least twice that old, because before our solar system formed, our Milky Way galaxy had to form, and that probably took several billions years by itself. The evidence estimates that the age of the Universe is at least 15 billion years old, but probably not more than 20 billion years old.

The order of events known from science is opposite of what is listed in Genesis: the earth is created (1:1) before light (1:3), sun and stars (1:16); birds and whales (1:21) before reptiles and insects (1:24); and flowering plants (1:11) before any animals (1:20).

What does “heaven” refer to? If the earth was "without form" or "formless" (v2) then it follows it could not be the atmosphere; no form, no gravity to hold an atmosphere. Is "heaven" then the universe outside of planet earth. If that is the case, then where did God exist before He “created” space? For that matter, where does God exist now?

[Responses I have heard in the past--God exists “outside” of normal space. God exists in the “spiritual realm.” God exists “outside of creation.” But without defining the meaning of “outside creation” or “spiritual realm,” this kind of response is simply an appeal to emotion IMHO.

The “beginning” of what? What did God do before the beginning? Who created God?

One of the standard responses to these questions is the Cosmological Argument. Simply stated: everything in the world requires a cause; by induction into the past, there must exist a “first cause” that initiated all future events. This first cause is God.

A good introductory article concerning the minutae of the Cosmological Argument

My response to the cosmological argument is that the universe does not necessarily require a creator. The universe may be “just there, and that’s all,” and
may have always existed into the infinite past. (Borrowed from Bertrand Russell)

The Bible makes no mention of the actual physical processes that take place when God does his creating.

Why does God need to create anything? If God is a perfect and eternally “complete,” and if God sees that something is missing and needs to create it, it therefore implies that this god is not perfect to begin with.

The creation story assumes many aspects of how the universe came to be, a monotheistic religious outlook. Most scientists argue that "God" is not a scientifically proven cause; current acceptable evidence does not verify a deity’s existence.