This is a quote from Richard Dawkins. It seems he understand the Bible far better than you do.
Richard Dawkins is an atheist with little, if any, education in the Bible.
If Genesis isn't historical then Jesus' death is an absolute joke by God.
In what genre of literature is Genesis 1-11written? Is it an accurate account of historical events, is it a collection of legends or myths (legends spring up from actual historic events, myths do not), or perhaps a collection of epic tales? Up to about the middle of the 19th century, the Anglican Church, of which Darwin was a member, believed that the first eleven chapters of Genesis gave us an accurate account of historical events, the author being Moses. In 1853, however, Hupfeld published his work,
Die Quellen Der Genesis, in which he set forth the Documentary Hypothesis, and his work was very favorably received. This hypothesis was, at that time, that Genesis was written by two different authors. In 1869, Nöldeke demonstrated the evidence that Genesis was written, not by two authors, but by three. These new understandings of Genesis opened the door for Genesis to be very seriously and laboriously studied by very many Old Testament scholars without fear of being too quickly accused of heresy.
Therefore, by the time that Darwin published his first edition of his On the Origin of Species in 1859, the door had already been opened in the minds of his critic for fresh interpretations of the first eleven chapters of Genesis, and Darwins views were well received by the Anglican Church. Moreover, the discovery of dinosaur bones in the first half of the 1800s caused many people to begin to rethink their interpretation of the first eleven chapters of Genesis. Just the thought of dinosaurs aboard Noahs Ark was a bit difficult for some people to swallow!
In Genesis 6-9, we read the narrative of Noahs Ark. Is this narrative an accurate account of historical events, is it a collection of legends or myths, or is it perhaps a collection of epic tales? Let us begin with the first of these choicesis the narrative of Noahs Ark an accurate account of historical events? According to a literal interpretation of the narrative, representatives of every kind of animals, clean and unclean, went into the ark. (Gen. 7:9, NASB, 1995).
A few facts regarding Noahs Ark that must be considered in evaluating the literalness of the account in Gen. 68 are:
There are today about 2,000,000 genetically distinct populations of animals living on the earth. If we assume a date of about 2,349 B.C. (Bishop Usshers date), microevolution reduces the number of kinds of animals that must have been aboard the ark (to account for the about 2,000,000 genetically distinct populations of animals living on the earth today) to a few hundred thousand kinds.
The several thousands of kinds of animals, including the dinosaurs, mammoths, giant ground sloths, etc., which have become extinct must also be considered. Did they all become extinct before the flood? If not, they were, according to the account in Genesis, aboard the ark.
The ark, as literally described in Genesis, was much too small because the amount of water that it would be capable of displacing would weigh less than the animals on board, thus making it impossible for the ark to float.
The floor space on the ark was too small to hold any more than a tiny fraction of the cages that would be necessary to keep the animals in place (and from eating each other).
The amount of food required for the animals would weigh at least nearly as much as the animals, and would require a vast amount of storage space.
Many of the animals aboard the ark would have required specific FRESH fruits, vegetables, leaves, grass, bark, roots, etc., including fresh fruits that are produced only on MATURE plants. Therefore, these mature plants would necessarily have been kept and maintained aboard the ark, and subsequently planted in the ground after the flood.
Most of the genetically discrete populations of fish (including many VERY LARGE fish) would have to be taken aboard the ark and kept in tanks of water that met their very specific water chemistry needs in order to survive.
The weight of the water on the earth would have crushed to death any of the land plants that did not drown in the water.
After 150 days when the water abated, there would be no vegetation on the earth for the herbivores to eat, and no meat for the carnivores to eat, therefore a vast amount of food would necessarily have been kept aboard the ark to sustain the animals AFTER the flood.
The Animals could not be released all at once or in the same place because many of them would eat each other.
The coming of the animals to Noah from all over the earth would have been a physical impossibility no less impossible than Santa Clause delivering presents to every boy and girl on the night before Christmas. The polar bears and penguins, not to mention all of the unique kinds of animals in Australia, would have posed more than a few special difficulties.
After the flood, the animals could not be returned to their original habitat because all habitats would have been destroyed by the flood.
Many of the necessary habitats would take 50 years or more to be reestablished and their reestablishment would have required the effort of many thousands of persons.
Until all the necessary habitats could be reestablished, the animals requiring these habitats would have to be kept and cared for by Noah and his family.
There was not enough water to cover the entire earth, and even if there was, where did it go after the flood?
If the reported sightings of the Ark are factual, the Ark came to rest on a VERY high mountain on VERY rugged terrain from which the large majority of the animals would not have been able to descend.
Therefore, the narrative of Noahs Ark cannot be a literal account of an historic event. Indescribably huge and very numerous miracles would have been necessary, and a literal interpretation of Genesis does not allow for these miracles because the whole point of the narrative is that through the natural, physical means of an ark built by Noah and his family, mankind and all the kinds of animals were saved from the floodwaters. Therefore, we are left with the following choices: a collection of sagas, legends, or mythsor a collection of epic tales. I realize that at this point, some of my readers believe that I am an incarnation of the devil, the anti-Christ, a heretic, or perhaps just a blind fool, but I believe that it is much more foolish to imagine that all of the necessary miracles are found in a literal interpretation of Genesis 6-9.
