The interesting thing about the Bible is that people tend to divide into two camps.

Either you are defending it, or you are trying to disprove it—claiming it’s idiotic, yada yada.

Being in one of those camps says a lot about you.

You can also read it like this: what a beautiful story, or what a fascinating way to look at history. Whether something is literally true or not is not always the point in life.

Most things we believe right now will probably turn out not to be true later on—maybe around 99%. Does that mean everyone is an idiot right now for believing things that will eventually be proven wrong?

I’m not religious, but a lot of things in religion—especially around life rhythm—are nothing short of brilliant. Taking one day off per week, both for yourself and for the environment. Taking moments of silence during the day. Looking out for others. Science still has a lot of catching up to do in certain areas. Some things work in practice and nobody really knows why. Some facets of religion are exactly like that.

By the way, the first line in Genesis:

“In the beginning G created the heavens and the earth.”

gets lost in translation, I think. It means something like this: when time was created (one of the first dimensions), then—after that, or simultaneously—the spatial dimensions (up and down, heaven and earth) were created.

Time always gets messed up a bit. We think the universe is old because it is 14.6 billion years old. But time at the beginning is not the same as time now. It’s perspective. For life forms like plankton—whose lineage goes back almost to the beginning of life on Earth—time is not the same as it is for us.