The Authorised Auto-biography of Me

Authorised Autobiography of Me

Part 1: In the Beginning.

My afternoon siesta yesterday was interrupted by a message from my EBook provider telling me that a new book had just been released, one that going on my past selections, I would be interested in. With a certain amount of anticipation and enthusiasm, I touched the screen to access this new tome. My enthusiasm died as fast as it had sprung to life, it was the new and improved 435th edition of the unauthorised biography of ME, known as the 'Holy Bible'. How anyone could believe this crap was beyond me, and what made it worse was, I get no royalties from its sale. How unfair is that? I have decided to set the record straight, so here goes; for your interest and delectation, and to set the record straight, I give you the new, Official, Readers Digest condensed book version of the authorised auto-biography of ME (AAofM). In keeping with the modern trend, I will write it in the modern idiom, I will refer from time to time to that other book and comment on its accuracy or lack of. I might even throw in a couple of swear words from time to time, just to demonstrate how 'in touch' I am with the current trends.

In the beginning there was . . . nothing, just me sitting in this void with nothing to do. One millennia, a couple of hundred billion years ago, I said to myself (yes I was talking to myself, who else could I talk to, I hadn't invented you lot, yet). As I was saying, I said to myself, 'Self, what have you to show for your life up until now, eh?' And of course I had to answer my own question, no-one else was going to answer it, 'Nothing, I have done nothing, created nothing, built nothing.' On realising that up until then my life was meaningless, I decided to give it meaning and create something. So I created the Universe, or to be more specific, the Multiverse, and let me tell you it took a damn sight longer than six of your piddling little twenty four hour days.

First I had to come up with a concept, and you know how long that takes. Then I had to do the design work, I didn't have a CAD programme for that, come to it I didn't even have a computer. And then I had to produce engineering specifications and get planning approval for my design, and believe me that wasn't easy, my first couple of hundred concepts I rejected because I decided that they would never work. Then I hit on the 'Big Bang', how else could you explain the ginormous gas explosion needed to create balls of energy around which orbited smaller balls of energy that would eventually solidify into balls of rock? That was the easy part. Having these balls of rock spinning around in this endless space I called the Multiverse, but achieving nothing more than spinning around in this empty space, seemed to me to be a waste of effort, so I had to create life.

If you think that the unauthorised biography of Me (UBM) got it right with its description of how this all began, do I have an investment for you? If you give me a tenth of all your income, I will increase that amount seven-fold, in other words I will give you your money back plus seven times that amount. Think that's too good to be true? Does the term Ponzi spring to mind? You bet your sweet ever-loving A it is, do you really think that I'm stupid or what? If I had the money to give you that sort of return on your investment, would I need to borrow it from you in the first place? And if anyone tells you otherwise then they're telling porky pies (lies). The truth is that it didn't take just 6 days for Me to create the Earth it took a damn sight longer than that.

This is how the 'Message' version of the UBM describes the beginning:

'First this: God created the Heavens and the Earth -- All you see, all you don't see. Earth was a soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness, an inky blackness. God's Spirit brooded like a bird above the watery abyss.'

'God spoke: "Light!"

And light appeared.

God saw that light was good

And separated light from dark.

God named the light Day,

He named the dark Night.

It was evening. It was morning --

Day One.'

Okay, let's take a close look at this: I created the Heavens, what are the heavens? They are the stars and planets and moons and all of those other things that form the Universes. The stars are massive balls of flaming gases lighting up the space. And I made the Earth, supposedly a bottomless blob of soupy nothingness, an inky blackness, and then My Spirit was supposed to have sat on it like a broody hen until I introduced light. What is it that lights up the Earth? The star that you call the sun! How could I flick a switch and turn on the sun when it was there all the time? Then I was supposed to have separated the light from the dark, day from night. Just how was I supposed to have done that? Did I put a timer switch on the sun so that it turned itself off for a while?

It gets worse on Day Two:

'God spoke: "Sky! In the middle of the waters:

Separate water from water!"

God made sky.

He separated the water under the sky

From the water above the sky.

And there it was:

He named sky the Heavens;

It was evening, it was morning --

Day Two.

I know that I am supposed to be able to perform miracles, but this would be beyond my powers. Think about it; if you were to take a blob of water and divide it into two blobs with nothing but air between them, what would happen? Because water is heavier than air, the blob above would fall back on top of the blob below re-forming the original big blob. And then I was supposed to name the sky the Heavens! What came first, the chicken or the egg? I was supposed to have started with the Heavens and in the Heavens was a blob, and I divided this blob and placed the Heavens between them? Nah, it never happened that way at all. But it doesn't stop there:

'God spoke: "Separate!

Water-beneath-Heaven, gather into one place;

Land, appear!"

And there it was;

God named the land Earth.

He named the pooled water Ocean.

God saw that it was good.

God spoke: "Earth green up! Grow all varieties

Of seed bearing plants,

Every sort of fruit-bearing tree."

And there it was,

Earth produced green seed-bearing plants,

All varieties.

And fruit-bearing trees of all sorts,

God saw that it was good.

It was evening, it was morning --

Day three.'

Am I awesome or what! I produced all of that in one day, I shove the waters aside to reveal the Earth that was there all the time because I made it on Day One. And then I greened up the Earth, but what did I produce first, the seed or the plant, the fruit or the tree? I'll leave that to your imagination.

Then another awesome day:

'God spoke: "Lights! Come out!

Shine in the Heaven's sky!

Separate Day from Night.

Mark seasons and days and years,

Lights in Heaven's sky to give light to Earth."

And there it was

God made two big lights, the larger

to take charge of Day,

The smaller to be in charge of Night;

and he made the stars,

God placed them in the Heavenly sky

to light up Earth

And oversee Day and Night,

to separate light and dark,

God saw that it was good

It was evening, it was morning --

Day Four.'

At the risk of repeating myself, I'm repeating myself. How many times did I make the Heavens, the sun and the moon and the stars? Counting this one it's three, the only day that I haven't made them so far has been Day Three! I suppose that, with making all of those plants and trees, I was just too busy to make the heavens again. One UBM put forward the explanation that, while the sun was there all the time, its appearance was Me moving it into position over the Earth. But for Earth to exist, the sun had to be in that position in the first place, for the Earth to orbit.

For my next awesome feat I give you:

God spoke: "Swarm, Ocean, with fish and all sea life!

Birds, fly through the sky over the Earth!"

God created the huge whales,

All the swarm of life in the waters.

And every kind and species of flying birds.

God saw that it was good.

God blessed them: "Prosper! Reproduce! Fill Ocean!

Birds, produce on Earth!"

It was evening, it was morning --

Day Five.

Now the UBM comes to the biggy, the creation of man:

'God spoke: "Earth, generate life! Every sort and kind;

cattle and reptiles and wild animals -- all kinds."

And there it was,

wild animals of every kind.

Cattle of all kinds, every sort of reptile and bug.

God saw that it was good.

God spoke: "Let us make human beings in our image. Make them reflecting our nature.

So they can be responsible for the fish in the sea, the birds in the air, the cattle.

And, yes; Earth itself

and every animal that moves on the face of Earth."

God created human beings;

he created them godlike.

Reflecting God's nature.

He created them male and female.

God blessed them!

"Prosper! Reproduce! Fill the Earth! Take charge!

Be responsible for the fish in the sea and the birds in the air,

For every living thing that moves on the face of the Earth."

Then God said, "I've given you

every sort of seed-bearing plant on Earth.

And every kind of fruit-bearing tree,

given them to you for food.

To all animals and all birds,

everything that moves and breathes,

I give whatever grows out of the ground for food."

And there it was.

God looked over everything he had made,

It was so good, so very good!

It was evening, it was morning-

Day Six.

Hang on a minute! Ignoring the fact that, looking at man's actions of late I've failed miserably with him, sure he's been responsible for the fish and the birds and every living thing, responsible for killing just about all of them that is, but what's with the 'us' and 'our'? If you accept the fact that there is only one God, and I'm it, why use the first person plural when describing the creation of man? Who wrote this stuff, Queen 'we are not amused' Victoria?

And then the Message UBM confuses things even more in Chapter 2:

Heaven and Earth were finished,

down to the last detail.

By the seventh day

God had finished his work.

On the seventh day

he rested from all his work.

God blessed the seventh day.

He made it a Holy Day

Because on that day he rested from his work,

all the creating God had done.

This is the story of how it all started,

of heaven and Earth when they were created.

Okay, so I completed my building project and the Earth was finished in every detail, I would not have to change a thing, all my creating had been done, evolution would not be necessary. Having done all of this I gave myself an RDO (rostered day off) and that's fair enough, but then the UBM gets all confused about the origins of man.

ADAM AND EVE

At the time God made Earth and Heaven, before any grasses or shrubs had sprouted from the ground - God hadn't yet sent rain on Earth, nor was there anyone around to work the ground (the whole Earth was watered by underground springs) - God formed man out of the dirt from the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life. Man came alive - a living soul!

Then God planted a garden in Eden, in the east. He put the man he had just made in it. God made all kinds of trees grow from the ground, trees beautiful to look at and good to eat. The Tree-of-life was in the middle of the garden, also the Tree-of-Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil.

A river flows out of Eden to water the garden and from there it divides into four rivers. The first is named Pishon; it flows through Havilah where there is gold. The gold of this land is good. The land is also known for a sweet scented resin and onyx stone. The second river is named Gihon; it flows through the land of Cush. The third is named Hiddekel and flows east of Assyria. The fourth river is the Euphrates.

God took the Man and set him down in the Garden of Eden to work the ground and keep it in order.

God commanded the Man. "You can eat from any tree in the garden, except from the Tree-of-Knowledge-of-Good-and Evil. Don't eat from it. The moment you eat from that tree, you're dead."

God said, "It's not good for the Man to be alone; I'll make him a helper, a companion." So God formed from the dirt of the ground all of the animals of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the Man to see what he could name them. Whatever the Man called each living creature, that was its name. The Man named the cattle, named the birds of the air, named the wild animals, but he didn't find a suitable companion.

God put the Man into a deep sleep. As he slept he removed one of his ribs and replaced it with flesh. God then used the rib that he had taken from the Man to make Woman and presented her to the Man.

The Man said,

"Finally! Bone of my bone,

Flesh of my flesh!

Name her Woman

For she was made from man."

Therefore a man leaves his father and mother and embraces his wife. They become one flesh.

The two of them, the Man and his Wife, were naked, but

They felt no shame.'

Let's face it; Chapter 2 differs from Chapter 1 in so many ways! I've even heard one Pastor try to explain that Chapter 2 is an expansion of Chapter 2. Expansion! It's an explosion. Contradictions run thick and fast, it's almost as if they are two separate accounts of the creation.

For a start Man is here created as a man, not man and woman as in Chapter 1. He is created before the plants and the trees and the animals, not after as in Chapter 1. I was even supposed to have him looking over the birds and animals for a companion. Me, encouraging him to commit bestiality? I don't think so! I am supposed to have put him a deep sleep and removed a rib to create woman, do you believe that? Apart from the fact that if I were to remove a rib there would be an uneven number of ribs, more on one side than the other, and why would I go to all of that bother? Surely I could just take another handful of dust and blow into like I was supposed to have done to make Adam and all of the animals. Oh, so it was so that the society that I'd created was patriarchal, man was more important than woman, now would I do that? No.

And another thing that bothers Me, Eden was east of where? If it was the place where it all began there was nowhere for it to be east of. And all of those rivers that flowed out of it, where are they now? Only the Euphrates exists.

The sun was created on Day 1 along with all of the other stars in all the universes, and again on Day Two, so when the UBM tells you that I waited until day 4 to produce it, they've got it wrong. And I didn't start with water like the UBM tells us, then separate the water from water by putting the sky in between two layers of water. Then I pushed the water below the sky to one side to form land. What a load of rubbish! It doesn't take a Science degree to realise that it could never have happened that way, just basic knowledge of science and an open mind. That bit in the UBM where it says that there was water above the Earth and water below, that was just the writers not fully understanding the geography of the situation. Have you ever noticed that the colour of the sky is the same as the colour of the sea, or any large body of water for that matter. This is because the colour of the sea is a reflection of the sky, but, because man back then could touch the water, it was wet and tactile, he assumed that what was up there was the same as what was down here on Earth. I can understand that because, when I created man I didn't give him all knowledge in one massive lump, apart from the fact that if I'd given him knowledge of all things his head would have exploded, it was simply because I needed him to exercise the power of reason I gave him to work it out for himself. I also gave him the knowledge that what he thought it was all about wasn't necessarily the final answer, so that he would and could develop his knowledge. I called this progress.

Meanwhile in the second universe to the left, on the verbit Zogg, the third from the minor stelvar Ornax, the dominant mammalian life form, Filax Erectus was making a better job of getting his history right. His UBM began with the 'Big Kablooie' that shot squillions of balls of burning gas into the void where they formed the horivons, what you call the heavens. Then the smaller gas balls began to solidify from the outside in to form the verbits, planets to you, of which Zogg was one. When it got cold enough two of the gases combined to form a clear liquid that was to play an important part in the creation, evolution and maintenance of life on Zogg. They called this stuff 'quatac', you of course know it as water. Filax quickly worked out, using the Me given power of reason, that he was not the first animal life form on Zogg, but the culmination of millions of years of development, and that he was still very much a work in progress.

As with Zogg, I started with land, and it wasn't a flat slab of land with water underneath, it was a ball of rock, an oblate spheroid to be precise. The water came later when the Earth's crust cooled to the extent that it was condensing and liquefying a combination of Hydrogen and Oxygen atoms from the atmosphere. Lucky for you guys I didn't combine Nitrogen atoms with Oxygen or you'd be breathing laughing gas.

But the UBM doesn't stop there with its misunderstanding of what happened, and it claims that it happened the way it says that it did because God told them that was how it happened. I told them no such thing, in fact I told them nothing about this part of the story at all, they made it up as they went along to try and explain how utterly awesome I am, and later how I would punish them if they did the wrong thing.

Okay, the UBM tells us that the water was separated from the water on day two, and I thought it was good. Nah! I never thought anything of the sort, but let's move on. Then I was supposed to have pushed the water to one side and exposed the land. I know I can do amazing things but this one I can't do, and do you know why? Because it's impossible, that's why. If you get a tray with some water in it and get something and push the water to one end of the tray, what happens when you release the water? It flows back! Elementary science will tell you that.

The next day I was supposed to have vegetated the land, planted grasses and trees and vegetables all creating fruit and seeds and I saw that it was good. If I did that in one day I'd say it was not just good, it was pretty awesome, wouldn't you? Massive great trees growing up into the sky in one day? I don't think so. This little feat took millions of years, actually it took squillions of days because the year was yet to be invented, that would come later after I'd invented the seasons, but no-one was aware of that because man was, according to the now scientifically accepted time line, still billions of years away.

The next day I was supposed to have placed the sun and the moon in the sky to create night and day. But I'd already done that on days one and two when I created the heavens and the earth. What are the heavens? They are the suns (stars) and planets, and moons, and meteors, and comets, and asteroids, and I made them in the very beginning so why should I do it all over again? Think about this, this, the earth could not exist without the sun to orbit around, could it? Something else to think about, we had evening and morning on day one yet the sun and moon, to separate day from night, didn't happen until day four. What made the evening and morning on day one? The sun and the moon, that's what. All credibility in the UBM account of the beginning should have disappeared by now, unless nah, you couldn't be that thick that you would still believe that, could you?

It's about time I set the records straight.

After the Big Bang and the smaller gas balls began to cool and solidify to form planets, I had to do something with them so I created life. But then I ran into a problem, having created life I had to feed it. The first life forms were single cells and quite frankly boring and all they seemed to do was to multiply. Soon the place was over-run with these pesky things and I needed to control them. So I invented multi-celled life forms that would feed on the single cell life forms, and it seemed to mushroom from there, although I didn't call it mushroom because I hadn't invented them yet. Some time down the track these multi cell life forms got sick of their wrinkly skins and crawled out of the primordial slime, so I had to invent a way for them to breathe air create land based plants to feed them.