An atheist riffs on the Bible (New International Version): Genesis 8

Regular paragraphs are the verses as written in the Bible.
Indented italicized paragraphs feature my comments on the previous paragraph.
Note that I might appear especially nitpicky and I know that some of these verses are not taken literally by everybody; I'm just having some fun basically.
Why the New International Version or NIV? Why not? The Bible has already been translated countless times before and I can't read or speak the original languages in which it was written, which is why it is stupid in the first place to assume that a divine being would communicate with us through a book.

New International Version

Genesis 8

¹ But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded. ² Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky. ³ The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down, ⁴ and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. ⁵ The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible.

We see a verse repeating the idea that the earth is surrounded by a dome and that opening or closing it will let water fall, but I'll let it slide as a metaphor this time. So now is the official number a hundred and fifty days for the flood seeing as how it's repeated here instead of the original forty days and forty nights? "and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible.": in two verses back to back, there's a contradiction, at least I perceive one. If the ark rests on the mountains of Ararat on the seventh month, it means the tops of the mountains were visible already, so why say that they became visible on the tenth month only? Why say that wind makes the water disappear too now that I think about it? (Water could push the water, but it will completely disappear through the process of evaporation with the sun. They probably didn't know that, which means God didn't know that if we're to believe this book was written through divine inspiration.)

⁶ After forty days Noah opened the window he had made in the ark ⁷ and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. ⁸ Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. ⁹ But the dove could find no place to set its feet because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark. ¹⁰ He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. ¹¹ When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth. ¹² He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him.

Is there a reason why he sends a raven then prefers the dove? (Not that it matters, but I'd like to know if I'm not getting something.) Anyway, animals aren't the best thing to rely on for information, but seeing as how God made Noah build the ark, it's not like he can easily see what's going on outside after all. "When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth. He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him.": why isn't Noah getting out of the ark as soon as the dove brings back a leaf, it just doesn't make any sense to wait any longer does it? But a lot more importantly, how did trees survive the flood. Not only should the water exposure for so long have given them too much water, but the pressure would have been enough to get rid of them anyway.

¹³ By the first day of the first month of Noah's six hundred and first year, the water had dried up from the earth. Noah then removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry. ¹⁴ By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was completely dry.

One has to wonder how dry the ground has to be before Noah dares to step outside...

¹⁵ Then God said to Noah, ¹⁶ "Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives. ¹⁷ Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you—the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground—so they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number upon it."

God finally has to practically force Noah to come out. Is Noah so much of a slave that he has no free thought of his own anymore (or never had)? Maybe that's why God picked him. "so they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number upon it.": yeah sure, now you want them to multiply. That's God's ultimate plan: create something, see if it works, if it doesn't send water, wash, rinse and repeat. So let me repeat what we've just read. A 600 years old man was so good that the creator chose him among all men to survive the incomprehensibly complicated method of eradicating evil he had chosen (including killing animals even if he only said that men were evil). That same old man was asked to build the biggest wooden ship ever with no particular knowledge of building this kind of thing, all alone. That ship, against all odds and what we know, managed to stand for something like a year (with the way it's written, it's impossible to get an accurate count, even if lots of numbers are thrown in). All the fucking species of living things on the earth, except for plants, were in that ark in a single pair or at most in seven pairs. There was lots of different food for each different species and also enough for them to live for that long, assuming they'd live through the trip in conditions they're not used to, that they'd get along too, that no one would get sick, etc. (you've got to wonder where the shit and piss went too). Some species don't even live as long as a year. We've got to assume that no mistake was made and that all animals were sexual opposites, that they were all fertile, with no biologist expert onboard. Finally, the earth has miraculously survived what just happened, even plants survived. I'm sorry, but that's just impossible to accept blindly in a regular brain state, let me get high first and I'll come back on that, OK?

¹⁸ So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his sons' wives. ¹⁹ All the animals and all the creatures that move along the ground and all the birds—everything that moves on the earth—came out of the ark, one kind after another.

So all the fucking species on this earth just travelled and got out at the same place, on a single continent. How is it that the earth we know has species exclusive to certain parts of the world (not including the fact that we can see an elephant at the zoo in Canada even if elephants are not supposed to live there)?

²⁰ Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. ²¹ The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: "Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though ^[a] every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.

What the fuck, this is seriously messed up. Not only is God so much of a freak that he likes the smell of burnt offerings (what kind of God is that?), but Noah is killing what are some of the last remaining specimens of near extinct species (I know there are more specimens of clean animals and birds than unclean animals, but still). He's quite the good man, isn't he? Couldn't there be a way for God to rely less on killing? Oh, of course God says: "Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.", but that doesn't count after what he did. It's just like Hitler (Godwin's law protection activated) saying "I'm sorry" after killing tons of Jews, no one would buy that. God is the predecessor to Hitler, and he's much more effective too. And isn't God making a mistake here? I mean, man is not PURELY evil from birth as far as I know from experience (isn't he admitting to a major flaw in what he made himself?) and I thought Noah and his family were supposed to be good, so what he's saying is proved to be wrong right here. He does bring up a good point though, you don't kill all living creature just because you found a flaw in one particular type or you don't even kill according to one of his commandments. The Old Testament is God making mistakes over and over again. It's quite a joke knowing that he's supposed to know everything. What a douche! And I guess this was the part where we were supposed to understand him, find him good as he cares for us and thank him, wasn't it? Fuck him! (Note that I'm not angry at God for real, I don't believe in him from the start. Though I do actually despise the character if he were to exist and be exactly like that.)

²² "As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease."

I'm happy to know that you know how the universe works God! You're making a slight mistake though, because day and night would still go on even if the earth was to be wiped out by whatever right now. If there's a Sun and planets revolving around it, there's something called a day and a night. There might be no one to notice it, but it doesn't mean it doesn't exist objectively. Of course, the Bible is not up with science.

Footnotes:

a. Genesis 8:21 Or man, for