God Creates Dusk

March 6, 2026 By Joel Reads Bible

And so it begins…

Welcome to Joel Reads Bible Substack!

The goal here is to be a companion to the JRB series on YouTube, making my humble observations (and jokes) more accessible, searchable, and consumable (get them in your belly!). Expect articles based on episodes, cheat sheets, and deeper looks at what this wacky book is saying.

Let’s get into Genesis 1

This first chapter would’ve gone swimmingly if God had just stopped hovering over the waters and jumped in. But apparently, he hates being wet (he parts seas, burns up Elijah’s soaked altars, Jesus was a virgin).

In the beginning God…

Christians will tell you that you can stop reading right there. That’s all Ken Ham needs to know. In fact, if you speak with Christians, you’ll find that they hold fast to this strategy: they religiously don’t read the Bible. They’ll actually tell you to stop reading, too (especially if you’re the least bit skeptical).

One important thing to note, this phrase, and all the phrases after it in this chapter, doesn’t explain anything.

It’s as if Steve Jobs were to say “We got the circuit board, popped it into the chassis, plugged it into the monitor and voilà, the first Mac!” This literally wouldn’t explain anything at all. How was the circuit board made? Or even the chassis?!

“Steve did it.”

How?!

It would be like saying they plugged the monitor into the computer and then put the circuit boards in the chassis. That’s obviously the wrong order—just like it’s the wrong order to create plants which need the sun, and then create the sun.

God and Light

Genesis 1:3–4

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.

It’s fascinating how much time and effort has gone into understanding the Bible—from true scholarship of ancient texts to “theologians” making up what things could mean to try to keep the cult of Christianity alive. Yet, where are the books trying to figure out how everything was dark and God added in light, but didn’t separate them? That just sounds like dusk to me.

This is actually more interesting than my flippant joke implies. We will learn later that Jerusalem (Uru-šalim) is actually named after a Canaanite deity, Shalim. This is the Canaanite GOD OF DUSK!

It’s completely counterintuitive. We are talking about the jealous God of Abraham, who requires the complete annihilation of whole people groups (to the extent of burning their corpses) all because they worshipped other gods. A God who is obsessed with names to the point of changing a bunch of them (Jacob to Israel, Abram to Abraham—interestingly, something his chosen people who are writing this book are also really into). And yet, this God isn’t going to change the name of his MAIN CITY from the name of some other god?

Unless… they’re just the same god? Yahweh might just be an amalgamation or evolution of Canaanite deities from a whole pantheon.

Whatever he is, what on earth did it look like when he separated the light from the dark? Did it look like Cruella de Vil’s hair? I need an explanation! Don’t just tell me he separated the monitor from the CPU, that doesn’t tell me anything!

That’s right, the first Mac’s monitor wasn’t “plugged in” to the chassis because it was part of it. But like God re: the universe, I wasn’t aware of the details re: the origins of the first Mac. Unlike God, however, I have Google to fact-check my Mac history.

Genesis 1:16

God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars.

Apparently, God doesn’t know that the moon reflects the light of the sun. Curiously, neither did the humans bumbling their way through this text, making up the order of creation.

It’s also strange that God made these “lights” to govern day and night, even though they aren’t really necessary because he had already separated the light and the darkness into days in verse 5. I’m spending too much time on light/darkness here.

To reiterate: he made the sun after he made the plants in verse 11. That’s just not how we KNOW these things happened.

God and Water

I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but this isn’t a science book… and I’m not even a science guy! I’m actually more of a science guy than this is a science book.

This chapter might be a tone poem, it might be a childlike imagining of the start of everything just to get the ball rolling on the playful genocide/slavery tale they’re about to tell, but it’s not an account of anything that actually happened (many Christians realize this).

So, when it says—

Genesis 1:6–7

And God said, “Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water.”

There’s no reason to think there’s an ocean in space being held back by a dome. This story isn’t telling us anything real. You can observe that plants NEED sun to survive. Even Biblical literalists, you might mindlessly grasp at the withering thought that the plants could have survived a day until the sun was created—why would God do it that way? Of course, he wants us to think this is fake so we have to overcome countless intellectual hurdles to be saved. How reasonable and loving.

There’s no reason to believe in a firmament just because a non-scientific book, written by people who didn’t know how anything worked, jotted the idea into some poetry.

God and Animals

The claim that God made all animal “kinds” (a creationist word used to mean whatever they need it to mean in the moment, but strictly not scientific) is simply not true and we don’t even need to believe in evolution to know this.

On day 6, God made livestock. God made livestock? Livestock was created in the beginning? Livestock is a kind?

We know anthropologically when we bred livestock. Any non-science guy, like me, knows that we breed animals to suit our purposes. That’s how we have pugs (their purpose is to look adorable, wheeze on us and break our hearts when they have hip problems).

The point is, if “livestock” is a kind, then so is a domesticated cat and dog… and we made those kinds, not God.

It is strange that God created sloths and then told us not to be like them. However, he LOVES ants (as we’ll see in Proverbs).

Genesis 1:26

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness…”

Is “great ape” a kind? Is God like a great ape, but specifically the kind that has opposable thumbs? These ancient writers didn’t know people were also animals. Or maybe they did know and God has the image of an animal!

God and Good

Genesis 1:31

God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.

Maybe, but it just wasn’t true.

Or good. He made botflies.

The episode is full of other comments, jokes, and ideas, and all the contradictions will be added to my Contradiction Cheat Sheet!

Read Full Transcript

That’s a lot for one day, you know. All the land-dwelling animals. That feels like it’s almost too much. And by the way, we’re just about to move on—he’s going to create mankind on that day too. That’s too much, God. And he’s going to see that it was good. But really, the duck-billed platypus looks like you just took a bunch of crap you weren’t using and shoved it all together. It’s not—you made a sloth and then said don’t be like that animal. You know what I mean? I don’t know if you were paying close attention.

Hello, and welcome to Joel Reads the Bible. This is the channel where I, Joel, read the Bible from front to back. We’re starting in Genesis 1. Let’s get into it.

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

A lot of Christians say you can stop at “In the beginning God.” That’s all you need. But we’re going to read past that now.

“Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”

Talk about a helicopter parent. Put in the comments if you like stupid jokes, because I could do constant stupid jokes.

“And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.”

God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. How did that work? Before that, was everything just kind of midtone? Like, he had darkness, then he added light, but he hadn’t separated them yet, so it was just kind of like dusk.

“God called the light ‘day,’ and the darkness he called ‘night.’ And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.”

I think it was dusk, and then he turned it into day. So in the first day, he just made days.

And God said, “Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water.”

So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. God called the expanse sky.

So basically, the sky we have between the ocean—the water on Earth—and the water in space, because space is all water? I don’t know if that’s true. I don’t know if there is water in space. Or maybe this is talking about clouds. Maybe it’s the sky between the water and the clouds. Space isn’t even being thought about yet.

And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered into one place, and let dry ground appear.”

So we don’t have an ocean yet.

God called the dry ground land, and the gathered waters he called seas. And God saw that it was good. He’s starting to sound a little braggy at this point. It almost sounds like a comedic skit—like, “Yep, that’s good. Yep, that’s good.”

Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation.”

That’s very detailed about the seeds. And God saw that it was good.

And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.

And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night.”

But we already did that. How did we do that before?

“And let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years.”

So astrology? I don’t know. It didn’t say it’s going to change people’s personalities.

God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. Which I assume is the sun and the moon, which the moon technically isn’t a light. But God knew that. He was just like, “They’ll think it’s a light.”

He also made the stars. The sun is one of the stars, but we separate it because we think of it as a separate thing.

And God saw that it was good.

And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.

And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky.”

I wouldn’t have minded if he’d been like, “Except for seagulls. We don’t need so many seagulls.”

And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day.

And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds.”

I love that he made livestock. God actually made them to be livestock. It’s a wonderful gift.

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image.”

Some people might think that’s the first hint at the Trinity. Or God could have solved all our gender issues by just committing to “they.”

“So God created mankind in his own image… male and female he created them.”

You thought it was one, but it was actually two.

God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.

And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.

That’s Genesis 1.

Who knows? Maybe that’s exactly how it happened. Could have been billions of years ago. Could have been six thousand years ago. Depends who you ask.

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