It is sufficiently evident from this account that the world had been in existence for three days and three nights before the sun was made, and that vegetation had in the meantime been produced, which is, we know, an absurdity. There are some ingenious individuals who have declared that this is quite possible, for there are, they say, lights that are unconnected with the sun, and that the writer evidently alluded to these faint glimmerings; but I assert confidently that, leaving out of the question the light derived from the stars, so far as we know from science, there is no light known which is not either directly produced from the sun, or a reflection of the sun’s light from some other object. On the fifth day were created fishes, birds, and mammals in the form of whales. Now there has been so far no creation of land animals except birds, and yet the writer declares that whales were made, being clearly quite ignorant of the fact that whales are not true fishes, but mammals, belonging to the sub-kingdom Mammalia, to which belong also horses, cows, apes and men. Whales were not evolved until long after creeping animals, such as lizards, serpents, etc., and took to the water again after having been, in the parent form, long accustomed to dry land, just in the same manner as did the walrus, porpoise, sea-cow, dolphin and seal, all of which are mammals. It was not until the next (sixth) day that creeping animals were created, according to Genesis, and yet we know well enough that they slowly evolved from molluscs, or soft-bodied animals, at a very early period, ages before such species as whales and cattle existed. On the very same day, according to the narrative, god formed an androgynous, or hermaphrodite man, having two sexes, and being the fac-simile of himself. Many ancient races believed that their god was androgynous, and no doubt the writer of this account held the same opinion, regarding the good principle of the summer months, or Elohim, as a bi-sexual and reproductive deity. If this be not the correct view of the matter, it would be interesting to know which of the two sexes the god of Genesis partakes of. On the seventh day god rested from his work; but we do not find any record of his having done anything to cause fatigue, except giving utterance to his fiat day by day. This story is so palpably absurd as to need no argument to prove it so, were it not for the fact that certain crafty persons, seeing the utter impossibility of reconciling it with science and reason, have seen fit to invent new interpretations of the original, in order to give it an appearance of truth. One sect maintains that the days were epochs, and not ordinary days, which, if it were true, would merely augment the difficulty by making the earth to have existed, with vegetation, for ages instead of days, without the sun; but we have already seen that this theory will not hold ground for a moment.