The Babylonian bible tells us that after Marduk had slain Tiamit in a great battle, he took his sword and cleaved her in two as you would a fish. With one half of her he made the firmament and fastened it to keep out the upper sea. This corresponds to the second day in Genesis. While the biblical writer does not change the Babylonian day, yet he has no use for the monstrous idea that the firmament was made out of one half of a goddess. According to our Bible, "God said, Let there be a firmament, and it was so." Our author, as the narrative shows, in keeping with the crude science of his times, thought that the firmament separated the sea that was above the firmament from the sea that was below the firmament; and that the sea under the firmament covered all the earth until God gathered the waters under the firmament unto one place and caused the dry land to appear. But if we know anything at all, we know that there is no firmament. God could not have made a firmament, for there is none. He could not have made space on the second day because space is nothing. And according to the story itself, He made the sun, moon, and stars on the fourth day,--the day after He had made grass and fruit trees. When, as a child, I thought that the apparent ceiling of the earth was the floor of heaven, my scientific ideas were no more crude than those of the writer who thought God made a firmament. But if there had been a firmament, as it appeared to the untrained senses, then it would have been made exactly as our inspired writer affirmed; and not after the ridiculous manner of the Babylonian bible. Our author's philosophy and religion in this case were perfect, but his science was wrong. So what is the use of trying to make out that the Bible always harmonizes with science, when it is absolutely certain that it does not?