I need help understanding what appears to be contradictory passages below: 

How many creations are in Genesis?

One account

Second account

Which one is right?

On the subject of light: 

God creates light and separates light from darkness, and day from night, on the first day (Gen 1:3-5). Yet he didn't make the light producing objects (the sun and the stars) until the fourth day (Gen 1:14-19). And how could there be "the evening and the morning" on the first day if there was no sun to mark them?

So what comes first, the chicken or the egg? 

Response:

I'll do my best to give the short answer here :)

First, it's important to understand that Genesis was not written as an astrophysics textbook for 21st century readers any more than Jesus' description of the "mustard seed" is intended to be a lesson in botany.  The author's intent was to script a creation account that combated the creation myths of Israel's neighbors. As such, the author uses theolgical motifs embedded in the cosmologies of the Ancient Near East.  For example, in the Akkadian and Sumerian accounts you have sky and water formed by the gods cutting another god in half (Tiamat).  Or, the heavens and earth are formed out of the slaying of a god.  The Genesis account speaks to the contrary by establishing that Israel's God is the God of creation - absolutely distinct from creation - and there are no other deities involved.

Secondly, Genesis is not written as a temporal sequence (especially since the sun, moon, and stars are not created until Day 4 which is contrary to cosmogony, so hopefully this note answers your last question raised).  Rather, it's written in a way to show how God creates and provides purpose out of chaotic landscape.  Here is a breakdown of that scenario:

Day 1: Light (the landscape)            -->   Day 4: Sun, moon, & stars as signs (the purpose)

Day 2: Water & sky (the landscape)-->   Day 5: Creatures to inhabit the sky and waters (the purpose)

Day 3: Dry ground (the landscape)  -->   Day 6: Land creatures & Man (the purpose)

Genesis is not giving us a temporal order of when the events took place, it's more of a framework showing God's creation and then its purpose - and these days correspond as the sequence above illustrates.  As the Vice Principal of Biblical Studies in Bristol, England Ernest Lucas explains, "the creative acts of the first three days correspond to those of the second three ....  In the first three days empty 'structures' are created by acts of 'separation.'  These are then filled with creatures in the second three days.  This structuring emphasizes that the creation is planned and ordered" (E.C. Lucas, "Cosmology", Dictionary of the Old Testament Pentateuch, T.D. Alexander and D. Baker, eds. (Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2003), p. 136).

So when we approach Genesis 2 and notice the events "out of sequence" we should not be at all disturbed.  For Genesis 2 is now seeking to show the purpose of animal life for Man.  As Old Testament scholar Walter Kaiser humorously noted in a lecture once, God created the animals for Adam and after he discovered that none were his type, God then created Eve.  The point?  Chapters 1 and 2 in Genesis are only attempting to show a landscape-fulfillment motif in the former case and how the animal kingdom is purposed for Man in the latter.

I hope this helps!

I have a question. I was talking with some people in class one day and they said they don’t believe that the bible is anything more than a paperweight because of the differences between Old Testament God and New Testament God. They said  in the Old Testament he was mean and spiteful, but you don’t see that in the new testament. I know that there are many themes, commands, things like that that are in both testaments but how do you argue the bible is legit when people look at the big picture and see a vengeful God in some books and a merciful one in others (and even if you brought up the fact that  God did things like bringing Israel back to him making good of the damage done it is still arguable that in the new testament, he never did anything like that in the new Testament.) I guess my question comes down to how can you show and explain that the bible is legit despite the differences seen by non believers.
Have a blessed week.

            Excellent question!  This contrast between the Old and New Testament actually constituted the Marcionite controversy of the early second century.  Marcion of Sinope was an early theologian who was deemed a heretic by the early Church in Rome.  His complaint of the dominant church was that the Old Testament could not possibly be from God since it betrayed the God of love, grace, and mercy as portrayed in the Pauline Epistles (as a side note, it’s Marcion’s protest that shows that the Pauline writings were already canonized as authentic Scripture else it would not have served his purpose in using it to defend his views).

            The problem here is based on a bad presupposition about how God is supposed to act throughout history.  It’s implied that how God acts in 1500 B.C. is precisely how God is going to act in 1500 A.D.  But not even the Bible follows this static pattern.  For example, the Sabbath is a Mosaic law that almost seems to be bigger than God Himself (cf. Leviticus 23:3) in that defiance of it warrants death (Exodus 31:14)!  But upon Jesus’ arrival, he makes it clear that “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27) while Paul almost dismisses it altogether (cf. Colossians 2:16).  The same could be said for how God reveals Himself to His people.  In the Old Testament, God is very much revealed in an external fashion (viz., visibly appearing as fire and cloud; giving visible demonstrations of Himself, etc.) while come the New Testament God His approach is quite different:

Thus God’s revealing of Himself takes on a more internal approach:

So in a sense here I’m arguing for God’s right to be different from one period to the next if He so chooses to be.  But this is only to show that it does not follow from God acting differently from era to era that, therefore, the Bible is not legitimate.  This is a non-sequitur.  It would be like arguing that a politician (like Nevada’s John Ensign) who once used Congress to enact policy now works in the Senate for such policy proves that the House of Representatives is not legitimate!

            Secondly, I actually disagree anyway that God is somehow less merciful in the Old Testament as opposed to the New.  For those who understand mercy itself to be an immutable moral attribute will not likely be moved by the previous response.  But nevermind.  Here I mean to show that the God portrayed in the Old Covenant is consonant with His portrayal in the New.  All throughout the Old Testament we find God literally pleading with people to repent and turn away from their sins:

Moreover, the Bible incessantly communicates God’s mercy:

These are just a few of those passages exemplifying the mercy of God.  In fact, if you do a simple word count, the word “mercy” appears more in the Old Testament of God than the New by a ratio of almost two to one!  But perhaps the objector is simply appalled by the content of certain passages that seem to portray God as a brutal dictator.  I think this is the heart of the difficulty in all reality.  Consider:

These sorts of passages rest uncomfortably on the eyes and ears of Christian readers who see God as merciful (and indeed God’s mercy has been established above).  And even the inclusion of killing women and children is extreme.  How atrocious!

            To give a short response, we must first consider that there is a difference between the Old Testament governmental theocracy that existed in Egypt, Israel, and Canaan versus the New Testament’s secularized form of government in Palestine.  God often meted out judgment in the here and now because sin was serious business back then.  There was no benefit of God’s grace through Jesus since this era antedates Jesus.  Thus nations were judged and literally cut off so that the spread of their corruption did not serve as a cancer to God’s people.  But children and infants??  Actually, God is always taking the lives of everyone through old age, disease, or accident.  God permits these things to happen in our lives so that each of us will inevitably have a final moment on earth.  That God has used the vehicle of war during this time period should be of no surprise.  Indeed, God as the creator of human life has the moral right to take it as He deems fit but us as human beings do not possess that right.  Now I’m not special pleading here.  You, as a human being, have the right to arrange and rearrange the contents of your own house as much as you want to.  But nobody else is permitted to come in and do it.  Analogously, we belong to God and if He thinks that in the grand scope of human history more people will benefit with eternal life than not by judging these corrupt nations by having even the children killed then so be it.  Eternal life with God is an incommensurable good!  After all, the children and infants themselves will actually benefit as they will receive eternal life whereas had they been raised to adulthood would have almost certainly embraced the pagan doctrines and ideals of their culture that would have damned them (since children lack the moral decision-making ability, they will not be held accountable for their sins - Isaiah 7:16; And also the Patriarchs expected children would be with God – Genesis 37:35).  Thus, these reasons and more show that God’s mercy is logically consistent with His judgment and, hence, cannot serve to show that in and of itself God is morally distinguishable from Testament to Testament.

With the upcoming release of Religulous (a less-than-clever way of combining "religious" with "ridiculous") this week - a documentary film on religious fanaticism and evangelicalism by the satirical iconoclast Bill Maher - we're going to see an assualt on Christianity and belief in God taken to new heights.  It's no secret that Hollywood has been less than sympathetic to the spiritual journeys of most Americans, but now, as Superchic[k] sings, "It's on!"  Atheists are throwing down the gauntlet and directly attacking us.  We see this already in the more educated, popular crowd (Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens). Perhaps it's a reaction to the recent Expelled film.  On Wikipedia's site, the film is described as the following:

A range of views on the various world religions are explored as Bill Maher travels to numerous religious destinations, such as Jerusalem, the Vatican, and Salt Lake City, interviewing believers from a variety of backgrounds and groups, including Jews for Jesus, Christians, Muslims, polygamists, Satanists, Hasidic Jews and Raël of the Raëlian Movement. Maher interviews research neuroscientist Andrew Newberg, MD, (author of Why We Believe What We Believe) who brain-scans people at the University of Pennsylvania as they pray, meditate and speak in tongues.

But Religulous certainly doesn't seem to interact with any prominent scholar, pastor, or theologian that represents Christianity.  It no more shows Christianity to be silly than interviewing Bill Maher himself on his atheism shows atheism to be silly!  Even its poster is attempting to be defamatory:

The film opens October 3rd.  Hide the kids!

If this resurrection of saints really happened, why is it only mentioned in Matthew?  Why wasn't this headline news?  Does this mean we can't rely on the descriptions of Jesus' own resurrection?

These are excellent questions.  And there are two ways to attack this.  First, I can assess this as a historian.  It is true that multiple attestation is a criterion of historical authenticity - and the more strata the statement in question appears in the better.  However, it is a misuse of the criterion to suggest that because the statement in question only appears on one layer of tradition that it therefore must not be historical.  But what compounds the problem here is that it is a significant event such that there should be eyewitnesses and massive converts if such a miracle actually occurred.  But there is a significant silence on this in the New Testament and nobody (including extra-Biblical sources) mention this seeminly momentous occasion.  Moreover, it appears at odds with not only first-century Judaism but with Christianity as well.  Why should there be a resurrection of some believers and not all?  It's further interesting that verse 52 uses mnemeia ("tombs" or "sepulchers") which parallels Jesus' resurrection from his tomb (mnemeion).  Now the account seems suspiciously like a retrojection back into the gospel narrative to prove that the end of Jesus' life and resurrection had theological significance (keeping in mind Matthew probably wrote around 70 A.D.).  The parallel becomes bolstered when we consider that after this resurrection, the saints then make subsequent appearances to people as did Jesus.  From a historical standpoint, it's nearly impossible to tell whether this event was historical or not.  Instead, perhaps to view this as historically literal is wrongheaded.  Perhaps this is Matthew's attempt at using eschatological language to connect Jesus to the end-times figure of the Old Testament eschatological sayings.  This becomes likely given the buzzwords Matthew uses in describing this event.  He mentions an "earthquake" which was descriptive of end-times eschatology denoting the presence of the awesome God:

This theme is picked up by New Testament apocalyptic sayings as well:

And it is certainly worth noting the close parallel 1 Kings 19 (which shows Israel's God to be a warrior God to the chagrin of Israel's neighbors) has with Matthew 27:

It might likely be the case that Matthew is attempting to connect the presence of God with the events of Jesus.  Note that the raising of the saints occurs, not at Jesus' resurrection, but at his crucifixion. This could be Matthew utilizing apocalyptic language to describe the significance of Jesus' death and the newness of life that springs forth from it.  But this would not prima facie preclude the account from being historical; it would only suggest that Matthean redaction is interested in explaining the theological significance of such an event. If it is not historical, it neither adds nor detracts from the symbolism it is meant to represent - eternal life through Jesus' death.

Secondly, I can approach this scenario as a Christian. For me this does not detract from the inspiration of Scripture since biblilcal inspiration does not entail that only one literary genre (e.g., historical) must be utilized (after all, the genre of Lamentations, Psalms, and Proverbs are not historical but poetic).  The late distinguished professor of the New Testament, Raymond Brown, explains:

[A]lthough the Bible is inspired, it is inexact to think that everything in it has been revealed; and so inexactness in a literary genre that does not require exactness is not an objection to the sacredness of the Bible (R. Brown, An Introduction to New Testament Christology (New York: Paulist Press, 1994), p. 38).

Matthew may not intend to write a historical narrative on what happened when Jesus died.  Rather, perhaps he merely means to connect the messianic figure of the apocalyptic sayings of the Old Testament with Jesus.  As early as Matthew 1 we can see how he deliberately attempts to connect the messianic passages of the Old Testament with Jesus:

This was part of Matthew's apologetic component in his biography of Jesus.  As a Christian, I learn two things from the Matthew 27 description:  (i) Jesus had in himself the authority and power of God, and (ii) Jesus' death brings newness of life for those who believe in Him.

Recently in the year 2000, popular theist-turned-atheist Dan Barker published a response to the Kalam Cosmological Argument entitled "Cosmological Kalamity". In my response, I highlight five main errors Barker (and others) commit in a critique of this special version of the cosmological argument.

As far as Barker's critique of kalam, he makes five primary mistakes (let the secondary ones fall where they may):

(i) He is ignorant of the metaphysical claim "everything that begins to exist has a cause" used outside of theistic philosophy.  This claim is much older than David Hume who went to great lengths to defeat it (but to no avail).  Immanuel Kant (18th century) believed that this claim was a synthetic a priori truth and that it was unquestionable.  Barker's limited understanding of these sorts of claims is just made more evident.

(ii) Barker wants the same premise (premise 1) to wrongly imply "everything except God begins to exist" which is a straw man of the premise.  Here's how it is twisted.  The original premise is only about everything that begins to exist and that's all.  The revised premise a la Barker is not just about everything that begins to exist but about God's eternality, too!  So, it is only the poorly reconstructed argument that assumes what it ultimately tries to prove (actually, the initial kalam argument does not immediately prove God per se but that the universe has a cause!).  The original premise concentrates simply on a subset of all things, namely those things that begin to exist.  Nothing else is to be presumed in the first premise. Worse, the revised conclusion "Therefore, the universe is not God" is also a howling straw man since the argument is completely remade.

(iii) Barker resurrects the old challenge that the conclusion could just as equally apply to impersonal causes as God.  Those who have read presentations of kalam in their entirety know that this issue has been discussed and debunked.  Eternal impersonal causes would necessarily yield eternal effects.  Since the universe is a temporal effect, then the cause cannot be impersonal.  The idea about God possibly evolving from initial sources is just a red herring and a category mistake.

(iv) Despite controversies surrounding God and time, Barker commits another fundamental mistake about an "actual infinite."  In the context of the kalam, one of the subarguments to the second premise is that there are no actual infinites.  And Barker complains that God is supposed to be an actual infinite, So isn't the kalam self-refuting?  When proponents talk about an actual infinite, we mean "an infinite number of discrete segments."  The infinity of God is to be understood in terms of an undifferentiated infinite entity.

(v) Barker's analogy is simply false.  He argues that the kalam is comparing "apples and oranges."  But the original premise 1 mentions "everything" and the original second premise discusses "the universe" in particular --  presumably a thing of some sort.  In order for the analogy to be similar, it would have to say something like:

    (1*) Every fruit that falls from the tree becomes bruised.
    (2) The orange fell from the tree.
    (3) Therefore, the orange is bruised.

Far from being an apples-and-oranges comparison, the everything-and-universe comparison is about a set one of its subsets.  I'm actually embarrassed for atheists if Barker thinks he's on to something!  Moreover, his second illustration (ripped from the pages of David Hume) is that there is a difference between every member of the object and the totality of those objects (think of Barker's "nations" example).  Again, this is not the usage of the argument.  The original kalam is not reifying something like "every human being has parents; therefore, the human race has parents."  Instead, "everything" is a designation of "all things" and not something like "the Alliance of All Things" like a company or a parent organization.  Instead, it literally means "ever single thing."  And the universe is singled out as either a distinct thing or a set of all physical things (Barker means the latter) -- a desparate attempt at finding a fallacy of composition.  Since the issue is about finitude, then any aggregate of finite parts entails that the totality is also finite.  If I have stamps I've collected that began in 1985, it makes no sense to say that my stamp collection did not begin to exist (where "collection" is used in the manner Barker employs it). It is true that the whole is not always equal to the sum of its parts, but it does not follow that the whole does not share any characteristics with its parts.  For example, if each part of any given set of objects are material, then the totality of the set must also be material.  If Barker's
right, we could equally complain that the universe does not have materiality simply because it might violate the whole-is-not-equal-to-its-parts rule. Dr. Michael Labossiere writes:

"It is important to note that drawing an inference about the
characteristics of a class based on the characteristics of its individual
members is not always fallacious. In some cases, sufficient justification
can be provided to warrant the conclusion. For example, it is true that an
individual rich person has more wealth than an individual poor person. In
some nations (such as the US) it is true that the class of wealthy people
has more wealth as a whole than does the class of poor people. In this case,
the evidence used would warrant the inference and the fallacy of Composition
would not be committed . . . It must be noted that reasoning from the
properties of the parts to the properties of the whole is not always
fallacious. If there is justification for the inference from parts to whole,
then the reasoning is not fallacious."
(http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/composition.html).

Even atheistic sites on critical thinking admit this (e.g., see http://seercom.com/bcs/resources/criticalthinking/hcf.compfal.html).  What Barker has to show is that the analogy is not like the argument "every part of the human body is made of matter; therefore, the human body is made of matter," or, minimally, he would have to provide a counterexample to a finite universe.  But, again, all of this presumes Barker's assertion that "universe" can't simply mean "every single spatio-physical object." Further, it would mean that a novel revision of the first premise would be required; something like "every set of a physical aggregate of things has a cause" could replace it.  And this premise would still be true and would accommodate the hair-splitting advanced by Barker.  You see, finitude is still a feature of "universe" regardless of how it is understood.  But this only means that Barker's presentation is uncharitable, not that the argument is fallacious.  Finally, I believe that the universe can be seen to be an "object" in the strictest sense because the universe actually has spatio-temporal boundary points much unlike aggregates like "stamp collection" and "human race."  So, the criticism becomes moot after all.