I finished Genesis yesterday. Big picture: I'm amazed and reassured by how delightfully imperfect God's chosen people were, and how tolerant God was of them. Right off the bat Adam and Eve disobeyed and ate from the wrong tree and thought they could hide from God. Then Cain kills Abel, then the whole world is so evil it needs to be purged by flood, then there's johns and prostitutes, liars, cheaters, manipulators, incestuous relationships, etc. etc. God was obviously not looking for perfection, just general trust and obedience.
The creation story begs a lot of questions for me though. First there's two accounts of the creation of man (ch 1 vs ch 2). They sort of work together but mismatch a bit. Then you get into who was Cain afraid of when God banished him? And where did Cain find a wife (that wasn't his sister)? And who were the "sons of God" (ch 6)? Angels? Or were Adam and Eve and their descendants the "sons of God" and other people that God may have created were the sons and daughters of men?
And don't get me started on the age of the earth question. According to the Bible the earth is less then 10,000 years old, but that doesn't jive with geological evidence which seems to suggest the earth is billions of years old.
The flood and Noah's ark... just doesn't seem plausible from a logistical standpoint. Thousands of animals couped up on that boat for almost a year? With enough food for everyone? Nobody is eating anyone else? Then they repopulate the whole earth in a very short period of time (this was only a few thousand years ago). How'd they get to Australia? This story especially gives me a hard time.
