> > "Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth[a] and no plant had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work

> > "Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth[a] and no plant had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground, 6 but streams[b] came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground. > This passage is simply saying there was no human agriculture on the earth, because rain as we know did not exist, and there were no humans to do the work. Assuming that that passage is talking about human agriculture is a very generous interpretation - it is specifically saying that plants had no reason to exist prior to human beings, and that would conflict with plant fossils (and a whole bunch of other fossils) pre-dating 2000 BC. I know it isn't uncommon to argue that fossils were the production of God to give us something to assemble in the main halls of our museums but I find that argument to be extremely weak and rely on God assuming they'd need to give us something we didn't know we'd need if it didn't exist. If there were no fossils predating, say, 500 AD, we'd probably try and come up with scientific justifications as to why fossils can only survive 1500 years. > > 8 Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. 9 The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." > Generally plants were existing, but this passage is saying that just prior to forming man, a special garden was planted for them to start with. In effect God was starting an agricultural project to hand over the the first man, for them to dominate the flora with time. Again, I think you're reading in some assumptions into the text - I've actually always read that passage to imply that the world was essentially an unformed wasteland prior to the creation of the garden of eden - that the "made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground" was a sort of spontaneous creation of life. > > And then the first woman is formed from the rib of the first man. > What is impossible about that? It is strange that in four thousand years of existence not once have we seen asexual rib-based reproduction occur again spontaneously - if this option was on the table you'd assume it'd occasionally happen again. Also, it clashes with a lot of our understanding of genetics, actually in a way worse than the first man being created from the rib of a woman - there is an x-chromosom that would need to be created somewhere in this process.