The Unacknowledged Accuracy of Genesis 1

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A naive viewer might think that the day sky was itself a light source.

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I doubt this. A naive viewer would witness the the sun rising and the day beginning. As the sun gets higher in the sky things become brighter. As the sun lowers and sets into the void it gets dark again and the day is over.In reality, there is no such thing as a day. There is always sunlight shining on one side of the earth, and the opposite side is in darkness. The invention of a "day" is simply a result of living on a fixed point on the earth.Before people knew this, they thought the sun was shining light on the whole earth. In reality, this never happens. It is always day and it is always night. The genesis story is without hope when compared to reality.

Perhaps the sun is strong enough to shine through you, and you are blocking only some of its light. From that point of view.

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after all, according the first genesis story, there was day and night before there was the sun.

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True. :-) And there was still light shortly after the sun set.But God called the light day and the darkness night. Yet there is always light on one half of the earth, and always less light on the other side. Always day and always night.

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Yet if clouds block the sun from view, the sky that is not obscured is still bright. Obviously the sun is a light source, but the day sky is, too. Unless you know about optics.

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I suppose the entire sky could be viewed as a huge light source - by a completely naive viewer. I guess I was thinking of people in general who had contemplated this stuff for a little while.When the sun is obscured (via clouds, rain, etc..) , a better way to express it is the light gets dimmer, it is not "still bright".People also realized that obstructing a bright thing (fire, sun) cast lack of light where it "blocked" the light. The sun itself cast a shadow, the sky did not. Hence the sundial.People could also see that "blocking" one's view of a lightsource did not stop all light from hitting them. I'm sure they understood reflections (mirrors) from a basic sense.But I can't back any of this up. It's just my gut feeling. I could be wrong! Very wrong! :-)