"Forgot about the last bit. The value and purpose I'm taking about in Genesis 1 are things like "God wanted you to be here." "God cares about you." As opposed to an uncaring deist God or a nonexistent one."

You might consider that value, but only purpose in the loosest sense of the term, and even the value is questionable. Other people want me here, they care about me, and they have done far more to show it than any god mankind has ever conceived.

"This was a revolutionary message at the time because the surrounding cultures believed the gods just did whatever they liked and humans were their slaves. So it's messages of value like that."

Oh, yes, because the god of the bible never demands obedience on the threat of pain or death. He never likens us to slaves or sheep.

"And purpose like "Look after the world.""

Odd, that, for the ones doing the least in regard to environmental efforts are the religious. Many even go so far as to ignore the inconvenient truth about our impact on it, simply so they can continue raping it for gain. And is god helping us fix the planet? Not apparently. It would seem when we were given this planet we should have been issued the box, with "god not included" printed in big red letter on the side of it.

"Psychologically this can be a very positive thing. Yes you can get to the same point philosophically through other paths as well, but this was over 4000 years ago and people were thinking very different things at the time, not very much like modern philosophy. I do think it was a helpful message for them."

We don't need it anymore, it is now simply dragging us down, more often than not keeping us from making real progress on real problems.