Of ape-men and Gamma Ray Bursts, gods and monsters before the Great Flood
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1
This first verse denies atheism. “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.” (Psalm 14:1).
The majority of modern scientists teach that all matter resided in a singularity, the size of a period in a sentence. This entity, containing all light, matter, and energy that there is, violently exploded and the universe has been expanding ever since. This is called the Big Bang* and is highly theoretical and not without detractors as some ask questions like, “where did the singularity come from” and “if empty space is part of the universe then what about the empty space just ahead of the explosion or a trillion miles in front of it?”. (Q is for Quantum, An Encyclopedia of Particle Physics, by John Gribbin, The Free Press, 1998).
Medieval Kabbalists, believers in an occult form of Judaism, believed that in the beginning God filled the universe, then withdrew from it, leaving something the size of a mustard seed, which contained all light, energy, and matter, and exploded, creating what we now know as the universe. The modern Big Bang theory in an oversimplified form sounds a lot like this occultic belief.
As quoted in the book, “The Whole Shebang, A State of the Universe(s) Report, by Timothy Ferris, Simon & Schuster, 1997”, astronomer Stuart Boyer admits, “Ultimately, the origin of the universe is, and always will be, a mystery”. I would suggest he read Genesis 1:1. That should help.
“And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” (Genesis 1:2). Because the Hebrew word for “without form”, transliterated Tohuw, is translated as “ in vain” in Isaiah 45:18 and it is said he didn’t create it that way, some people believe there is a large gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, allowing for millions and millions of years, dinosaurs, ape-men and the like. The main problem with this theory is that there is the problem of death entering the world with Adam’s sin (Romans 5:12), not before. The counter to this is that the word “world” in that verse, is “Kosmos” referring to the world system, however, this is stretching the clear and literal meaning of the text. Anglican Archbishop Ussher calculated backwards from the Bible and other sources and came to a date of 4004 BC for creation or 6000 years ago. The current Hebrew year is 5770. The Hebrew year begins in the Autumn while the Hebrew day begins in the evening and 5770 began on September 18, 2009.
“And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.” (Genesis 1:3). As God did not create the Sun and the stars until the fourth day most scientists and many Christians scoff
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at this verse, claiming that, if they believe the verse at all, that there was a cloud cover over the earth blocking out the sun. But, not wanting to call the Biblical text a lie, let me just say that since 1967 a phenomenon known as Gamma Ray Bursts has been known in which a burst of light brighter than all of the universe’s suns combined lasts for a few seconds at random intervals each day. This is not to say that these bursts of high energy radiation explain God’s light but to say that there are sources of light not from the stars (although the basis for these bursts is theoretical, one theory is that they come from collapsing stars). Light being produced by sound passing through water is called sonoluminescence.
“4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. 5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.” (Genesis 1:4-5). Notice the beginning of the first day was in the evening and that this refers to a normal day consisting of evening and morning. Another popular theory is that the “days” of creation were ages of billions of years. This so-called “Day-Age” theory has the problem of the reference to “evening and morning” and the fact that the reference is of “Day” versus “Night”.
“6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. 7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. 8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.” Notice this day is not called good? (Ephesians 6:10-13; Isaiah 24:21; Job 41:31, 32 if referring to outer space).
The idea of the universe or outer space being a division between water in space and water on earth is made all the more interesting by the fact that, according to astronomers there is a large water vapor “factory” in the Orion Nebula (Job 9:9; 38:31; Amos 5:8) and Cornell University reported in the April 10, 1998 edition of Science Daily that it produced enough water to fill the earth’s oceans 60 times each day.
“9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. 10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.”
Modern science dates the earth at approximately 4.5 billion years old and the universe at about 15 billion years. The earth’s date is figured most significantly by radiometric dating which estimate the age of rocks using calculations based on the decay rates of radioactive elements such as uranium, strontium, and potassium. Oversimplifying the problems for this discussion, let me just say that there are many anomalies with dates differing between methods of dating of hundreds of millions of years and even the most
enthusiastic believers in radiometric dating do not claim it’s a perfect way to obtain age estimates. I recommend the website for the Institute for Creation Research or icr.org.
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Another thing to note is the prevalent theory, that complements the Genesis account, that no matter when the earth was formed it did contain one super-continent called Rodinia, consisting of Gondwanaland, Euramerica, and Siberia, which then the theorists say drifted apart and came together again in another super-continent called Pangea, which then drifted apart again all within the span of a few hundred million years give or take a few hundred million years. This information was gleaned from Palaeos.com and ecology.com online.
“11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. 12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.”
Grasses include wheat, rice, corn, and other grains such as millet and rye according to the Washington State University website. Fruits would include apples, citrus fruits, melons, etc.
“14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: 15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. 16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. 17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, 18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. 19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day. “
The stars and other objects in the universe are created in their current positions and distance which over rules using distance as age based on the Big Bang expansion. The Static Universe theory better fits observational data than the Big Bang according to T.C. Van Flandern of the US Naval Observatory and V. S. Troitskii from the Radiophysical Research Institute in Gorky, Russia.
“20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. 21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. 23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.”
Life from water is a no-brainer, even for a traditional modern scientist. The Hebrew word for “kind” transliterated as “Meen” is not a species as in a type of eagle but a more broad categorization such as a “Family” for example. The belief that creatures were not
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created but evolved from lower life forms, which is against the Bible, was introduced by the Greek philosopher, Anaximander* around 520 BC. (*‘Does God Believe in Atheists?’ by John Blanchard, Evangelical Press, 2000.) Evolution of life is a concept, although stated differently than the modern theory, in the Indian religion of Hinduism. In fact, in the Rig Veda (the Veda’s are ancient Hindu religious texts), the origin of all life comes from a cosmic egg, sounding similar to the Kabbala’s mustard seed and the Big Bang theory’s Singularity. Traditional modern scientists hold to life on earth either happening by chance on earth by a random mix of the vital elements for life over a long period of time or by the process of Panspermia, having been transported here on the solar winds or by meteorites from another planet.
Frances Crick, co-discoverer of the DNA helix, in ‘Life Itself: It’s Origin and Nature’, believes that it would have been mathematically impossible for life to have happened on earth by chance and that it must have come from somewhere else. However, geologist, astrobiologist, and paleontologist Peter Ward and astronomer and astrobiologist and NASA scientist Don Brownlee in their book, ‘Rare Earth’, state that the Earth is so unique that it is unlikely that life, as we know it, could exist anywhere else. With so many conflicting theories on the origin of life with so few facts to back them up, what prevents us from accepting the Bible by faith, as our final authority rather than the musings of Frances Crick, Peter Ward or any number of other scientists? If life could not have happened here by chance and it most likely didn’t happen anywhere else by chance then what do they have left? Nothing.
This brings to mind the problem that science has with what keeps the universe together. Since they believe that mass is the basis for gravity they have found that there is not enough mass in the universe to keep it from disintegrating, according to their theories. Now, we know that the universe is held together by the Lord Jesus Christ (Colossians 1:16, 17). However, the scientist theorizes that there must be an invisible element called “Dark Matter”, which they say, according to ‘Q is for Quantum’, referenced beforehand, “is revealed by its gravitational influence on the bright stuff”. I would counter this with saying that the Lord Jesus Christ is revealed by His influence on the bright stuff, Mr. Bright Stuff.
“24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. 25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.”
Cattle, in the scriptures, refers to any domesticated livestock, not just beef cows but also sheep (Genesis 30:32). Once again, things do not change families or order. Dinosaurs, contrary to National Geographic’s fantasy in its November 1999 “Feathers for T. Rex” article by Christopher Sloan, did not become birds. The Smithsonian Institution vigorously protested that assertion in an open letter, a copy of which you can read on the net.
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“26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. 28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. 30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.
31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.”
Note, that here in verse 29, as in verse 12, “herb yielding seed” is mentioned as part of the original diet, not only of mankind but of other creatures as well. Herbaceous plants would include vegetables and legumes (beans) which are high in protein.
Traditional, modern science does not believe God created man. It believes that man evolved through several stages of development through “ape-like” creatures with names such as Australopithecine, Homo Erectus, Cro-magnon, Homo Habilis. For instance, recently, in Time Magazine, the same science celebrity who trumpeted his theory that whales and hippos have the same ancestor, which was a rip-off of another wild National Geographic story, Michel Brunet, claimed to have found the oldest pre-hominid skull in Africa, with a date of 7 million years. He was on the cover of Time. However, Brigitte Senut, of the Natural History Museum in Paris, explained that it was only the skull of a female gorilla. In fact, evidence has shown in virtually every case the bones found, declared to be that of some primitive form of ape-like ancestor of humans or near human is either the remains of an actual ape or of a variant of a human being contemporary with modern humans. These particular theories, that we have Neanderthals living among us, aren’t given much authority in the press.
Recently, it was stated that genetic studies had shown that we are not related to Neanderthals at all but the numbers given to prove that declaration were said by other scientists to be less than the variation between modern Chimpanzee groups that, after all, were still Chimpanzees. A great deal has been said about how apes have 98% of the DNA we do, and of how they are genetically similar to us. But, genetics teaches us that it is the expression of genes, not just their presence, which determines differences. After all, the London Telegraph, in August of 2003, reported an article from the science journal, Nature, that declared that we are even more closely related to the Swedish Mud Worm. So what?
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Let’s proceed to Genesis, chapter 2. “1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. 3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.
4 These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, 5 And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. 6 But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. 7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”
Notice that “day” in verse 4 stands for a period of time. Notice, also that the system that is in place today of rain, evaporation, rain did not exist as such in the beginning. Man is formed out of the dust of the earth and God, not only creates him but gives him life directly by breathing into him. Compare this to John 20:22-23 when he gave those specific apostles authority while they were on the earth to carry out their mission.
Genesis 2:8-15 gives us the location of the Garden of Eden, which was lost after the Fall and the Flood. It also gives us the day to day job of the first man. Verses 16 to 17 give us the only stated restriction upon the man. Verses 18 to 25 reveal a very important concept in history, that the power to name was power of dominion over creation. This section finally ends with the creation of woman, the only creature not made out of dirt, and with the state of apparent innocence of the first couple.
Not speaking directly about the history of mankind but speaking directly to what eventually was to happen to mankind is the history given in Isaiah 14:12-14 and in Ezekiel 28:12-15 and chapter 31 as prophecy about contemporary tyrants points out how they are similar to Satan.
At this point it might be helpful to talk a little more about the current view of the majority of modern scientists with regard to evolution. One of the lynchpins of modern dating methods is the method known as Carbon 14 or radio carbon dating. Conventional radio carbon dating does not take into account specific differences between the activities of different carbon reservoirs. Natural variations in the amount of carbon brought on by such things as volcanic activity and variations caused by human interaction with the environment in regard to everything from atom bomb testing to pollution in the industrial age affect dating. Tree rings have been used to date things back as far as 8,000 years, according to scientists but tree rings are affected by the growing conditions around the tree, its location, and its interactions with catastrophe. To simplify a very complicated subject, let me just point out that modern manmade objects have given off dates of
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hundreds of millions of years and more importantly, modern objects such as cups have been found embedded in coal and other deposits that dated to the millions of years.
At this point a brief description of the scientific method as opposed to “science, falsely so called” (1 Timothy 6:20) might be in order. The scientific method, which true science is, is a method or way of finding things out that has to do with observation, experiment-tation, and then being able to reproduce the results of these experiments independently. As the atheist historian, Will Durant, said, “all theories of origins are pure conjecture”, so called scientific theories about the early earth and universe are more conjecture and guesswork than they are fact. Science can not reveal God by experimentation or observation because God is not the subject of experimentation but of revelation as He chooses to reveal himself as He will.
With regard to evolution let me quote the British Museum of Natural History’s former senior paleontologist Colin Patterson; “Ninetenths of the talk of evolutionists is sheer nonsense, not founded on observation and wholly unsupported by facts. This museum is full of proofs of the utter falsity of their views. In all this great museum there is not a particle of evidence of the transmutation of the species.” (quoted in “Does God Believe in Atheists?, page 114) I will now read some other quotes about evolution.
“Neo-Darwinism has failed as an evolutionary theory that can explain the origin of species, understood as organisms of distinctive form and behaviour. In other words, it is not an adequate theory of evolution. What it does provide is a partial theory of adaptation, or microevolution (small- scale adaptive changes in organisms).” Brian
Goodwin, Professor of Biology, Open University, UK, “Neo-Darwinism has failed
as an evolutionary theory,” The Times Higher Education Supplement, May 19, 1995
“Paleontologists have tried to turn Archaeopteryx into an earth- bound, feathered dinosaur. But it’s not. It is a bird, a perching bird. And no amount of `paleobabble’ is going to change that.” Dr. J. Alan Feduccia, Prof. Avian Evolution and world authority on birds at the University of North Carolina. Archaeopteryx: Early Bird Catches a Can of Worms by V. Morell, Science 259(5096):764–65, 5 February 1993.
“One must conclude that, contrary to the established and current wisdom, a scenario describing the genesis of life on earth by chance and natural causes which can be accepted on the basis of fact and not faith has not yet been written.” Hubert P. Yockey, “A Calculation of the Probability of Spontaneous Biogenesis by Information Theory,” Journal of Theoretical Biology, Vol. 67, p. 398.
“The older textbooks on evolution make much of the idea of homology, pointing out the obvious resemblances between the skeletons of the limbs of different animals. Thus the ‘pentadactyl’ [five bone] limb pattern is found in the arm of a man, the wing of a bird, and flipper of a whale, and this is held to indicate their common origin. Now if these various structures were transmitted by the same gene couples, varied from time to time
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by mutations and acted upon by environmental selection, the theory would make good sense. Unfortunately this is not the case. Homologous organs are now known to be produced by totally different gene complexes in the different species. The concept of homology in terms of similar genes handed on from a common ancestor has broken down.” William Fix, The Bone Peddlers: Selling Evolution, Macmillan Publishing Co., New York, 1984, p. 189.
“The earliest and most primitive members of every order already have the basic ordinal characters, and in no case is an approximately continuous series from one order to another known. In most cases the break is so sharp and the gap so large that the origin of the order is speculative and much disputed.” George Gaylord Simpson, Temp. and Mode in Evolution (NY: Columbia University Press, 1944), p. 105–106.
“What has closed the doors of the Academy to Mr. Darwin is that the science of those of his books which have made his chief title to fame-the ‘Origin of Species,’ and still more the ‘Descent of Man,’ is not science, but a mass of assertions and absolutely gratuitous hypotheses, often evidently fallacious. This kind of publication and these theories are a bad example, which a body that respects itself cannot encourage.” On why the Zoological Section of the French Institute denied Darwin’s membership in 1872. “Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, D. Appleton and Co., London, 2:400, footnote, 1911”.
“Don’t let the cosmologists try to kid you on this one. They have not got a clue either–despite the fact that they are doing a pretty good job of convincing themselves and others that this is really not a problem.‘In the beginning,’ they will say, ‘there was nothing–no time, space, matter or energy. Then there was a quantum fluctuation from which...’ Whoa! Stop right there. You see what I mean? First there is nothing, then there is something. And the cosmologists try to bridge the two with a quantum flutter, a tremor of uncertainty that sparks it all off. Then they are off and away and before you know it, they have pulled a hundred billion galaxies out of their quantum hats.” Dr. D. Darling, “On creating something from nothing,” New Scientist, Vol 151, No. 2047, 14 September 1996, p.49.
“[The theory of evolution] forms a satisfactory faith on which to base our interpret-tation of nature.” L. Harrison Matthews,Introduction to ‘Origin of Species: The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life’, p. xxii (1977 edition).
“Karl Popper warns of a danger: ‘A theory, even a scientific theory, may become an intellectual fashion, a substitute for religion, an entrenched dogma.’ This has certainly been true of evolutionary theory.” Colin Patterson, Senior Palaeontologist. British Museum of Natural History, London. Evolution (1977), p. 150.
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“Evolution (as theory) is indeed ‘a conglomerate idea consisting of conflicting hypotheses’, and I and my colleagues teach it as such.” Stephen Jay Gould, Professor of Zoology and Geology, Harvard University, “Darwinism Defined: The Difference Between Fact and Theory,” Discover, January 1987, p65).
“The driving force behind Darwin’s theory of origins was blatant racism, not science. Remember, the evidence that Darwin was a racist is easily discovered, he did not hide it. It can be seen in the subtitle selected for his ‘The Origin of Species’. The words he chose to describe his effort were: ‘The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life’. That should be enough for anyone. Darwin was out to prove the superiority of the white race over the black. That goal was at the core of his stated thesis! He had an agenda, and that agenda was not scientific.”
“The likelihood of the formation of life from inanimate matter is one to a number with 40,000 noughts after it... It is big enough to bury Darwin and the whole theory of Evolution. There was no primeval soup, neither on this planet nor on any other, and if the beginnings of life were not random, they must therefore have been the product of purposeful intelligence.” Sir Fred Hoyle, Respected British physicist and astronomer.
“The irony is devastating. The main purpose of Darwinism was to drive every last trace of an incredible God from biology. But the theory replaces God with an even more incredible deity— omnipotent chance.” T. Rosazak, Unfinished Animal (1975), pp. 101-102.
“Not one change of species into another is on record....we cannot prove that a single species has been changed.” Charles Darwin
“We still do not know the mechanics of evolution in spite of the over-confident claims in some quarters, nor are we likely to make further progress in this by the classical methods of paleontology or biology; and we shall certainly not advance matters by jumping upand down shrilling, `Darwin is god and I, So-and-so, am his prophet.’” Errol White, Proceedings of the Linnean Society, London, 177:8 (1966).
“In any confrontation [with creationists], you should be prepared to show that evolution is scientific, not that it is correct...One need not discuss fossils, intermediate forms, or probabilities of mutation. These are incidental. The question is, what is scientific, and what is religious. Therefore, if you must confront the creationists, we suggest you discuss the nature of science, the kind of knowledge it can provide,
and the kind it cannot provide.” American Journal of Scientific Anthropology,
Article in entitled ‘A Recommendation to the Association Concerning Creation,’ Volume 2, 1983, 457-458.
“I have always been slightly suspicious of the theory of evolution because of its ability to account for any property of living beings (the long neck of the giraffe, for example).
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I have therefore tried to see whether biological discoveries over the last thirty years or so fit in with Darwin’s theory. I do not think that they do. To my mind, the theory does not stand up at all.” H. Lipson, “A Physicist Looks at Evolution,” Physics Bulletin, 31 (1980), p. 138.
“We have proffered a collective tacit acceptance of the story of gradual adaptive change, a story that strengthened and became even more entrenched as the synthesis took hold. We paleontologists have said that the history of life supports that interpretation, all the while really knowing that it does not.” Niles Eldredge, Chairman and Curator of Invertebrates, American Museum of Natural History, “Time Frames: The Rethinking of Darwinian Evolution and the Theory of Punctuated Equilibria,” Simon & Schuster: New York NY, 1985, p144).
“Evidence from fossils now points overwhelmingly away from the classical Darwinism which most Americans learned in high school. The missing link between man and the apes is merely the most glamorous of a whole hierarchy of phantom creatures. In the fossil record, missing links are the rule. The more scientists have searched for the transitional forms between species, the more they have been frustrated.” Newsweek,
November 3, 1980.
“Darwinism is a creed not only with scientists committed to document the all-purpose role of natural selection. It is a creed with masses of people who have at best a vague notion of the mechanism of evolution as proposed by Darwin, let alone as further
complicated by his successors. Clearly, the appeal cannot be that of a scientific truth but of a philosophical belief which is not difficult to identify. Darwinism is a belief in the meaninglessness of existence.” R. Kirk, “The Rediscovery of Creation,” in National Review, (May 27, 1983), p. 641.
“The fact that a theory [evolution] so vague, so insufficiently verifiable, and so far from the criteria otherwise applied in ‘hard’ science has become a dogma can only be explained on sociological grounds.” Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Biologist.
“A growing number of respectable scientists are defecting from the evolutionist camp ... moreover, for the most part these ‘experts’ have abandoned Darwinism, not on the basis of religious faith or biblical persuasions, but on scientific grounds, and in some
instances, regretfully. The evolutionist thesis has become more stringently unthinkable
than ever before.” Wolfgang Smith, Ph.D. physicist and mathematician
“So heated is the debate that one Darwinian says there are times when he thinks about going into a field with more intellectual honesty: the used-car business.” Sharon Begley,
“Science Contra Darwin,” Newsweek, April 8, 1985, p. 80.
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Since this is not a course on Bible doctrine but on history I will only touch briefly on the fall of man and woman in Genesis 3. There are two very key verses from an historical point of view. The first if verse 15 and the second is verse 24. Satan’s attempt to counterfeit the prophecy of the virgin birth of the Messiah in verse 15 is at the root of virtually all of the earth’s religions in a prideful and vain attempt to thwart the last part of the verse.
Speaking to Satan, the pre-incarnate Jesus Christ, the living Word, and God, says: “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.”
First, it must be noted that originally, according to Bienkowski and Millard’s “Dictionary of the Ancient Near East”, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000, the goddess, Ishtar, who plays an extremely important role in history as a manifestation of Satan himself, was portrayed as a male deity in Venus, as the morning star, and , as the evening star, a goddess. This devil went on to become the biblical Ashtoreth. Finally, thousands of years later, in the Luciferian Madame Blavatsky’s “The Secret Doctrine” she/he/it is called “Lucifer, as Christ, the bright and morning Star;” (page 540, Volume 2).
The mother and child motif of ancient religion after the flood can not be dismissed if we are to understand history as it is tied to the Bible. Here, from Alexander Hislop’s “The Two Babylons” (chapter 2, section 2) we have this eye opening quote:
“The Babylonians, in their popular religion, supremely worshipped a Goddess Mother and a Son, who was represented in pictures and in images as an infant or child in his mother’s arms. From Babylon, this worship of the Mother and the Child spread to the ends of the earth. In Egypt, the Mother and the Child were worshipped under the names of Isis and Osiris. In India, even to this day, as Isi and Iswara; in Asia, as Cybele and Deoius; in Pagan Rome, as Fortuna and Jupiter-puer, or Jupiter, the boy; in Greece, as Ceres, the Great Mother, with the babe at her breast, or as Irene, the goddess of Peace, with the boy Plutus in her arms; and even in Thibet, in China, and Japan, the Jesuit missionaries were astronished to find the counterpart of Madonna and her child as devoutly worshipped as in Papal Rome itself; Shing Moo, the Holy Mother in China, being represented with a child in her arms, and a glory around her, exactly as if a Roman Catholic artist had been employed to set her up.”
Verse 24, which has to do with man being permanently kicked out of Eden, brings to mind the fact that mankind has futilely spent a great deal of time trying to get back to Eden. Much of history has to do with attempting to make the earth a paradise, for one person or a group of people, and slaughtering countless millions in that effort.
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For a moment, let’s go back to verse 20 of chapter 3. Eve, the mother of all living, is mentioned in modern genetic theories. Here is a quote from the Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia:
“A comparison of the mitochondrial DNA of humans from many races and regions suggests that all of these DNA sequences have evolved molecularly from a common ancestor sequence. Under the assumption that an individual inherits mitochondria only from one’s mother, this finding implies that all living humans have a female line of descent from a woman whom researchers have dubbed Mitochondrial Eve. Based on the molecular clock technique of correlating elapsed time with observed genetic drift, Eve is believed to have lived about 150,000 years ago. Phylogeny suggests she lived in Africa.” S. Paabo, Science 268, 1141 (1995) & R.L. Dorit, H. Akashi, W. Gilbert, Science 268, 1183 (1995) reported a similar finding with regard to men, in which 38 men from all over the world were discovered to have, after examining over 27,000 base pairs of genes, identical genetic sequences. They call this supposed common ancestor of all mankind, emerging out of Africa, Adam, believe it or not.
More recently (1998), a study of 67 men, as reported in Human Molecular Genetics brought the supposed origin of modern man closer than what these earlier studies suggested from 188,000 to 150,000 years down to a possible 55,000. Keep trying, Sparky, is all I can say.
Finally, the size of the human brain alone, and its intense consumption of 60% of the body’s available energy, which is way out of proportion with other animals, is a problem for evolutionists. Gibbons, EVOLUTION: Solving the Brain’s Energy Crisis, Science 1998 280: 1345-1347.
Genesis 4 details the rejection by God of Cain’s mode of worship, his sacrifice. Cain, as the Bible later tells us, was “of that wicked one” (1 John 3:12) and we know who that “wicked one” is from Matthew 13 and 1 John 5:19 along with our own reasoning powers (Isaiah 1:18). It then goes on to tell us about Cain’s murder of Abel. One note of interest is God’s banishment of Cain which was mirrored in the justice system of several African tribes, as discovered by European explorers. Banishment from the tribe was the worst possible punishment. Common sense tells us that Cain’s wife was a sister, as Adam and Eve were the head of the only human family and there is nothing in the text to say that they did not have many children by this time.
The mark of Cain has long been disputed in Christian circles and has been the subject of extra-biblical assumptions by racists and a source of pride by gypsies.
Here is the report of the first city built, called Enoch, after Cain’s son. The location of this first urban center would have been wiped out by the flood and as names of people and places can vary over cultures, languages, and time we might have evidence of its existence under another name. For instance, Jericho, is believed by some to be the longest
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continually inhabited city on earth. But, more likely, the remains of this first city are yet undiscovered unless we are driving our cars on the remains of its inhabitants. More on that later.
Other candidates for the oldest city are Catal Hoyuk, which traditional modern scientists prefer to date at 8,000BC and regard as the world’s oldest and largest “Neolithic” city with a population in the thousands. Neolithic means “new stone” as Paleolithic refers to “old stone age”. These designations are used more to classify the types of artifacts found than as real attempts at actual dating as they are not consistent over the entire spectrum of human civilizations. Stone, bronze, and iron “ages” exist at the same time among different cultures around the world and some people still use stone and live in caves, such as the Tasaday in the Phillipines, as late as 1978.
Caral, in Peru, has also been dated to be of great age but it’s traditional date of 2600BC makes it much younger than either Jericho or Catal. The Phoenicians claimed that their city, Byblos, was the oldest city on earth.
We have Jabal, the father of nomadic herders mentioned in chapter 4, Jubal, of musicians, Tubalcain, of brass and iron workers, and then a hint of how violent this early human culture was in the statement of Lamech.
Finally, Seth is born to replace Abel. With the birth of his son, it would appear that formalized religion, or religion as we understand it, began with the mention in the last verse of calling upon the name of the Lord. The groundwork is laid in this chapter for all future religious wars. Less than two centuries have passed since creation, from a literal reading of the Biblical account.
One note of interest concerning so-called fossil fuels. There are two main theories as to the origins of the products which run our cars and provide us with so many other essential products for modern civilization. One is that they came from decayed plant and animal life and the other is that they were present at the formation of the earth and did not have an origin in living matter. In the first theory the organic molecules left by these decaying organisms form something called kerogens which are transformed into hydrocarbons (petroleum) by a process called catagenesis. How fast does this process occur? This can be done very fast in a process called pyrolysis with high heat and the absence of oxygen. The Petroleum Institute of Victoria, New Zealand has dated some petroleum deposits in the Gulf of Mexico at 6-7,000 years according to one source I read. I have not been able to verify that claim. However, I’d like to point out this article found on World Net Daily on May 25, 2004;
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“Sustainable oil?
________________________________________
Posted: May 25, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Chris Bennett
About 80 miles off of the coast of Louisiana lies a mostly submerged mountain, the top of which is known as Eugene Island. The portion underwater is an eerie-looking, sloping tower jutting up from the depths of the Gulf of Mexico, with deep fissures and perpendicular faults which spontaneously spew natural gas. A significant reservoir of crude oil was discovered nearby in the late ‘60s, and by 1970, a platform named Eugene 330 was busily producing about 15,000 barrels a day of high-quality crude oil.
By the late ‘80s, the platform’s production had slipped to less than 4,000 barrels per day, and was considered pumped out. Done. Suddenly, in 1990, production soared back to 15,000 barrels a day, and the reserves which had been estimated at 60 million barrels in the ‘70s, were recalculated at 400 million barrels. Interestingly, the measured geological age of the new oil was quantifiably different than the oil pumped in the ‘70s.
Analysis of seismic recordings revealed the presence of a “deep fault” at the base of the Eugene Island reservoir which was gushing up a river of oil from some deeper and previously unknown source.
Similar results were seen at other Gulf of Mexico oil wells. Similar results were found in the Cook Inlet oil fields in Alaska. Similar results were found in oil fields in Uzbekistan. Similarly in the Middle East, where oil exploration and extraction have been underway for at least the last 20 years, known reserves have doubled. Currently there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 680 billion barrels of Middle East reserve oil.
Creating that much oil would take a big pile of dead dinosaurs and fermenting prehistoric plants. Could there be another source for crude oil?
An intriguing theory now permeating oil company research staffs suggests that crude oil may actually be a natural inorganic product, not a stepchild of unfathomable time and organic degradation. The theory suggests there may be huge, yet-to-be-discovered reserves of oil at depths that dwarf current world estimates.
The theory is simple: Crude oil forms as a natural inorganic process which occurs between the mantle and the crust, somewhere between 5 and 20 miles deep. The proposed mechanism is as follows:
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• Methane (CH4) is a common molecule found in quantity throughout our solar system – huge concentrations exist at great depth in the Earth.
• At the mantle-crust interface, roughly 20,000 feet beneath the surface, rapidly rising streams of compressed methane-based gasses hit pockets of high temperature causing the condensation of heavier hydrocarbons. The product of this condensation is commonly known as crude oil.
• Some compressed methane-based gasses migrate into pockets and reservoirs we extract as “natural gas.”
• In the geologically “cooler,” more tectonically stable regions around the globe, the crude oil pools into reservoirs.
• In the “hotter,” more volcanic and tectonically active areas, the oil and natural gas continue to condense and eventually to oxidize, producing carbon dioxide and steam, which exits from active volcanoes.
• Periodically, depending on variations of geology and Earth movement, oil seeps to the surface in quantity, creating the vast oil-sand deposits of Canada and Venezuela, or the continual seeps found beneath the Gulf of Mexico and Uzbekistan.
• Periodically, depending on variations of geology, the vast, deep pools of oil break free and replenish existing known reserves of oil.
There are a number of observations across the oil-producing regions of the globe that support this theory, and the list of proponents begins with Mendelev (who created the periodic table of elements) and includes Dr. Thomas Gold (founding director of Cornell University Center for Radiophysics and Space Research) and Dr. J.F. Kenney of Gas Resources Corporations, Houston, Texas.
In his 1999 book, “The Deep Hot Biosphere,” Dr. Gold presents compelling evidence for inorganic oil formation. He notes that geologic structures where oil is found all correspond to “deep earth” formations, not the haphazard depositions we find with sedimentary rock, associated fossils or even current surface life.
He also notes that oil extracted from varying depths from the same oil field have the same chemistry – oil chemistry does not vary as fossils vary with increasing depth. Also interesting is the fact that oil is found in huge quantities among geographic formations where assays of prehistoric life are not sufficient to produce the existing reservoirs of oil. Where then did it come from?
Another interesting fact is that every oil field throughout the world has outgassing helium. Helium is so often present in oil fields that helium detectors are used as oil-prospecting tools. Helium is an inert gas known to be a fundamental product of the radiological decay or uranium and thorium, identified in quantity at great depths below the surface of the earth, 200 and more miles below. It is not found in meaningful quantities in areas that are not producing methane, oil or natural gas. It is not a member
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of the dozen or so common elements associated with life. It is found throughout the solar system as a thoroughly inorganic product.
Even more intriguing is evidence that several oil reservoirs around the globe are refilling themselves, such as the Eugene Island reservoir – not from the sides, as would be expected from cocurrent organic reservoirs, but from the bottom up.
Dr. Gold strongly believes that oil is a “renewable, primordial soup continually manufactured by the Earth under ultrahot conditions and tremendous pressures. As this substance migrates toward the surface, it is attached by bacteria, making it appear to have an organic origin dating back to the dinosaurs.”
Smaller oil companies and innovative teams are using this theory to justify deep oil drilling in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico, among other locations, with some success. Dr. Kenney is on record predicting that parts of Siberia contain a deep reservoir of oil equal to or exceeding that already discovered in the Middle East.
Could this be true?
In August 2002, in the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (US),” Dr. Kenney published a paper, which had a partial title of “The genesis of hydrocarbons and the origin of petroleum.” Dr. Kenney and three Russian coauthors conclude:
The Hydrogen-Carbon system does not spontaneously evolve hydrocarbons at pressures less than 30 Kbar, even in the most favorable environment. The H-C system evolves hydrocarbons under pressures found in the mantle of the Earth and at temperatures consistent with that environment.
He was quoted as stating that “competent physicists, chemists, chemical engineers and men knowledgeable of thermodynamics have known that natural petroleum does not evolve from biological materials since the last quarter of the 19th century.”
Deeply entrenched in our culture is the belief that at some point in the relatively near future we will see the last working pump on the last functioning oil well screech and rattle, and that will be that. The end of the Age of Oil. And unless we find another source of cheap energy, the world will rapidly become a much darker and dangerous place.
If Dr. Gold and Dr. Kenney are correct, this “the end of the world as we know it” scenario simply won’t happen.
Think about it ... while not inexhaustible, deep Earth reserves of inorganic crude oil and commercially feasible extraction would provide the world with generations of low-cost fuel. Dr. Gold has been quoted saying that current worldwide reserves of crude oil could be off by a factor of over 100.“
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Genesis 5 reveals the life spans of Adam’s offspring and ends with Noah and his three sons, the progenitors of the entire human race as we now know it.
Genesis 6 explains the foundation for all later mythologies about how the “gods” interacted with human kind. As in Genesis 3:15 we have the format Satan’s counterfeiting of the virgin birth through the miraculous births of Buddha and Lao-tze in India and China respectively, and for the death of the child and it’s resurrection in Assyrian, Babylonian, and Egyptian mythology, as well as the goddess, known as the “mother of god” and the “queen of heaven”, “holy virgin”, in near eastern religion, we have here the starting point for later myths about the assault on creation by demonic beings.
The Greeks called their gods, Daemons, and Plato and others admitted that they were possessed by their own particular demon, however, they did not look at the actions of these beings as necessarily bad, but inspiring, and enlightening. They were givers of wisdom, which we can see mirrored in Satan’s statements about how the tree of the knowledge of good and evil would make one wise. Zeus, the chief of the pantheon of Greek gods, we know by the writings of the historian, Herodotus, to be the same god as Bel in Babylon or Baal in Canaan, who Jesus called Satan. Modern mythologists refer to Quetzcoatl in Mexico and Viracocha in Peru as well as Odin in Norse mythology to be the same as Zeus. This makes all of these gods to be mirrors of or representations of Lucifer himself. Let’s look at the particular verses in question.
1 And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, 2 That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.
3 And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.
4 There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.
Pre-flood man and later, we will state, by implication, animals were infested by heavenly beings who “kept not their first estate” and later cultures, in their apostate condition, referred to these beings as gods. Notice that verse 4 reveals that this occurred before AND after the flood. Of the many references to gods mating with women we will get to in a moment but just as a reminder of how the word of God views these creatures before we start.
“They sacrificed unto devils, not to God; to gods whom they knew not, to new gods that came newly up, whom your fathers feared not.” Deuteronomy 32:17
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“Are there any among the vanities of the Gentiles that can cause rain? or can the heavens give showers? art not thou he, O LORD our God? therefore we will wait upon thee: for thou hast made all these things.” Jeremiah 14:22
Now, here are some much later myths regarding the polluting of god’s creation by these “alien” beings;
According to Greek mythology and writers such as Plutarch, the author of the biography, “Lives of Illustrious Men”, such heroes as the Athenian Theseus were thought to be the sons of gods such as Zeus or Poseidon. Now, we know from the words of Jesus and Herodotus that Zeus is another name for Satan. Men of history, such as Alexander the Great, the Bible’s “prince of Grecia” in Daniel 10:20, were said to be of his offspring by myths surrounding their birth. Aprhodite, who is also known as Venus, Ishtar, Minerva, Diana, Cybele, and Ashtaroth, aka in Babylon as “the holy virgin”, “the mother of god”, and the “queen of heaven”, in the Bible, had human lovers and offspring. She is also known as Erzulie in Voodoo, Oshun in the Afro-Caribbean religion, Tlazolteot in the Aztec/Mexican religion, Obatala and Ani in Africa, and Kali in India. As we will see later, the old “gods” of the pagan cultures were often both male and female. Essentially, they all come back to Satan/Lucifer himself as Madame Blavatsky, the mother of modern Satanism and the new age movement called him;
“Lucifer represents .. Life .. Thought .. Progress .. Civilization .. Liberty .. Independence .. Lucifer is the Logos .. the Serpent, the Savior.” pages 171, 225, 255 (Volume II)
“It is Satan who is the God of our planet and the only God.” pages 215, 216, 220, 245, 255, 533, (VI)
“The Celestial Virgin which thus becomes the Mother of Gods and Devils at one and the same time; for she is the ever-loving beneficent Deity ... but in antiquity and reality Lucifer or Luciferius is the name. Lucifer is divine and Terrestrial Light, ‘the Holy Ghost’ and ‘Satan’ at one and the same time.” page 539
Back to Zeus. Zeus/Satan had affairs with mortal men AND women. The pagan gods were known to appear as animals and it has been suggested that one reason that the animal world of the pre-flood had to be destroyed, except for those that God had chosen to go with Noah, was that even the animals had been polluted with sexual contact with these devils. Note myths of fantastic animals and how the Bible refers to such creatures of which we have physical evidence that are mixed in with descriptions of Satan himself as the “children of pride” in Job 41. Pride was Satan’s first sin. See Isaiah 14:12-14.
Not only were the so-called gods responsible for this perversion but they are credited with giving mankind knowledge and freeing him from the constraints set by God. Heretical Gnostic sects of early Christianity refer to Satan as “knowledge giver” and
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Lucifer, “giver of light”. In keeping with this theme one Polynesian legend tells that in the beginning heaven was so close to the ground that men had to walk bent over but that a god freed them so that they could stand up and heaven went far away.
The supernatural entities that corrupted the pre-flood earth are undoubtedly the “gods” of human memory and mythology who intermingled with humankind before “and after that” as the Bible clearly says. Special knowledge was granted by the gods in all the ancient mystery religions of the pagan world. As the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, probably a generic name for many practitioners of magic and alchemy from the days of Egypt on down to contemporary times, says ‘as above so below’ and then goes on to define the ultimate, if legendary, special knowledge given to man by the gods. We have secret societies with secret knowledge given to man by supernatural entities down through the ages. Legend has it that this tablet was first placed in the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid of Cheops. It defines the deity of the sun, which was universally worshipped as a serpent in the ancient world as explained by Alexander Hislop in “The Two Babylons”.
The pre-flood civilization has been memorialized in legends, both real and imaginary, as Atlantis by the Greek philosopher, Plato, in his dialogues, Timaeus and Critias, as well as many others, and as Mu in Indian folklore, a lost civilization that was the mother of all civilizations. The Vedas and the Mahabarrata, Hindu religious literature, written sometime in the middle of the first millennium BC refer to an ancient world where wars that appear almost nuclear in description with fire raining down from what is often translated as flying ships and what appears to be some type of rockets. Now, all of these references are highly controversial and not universally accepted as referring to anything but the object of a fertile imagination, however, it is very clear from both the Bible’s brief account and from legend that the pre-flood world was a violent and corrupted age.
6 And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. 7 And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. Genesis 6:6 & 7
The pre-flood history of mankind is marked by two great events. One has to do with mankind’s rebellion in sin which the Bible equates later with witchcraft;
“For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, he hath also rejected thee from being king.”Samuel to Saul in 1 Samuel 15:23. The same could have been said of Adam.
Satan’s offer of knowledge, special god-like knowledge, to Eve is mirrored in today’s science and ethics controversies with regard to cloning and other bio-ethics issues as well as our destructive capabilities.
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To quote from the foreword of the 1996 book, “Forbidden Knowledge”, by Roger Shattuck. “ One powerful reading of history points out that the most advanced nations on Earth have produced unthinkable weapons of destruction at the same time as they have developed a media culture that revels in images of destructive violence. Can such a combination fail to propel us toward barbarism and self-annihilation?”
The resultant spiritual death of Adam, in that day, as he physically didn’t die for several hundred years, is a great tragedy for all of mankind as we are born with a predilection for sin and must be born again to be saved from its consequences. Death is an aberration and the heritage of sinful mankind. See Romans 5:14.
To paraphrase the evolutionary biologist and professor of immunology at UCLA, William Clark in his book, “Sex and the Origins of Death”, death was not present in the original “creation”, a term he uses euphemistically to describe evolutionary processes and the formation of life, and in fact, he goes on to say that death is not necessary for the biological definition of life.
God has now called Noah to build the Ark and has announced “the end of all flesh” and of his covenant with Noah, mirrored in the fantastic Sumerian fable, the Epic of Gilgamesh as Utnaphishtim, who survives the greatest natural catastrophe recorded in the Bible. No one survives the great spiritual catastrophe recorded in these first few chapters of Genesis until the first advent of Jesus Christ and his death, burial, and resurrection, the last Adam, as Paul refers to him in 1 Corinthians 15:45.
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