RETRIEVING OUR LOST HERITAGE!

Learn about the early history of mankind and of the earth – a fascinating history well known to our forbears, but, sad to say, one that lies hidden nowadays under a mountain of modern misconceptions about our origins.
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INDEX

Part 1: The World of Prehistory

1-A: Large Size of Plants and Animals!
1-B: Peculiar Creatures of Prehistoric Times!
1-C: Warm Climate All Over the Earth!
1-D: What About Mankind in the Age of Prehistory?
1-E: Origin of the Prehistoric Environment & Cause of its Disappearance

Part 2: Cataclysmic Events of Prehistoric Times

2-A: Is There Scientific Evidence of Massive Flooding?
2-B: And What About Cultural Evidence?
2-C: Re-Creation of the Earth!

Part 3: Transition from One Environment to Another

3-A: How Massive Flooding Re-modeled Earth’s Landscape
3-B: What the Flood Waters Did to the Plant and Animal Life
3-C: How Earth Movements Re-modeled the Landscape
3.D: How the Great Flood Changed the Earth’s Climate
3-E: Pictorial of the New Features in Our Post-Flood Environment
3-F: A Further Word about the Giants
3-G: Was There an Ice Age?
3-H: Early Migration Before the Rise of Civilization

Part 4: How Well Does Evolution Theory Agree with Scientific Principles and Discoveries?

4-A: Complexity of the Natural World – Evidence of Supernatural Designer
4-B: Laws of Science
4-C: The Marvel of DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid) Structures
4-D: Monkey-to-Man Evolution? Missing Evidence of Missing Links
4-E: Micro Versus Macro Evolution
4-F: The Problem with Darwinism
4-G: In Summary, What Does Science Tell Us about Evolution Theory?

Part 5: How Old Is the Natural World?

5-A: What About Radioactive Dating Methods?
5-B: Age Estimates Based on Geological Evidence
5-C: Estimates Based on Evidence from Outer Space
5-D: Age Estimates Based on Population Data
5-E: Historical-Cultural Evidence
5-F: Age Estimates Based on Fossil Evidence: Human-Dinosaur Co-existence!

Part 6: Conclusion

6-A: What Is Permanent?
6-B: What does it Mean to Have a Definite Starting Point for History?
6-C: Closing Remarks

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Part 1: THE WORLD OF PREHISTORY

Investigating the world of Pre-history is very much like detective work

A pair of Ceratopsian dinosaur fossils (dubbed Ben, a juvenile, and Xenia) provide “clues” to their appearance.

Well known in the domain of science is the fact that our world was a very different place back in some distant prehistoric age. The discoveries of paleontologists, geologists, archeologists have attested over and over again to this intriguing reality about Earth’s history. The climate, surface features, plants and animals, and human beings were all much different to what they are today.

[RETURN to INDEX]

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1-A: Large Size of Plants and Animals!

For example, fossil discoveries have proven that plant and animal life was greatly sized-up compared to what exists today.

Crocodile and Deer Huge Compared to Those of Our Present Environment

Dinosaurs the Size of Double-decker Buses: In fact, Argentinosaurus (below) would have been 3-4 times the length of a Volvo bus

Argentinosaurus

• Perhaps the biggest of dinosaurs
• Gigantic plant-muncher (named after Argentina, where its remains were found)
• Measured about 120 feet from head to tail and may have weighed over 100 tons.
• Just one vertebra of Argentinosaurus is over four feet thick!

Giant Dragonfly

• Lifesize reconstruction of Meganeuropsis Permiana
• Wingspan: 72 cm (28 inches)

Jaekelopterus

• One of the largest arthropods (creepy-crawlers) ever discovered
• Related to the horseshoe crab, arachnids (spiders), and scorpions
• About 8.2 feet long and lived in fresh water lakes and rivers
• Sometimes called the sea scorpion

Megalodon

• A gigantic shark, closely related to today’s mako shark and great white shark
• Up to 20 meters long and 60 tons in weight, being almost six times larger than Tyrannosaurus Rex!

Pelorovis

• The central African prehistoric goat looked like a gigantic bull.
• Huge paired horns on top of its massive head (about six feet long from base to tip)

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As in the Animal Kingdom, the Plant Kingdom too was Much Larger in Size

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1-B: Peculiar Creatures of Prehistoric Times!

Elasmosaur

• A type of plesiosaur
• 46 feet in length
• Weighed over 2.2 tons
• Half of its body’s length was its neck.
• Over 70 vertebrae in the neck, more than any known animal today
• The neck was the only part of its body that could lift out of the water.
• Despite its large size, its flippers were small.
• No close relatives to animals in today’s world, except that it bears a close resemblance to accounts made of the Loch Ness monster.

Indricotherium (or Paraceretherium)

• An extinct species of gigantic hornless rhinoceros-like mammals
• The largest land mammal known, larger than the largest species of mammoths
• 5.5 metres (18 ft) tall at the shoulder, 12 metres (39 ft) in length with the tail, a maximum raised head height of about 8 metres (26 ft), and a skull length of 1.5 metres (4.9 ft)
• Weight approximately 20 (metric) tons. This puts it in the weight range of some medium-sized sauropod dinosaurs.
• A herbivore who stripped leaves from trees

Deinotherium

• Looks much like present-day elephants except for the shorter trunk and the placing of its tusks.
• Known as the ‘hoe tusker’. Tusks were attached to the lower jaw, not the upper jaw.
• Considered the third largest land mammal to have ever existed (after indricotherium and the mammoth elephant)
• About 15 feet tall and weighing over 15.4 tons
• Its fossils have been found everywhere, mainly in Europe, Asia, and Africa.
• Most likely related to the elephants of today and to the extinct wooly mammoths and mastodons of the past

Helicoprion

• Shark-like, having cartilage, fins, and razor sharp teeth.
• Known as the “Spiral Saw”
• The arrangement of teeth on the lower jaw looks very much like a circular saw.
• As new teeth grew, the older teeth were pushed out and into the middle to create the spiral.
• About 10-15 feet in length
• Little is known about the skeleton, but it is assumed to be cartilaginous, similar to other members of that class of fish – sharks and rays.

Quetzalcoatlus

• Perhaps the largest creature to ever roam the skies
• Named after an Aztec god, Quetzalcoatl, who was known for being a feathered serpent
• Scientific name: pterodactyloid pterosaur
• King of the skies, with a wing span of up to 36 feet and standing almost 32 feet high on the ground
• Had a pointed beak, used for collecting food
• No teeth
• On the ground, the animal was a quadruped, it is believed, using its folded wings as an extra pair of legs.
• It could take off straight into flight. But nowadays the air is too thin, and it probably could not fly in our present atmosphere.
• No clear relatives today, but it was related to the Pteranodon, also extinct.
• It compares somewhat to the Marabou stork of today.

Tyrannosaurus Rex

• Its thick, heavy skull and 4-foot-long (1.2-meter-long) jaw, was designed for maximum crushing ability.
• About 40 feet (12 meters) long and about 15 to 20 feet (4.6 to 6 meters) tall
• Its strong thighs and long, powerful tail helped it move quickly.
• Its two-fingered forearms could probably hold whatever it was eating, but they were too short to reach its mouth.

Sabre-toothed tiger (smilodon)

• Large, sabre-like maxillary canine teeth, up to 50 cm long in some species
• More robust than today’s cats
• Bear-like in build

The classic interpretation of a sabertooth cat, a 1905 painting by Charles R. Knight in the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

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News Article: Gigantic Fossils of Animals Found
East African Cites Sheep as Big as Horses, Hogs with Elephant like Tusks
(New York Times May 11, 1956)

“The remains of gigantic animals have been found, including sheep the size of present-day cart horses, hogs with tusks like elephants have been dug out of an ancient gorge at Olduvai in East Africa. Two giant human teeth have also been found.”
“Dr. Leakey has found the complete skeleton of a Pleistocene sheep with a horn-span of fourteen feet. He also unearthed wild hogs the size of a rhinoceros with elephant sized tusks. He has found a giant sized giraffe, baboons as big as modern gorillas, massive zebras and antelopes.”

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Size comparison of prehistoric and present animals. Note the blue whale, if not as long as Argentinosaurus, is still the most massive creature on earth.It does not have to support itself on legs; the ocean takes care of that.

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1-C: Warm Climate All over the Earth!

Somehow the environment in that Prehistoric Age was so invigorating that it could support the growth of these enormously sized plants and animals, and so widespread too that fertile conditions existed everywhere, even in parts of the world that today are barren, such as in the Polar regions or desert areas.

The fossil forest of dawn redwoods (above) at Axel Heiburg Island in Northern Canada provides graphic evidence that these trees that exist now in mid-latitude areas once flourished in what are now barren, Polar regions. Even dinosaur fossils have been found in these northern areas.

(Left) Here’s a look at the warmer, wetter world of Ellesmere Island, in the Prehistoric Age: A hippo-like mammal, called a Coryphodon, enjoys mild temperatures, year-round. (Courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History) Notice the contrast with what Ellesmere Island looks like today. (Right)

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1-D: What About Human Beings in the Age of Prehistory?

Learning about the prehistoric world certainly makes for a fascinating study because of all the unusual and much larger forms of life that existed back then. The study becomes even more intriguing when we look at what mankind was like in those days. There is much evidence from fossil bones, fossil footprints, and giant-sized tools to prove that, like the animals, our ancestors were much larger than we are today. Unfortunately, much of that evidence has been ignored in the scientific world (for certain reasons which we will look into further on). Since this subject is so unusual, even controversial, some extra space will be given in this section to exploring it and checking out the evidence from various reports, photos, news clippings, etc.

(Left:) Giant fossilized footprint found on Mount Gowers in Cleveland National Forest, Ohio state, U.S.A. A Mr. James Snyder was looking for gold in February, 2002, when he happened to stumble onto this peculiar evidence of an ancient race of giant people.

(Right:) “The track in the stone measures 65 cm (25.5 inches) long, next to my foot that measures 28.5 cm (11.2 inches)” by Jorge Gasco de El Oraculo de Occidente, 2004, Valencia, Spain

(Center:) Giant footprints found in the Paluxy River Bed near Glen Rose, Texas, USA, by C.L. Burdick in the 1950’s. Similar giant human footprints have been found in Arizona, near Mt. Whitney in California, near the White Sands in New Mexico, New South Wales in Australia, Kerala in India, and other places.

Rex Gilroy with a twenty five pound hand axe found near Bathurst, Australia.

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Great Orme Copper Mine – By Ted Twietmeyer

There is an ancient copper mine near the coastal town of Llandudno in North Wales. This area rises 220 meters above the Irish Sea, and it is known as the location of the Great Orme Copper Mine. It dates to the Bronze Age, about 3,500 years ago. More than 2,500 hammers at the mine have been recovered.

It is believed that the mine stretches for many kilometers, with six kilometers already surveyed. It is known to have nine levels within it, and over 1,700 tons of copper are known to have been removed from the mine. This is quite a staggering accomplishment for a society of that era without the use of power tools, or at least as we know power tools today.

The largest typical sledge hammer used today weighs 20 pounds, though sledge hammers in the 10 pound class are more commonplace. A grown man (without back trouble yet) can wield a 20 pound hammer, but only for limited amounts of time. That is, unless smashing masonry and demolition is his livelihood.

In that case, he might do it for several hours at a time. This author owns a 10 pound sledge, and the only words to describe using it are misery, sweat and pain. And not necessarily in that order! It’s very hard to imagine using one of these for mining, day in and day out.

A huge 64 pound sledge hammer was found at the copper mine by archeologists. To lift this 64 pound hammer using only the far end of a 9 foot long handle would be beyond the strength of any man. To swing it with force would be virtually impossible.So who or what could have wielded one of these back-breakers? If we scale up the size of the ancient people so they could use this tool, the giants at the copper mine may have been perhaps 12 to 18 feet tall, or about 3 times taller than an average human being of today. (from “Ooparts” website http://www.s8int.com/)

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Various News Articles

It is not necessary to read over all these news articles. The display of so many of them, however, serves to counteract the prevailing view nowadays that giants existed only in the realm of fable and legend. The several articles, reports, and testimonies listed here should provide adequate proof of their existence in the past. And this is only a small sampling of what could be reproduced here!

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Printed from

‘Giant footprints prove Bigfoot’s existence’
10 Jan 2006, 0108 hrs IST, T S SREENIVASA REGHAVAN, TNN

Was there an Indian Bigfoot? Yes, insists a team of amateur anthropologists led by S R Krishnaswamy. “We found four footprints of Bigfoot. In one, the footprint of the adult male measures 29 inches and the female size is 26 inches.

Even the young one’s foot size is 8.5 inches,” said Krishnaswamy on Monday. Going by the size of the footmarks, the anthropologists say Indian Bigfoot would have been far bigger than his Australian and Malaysian counterparts, estimated to be about 8 feet tall and weighing a hefty 350 kg….

Eminent anthropologist L K Balaratnam said in Coimbatore that the site is virgin and could throw up unknown facts. Balaratnam, who along with his father co-authored India’s first book on anthropology, ‘Anthropology in India’, said the finding should be “interesting.”

He added that reports of Bigfoot sightings or impressions have not been reported from anywhere else in the country…

[This first article was a little skeptical, but 10 months later another article came out.]

Did Big Foot Live?
8 Oct 2006, 0033 hrs IST, T S SREENIVASA, TNN

He was 17 feet high, weighed over 400 kg, was hairy, and lived over 50,000 years ago, in the caverns of Kerala’s green hills. It’s not clear if he was a communist. Nine months ago, the discovery of a 29-inch-long gigantic footprint on a rocky hillock at Karalmanna, 75 kms from Palakkad in Kerala excited interest and skepticism.

The skepticism was chiefly because the discoverer was one S R Krishnaswamy, a clerk employed with the Life Insurance Corporation and an amateur archaeologist. Now, some professionals are beginning to endorse his claims.
Based on the mammoth size of the footprint that has been fossilised in limestone, Krishnaswamy and team speculated not just the being’s vital statistics but also his (or her) general behavior… [Note: Because the footprints were found “fossilized in limestone”, this “bigfoot” does not belong in the same category as the “abominable snowmen” of more recent times. These prints belonged to a race of giant humans who lived long ago and have nothing to do with the fresh footprints of supposed “abominable snowmen” who some claim are roaming in remote areas of the earth today.]

Dr. Pathmanathan Raghavan, senior researcher, School of Archaeology and Anthropology in The Australian National University, who studied videos and pictures of the footprints says that not only does he think the fossilised marks are genuine but also that they were imprints of a biped pre-historic human.

He even guesses that the footprints belong to both juveniles and adults. “I am certain they don’t belong to any animals.
Because, I’ve studied hundreds of footprints left behind by birds, carnivores and mammals… They are totally different from the ones found at Karalmanna.”

… there are respected scientists who do not rule out the possibility of huge bipeds once populating the Earth. …

Both the excitable amateurs and the professionals lament that lack of government protection will lead to the fossilised footprints and the ancient burial sites vanishing. Already the Karalmanna has become a tourist attraction…

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     These remarkable pictures were sent to me in December, 2019, by a gentleman, Sam Sales, from South Africa. Having seen this online section about giant-size humans, Mr. Sales felt led to send me pictures of these footprints that he and his son had stumbled across in 2014. The footprint is about one meter long, similar to the one mentioned in the Times of India news article above. The height of this pre-Flood individual would have been about 6.5 meters! By enlarging the pictures and adding some contrast, the toes become more visible.

     Mr. Sales wrote, “I have found a foot print in the Richtersvelt (in South Africa near the Orange river). It is a right foot 1000mm long and 500mm wide in front. If you look into the print, it looks like when a person stepped into soft clay with the toe marks in the clay.”

     Sad to say, there are so many photoshop-faked pictures of giant skeletons, etc. online that it is difficult to know what’s fake and what isn’t. So it was gratifying to receive genuine photos and this testimony from Mr. Sales and feel certain about them that they are authentic.

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Excerpt from news report on Russia Channel One (Russia’s major broadcasting company):
(6 August, 2008)
“Scientists have found a settlement of mysterious, mythical creatures in the Borjomi gorge.

“Archaeologists have made a sensational find. In the mountains of the Borjomi Gorge, they found the remains of the mysterious creatures of which legends have been told for centuries by local residents. As it turned out; the stories about the huge giants are in fact reality. What a mystery that has been hidden in the highlands!” [Read the rest of the article at http://www.sydhav.no/giants/borjomi_georgia_upgrade.htm]

Professor Vekua holds the bones of a 10-foot giant found in the Borjomi Gorge, Georgia. These giants’ were midgets in comparison to the ones that roamed in Kerala (and other places). Nevertheless, this discovery does provide good, documented evidence of the existence of giants in the past.

It is likely that these giants (and the Antrim giant mentioned next) lived after the great cataclysm which destroyed the prehistoric world. We will study more about this cataclysm in the upcoming section Part 2.

Other giants, like the Kerala giant and others, lived before that great cataclysm, and their remains were fossilized in stone.

Borjomi Giant: Middle bone is a normal human femur

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An extract and photograph from the British Strand magazine of December 1895, reprinted in W. G. Wood-Martin’s Book, Traces of the Elder Faiths of Ireland, mentions a fossilized giant that had been found during mining operatons in Count Antrim, Ireland:

[Note: Although preservation of the soft tissues in fossil form is rare, it is possible under certain conditions that cause petrefaction. Lime-rich water is known to have the effect of turning dead organisms – whether small plants or this human giant – into virtual stone statues. The process of carbonization also has this effect; coal mines are full of preserved imprints of soft leaves, plants, animal organisms, and even humans.]

“Pre-eminent among the most extraordinary articles ever held by a railway company is the fossilized Irish giant, which is at this moment lying at the London and North-Western Railway Company’s Broad street goods depot, and a photograph of which is reproduced here…

“This monstrous figure is reputed to have been dug up by a Mr. Dyer whilst prospecting for iron ore in County Antrim.

“The principal measurements are: entire length, 12 ft 2 in.; girth of chest, 6 ft 6 in.; and length of arms, 4 ft 6 in. There are six toes on the right foot. [The peculiar six-digit hands and feet are a common feature, found both in the physical remains and in the legends of giants. Could this be a clue to the origin of our systems for measuring time and compass degrees in multiples of 60?] The gross weight is 2 tons 15 cwt.; so that it took half a dozen men and a powerful crane to place this article of lost property in position for the Strand magazine artist.

“Dyer, after showing the giant in Dublin, came to England with his queer find and exhibited it in Liverpool and Manchester at sixpence a head, attracting scientific men as well as gaping sightseers.

“Business increased and the showman induced a man named Kershaw to purchase a share in the concern. In 1876, Dyer sent this giant from Manchester to London by rail; the sum of £4 2s 6d being charged for carriage by the company, but never paid.

“Evidently Kershaw knew nothing of the removal of the ‘show’, for when he discovered it he followed in hot haste, and, through a firm of London solicitors, moved the Court of Chancery to issue an order restraining the company from parting with the giant, until the action between “Dyer and himself to determine the ownership was disposed of. The action was never brought to an issue.”

[Unfortunately (as far as is known), nothing more was ever heard of the Antrim giant or its owners.]

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• Ancient Civilization Beneath Death Valley? EXPEDITION REPORTS NINE-FOOT SKELETONS
  August 4, 1947 edition of the San Diego Union.

(Text of the Article:)

TRACE OF GIANTS FOUND IN DESERT

LOS ANGELES, Aug 4. (AP)– A retired Ohio doctor has discovered relics of an ancient civilization, whose men were 8 or 9 feet tall in the Colorado desert near the Arizona-Nevada-California line, an associate said today.

Howard E. Hill. of Los Angeles speaking before the Transportation Club, disclosed that several well-preserved mummies were taken yesterday from caverns in an area roughly 180 miles square, extending through much of southern Nevada from Death Valley, Calif. across the Colorado River into Arizona.

Hill said the discoverer is Dr. F. Bruce Russell, retired Cincinnati physician, who stumbled on the first of several tunnels in 1931, soon after coming West and deciding to try mining for his health.

MUMMIES FOUND

Not until this year, however, did Dr. Russell go into the situation thoroughly, Hill told the luncheon. With Dr. Daniel S. Bovee, of Los Angeles — who with his father helped open up New Mexico’s cliff dwellings — Dr. Russell has found mummified remains together with implements of the civilization, which Dr. Bovee had tentatively placed at about 80,000 years old.

“These giants are clothed in garments consisting of a medium length jacket and trouser extending slightly below the knees.” said Hill. “The texture of the material is said to resemble gray dyed sheepskin, but obviously it was taken from an animal unknown today.”

MARKINGS DISCOVERED

Hill said that in another cavern was found the ritual hall of the ancient people, together with devices and markings similar to those now used by the Masonic order. In a long tunnel were well-preserved remains of animals including elephants and tigers. So far, Hill added, no women have been found.

He said the explorers believe that what they found was the burial place of the tribe’s hierarchy. Hieroglyphics, he added, bear a resemblance to what is known of those from the lost continent of Atlantis. They are chiseled, he added, on carefully-polished granite.

He said Dr. Viola V. Pettit, of London, who made excavations around Petra, on the Arabian desert, soon will begin an inspection of the remains.

• The first Europeans to sail along the Patagonian coasts were Ferdinand of Magallanes and his crew in 1520. Their first meeting with the aboriginals (Tehuelches) was recorded by Antonio Pigafetta, the chronicler of the expedition, in a by now famous passage:

“One day, when no one was expecting it, we saw a giant, completely naked, by the sea. He danced and jumped and, singing, spread sand and dust over his head…He was so tall that the tallest among us reached only to his waist. He was truly well built…The captain named these kind of people Pataghoni. They have no houses but huts, like the Egyptians.
They live on raw meat and eat a kind of sweet root which they call capac. The two giants we had on board ship ate their way through a large basket of biscuits, and ate rats without skinning them. They used to drink a half bucket of water at once.”

In the center picture can be seen the “giants” depicted on a 1562 map of the tip of South America. It used to be common knowledge that the name Patagons alluded to the outstanding foot size of the Tehuelches natives of that area.
The engraving on the left is from the cover of “A Voyage round the World, in his Majesty’s ship the Dolphin, commanded by the Hon. Comm. Byron [relative of the famous poet], 1767” and read: “A sailor giving a Patagonian woman a piece of bread for her baby.”
Not all the Patagonian natives were tall. But out of the 5 nations that inhabited the area, one known as the Tiremenen were truly gigantic. The existence of these giants was attested to by several other explorers after Megellan who reported seeing them and noted their gigantic size of around 10 or more feet tall. One of these explorers was the well known Englishman, Sir Francis Drake. Historians believe they disappeared due to war with neighboring tribes and due to not having any genetic resistance against European diseases.

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• “A skeleton which is reported to have been of “enormous dimensions” was found in a clay coffin, with a sandstone slab containing hieroglyphics, during mound explorations by a Dr Everhart near Zanesville, Ohio. (American Antiquarian, 1880)

• Ten skeletons “of both sexes and of gigantic size” were taken from a mound at Warren, Minnesota, 1883. (St. Paul Pioneer Press, May 23, 1883)

• A mound near Toledo, Ohio, held 20 skeletons, seated and facing east with jaws and teeth “twice as large as those of present day people,” and beside each was a large bowl with “curiously wrought hieroglyphic figures.” (Chicago Record, Oct. 24, 1895; cited by Ron G. Dobbins, NEARA Journal, v13, fall 1978)

• Bathurst, Australia… In fossil deposits in the 1930’s found around Bathurst from a depth of 6 feet below the surface a fossil lower back molar tooth was found. The owner would have been at least 25 ft. tall. Also found were huge stone artifacts – clubs, pounders, adzes, chisels, knives and hand axes all of tremendous weight, scattered over a wide area weighing from 8 to 25 pounds, implements which only men of tremendous proportions could possibly have made and used. Estimates for the actual size of these men range from 10 to 12 feet tall and over, weighing from 500 to 600 lbs.

• At Gympie, Queensland, a large fragment of the back portion of a jaw which still possessed the hollow for a missing lower back molar tooth was discovered. The owner of the tooth would have stood at 10 feet tall.

• Blue Mountain: In the Megalong Valley in the Blue Mountains, NSW [Australia], a depression found in ironstone protruding from a creek bank was the deeply impressed print of a large human-like foot. This footprint measures 7 inches across the toes. Had the footprint been complete it would have been at least 2 feet in length, appropriate to a 12 foot human. The largest footprint found on the Blue Mountains must have belonged to a man 20 feet tall!
  Mulgoa: A set of 3 huge footprints was discovered near Mulgoa, south of Penrith, N.S.W. The prints, each measuring 2 ft by 7 inches across the toes, are 6 ft. apart, indicating the stride of the 12 ft. giant who left them.
  Macleay River: Noel Reeves found near Kempsey, N.S.W., monstrous footprints discovered in sandstone beds on the Upper Macleay River. One print shows toe 4 inches long and the total toe-span is 10 inches suggesting that the owner of the print may have been 17 feet tall.

• Ivan T. Sanderson, a well-known zoologist and frequent guest on Johnny Carson’s TONIGHT SHOW in the 1960s (usually with an exotic animal like a pangolin or a lemur), once related a curious story about a letter he received regarding an engineer who was stationed on the Aleutian island of Shemya [near Alaska] during World War II. While building an airstrip, his crew bulldozed a group of hills and discovered under several sedimentary layers what appeared to be human remains.The Alaskan mound was in fact a graveyard of gigantic human remains, consisting of crania and long leg bones. The crania measured from 22 to 24 inches from base to crown. Since an adult skull normally measures about eight inches from back to front, such a large crania would imply an immense size for a normally proportioned human. [Three times the size of present day humans!] Furthermore, every skull was said to have been neatly trepanned (a process of cutting a hole in the upper portion of the skull).

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The above-mentioned cases are only a small sampling of what could be reproduced on the the subject of discoveries of the remains of giants. In view of all the evidence that exists, there seems no other conclusion to arrive at other than to understand that, indeed, many of our more ancient ancestors were much larger than we are today.

Food for Thought: Could the existence of giants in the earth explain how some of the huge structures of antiquity were built, such as the Stonehenge monument, or the pyramids? Likely, there were many peaceable and friendly giants in ancient times who could have assisted in some of these construction projects.

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Legends of Giants

Surely there must be some truth to the numerous legends about giants that exist in almost every ancient society and culture in the world today: whether the Goliath in the Bible’s Book of Samuel, the Cyclops in Homer’s Odyssey, Ravanna in Hindu mythology, the Formorian giants of Ireland, and many more.

The great hero Rama slays the evil giant Ravana, an event still remembered today in the Hindu Dassera and Diwali festivals and even celebrated in cinematic versions of the ancient legend.

Ravana’s brother Kumbhkaran known for his love of sleep and food

The Bengal goddess Durga slays giants and demons in this ancient bas-relief sculpture

Odysseus was the hero of the Battle of Troy because of his idea to use the “Trojan Horse”. On his way home to Greece, he got sidetracked and wound up trapped in the cave of the one-eyed giant known as the Cyclops. In the picture Odysseus is pouring wine for the giant to make him drunk so he and his men can make their escape.

David faces Goliath in this 1888 lithograph by Omar Schindler. David was just a shepherd boy, but he did have experience killing wild animals (a bear and a lion) while taking care of his father’s sheep. One day, during a visit to his older brothers on the battlefield, he heard the Goliath giant mocking the Israeli soldiers. David knew just what to do: he challenged the giant to a duel, and with one fling of his sling, down went the giant.

King Arthur faces a giant in this engraving by Walter Crane: There is a tale of King Arthur, on an expedition to France, encountering a giant. The giant was armed with a great club, and Arthur had his sword. According to the legend, the giant had been terrorizing the people of that vicinity, so Arthur bravely fought against the giant and killed him.

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Unlike the fossils and unearthed skeletons mentioned in various news articles and reports, these giants of legend pictured above are not exactly “prehistoric” since there are actual records of them. Some of the records are somewhat embellished, but that does not discount the fact that giant people did exist in the past, even the not-so-distant historical past.

Question: Why in modern times don’t we know more about these discoveries of giants?

Regarding the news articles and reports, one noticeable feature about most of them: Except for a few articles, like the Times of India one about the Kerala giant, or the Russia Channel One broadcast about the Borjomi Gorge giant, they were written back around the turn of the 20th century. Why is that, one may wonder? Well, at that time the world had not yet come so much under the influence of a certain philosophy that has in our modern day come to dominate the way we think about mankind’s past history and prehistory. And that is the philosophy of evolution.

We will discuss more about this later, but suffice it to say for now, as far as evolution theory is concerned, the idea of giants doesn’t go along with it very well, nor the fact that these prehistoric ancestors of ours had achieved a fairly high degree of civilization. We are supposed to have descended from smaller, inferior, less intelligent species, not from larger, stronger, and probably more intelligent ancestors. As a result modern thinkers have taken a bit of a hush-hush approach to the subject of giants and their existence in times of old.

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1-E: Origin of the Prehistoric Environment and Cause of its Disappearance

Scientists generally acknowledge that the environment of the prehistoric world was very different to the environment that we live in today. And this begs for an answer to certain questions about how and why things were so different:

1) How was it that the prehistoric environment was able to support the growth of such large versions of plants, animals, and even man?

2) What was it about the weather that allowed plants and animals that today inhabit only tropical areas to thrive even in the polar regions of that mysterious world of ancient times?

3) Whatever happened to cause the disappearance of all these strange creatures that used to roam the earth?

4) Did the earth experience some great cataclysm in the past?

Since we in modern times weren’t there to witness what the earth was like back then, is there any record from ancient times times that might at least give us the basic understanding we need? A good detective might suggest to check out the ancient

SACRED WRITINGS OF ANCIENT HUMAN SOCIETY

After all, even if there were no scientists around at the time, the Creator was, and He certainly knew what took place. And the people who were living in those prehistoric days would also have some idea. We don’t have much of an idea because we weren’t there. But a major “lead” that can put us on the right track towards unraveling the mystery appears in the passages below; they contain an important “clue” to help us solve this great mystery of the prehistoric world’s strange environment. In particular, this ancient passage describes for us the kind of atmosphere and “waters” the earth had long ago in the very Beginning of time.

Rig-Veda

suggests the existence of a double-layered atmosphere:

“Svah” being the upper layer above “Bhuvah” (airspace), while “Bhuh” is the earth below.

Genesis 1:6-8

And God said,

“Let there be an expanse [atmosphere] between the waters to separate water from water.”

So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it.

And it was so.

God called the expanse ‘sky’…”

The waters below the atmosphere would, of course, represent the oceans, lakes, and rivers of the Earth

But what does it mean by the “waters above the atmosphere” ? In the present day there exist water vapor and clouds of condensed vapor up in the sky, but these are located in the atmosphere rather than above it. In prehistoric times, however, it seems that Earth was surrounded by a shroud of water, or water vapor, at a very high altitude above ground level.

Is this possible? In our present atmosphere, the stratosphere section of it is quite cold. However, beyond that region (in the thermosphere) the temperature becomes very hot, well above the boiling point of water. And this is where Earth’s atmosphere is capable of harboring a tremendous “ocean” of invisible water vapor. This “ocean” of water vapor is not there now, but according to the Genesis Book, it was there and was an important feature of God’s original creation.

In the upper reaches of the atmosphere (thermosphere), the temperature rises to well above the boiling point of water. This region of the atmosphere could easily have sustained a huge “ocean” of water vapor, as part of the original Creation.

Of course, it is impossible to travel back in time to verify what the earth was like back then. But as we continue, we shall see how the above explanation helps us to make sense of the evidence that we see today in the fossils and rocks, and in our present climate.

Features of Earth’s Original Atmosphere:

• 1) The Sun emits some harmful radiation (cosmic rays, x-rays, ultra-violet radiation); all these are not good for our health and cause aging in man. But originally, Earth was protected from most of this harmful radiation.
• 2) Greenhouse effect: The layer of water vapor above the earth acted as an insulator. Heat could not escape so easily; thus temperatures in polar regions could get much warmer than they do now. In addition, the same water vapor shroud could have acted as a shield against excessive heat, such as we find nowadays in some desert areas of the Earth.
• 3) A layer of water vapor above the Earth would have caused the atmosphere to be much denser than it is today; air pressure at ground level would have been much higher.

With higher air pressure in the atmosphere, it is easier to absorb oxygen. Such conditions enabled plant, animal, and human life in those early days of history to grow much larger and live much longer than today. More oxygen also gave the muscle strength needed to enable huge animals, like some of the dinosaurs, to move themselves easily, whereas in today’s environment it would be very difficult.

To understand what this means, consider the following imaginary scenario: if you are 6 feet tall (and your volume 6x1x1=6 cubic feet), but then you somehow became twice as tall, then your volume would change to 48 cubic feet (12x2x2=48). You would have, not 2 times, but eight times as much volume, which means you would be 8 times as heavy; and that means you would need a lot more muscle strength to move all that additional weight.

Besides greater muscle strength, a denser atmosphere also made it possible for the large flying creatures, like the pterodactyl, to fly. In the thin atmosphere of our present environment, it might be very difficult.

In a groundbreaking experiment, scientist Dr. Baugh, founder and director of the Creation Evidence Museum in Glen Rose, Texas, recreated these conditions in the laboratory. In a specially constructed biosphere, he was able to duplicate the atmospheric conditions of the ancient past and observe the startling results: fish and insects grew to giant size!

• See VIDEO CLIP of Dr. Baugh’s biosphere experiment http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aq4DK4W9xe4

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“The London Artifact is a hammer, probably used for fine metal working judging by its size, weight and the ends of the head. It was found near London, Texas, near a waterfall in 1934. The rock of this area is dated geologically as Cretaceous (144 Million to 65 Million years old), or during the time of the dinosaurs. [Does that mean the dinosaurs were very clever and made this tool? Or does it mean the belief in long ages of prehistory before the arrival of mankind is mistaken? More explanation on this point will come later, but suffice it to say for now, there is plenty of evidence to show that mankind was alive at the same time as the dinosaurs … in the pre-Flood age.]

Besides being a fascinating find, the metallurgy of the hammer is remarkable: Good, high quality metal with no bubbles or slag and a bizarre compounding of 96% iron, 2.6% chlorine and 0.74% sulfur. A cut was made into the corner of the head to verify it was metal. Sixty years later, that cut (shown also on this replica) has still not rusted! When you compound chlorine with iron you get a powder etchant – not tough steel!

“What is this artifact doing in rock so “old” and how did the people who formed it make it the way they did?” [A denser atmosphere would have created the conditions needed in this process of creating “tough steel” out of these materials.]

(by Ian Juby, director of the Creation Science Museum of Canada)

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REVIEW

Since no was one around at the time to scientifically observe and verify the fact, how can we scientifically figure out that a great water vapor canopy once surrounded the earth? Like a detective, we must observe the evidence and ask questions:

– Evidence? Fossils of very large plants and animals –

Question: How was it that the plants and animals were so much more robust than those of today?
Answer: Without as much protection from the Sun’s harmful radiation (cosmic, UV, and X-rays), the plants and animals in our present environment cannot grow as large or live as long as they used to when the Earth was surrounded by the water vapor shield that existed at the time of the original Creation.
Question: How can such large birds fly?
Answer: A denser atmosphere ⇒ easier to fly. (Wings have more to push against.)
Question: How can such large land animals move themselves?
Answer: A denser atmosphere ⇒ absorb more oxygen ⇒ more muscle strength
Question: How would the atmosphere be more dense?
Answer: A great shroud of water vapor around the earth would cause this effect.
Question: What happened to this great “ocean” of water vapor?
Answer: God caused it to collapse and flood the world.
Question: If that is true, is there any evidence of it?
Answer: The same fossils and rock formations that present us with evidence of what conditions were like in the prehistoric age also present startling evidence of a great worldwide Flood.

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Part 2: CATACLYSMIC EVENTS OF PREHISTORIC TIMES

2-A: Is There Scientific Evidence of Massive Flooding?

1) Evidence of Sedimentary Rock Formations

Nice, neat layers of rock formed through the action of the Flood waters on the Earth’s primeval soil. Such a formation, without any signs of plant growth or erosion between layers, could not possibly have come about by successive laying down of sediments with layers separated by thousands, or hundreds of thousands of years. Such rock formations fromed rapidly.

Sedimentary rock strata exist all over the surface of the earth and were formed by water action. Water, especially in floods, washes away loose soil and dirt, dissolved chemicals, and sometimes even boulder-sized fragments. These are called sediments. Often they’re mixed with remains of living organisms (which can turn into fossils later on).

If modern floods can cause so much erosion, think how much took place during the great worldwide Flood of old

The waters carry the sediments off and dump them elsewhere. As time goes on, the soft, muddy sediments harden and may end up looking like the rock layers in these pictures.

This much sediment from a flood in Himachal Pradesh, India – June, 2013

To understand what happens in this sedimentation process, just scoop up some dirt from the backyard and place it in a glass jar; add some water, swish it around, and watch the dirt settle into nice, neat layers. Now just imagine the same thing happening on a huge, gigantic scale. The rampaging waters created by such a great Flood would tear off the soil (and vegetation) and re-settle it into nice, even layers.

A similar thing can happen with tidal action; incoming tides deposit layer after layer of sand and silt. Sometimes you can see this sort of layered formation on the beach after a monsoon season. It may also happen in some cases by the action of repeated flooding.

The kind of sedimentary rock formations that we commonly see in the earth today were not the result of several local floods or tides taking place over millions of years of time. They were formed quickly during the cataclysm of the Great Flood.

Long-term, gradual processes cannot explain how the rock strata are laid out so evenly without any signs of erosion or plant growth between the layers. The sheer size of the rock layers, and their existence in every corner of the earth, provide telltale signs of the enormous scale of the flooding that occurred, something that could only be characteristic of a worldwide flood.

Boundaries between layers are clean. No signs of erosion or plant growth.

This was an event well known to those who dwelt in ancient times. But unfortunately, our modern society has all but forgotten this grand and sacred heritage that was passed down to us through the ages… and having abandoned that heritage, the academic and scientific world has been left to grope around in vain with unsatisfactory, and for the most part imaginary, theories about our origins.

Sedimentary Rock Strata Exposed, Hwy 416, Ottawa, Canada

Sedimentary rocks are found everywhere in the earth, which clues us in to how widespread the Flood was. We’ve all seen them; anytime you take a drive in the countryside you may notice these layered rocks, especially in roadbeds that have been cut through hilly terrain. Have you ever wondered , how did these rock strata get there? So remember, next time you see them, that you are actually viewing evidence of the Great Flood that once swept over the earth.

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2) Fossil Evidence of the Great Flood

The very presence of fossils of any kind proves that something very unusual happened in our Earth’s past geological history. Normally, when an animal dies, its soft tissue quickly disappears and eventually, even its bones disintegrate if left exposed to the elements. So, in order for fossilization to occur, the following unusual conditions must be present:

Sudden death

Sudden burial

Sudden pressure

Only by means of catastrophic disturbance, such as happened during the Great Flood, could these animals’ remains have been buried quickly enough to have caused them to become preserved in fossil form. And where are most fossils found? In sedimentary (water-formed) rocks.

Conclusion: That answers the question of what happened to cause the extinction of the prehistoric animals: they perished in the Great Flood.

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At this point it is worth mentioning that, besides the rainfall coming from the sky, the groundwaters also welled up, flooding the earth, according to the Book of Genesis. “All the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of Heaven were opened.” (7:11) It is difficult for us now to understand exactly the geological workings of how all this happened. However, it should be safe to say that if “all the fountains of the great deep were broken up”, then there must have been a great deal of earthquake and volcanic activity at the time of the Flood. And therefore, great tidal waves would have gone crashing over the landscape.

One may wonder, how could Noah and the ark have survived such conditions? Well, certainly if God had the power to bring on the Flood, then it would have been a small matter for Him to protect the ark from some of the dangers that were abounding during that tumultuous year of the Flood.

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In Sioux county, Nebraska, on the south side of the Niobrara River, in Agate Springs Quarry, is a fossil bearing deposit… The state of the bones indicate a long and violent transportation before they reached their final resting place. “…The fossils are in such remarkable profusion, in places, as to form a veritable pavement of interlacing bones, very few of which are in their natural articulation with one another,” says R.S. Lull, director of the Peabody Museum at Yale, in his book on fossils.

The profusion of bones in Agate Springs Quarry may be judged by a single block [see picture above] now in the American Museum of Natural History in New York; this block contains about a hundred bones to the square foot. There is no way of explaining an aggregation of fossils as a natural death retreat of animals of various genera.

The animals found were mammals. The most numerous was the small twin horned rhinoceros (Diceratherium). There was another extinct animal (Moropus) with a head not unlike that of a horse but with heavy legs and claws like that of a carnivorous animal. And bones of a giant swine that stood six feet high (Dinohyus hollandi) were also unearthed.

The Carnegie Museum, which likewise excavated in Agate Spring Quarry, in a space of 1350 square feet found 164,000 bones or about 820 skeletons. A mammal skeleton averages 200 bones. This area represents only one-twentieth of the fossil bed in the quarry, suggesting to Lull that the entire area would yield about 16,400 skeletons of the twin-horned rhinoceros, 500 skeletons of the clawed horse, and 100 skeletons of the giant swine.

A few miles to the east, in another quarry were found skeletons of an animal which, because of its similarity to two extant species, is called a gazelle camel (Stenomylus). A herd of these animals was destroyed in a disaster. . . the transportation was in a violent cataract of water, sand, and gravel, that left marks on the bones. Tens of thousands of animals were carried over an unknown distance, then smashed into a common grave.

The catastrophe was most likely ubiquitous [everywhere in the earth], for these animals – the small twin-horned rhinoceros, clawed horse, giant swine, and gazelle camel – did not survive, but became extinct. . . . the very circumstances in which they are found bespeak a violent death at the hands of the elements, not slow extinction in a process of evolution.

(Adapted from “Ooparts” website)

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Fossilized tree-trunk (7.6 meters high) discovered in Germany passing through several rock-strata. Similar phenomena have been found in many other places in the world.

In this open-cast mine in Germany several tree trunks had been fossilized. The trees pass through twenty feet and more of different sedimentary rock layers. Some places have trees fallen over, some at an angle, some straight up, all fossilized and extending through several layers of “strata” that, according to evolutionary geology, took millions of years to lay down. But the clear-cut evidence tells us that the sediment was deposited rapidly, as in a great flood. Otherwise we would have to believe that a dead tree stood for millions of years in the same place, exposed to the elements, and yet never rotted away while layers of sediment/rock strata were building up around it.

The sedimentary rock strata surrounding the trunks must have formed rapidly – more so because some are positioned upright. Rapid burial is one of the key conditions required in order for the process of fossilization to take place. So it makes much more sense to understand that these layers of sediment resulted from the turbulent action of the Great Flood waters upon the earth’s original surface.

In crime-solving, whenever new “evidence” comes up, a sharp detective will, if he hopes to solve the mystery, revise his conclusions rather than rely on old theories that don’t properly account for the facts.

***

And what about the layers of Diatoms found in the ocean floors? These are microscopic life forms (planktonic algae) that accumulate on the floor of bodies of water and are said to accumulate at the slow rate of one inch per 1,000 years as they die and float to the bottom. They use this accumulation to determine the age of things found according to the present rate of diatom accumulation. During the Flood, however, it was a very different story. In the interesting example here, an 80 foot whale was found standing on its tail completely surrounded by Diatom layers. A whale stood on its tail for millions of years while Diatoms died and built up around it? No. The waters of the Great Flood simply accelerated the rate of diatom accumulation by burying the whale quickly under a massive mixture of sediment and diatoms.

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3) Evidence of Geological Formations: The Grand Canyon

In the normal course of natural history, rivers can meander (make big loops) on broad, flat plains. The banks of the river are soft, and so the river can weave its way sideways quite a bit, but not downwards because of the solid bedrock underneath.

In this case however, the Colorado River not only cut sideways but also in a downwards direction to form the Grand Canyon. Why? At the tail end of the Flood, God caused great upheavals in the ocean floor (so that there would be some land surface again). During the resulting water runoff, great rivers were able to gouge deep gorges quickly into the soft, newly-laid sediments (as well as cut sideways).

You can easily see the same thing (in miniature) on the beach after a storm or succession of high tides. Or even after a heavy rainstorm, go somewhere where there is soft mud or soil and where the rainwater has had to drain off through it, and you will probably see the Grand Canyon there in miniature.

Mini-Canyons Gouged Out by Rainwater Runoff

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        From what we’ve seen so far, there is much concrete evidence in favor of the belief that there was a great cataclysm in Earth’s past, which is known to us as the Great Flood. The evidence we’ve seen pokes gaping holes into the theory that Earth’s geologic history has been inching along millions of years without anything much happening – the occasional earthquake, local flood, or volcanic eruption, yes, but surely nothing as colossal as a great worldwide Flood. But as we’ve seen, the facts speak for themselves, and speak very loudly too, that a great global catastrophe, the Great Flood, did indeed occur.

The rocks and fossils are screaming at us,

“The earth experienced a Great Flood in the past!”

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2-B: And What About Cultural Evidence?

Besides telling us about the original Creation, the ancient sacred writings also describe for us God’s “re-Creation” of the earth: the story of the Great Flood and Noah’s Ark. From this we can understand why there is no more water vapor shroud in the upper atmosphere: God caused it to collapse and, together with the “fountains of the great deep”, to inundate the Earth with a great Flood.

Nowadays this well known account of the Flood has been relegated into the realm of fable. Amazingly though, there are several versions of this ancient legend existing in the sacred histories of cultures around the world. And they all tell the same story of a Great Flood and a large boat that held the land animals and a small group of human beings:

• The Matsya Purana and Mahabharata from India

“The time for the purging of this world is now ripe.
Therefore do I now explain what is good for thee! … Thou shall build a strong massive ark … On that must thou ascend, O great Muni, with the seven Rishis and take with thee all the different seeds … and carefully must thou preserve them therein.” (Mahabharata III.clxxxvi)

• Various Suras in the Quran

It was revealed to Noah:
“… construct an Ark
Under Our eyes and Our
Inspiration …”
At length, behold!
… the fountains of the earth
Gushed forth! We said:
“Embark therein, of each kind
Two, male and female,
And your family…”
So the Ark sailed
With them on the waves
(Towering) like the mountains…
(Sura 11: 36,37,40,42)

• The Gilgamesh Epic from ancient Babylon
• Legends belonging to the Aztec and Toltec Indians of Mexico
• The Genesis Book in the Bible

“In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened… The waters increased and lifted up the ark, and it rose high above the earth… And the waters prevailed exceedingly on the earth, and all the high hills under the whole heaven were covered.” (Book of Genesis 7:11, 17, 19)

• And many others (There are at least 270 known Flood legends still existing in the world, and some claim there are up to 500!)

Evidently, in the minds of Earth’s inhabitants long ago, the legend of the Flood was anything but a fictitious fable; it was common knowledge then, still fresh in their minds in the years after the Flood. As the tribes of man began to migrate into different corners of the world, they brought with them this shared knowledge of their historical origins, a knowledge which still exists in the sacred heritage of many ancient societies in our world today.

Artist Elfred Lee’s picture based on the description given by George Hagopian who claimed to have seen the Ark in 1902. Other eyewitnesses have confirmed this to be an accurate representation

Conclusion: Going by both the evidence of science and the evidence of culture (mankind’s own records and sacred history), it makes every bit of sense to conclude that a great Flood once inundated the earth. Further ahead, we shall learn how this great cataclysm was the event that shaped and structured the environment we now live in; it set the stage for and became the starting point to our present era of history.
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2-C: Re-Creation of the Earth

To understand better the re-Creation of the earth at the time of the Flood, it should be mentioned that, besides the rainfall coming from above, also the groundwaters from below surged upwards, flooding the earth. In the Genesis Book Scripture quoted in the previous post, we read, “All the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.” And in the Quran, “The fountains of the earth gushed forth.” Likely, this meant that, in order to flood the world completely, colossal earth movements worked to disgorge the waters from deep down and spread them over the earth’s surface. The rains by themselves would not have been enough.

It is difficult for us now to understand exactly the geological workings of how all this happened. However, it should be safe to say that if “the fountains of the great deep were broken up”, then there must have been a lot of earthquake and volcanic activity at the time of the Flood.

It is estimated that the amount of underground water deep in the earth’s crust exceeds the amount that exists above ground in the oceans and freshwater sources. That would explain why eruptions of volcanic material consist not just of molten rock, but a full 70% of that material is water apparently. Anyway, all that to say, it seems that much of the water for the Great Flood came from below, not just from above.

Earthquake activity and consequent volcanic activity, the like of which Earth had never seen before since the Creation, marked these beginning stages of the Flood. However, this was not the end of it. There is much geological evidence to show that, at the end of the Flood or shortly thereafter, the earth’s crust heaved and buckled together under the force of great tectonic pressures.

In order to create some land area, it lay in the domain of the Almighty to deepen the ocean basins in some places and in other places raise them above water level. This would have entailed some colossal uplifts and re-construction of the continental land masses.

Although no one was there to witness exactly what happened, the evidence of this re-Creation process is plain to see. For example, such a grand re-structuring of Earth’s surface would explain why

1) We have today the broad expanse of the Pacific Ocean bordered by the high mountain ranges of the Andes and Rockies. Geologists always refer to these (and the Himalayas) as “young” mountain ranges. Well, they’re “young” because they were formed after the original Creation at the time of the Flood. The Pacific Ocean also has very deep trenches. It would appear that the Ocean was widened and deepened to allow more space for the Flood waters. At the same time the land surfaces were raised considerably. Scientists may have different theories about how exactly God went about re-structuring the earth at this time, but one thing is certain: we at least know why it had to be re-structured.

The broad expanse of the Pacific Ocean laced with deep trenches and bordered by high mountain ranges

2) Or why the top 3,000 feet of Mt. Everest is made up of sedimentary rock layers containing all kinds of marine fossils. Before and/or during the Flood, Mt. Everest was just flat surface under the ocean. But then great earth-shaking movements forced the sea bed upwards to create the very high mountain ranges in our world today, such as the Himalayan Mountains… and Mt. Everest.

(L) Mount Everest (R) Fossilized Clams Found High Up in the Andes Mountains, Peru. Note that they are closed, something that usually happens because of sudden death and burial; in normal circumstances, clams open up when they die.

3) All kinds of folded rock formations and mountains exist in the earth, bearing witness to the great tectonic forces that rocked the earth in those early days when the sediments left by the Flood had not yet cemented into solid rock.

Folded Rock Formation in King Oscar Fjord, eastern Greenland

Rock formations, such as those pictured above and below, were formed at the end of the Flood, or shortly afterwards, while the rocks were still soft and pliable and capable of forming into a wave-like pattern without shattering. (Such formations bear silent but powerful testimony to the re-formation of the earth’s land surface after the Great Flood.)

Zagros Mountains, Western Iran

One could imagine that the ground was just soft mud when this “wave” formation happened under the stress of enormous earthquake and tectonic pressures. Notice those green things: those are trees – just to give a sense of perspective as to how huge this formation is and how great were the earthquake forces operating at that time.

Heaven’s Peak, Montana, USA – Heaven’s Peak, Montana, USA. It looks like the ground shot straight up because of some mighty movement in the earth’s crust, and then fell back on itself, creating this odd formation known as a “gravity fold from uplift”.

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And so it was that the Flood cataclysm, besides covering the earth with water, included also this grand re-structuring of Earth’s surface: great land masses sank to form deeper ocean basins while in other regions the ocean floor beneath the Flood waters rose to form new plateaus and mountain ranges. Earth’s landscape changed completely compared to what it looked like before the Flood. This incredible re-structuring of the environment is well explained in a groundbreaking investigation by scientists Morris and Whitcomb. In their book The Genesis Flood there is a revealing passage about the formation of the Grand Canyon:

“This region occupies some 250,000 square miles, including most of Utah and Arizona, with large segments of Colorado and New Mexico. The Grand Canyon and many other spectacular canyons have been excavated through thousands of feet of these flat-lying sedimentary rocks.

“The remarkable thing is that this entire region has somehow been uplifted from far below sea level, since most of its sediments are of marine origin, to over a mile above sea level, without disturbing the horizontality of the strata or summit levels! …

The stratified rock layers in the Grand Canyon are quite clean and clear-cut. The borders between the layers show no signs of erosion (plants growing, water erosion marks) which one would expect to see if they were being formed over long periods of time. The same can be said for most sedimentary rock formations in the earth. They were not laid down by gradual processes but rather, were formed rapidly during the time of the Great Flood

““[The Tibetan Plateau], an area of 750,000 square miles has been uplifted from approximately sea level to a mean elevation of roughly three miles, and the Himalayan mountain chain bordering this region has floated upward some five miles, and rather late in geologic time…

“Although the various theories, all highly speculative and none as yet generally accepted, have been devised in an attempt to account for these phenomena, we merely point out that uniformist [gradual evolutionary] concepts have apparently proved incapable of providing a satisfactory solution. It seems much more likely that the sediments all were deposited more or less rapidly and continuously, followed by a single great regional uplift. Subsequent rapid canyon downcutting then ensued, while the sediments were still relatively soft and the rivers were carrying much larger discharges.

“Spectacular exposures of flat-lying sedimentary rocks such as in the Grand Canyon provide ample visible evidence of Deluge deposition. In this area, there are thousands of square miles of horizontal strata, thousands of feet thick, supposed to have been deposited over about half a billion years! The strata include limestones, shales, and sandstones. According to uniformist concepts, numerous changes of environment, with great regional subsidences [sinkings] and uplifts, must have been involved, but this would appear quite impossible. The strata simply could not have remained so nearly uniform and horizontal over such great areas and great periods of time, while undergoing such repeated epeirogenic [continent-building] movements. By far the most reasonable way of accounting for them is in terms of relatively rapid deposition out of the sediment-laden water of the Flood. Following the Flood, while the rocks were still comparatively soft and unconsolidated, the great canyons were rapidly scoured out as the waters rushed down from the newly-uplifted peneplains to the newly-enlarged ocean basins.”

(Quoted from The Genesis Flood, pgs 151-152 by Whitcomb and Morris)

The above passage stated, “This entire region has somehow been uplifted from far below sea level.” That inexplicable, unseen force that caused this colossal uplift could only have been the hand of the Almighty. He was the One who set in motion the forces that caused this grand reconstruction of Earth’s surface.

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Part 3: TRANSITION FROM ONE ENVIRONMENT TO ANOTHER

Unlike the prehistoric (pre-Flood) environment, Earth’s environment now features very high mountain ranges, enormous volcanic and sedimentary rock formations, vast ocean basins, polar ice caps, and extreme weather conditions. These stand today as impressive monuments to the great catastrophic convulsions that once rocked the Earth during, and shortly after, that tumultuous year of the Flood!

3-A: How Massive Flooding Re-modeled Earth’s Landscape

• • • Most of the Earth’s surface is made up of sedimentary rocks of many different sorts. (But below the surface, there still exists the original foundation of hard crystalline bedrock.)

• • • Thus, the more recent “water-formed” rock formations, like sandstone, chalk, shale, and limestone, etc. are all end results of the violent eroding action of the turbulent Flood waters upon the deep soil and rocky materials of the Earth’s original surface.

• • • As the Flood rampaged over the earth, most of the loose surface material dislodged under the enormous crushing weight and plowing action of the roiling waters.

How Flood Waters Can Tear Away the Land Surface

• Floods of today can do much damage, washing away the soil, rocks, and even boulders out of just a small area in the Earth’s surface. But on the much much larger scale of this great worldwide Flood of old, how much greater was the extent of destruction through water erosion! It is hard for us to conceive the magnitude of what can happen when such unimaginably huge volumes of water move over the earth’s surface.

Still from the Movie 2012

• • • Earth’s original covering of soil was torn away, then dumped into great piles of sediment, settled and sorted out into various layers of sand, silt, mud, clay, etc.

• • • The end result of such rapid erosion followed by the sedimentation process on this grand worldwide scale was the formation of vast layers of sedimentary rock, often 1000’s of feet thick, found everywhere throughout the Earth – a beautiful silent testimony and startling reminder to us of this great catastrophe of long ago.

• • • Nowadays it is often thought that it took 1000’s or 100,000’s of years for the sediments in each of these rock layers to be deposited. If that were the case, the boundaries between these stratified layers should be quite rough and uneven. But what do we actually find? The rock layers are neatly laid out, having clean smooth boundaries without any of the telltale signs of erosion or plant growth one would expect to find if this process had taken such a long time.

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3-B: What the Flood Waters Did to the Plant and Animal Life

• • As the Flood waters began to move over the landscape, they immediately tore away the vegetation and forests and swept away herds of animals of all kinds. This was followed by the scraping away of loose surface materials of soil and rocks; these mixed with and buried the plant and animal life that had already been swept away.

• • The fossil graveyards found throughout the earth testify loudly of rapid burial in a great catastrophe. (Had it not happened in this manner, the plants and animals would have decomposed and disappeared long ago rather than end up being preserved as fossils. This is the only way they could have become encased as they are now into such large “graveyards” embedded in the sedimentary rock formations of the earth.)

• • In many of the old riverbeds, fossil bones are exposed and available to archeologists, and provide clear evidence of what happened during the Flood. Everywhere throughout the Earth are found these dramatic signs of widespread and sudden destruction, drowning, and burial of the Earth’s prehistoric plant and animal life.

• • Besides the land animals, many of the fossil “graveyards” show that great quantities of marine life also were destroyed suddenly, buried deep underground by great upheavals in the ocean bottoms. The contorted appearance of these fossils suggests that the fish suffocated while suffering a rapid burial in sediment-laden waters.

• • So this explains easily the origin of the mysterious fossil “cemeteries” of prehistoric plants and animals that exist everywhere in today’s environment.

• • And in addition, the origin of the great coal beds and oil reservoirs of today – what we now call fossil fuels. These also were a by-product of the Great Flood. (Earth’s organic matter was first to get swept away during that tumultuous era; this was followed by the soil sediments, with the end result that most of that organic matter was buried and compacted deep underground.)

Leaf Frond Fossilized in Coal

• Under pressure from rock layers above, these vast accumulations of buried organic life transformed quickly into coal in dry areas and into oil in areas where the organic deposits remained mixed with water. (By the way, there is no way to explain the existence of the coal beds and oil reservoirs in terms of gradual processes – since these are not in the process of formation nowadays. However, they can be understood easily as by-products of the kind of catastrophic action and burial of earth’s plant and animal life that took place during the Great Flood cataclysm.)

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3-C: How Earth Movements Re-modeled Earth’s Landscape

In addition to the action of the Flood waters, there were great earth movements and volcanic activity; these also did much to re-model the earth’s landscape.

• • As great underground pressures heaved underground, the landscape buckled, folded, and faulted resulting in a grand and thunderous formation of new hills, mountain ranges, and elevated tablelands all over the earth.

• • The very high mountain ranges like the Himalayas or the Andes were created at this time.

Tectonic Forces at Work: India Plate Pushed against the Eurasian Plate in the post-Flood era

Where Ganges Plain (left) meets Tibetan Plateau (right) is the Range of Himalayan Mountains

• Geologists even refer to these as “young” mountain ranges in comparison to the smaller “old” ranges like the Canadian Shield, Baltic Shield, or the Ghats of southern India where the rock formations from the original Creation still lie exposed. Geologists call this type of hard, crystalline rock Pre-Cambrian.

Map showing the Pre-Cambrian rock formations (from the original Creation) and the overlying rock/soil formations (from the Flood)

Rock Formations from the Original Creation: (L) One of the Nandi Hills north of Bangalore, India (R) Canadian Shield at Killarney Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada

• • During the era of these great uplifts and sinkings, swollen rivers gouged and scoured out the landscape, as the waters drained off the mud-filled lands and into the oceans.

• • The Grand Canyon, as we’ve seen, is a good example of how these rampaging rivers cut deeply into the soft new land surface. In fact, this is how most of the wide river valleys and canyons in our present environment were first carved out. Even the continental shelves, all made of sedimentary rock, were the direct result of the vast amount of erosion that took place at this time.
    

• • In addition to the effects already listed, the great rumbling upheavals in Earth’s crust caused disturbance of its huge subterranean beds of molten rock .

• • Dormant cauldrons of molten rock spewed out their contents on an unbelievably wide scale

• • Great rivers of molten lava, showers of brimstone, and springs of underground water burst from the ground, spewing out through volcanoes, geysers, and cracks in the Earth, and poured over the landscape.

• • Forests were mowed down, ancient hills and valleys were covered under thick layers of molten stone.

• • Today many regions of the Earth contain these immense formations of volcanic rock spread out over 100,000’s of square miles of territory, along with a host of extinct volcanoes. (For example, much of the Deccan Plateau is overlaid with volcanic rock formed at this time.)

The Deccan Traps are a large igneous (volcanic) province located on the Deccan Plateau of west-central India and one of the largest volcanic features on Earth. The bulk of the volcanic eruption occurred at the Western Ghats (near Mumbai). They consist of multiple layers of solidified flood basalt that are sometimes more than 2,000 m (6,562 ft) thick and cover an area of 500,000 sq km (193,051 sq mi). The volume of basalt is estimated to be 512,000 cubic km (123,000 cu mi). (By contrast, the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens produced only 1 cubic km of volcanic material.) The term ‘trap’, used in geology for such rock formations, is derived from the Dutch word for stairs, referring to the step-like hills forming the landscape of the region. This type of volcanism that covers large areas of Earth’s surface does not take place nowadays. But at the time of the Flood it seems that large cracks opened in the earth’s crust, allowing volcanic material to flow out in unimaginably huge quantities. This was different to the type of volcanic action we see today – smaller, explosive eruptions from cone-shaped volcanic mountains.

Thick stack of basalt lava flows north of Mahabaleshwar. Photograph by Lazlo Keszthelyi, January 28, 1996.

Eruption of Mt St. Helen’s, Washington state, USA

• • These newly formed and very high mountain ranges, and the volcanic and sedimentary rock formations, found in our present environment are an impressive monument to the great catastrophic convulsions that once rocked the Earth during, and shortly after, that tumultuous year of the Flood!

• Besides upward movements, there is much geologic evidence that earth’s surface also shifted downwards – mainly to form huge ocean basins. Our present environment was designed to contain the massive deluge of waters that were released from the skies and from under the earth during the Flood cataclysm.

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3-D: How the Great Flood Changed the Earth’s Climate

• • In addition to the landscape, Earth’s environment underwent another major change – in its climate.

• • In pre-Flood times the weather, as far as we know, had been warm, calm, and fairly uniform throughout the earth.

• • In the post-Flood world, however, because of the collapse of the original shelter of water vapor in the upper atmosphere, the climate transformed radically.

• • Earth became subject to great extremes in temperature and much air movement as a result.

• • Also, there came a great change in the evaporation cycle; the pre-Flood world had not known rain before. In the Genesis Book (2:5-6) there is an unusual statement: “The LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth… But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.”

• • But all that changed in the new post-Flood environment. A very different evaporation cycle came into being because of the changed atmosphere.

• • Our world in some ways became a more interesting place with more variety in seasons and weather; but also, it became a more difficult environment.

• • Not only had the landscape transformed from the gentle terrain of pre-Flood times (as far as we know, it consisted of small seas, low mountains, and rolling plains) to one of very high, rugged, difficult-to-cross mountains and enormous stretches of ocean, but the climate also transformed into a much harsher one than before.

• • Snow, rainfall, extreme heat in deserts, frigid polar regions, blizzards, storms, these were all new features in the environment that those who survived the Flood in the Ark, and we their descendants, have had to contend with.

• • Perhaps this was part of God’s plan to keep mankind so pre-occupied with survival that he would have less opportunity to get into trouble.

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          As time passed (in the pre-Flood Age), human society became corrupted, and so much so that the only solution left was to give the human race a new start. Earth was filled with violence, and its people had departed from God in their thoughts and actions. Because of this, and in His great concern for them, God used the Flood cataclysm as a way to give humanity a fresh start in a new environment – not a more comfortable environment, but a better one all the same.

An important conclusion from all of this: Knowing about God’s purpose behind this great cataclysm helps us to understand that the Flood was not some kind of freak accident of nature; it was brought by the hand of the Almighty and happened under His control.

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3-E: Pictorial of the New Features in Our Post-Flood Environment

Clouds: A shelf cloud associated with a heavy or severe thunderstorm over Enschede, Netherlands

Rainfall: Spectacular scene in Bangalore, India, as viewed from the Nandi Hills

Lightning

Hurricanes and Tornadoes

Deserts: The pre-Flood world may have had dry areas, but likely, it did not experience the kind of extreme heat found in many deserts of our present environment.

Snow and Ice: A man stands near a utility pole in North Dakota, USA, March 9, 1966. A late-winter blizzard produced snow and wind-blown drifts so high that utility poles were nearly buried.

Frigid Polar Regions

High and Rugged Mountain Ranges: Scene from Himalyan Mountains

Vast Expanse of Oceans Separating Afro-Eurasia from the Americas

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3-F: A Further Word about the Giants

Returning briefly to the subject of giants, in the above illustration the Omniological Society has prepared this skeleton chart, showing the range of skeletal remains, starting in order from most common on the left and ending with least common on the right. As expected, the 6-foot skeleton representing the general size of human beings through many centuries is the most common. (It seems we are the “hobbits” of humankind.)

Surprisingly, the next most common skeleton is the 15-foot one. This is just an educated guess, but it would seem that, since many of this size appear in fossil form, it could represent the average height of human beings during the pre-Flood era, and perhaps for awhile after the Flood.

As for the 30-foot plus skeleton, this does seem to stretch the bounds of believability. Nevertheless, it seems there are historical reports that such skeletons were unearthed in the past. That may be rather flimsy evidence, but for the medium-size giants of 15-17 feet, there is, as we have already seen, plenty of evidence to show that they really did exist in times past.

Interestingly, giants existed after the Flood as well. Many large skeletons have been unearthed in Turkey, the land where the Ark landed and where the first settlers from the pre-Flood world, who were probably quite large, were dwelling. So a question that may come to mind, why do they no longer exist? There are some very tall people in the world today, but these are just midgets compared to the giants who existed in ages past.

It seems that, as time went on, genetic variation and natural selection favored smaller races and varieties, so that by now the gene pool for giantism has all but disappeared in the Modern Age. This process sped along, probably, because the post-Flood world’s environment did not support very well the survival of larger-sized human beings or animals. Because of our present thinner atmosphere, less oxygen is available. For giants this would translate into a lack of stamina. It could be that in battle situations they would run out of steam too quickly, becoming easy prey for their numerous and smaller sized enemies.

In ages past giants were useful and, according to legend, helped with the construction of cities and monuments; and they were useful in times of battle (if they were on your side). But in this age of technology there is no real need in the earth for gigantic people. Whatever the reason may be for their disappearance, they are not here anymore. But that shouldn’t make us think that they never existed.

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3-G: Was There an Ice Age?

Malaspina Glacier, Alaska – Photo taken by satellite. When a glacier exits onto a plain, it makes this kind of formation.

Modern geology teaches much about an Ice Age or Ice Ages, occurring in times past. Generally, the theories have over-estimated the duration and extent of the Ice Age because much of what should have been understood as the action of the Flood waters upon the earth was mistakenly assumed to be evidence for ice action on the landscape. The kind of trail left by flooding and that left by glacial action can look similar, and it is easy to mistake one for the other.

At any rate Earth’s “Ice Age” did begin after the Flood and would have reached its peak at some point afterwards. But in a sense we are still in the “Ice Age” – at least when we compare how the climate is now with the milder, more tropical climate that existed before the Flood.

How the Ice Age came about has always been a great puzzle to scientists. Since cold air does not hold moisture very well, it is difficult to explain how there could have been enough precipitation to enable the tremendous build-up of snow and ice that happened during the Ice Age.

How could the Earth have had just the right combination of water temperature, air temperature, atmospheric conditions, precipitation, and so on? But when we understand this era of Earth’s history in light of the Great Flood cataclysm, the vagueness and mystery surrounding the Ice Age’s appearance clears up quite easily.

First of all was the collapse of Earth’s protective shield of water vapor during the Flood. No longer were the polar regions able to retain heat as they had in pre-Flood days. Unlike the atmosphere and land surfaces, however, water retains its heat much longer. Thus, the oceans kept their warmth for quite some time after the Flood – which led to an excessive amount of evaporation.

Add to this the fact that there was much volcanic activity due to the geological disturbances that released underground water onto the Earth’s surface; and later, after the Flood, the re-shaping of landforms to accommodate the floodwaters into huge ocean basins also caused a huge amount of volcanic activity. In the post-Flood era the oceans were quite warm.

At the same time the atmosphere was cool – not only because of the loss of Earth’s surrounding “blanket” of water vapor, but also because great clouds of volcanic dust were blocking much of the Sun’s heat. In the polar regions of the Earth, this combination of circumstances would have resulted in a peculiar set of climatic conditions:

warm water ⇒ excess evaporation + colder air ⇒ heavy precipitation

And a huge amount of it. This brought on a massive amount of snow and ice accumulation, which in turn produced the enormous glaciers and ice sheets that still cover much of the polar regions and higher mountain ranges in various parts of the world. It is thought that so much of the Earth’s water got locked up in ice form at this time that the ocean was actually 200 m. shallower and that the shorelines of earth extended to the edge of the continental shelves (which lay exposed then as dry land because of the “Ice Age” going on at that time in Earth’s history).

Map Showing Continental Shelves

The climate during the Ice Age was peculiar. This was an era of transition as the environment adjusted to a new set of atmospheric and temperature conditions. For example, the climate in northern areas featured a sharp contrast: some regions were ice-bound and hostile; other regions at the same latitude experienced a relatively mild climate due to the effects of warm ocean waters.

There is evidence that great herds of large mammals (such as the mammoth elephant) were roaming in northern areas during this unique era of transition in Earth’s history as the environment was adjusting and before it stabilized (more or less) into its present equilibrium.

Even nowadays we can see a limited version of this phenomenon of contrasting climatic zones existing side by side. For example, the coastal city of Vancouver, Canada, being not far from the warm Alaska Current, experiences much less snow and cold weather than other nearby areas that are further inland and elevated.

Eventually, towards the end of the Ice Age, the skies cleared of volcanic dust and more sunlight appeared. In addition, as the oceans began to lose their heat from pre-Flood days, there was much less evaporation. This combination of more sunlight and drier climate caused some of the great ice sheets that were covering much of Canada and other parts of the world to melt and recede.

During the post-Flood era there was less seasonal variation in temperature. This meant that snow and ice build-up from winter-time did not melt away during the summer. But with the onset of more extreme seasonal variation towards the end of the Ice Age, summers became hotter; and although winters became colder, the atmosphere became drier, which did not allow for much precipitation.

And the warmer drier summers in many northern areas led to catastrophic melting of ice sheets and glaciers; this in turn led to a rise in sea level and flooding. And it seems evidence of this can be found in legend (such as that of Atlantis) and in the underwater remnants of former seaside towns that had sprung up in the post-Flood era.

Mammoth elephants have been found in a frozen state in the Siberian tundra. Some were so well preserved that their flesh could be given to explorers’ dogs as “fresh” meat! There is some debate as to what happened to these animals. One theory is that the sudden collapse of the water vapor canopy around the earth was followed by a drastic temperature drop in the earth’s polar regions, causing some animals to end up in this frozen state. A more recent theory proposes that, as the warm waters of the pre-Flood era began to cool down, this brought dry, cold, and windy weather conditions to areas that had experienced a mild climate during the initial post-Flood era. Many animals ended up getting stuck in loess (wind-blown soil), which later turned into “frozen muck” (permafrost). In either case, a knowledge of the Flood and its effects is essential to understanding the mystery of these peculiar frozen carcasses in certain parts of the Earth.

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3-H: Early Migration Before the Rise of Civilization

A rather interesting, but little understood, era of past history has to do with the sons of Noah and their offspring and where and how they migrated into different regions of the earth. Much of this information has been recorded and preserved in the historical records and genealogies kept by tribes of Saxons, Scandinavians, or Hebrews among others, or in the sacred legends of many ancient peoples in different parts of the earth.

For example, In the Matsya Purana, a legend originating in ancient India, there is the account of a man named Satyavarman (or Manu) in whose days the whole earth was covered by water. He was preserved from the flood by building a boat and boarding it with his seven companions – his wife, his three sons, and their wives:

To Satyavarman [Noah], that sovereign of the whole earth, were born three sons: the eldest Shem; then Sham [Ham]; and thirdly, Jyapeti [Japheth] by name.
They were all men of good morals, excellent in virtue and virtuous deeds, skilled in the use of weapons to strike with, or to be thrown; brave men, eager for victory in battle.
But Satyavarman, being continually delighted with devout meditation, and seeing his sons fit for dominion, laid upon them the burdens of government…
Then he gave Sham the wide domain on the south of the snowy mountains [Caucasus Mountains].
And to Jyapeti he gave all the north of the snowy mountains; but he, by the power of religious contemplation, attained supreme bliss.

– From Matsya Purana

By studying the clues – such as the ancient writing above, or place names along their migration routes, or their languages, or archeological remains – historians have been able to trace where the various descendants of Noah went after the Flood, as outlined in the following brief summary:

Sons of Jyapeti:

Jyapeti (known as Japheth in the Book of Genesis) is honored as the father of the European races. As such, because of the tendency in earlier times for people to engage in ancestor worship, Jyapeti became an object of worship in many cultures. In Roman mythology, for example, he was known as Jupiter, the chief of the gods. The sons of Jyapeti and where they went are listed below:

(1) Gomer: Went north to Ukraine; Crimea on the shores of the Black Sea derived its name from Gomer. His descendants went on to Europe – Goths in northern Europe, Gaul (now France), Galicia in northern Spain. The sons of Gomer:

Ashkenaz – The lands of Scandinavia and Scotland are thought to have been named after him as were the ancient tribes of Saxons and Scythians (of the Russian steppes).

Riphath – The Ural Mountains used to be known as the Riphaean Mountains.

Togarmah – Armenia, eastern Turkey. Probably father also of the Turkic peoples of central Asia.

(2) Magog: The descendants of Magog mixed with the descendants of Gomer, Meshech, Tubal, and Togarmah to form the numerous nations/tribes of Scythia, stretching over a vast area from the Caucasus Mountains and along the Black and Caspian Seas to eastern Siberia. In ancient writings these northern peoples were collectively referred to as Magog, or as Scythians. The highest of the Caucasian Mountains was called Mugogh; a people living on the Don River north of the Black Sea were called Magotis; the ancient Mongols (from Mongolia) are thought to have derived their name from Magog.

(3) Madai: Father of the Medes who settled in Persia (Iran) and merged with the Persians (descendants of another son of Noah, Shem) to form the Medo-Persian empire around the 6^th century B.C. Before this time, a branch of Madai’s descendants had arisen called the Aryans (which is where the modern name for Iran came from). The Aryans entered India around 1500 B.C., bringing Sanskrit and Aryan culture with them, and mixed with the previous inhabitants, the Dravidians (probably descendants of either Shem or Ham). It seems that because of the common origin with their forefather Jyapeti (or Japheth), the north Indian languages bear some similarities to the languages of Europe and are part of what is known as the Indo-European family of languages.

Map Showing the Lands Inhabited by Noah’s Descendants

(4) Javan: In ancient times the land of Greece was called Javan. Sons of Javan:

Elishah – The Elysian Fields, the paradise of Greek legend, apparently was named after him.

Tarshish – Became a city in southern Spain and well known in the ancient world as the far western edge of the Phoenecian trading empire. The city had contact with Britain and other remote places.

Kittim – Settled in Cyprus which for centuries was called Kittim

Dodanim – Settled around the ancient city of Troy whose coastal regions were and still are known as the Dardanelles.

(5) Tubal: Some of his descendants settled in Siberia and gave Tubal’s name to the Tobol River and city of Tobolsk. They also migrated to Georgia whose capital city is called Tbilisi.

(6) Meshech: Often mentioned together with Tubal. Meshech’s descendants also went north and were known as the tribe of Mescherians near Moscow whose name is derived from Meshech. Maps often show these tribal names (of Meshech, Tubal, Gomer) located further south in what is now Turkey. Branches of these tribes did migrate from their northern homelands and settled in parts of what is now northern Turkey or other places in the north Mideast. But their primary regions of settlement were in the northern steppes of Russia.

(7) Tiras: The area of Greece known as Thrace, the ancient city of Troy (coast of NW Turkey), and the Taurus Mountains in Turkey are thought to have derived their names from Tiras.

Sons of Ham:

(1) Cush: His descendants migrated to various places in the Mideast, especially Arabia, and to Black Africa.

(2) Mizraim: Also to the Mideast, but especially Egypt.

(3) Phut: Libyans and north Africans

(4) Canaan: Settled in the land of Palestine. His son Sidon founded the city of Sidon, Lebanon, which became the center of the Phoenecian empire. Two others of Ham’s sons, Sin and Heth, or their desdendants, are thought to have gone eastward and founded the Chinese and American Indian races. (The ancient name of China was Sinim.) The other sons went to areas in the Mideast.

Sons of Shem:

(1) Elam: Ancestor of the Persians (ancient Persian empire)

(2) Arphaxad: Ancestor of the Hebrews, Arabians, and southern Iraqis (ancient Babylonian empire).

(3) Asshur: Ancestor of the northern Iraqis (ancient Assyrian empire)

(4) Aram: Syrians and scattered groups

(5) Lud: Went to Turkey, north Africa

It is a little difficult to pinpoint exactly where everyone went, but we do at least have the starting clues. Tracing the pattern and routes of the early migrations after the Flood is a fascinating study and can be made a lot easier if it is based on the records left by several ancient societies from those early days.

This early period of our history after the Flood and before the rise of the great civilizations has for the most part been shrouded in a great deal of mystery. Or confusion might be a better word. Because the idea is so deeply engrained nowadays that we are supposed to have evolved from a primitive “ape-man” state a long long time ago, it has prevented scholars from even considering the possibility that our present era of history could have had a definite starting point (with the people who survived the Flood in the Ark).

As a result we lack nowadays an accurate understanding of this intriguing period of time; it has lain buried somewhat under the rubble of modern misconceptions about the progress of history. By ignoring the important sources of historical information available to them, modern scholars have tended to misjudge what really happened during those early days. Perhaps the root of this problem stems from an unwillingness to admit that some of our knowledge can only come from the Creator and the Sacred Records that He has left for us to refer to.

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It is worth noting, regarding the spread of civilization in the earth, that the first post-Flood inhabitants were quite advanced in their technical knowledge, having brought with them much of the accumulated wisdom gained during the pre-Flood Age. Man’s overall storehouse of knowledge has increased, of course, since then, having been preserved and nourished among the great civilizations that have come and gone through history.

In the early days of pioneering and repopulating the earth after the Flood, groups and tribes of people were branching off from established areas and migrating into distant corners of the world. Due to the distances involved and lack of communication with their former homelands, these new groups naturally weren’t able to keep all their previous knowledge and technology. As more and more groups splintered off from each other, it was inevitable that many new tribes of more primitive cultures began to appear.

It is a common misconception in the study of anthropology to think that humankind started off in a primitive state and worked their way up from there to more sophisticated levels. But actually, it has happened more the other way round. The first settlers in the post-Flood world were quite civilized and advanced in their technology, and the primitive tribes did not show up until some time later. It was inevitable that technology levels went into reverse among those peoples who were unable to preserve it because of being too isolated or too small in number. Otherwise of course, the overall level of technology has advanced from what it was when Noah and his sons and their wives left the Ark.

Interestingly, many of the scattered tribes in the earth today still retain in their sacred histories references to the Great Flood and the Ark. This evidences rather well the fact that humankind had a common origin in the survivors of the Flood.

As for man’s progress since the Flood, it is debatable whether or not our level of civilization has truly advanced. Noah and his sons and their early descendants were likely quite civilized, peaceable, and knowledgeable in the ways of God, and from that point of view, it doesn’t look as though modern culture matches very well with how it was then, at least as it was in those very early days.

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Review of Parts 1-3

• Original environment
  – Water vapor protection around the Earth
  – Greenhouse effect
  – Atmosphere capable of allowing animals, plants, and humans to grow very large
• Great Flood – Evidence for
  – in sedimentary rocks
  – fossils
  – Geologic formations like the Grand Canyon
  – Sacred Records of ancient societies
  
• Re-creation of Earth’s environment
  – Flood waters create sedimentary rock formations
  – Earth movements and uplifts create high mountain ranges, new land areas, and volcanic rock formations
  – Downshifting earth movements create ocean basins
  – Climate becomes extreme and storm-filled
  – Ice Age (we’re still in it)
• Migration in post-Flood era traced to its starting point in the mountains of Ararat
  

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Part 4: HOW WELL DOES EVOLUTION THEORY AGREE WITH SCIENTIFIC PRINCIPLES AND DISCOVERY?

Or, to re-phrase the title-question, we might ask, did the natural world evolve by itself, or was it created?

What we have learned so far – from fossil, geological, and cultural evidence – presents a version about the origins of the natural world that may be different to what you have heard before. As outlined in previous posts, mankind has a fascinating and marvelous ancient heritage. But unfortunately, it has lain buried under misguided concepts about our past history.

Those concepts were thought to be modern and progressive at one time, but now a more thorough examination of the scientific evidence has revealed many of them to be somewhat misleading and outdated. Let us continue then the process of re-orienting our thinking. Let’s aim to get a more accurate understanding of the science behind these issues as we continue the search to retrieve our lost, ancient heritage.

The following chapters will examine evolution theory in the light of the science of genetics, DNA discoveries, fossil evidence, and dating of the Earth’s age.

Every scientist knows that, before pronouncing a theory or hypothesis as fact or as a “law”, he or she must prove its truth by using the experimental method. Until one has tested a theory exhaustively enough to see that it works in practical reality, only then does it become legitimate; only then can one begin to proclaim it as a new “law of science”.

But when it comes to investigating the more distant past history of humankind and the earth, this experimental method is often ignored; scientists tend to skip this normal and established procedure called investigation, experimentation, and testing. Instead of letting the evidence speak for itself, it ends up getting misinterpreted, then forced, pounded, and made to fit into the mold of preconceived ideas.

Along this line, here is a revealing quote from the brother of Charles Darwin, commenting on Charles’ recent book The Origin of Species :

“In fact the a priori reasoning [the theory] is so entirely satisfactory to me that if the facts won’t fit in, why so much the worse for the facts is my feeling” – Erasmus Darwin (November 23, 1859)

What he meant here was that the theory seemed to him so utterly profound that the facts, even if contrary to evolution, should just mind their own business and take a back seat to the theory. Well, that is a case of putting on the blinders – a poor scientific approach… and poor detective work!

True science is based on

• • • accurate observation
    • thorough investigation
    • unbiased interpretation

And if true Science points us to the reality of a supernatural Creator, then that is what we ought to believe and follow.

Unfortunately however, that regrettable attitude towards the study of origins (of ignoring the evidence) has persisted and caused great misunderstanding these days in the collective mind of mankind… to the point now where everyone assumes that evolution theory is the only valid explanation for the origins of the natural world. So in spite of solid scientific evidence, it becomes a difficult exercise to dismantle the old assumptions and ways of thinking about the origins of the natural world.

But let us look at the “solid scientific evidence” and see if we can gain a better updated understanding about this great mystery of our origins… from five different angles:

• • • Complexity of life

• • • Laws of Science

• • • DNA discoveries

• • • Absence of missing links

• • • Micro versus macro evolution

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4-A: Complexity of the Natural World – Evidence of Supernatural Designer

(Above:) A single cell: as complicated as a factory. (Below:) Biochemistry of the Human Cell: Schematic diagram shows its biochemical/metabolic pathways.

       When Darwin began advocating his idea that the world could be explained by naturalistic means, the prevailing view of the cell held that it was as simple as a chocolate cupcake; chocolate icing on the outside, chocolate cake on the inside and a creamy filling. It was the kind of thing that one might imagine could arise by accident – either the single cell or the cupcake. However, the cell is not a simple life form containing merely a little protoplasm and a nucleus; it’s as complicated as a modern factory – and it can replicate and repair itself. If Darwin had known what we now know about the cell, hopefully he would have scrapped the idea that it could emerge by itself from non-living materials.

***

Doctor Robert A. Millikan was a renowned American scientist who won the Nobel Prize for Physics. One evening, at a banquet held in his honor, a young journalist approached him and said, “Dr. Millikan, although you are undoubtedly a brilliant scientist, a great physicist, I’ve heard rumor that you still cling to the old-fashioned concept of a Creator, that you actually believe in God! Is this true?”

Millikan paused for a moment and then produced an elaborate gold pocket-watch from his vest and said,

“If you’d say that this watch just put itself together, invented itself, you’d be crazy! And just as there had to be a watchmaker behind the synchronized perfection and order of every watch, so there had to be a Creator behind the perfect synchronized perfection of the Universe!”

In a similar vein Albert Einstein rejected the idea that random, blind processes could bring about the formation of the natural world:

“I can’t believe that God plays dice with the universe.”

The truly great scientists – like Albert Einstein, Galileo, Sir Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, and others – all were firm believers in God. The more they learned about the physical world, the more they became convinced that there had to be a Higher Power, a Supernatural Power, a Designer behind the scenes.

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4-B: Laws of Science

• Can life emerge from non-life?

If it did, it would have to contradict an important law of science,

The 2^nd Law of Thermodynamics

The Laws of Thermodynamics

First Law: (also known as the Law of Conservation of Matter and Energy)

“In any process, energy can be changed from one form to another (including heat and work), but it is never created or destroyed.” — Rudolf Clausius, German physicist

Second Law: (also known as Entropy)

Although the total amount of energy remains the same, there is always a tendency for it to become less available for useful work.

Or as famed scientist and science fiction writer, Isaac Asimov, put it,

“The universe is constantly getting more disorderly.”

From that point of view we can see the second law all about us. It takes effort and work to straighten a room, but left to itself it becomes a mess again very quickly. Even if we never enter it, it becomes dusty and musty.

How difficult it is to maintain houses, and machinery, and our own bodies in decent working order, but how easy to let them deteriorate. In fact, all we have to do is nothing, and everything deteriorates, collapses, breaks down, wears out, all by itself. And that is what the second law is all about.

“Watches, batteries, and even people run down. Can their used-up energy be recovered? You may rewind a watch, recharge a battery, and rest and eat to ‘recharge’ yourself, but none of these processes recover the original energy. If we consider all the natural processes in the universe, we can see that all of nature is running down.

“The fact that the universe is running down implies that it must have been ‘wound up’ sometime in the past.

“No one has ever found a single exception to the 1^st and 2^nd Laws of Thermodynamics.

“Both Laws present serious problems for the theory of evolution. For example, the 2^nd Law refutes the evolutionary idea that matter organized itself from disorder and chaos into order and complexity.”

(from The Physical World – An Introduction to Physical Science, pg 375, Bob Jones University Press)

What about chemical evolution and the Miller-Urey  experiment (1953)?

        That experiment showed that amino acids could be created under certain laboratory conditions, and this was thought to prove that life could arise from non-living chemicals (since amino acids are the building blocks of proteins, which are necessary for life).

• On this subject, noted scientist Dr. Charles McCombs had this to say:
  • “As a Ph.D. Organic Chemist, I have to admit that the formation of amino acids under these conditions is fascinating, but there is a major problem. Life was never formed in that experiment [Miller-Urey’s]. The product was amino acids, which are normal everyday chemicals that do not “live.” Even unto this day, there is no known process that has ever converted amino acids into a life form. . .”
• There is a much bigger gap between non-living and living organisms than scientists are willing to accept. The phenomenon of chirality, for example, illustrates how unbridgeable this gap is. In our body, every single amino acid of every protein is found with the same left-handed structure (chirality). They have to be left-handed, not the right-handed mirror version.
• The amino acids formed in the Miller-Urey experiments produced a 50/50 mixture of left and right handed molecular structures, exactly what one would expect with the creation of molecules in a random chemical process. It is a universally accepted fact of chemistry that chirality, the molecular structure needed for living organisms, cannot be created by random process. It needs the Creator.
• For more information on this, see the article “Evolution Hopes You don’t Know Chemistry: The Problem with Chirality”

See The Case for a Creator (3) video about the Miller-Urey experiment

Food for thought: You could go into an auto parts store and buy every single part needed to construct a car, but without an assembler, no car

Conclusion: Even the simplest life forms are extraordinarily complex. It would contradict the 2^nd Law of Thermodynamics for molecules to organize themselves in this manner.

More Food for Thought:
        Could the human cell assemble itself? The cell is just as complex as a car. Without an Assembler those amino acids could not even form proteins, DNA, etc., much less produce a living cell.
        All living organisms are “irreducibly complex”. That is, several different parts have to be working simultaneously right from the start before the organism is able to work at all. There is no room for an evolutionary process from simple to complex. Every organism has to start off as “complex”. 

***

        “The common notion that life originated in an RNA to DNA to life sequence is simplistic. Each of the RNA, DNA, and protein molecules requires the existence of the other two to put it together or to help it work.”
            (from God’s Undertaker, pgs 143-144, by John Lennox)

See VIDEO CLIP: “Case for a Creator: Evidence of Biological Machines”
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4-C: The Marvel of DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid) Structures

Like blueprints for a building, the substance of DNA acts as a code that maps out how our bodily structures will develop as we grow from a tiny cell into a full grown human being. The complex blueprints used in building construction are carefully planned and designed by intelligent architectural designers and draftsmen; they don’t just come together by themselves or by accident. Likewise, the DNA in our bodily cells and genes were the result of the planning and craftsmanship of a Master Builder, our Creator.

Chimpanzee Genome Unraveled!

The 1st September 2005 edition of Nature magazine published the results of research done by a group of 67 scientists in the “Chimpanzee Sequencing and Analysis Consortium”. This group of scientists was able to piece together the entire genome (complete set of chromosomes) of the chimpanzee.

The results of this research have revolutionized the scientific understanding of our biological “construction” – with serious implications for evolution theory:

• • When the scientific world started learning about deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), it was intrigued by the fact that our human DNA was very close to that of apes: only a 1.2 % difference in the gene structure, or 4% difference, depending on how you interpret the scientific findings.

• • But one important difference does exist: man is a sapient (wise) creature, and apes are non-sapient (non-wise).

• • Is it possible to close that small 1.2% gap between man and apes by some gradual process? Could a random process of change by genetic mutation cause such a transformation?

• • Mutations, however, are mostly harmful; only one out of a thousand can be considered beneficial. (Happens sometimes when genetic information gets lost; but it is never gained.) Each and every cell in your body has some 3,000,000,000 “base pairs” in its DNA structure, and each “base pair” has 4 molecules.

• • Humans and apes have similar features, but the difference in their genomes still would involve re-vamping a staggering 120,000,000 4-character digital codes, those having to do mainly with features of intelligence and speech.

• • So, to transform from ape to man means that 120,000,000 changes must occur in the gene structure, and these changes all have to take place in the correct order.

• • Considering that mutations happen, not in a planned way, but randomly (usually in the egg cell before you start growing) and that most of them are harmful, not beneficial, the probability of apes turning into humans is a hopeless impossibility, no matter how many millions of generations of apes we suppose might have come and gone over millions of years of time.

• • To say that a random, accidental process (like mutational change) could bring about such a transformation in the complex genetic machinery would be about the same as saying that tossing a grenade into a printing factory would succeed in producing the unabridged dictionary.

See VIDEO CLIP: “Evidence of Biological Information”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CamNoA6Cfjc

• • As brought out in the video clip mentioned above (“The Evidence of Biological Information”), any man-made creation that transmits information – whether it be Egyptian hieroglyphics, the words on a printed page, or a software program – when you trace it back to the source, you will always find it was intelligence that created it. One would not try to understand how a written document came into being merely by studying the chemistry of ink composition, or what materials paper is made of, or the mathematical probability of splattering ink forming into letters.
  • We would acknowledge that there had to be an intelligent being who created the document, who put it together; it can’t do so by itself. Anything that transmits information, of course, requires the material medium but, most important, there must be an intelligence that exists beyond the material medium in order to bring it into being.
  • The same is true for DNA structures which transfer information to our body cells: there had to be an Intelligent Designer behind them; they cannot be understood merely as a collection of molecules that by chance happened to get together by themselves.
  • Over time a species would actually “devolve” and eventually become extinct because of the harmful effect of mutations. It won’t work the other way round

Now that doesn’t sound very hopeful, does it? That given enough time, we’re going to become extinct. But there is a bright side to this: in a future time, God’s plans call for a regeneration of the natural world to restore the kind of ideal conditions that existed in the world at the beginning of Creation. That, of course, is a matter of faith and can’t be proved by any scientific means. Nevertheless, it does make sense that, if God has love and concern for His creation, which He surely does, then that should be part of His long-term plan: to bring about a grand re-creation or regeneration of the natural world.

Conclusion:

• • According to the scientific laws of chemistry, biology, physics, and even math, it is impossible to cross the bridge that separates man from monkeys by chance mutational processes no matter how many millions of years we may allow for it to happen.

• • If mutations could explain anything, it might account for a certain amount of devolving or degeneration of the human race from stronger, larger, and smarter ancestors, but mutations cannot explain any kind of monkey-to-man process of evolutionary advancement.

• • The similarity that we observe in the DNA of humans and apes is based, not on common evolutionary ancestry, but on the fact that we and the apes have a common Designer.

(See Appendix 1 below: The amazing story of a lifelong atheist philosopher converted to belief in God after learning about the incredible intricacies of DNA structures.)

***

To learn more about the Creation-Evolution question viewed at from the angle of the most recent scientific discoveries, check out the rest of Lee Stroebel’s The Case for a Creator videos

***

Appendix 1

World Pays Tribute on Death of Atheist Turned Believer
Catholic Communications, Sydney Archdiocese, 20 Apr 2010

Leading academics, philosophers and members of the Christian faith across the world continue to pay tribute to Antony Flew, the famed British atheist and thinker who discovered God at the end of his life.

The renowned rationalist philosopher died earlier this month at age 87 and continues to be remembered in obituaries and tributes worldwide.

The son of a Methodist minister, Antony Flew spent most of his life denying the existence of God until just six years before his death when he dramatically changed his mind after studying research into genetics and DNA.

“The almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce life, show that intelligence must have been involved,” he announced in 2004 and went on to make a video of his conversion called: “Has Science Discovered God.”

Ironically, although modern day atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens claim in the rational world of science there is no proof of God exists, it is from the world of science that Antony Flew in his final years discovered “empirical evidence” that God exists, which overturned beliefs he had held for more than 60 years.

Like Einstein before him, Flew found that God was the only possible answer when it came to increasingly complex discoveries from sub atomic particles to the human genome to the very origins of the Cosmos.

“How can a universe of mindless matter produce beings with intrinsic ends, self replication capabilities and ‘coded chemistry’?” he asked, giving this as the main reason for his discovery of God in his final decade.

Flew’s conclusion that there was in fact a God in his 81st year came as a shock to his fellow atheists, particularly Dawkins and Hitchens, two of the world’s most outspoken proponents of atheism.

But Flew refused to back down even when some of his former followers decided his volte-face on God was the result of old age dementia and confusion rather than scholarly research and intellectual rigour.

Flew’s late life change of mind about God’s existence was remarkable because of the huge volume of his writings which until then had embraced the atheist cause. Throughout most of his academic life he was adamant that one should presuppose atheism until there was empirical evidence to the contrary. Then in his final decade as DNA and the human genome began to be understood along with the complexities of life, Flew found evidence which proved to him God exists and is the Creator of life. And from being a rationalist philosopher and non-believer for most of his life, one of the world’s leading thinkers suddenly became a staunch believer.

“The most impressive arguments for God’s existence are those that are supported by recent scientific discoveries,” he said.

In his final years, Flew supported the idea of a God along the lines of the philosophy espoused by Greek philosopher, Aristotle who believed God had characteristics of both power and intelligence.

In 2007, Antony Flew published the manifesto of his conversion, stating unequivocally in the title: “There is a God.”

However until his death while convinced God did exist, he remained skeptical about an afterlife.

With an academic career spanning 60 years with stints at universities across Britain and the US, Antony Flew will be remembered not only as one of the outstanding philosophers of his time, but as the man who preached atheism but died a believer.

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4-D: Monkey-to-Man Evolution? Missing Evidence of Missing Links

What you may be thinking,

Is there evidence of this?… No!

So let’s take a closer look…

***

Australopithecus Afarensis ‘Lucy’ Skeleton (Replica): Perhaps the most famous “missing link” is the “Lucy” skeleton (known as Australopithecus Afarensis) discovered in 1974 in Hadar, Ethiopia, by the Leakey family of archeologists.

– Authentic skeleton?

– Not really. It is actually made up of dis-articulated and geographically separated bones of more than 30 individual skeletons.

As usually happens with these discoveries, “Lucy” was greeted with great fanfare and trumpeted as the long-lost “missing link” between apes and man before any exhaustive scientific studies could be carried out to verify the claim. Eventually, further research did reveal that “Lucy” was nothing more than an ape. Sadly and all too predictably, this “reality-check” news never got the kind of media attention as did all the premature proclamations of Lucy as man’s ancestor. The following quotes/articles – from the discoverers of “Lucy” – should have been headlines on the front page of our newspapers long ago:

“If pressed about man’s ancestry, I would have to unequivocally say that all we have is a huge question mark. To date, there has been nothing found to truthfully purport as a transitional specie to man, including Lucy, since 1470 [name of a normal human skull found in the same area] was as old and probably older. If further pressed, I would have to state that there is more evidence to suggest an abrupt arrival of man rather than a gradual process of evolving.” (Richard Leakey, co-discoverer of Lucy, from a PBS documentary in 1990,)

“All these trees of life with their branches of our ancestors, that’s a lot of nonsense.” (Mary Leakey, also a co-discoverer of Lucy, three months before her death, from an interview with Associated Press (AP) Dec. 10, 1996.)

***

What’s “missing” in the history of “missing links”? … the EVIDENCE !

• • Nebraska Man (1922)
    

• Australopithecines (1974) – Extensive computer analysis has shown these to be just another type of ape.

• Ardipithecus ramidus (1999) – Bones scattered over an area of about one mile. A single toe bone, supposed to prove the creature was part human, was found some ten miles from the other bones.

• • Australopithecus Sediba (2010) – Resembles very much other Australopithecines. Like the Lucy fossil, it is just another genetic variation within the ape species.

• Fossil skeletons: Ape-men? No. Just extinct breeds of apes

Charles Oxnard, PhD, DSc, expert in anatomy, conducted extensive computer analysis on Australopithecine fossils and concluded they were just another type of ape. He stated,

“All of this should make us wonder about the usual presentation of human evolution in introductory textbooks, in encyclopedias and in popular publications.”

(See Appendix 2: “Time Magazine’s New Ape-man” by James Perloff – an informative essay that goes into more detail about the “missing links”.)

***

Conclusion: The over-blown claims of “missing link” discoveries are nothing more than examples of “micro-evolution”, or development of genetic variations among human beings or among ape species that look a little different from present day human beings or apes. These fossil discoveries, trumpeted so much in glossy media presentations these days, are not “evolutionary ancestors” to humankind. Archeologists have only discovered some of the different breeds of apes/monkeys or different races of humankind that disappeared in the Flood, or those who, during the post-Flood era, became extinct somehow or merged into other races.

From the above information we can understand what so often happens when a scientist discovers some unusual-looking skeleton: he might easily jump to conclusions and assume that it is some kind of “missing link”. Especially if the discoverer has a strong predisposition towards the idea of evolutionary development of species, very likely he will interpret the bone remains in those terms while glossing over anything that might contradict his preconceptions.

***

Extinct form of ape and australopithecine model displayed in American Museum of Natural History, New York. Skull on top is modern man. Autralopithecine skulls bear no resemblance to human skulls. They belong to the family of apes, not human beings.

The artists’ pictures of these “ancestors” are misleading. It is easy to take an ordinary human skull and create an apish-looking face based on how one imagines the individual might have looked. The skull is no different, but the soft tissues, which have disappeared, are only assumed to look a certain way according to the preconception of the artist who drew it or the scientist who discovered it.

There is much evidence, as can be gathered from the above news article (Bangalore Mirror, 3 Jan 2011 issue), to show that instead of lacking intelligence in the past, mankind had a larger brain capacity and was, if anything, smarter than we are today. Of course, mankind has a huge amount of accumulated wisdom that we didn’t have before, but from the biological viewpoint, there is more likelihood that we have less brain capacity now than did our ancient forebears.

The news report above was based on an article printed in Discover magazine, March 2009 issue, titled “They Don’t Make Homo Sapiens Like They Used To” by Kathleen McAuliffe. During the course of McAuliffe’s interview with anthropologist John Hawks, Mr. Hawks stated, as they were looking over his collection of skulls, “You don’t have to look hard to see that teeth are getting smaller, skull size is shrinking, stature is getting smaller.” The article went on to point out that “evolution” is happening more rapidly now than ever before because of the world’s much larger population.

And yes, that is true in a sense. But it is the process of micro-evolution that scientists are observing in the natural world – the genetic variation that happens within a species that enables it to branch out into new varieties and adaptations, but without changing its basic gene structure, or genome. The genome of a species is extraordinarily complicated – like a software program – and its basic structure cannot be altered (as macro-evolution theory supposes) unless an outside Intelligence (God) purposefully intervenes and engineers such a change. Like any of mankind’s creations, the natural world has a purposeful design, and an Intelligent Creator behind the scenes who designed and made it. It is not possible that a chance process of mutational change could bring about any of the drastic changes (from one species into another) that macro-evolutionary theory envisions.

In spite of the evidence showing otherwise, the article still tries to convey the idea that mankind is advancing into “higher” forms (what we might call macro-evolution theory). Because of the habit of viewing everything through the lens of macro-evolutionary theory, scientists are seldom able to connect the evidence in the fossils and bones to the process of micro-evolution – the genetic variation that goes on within species.

Appendix 2

Time magazine’s new ape-man- by James Perloff,
WorldNetDaily

In 1999, following the de-emphasis of evolution in Kansas schools, Time magazine struck in its August 23 issue with an editorial denouncing creationists and a huge cover story called “How Man Evolved.” The article displayed man’s supposed oldest ancestor—Ardipithecus ramidus—while neglecting to tell readers that its fragments had been found scattered over an area of about one mile, and put together to form a “missing link.” Time’s cover was of a reconstructed ape-man skull, yet well less than half the skull consisted of actual fossil fragments—the rest was plaster, molded by imagination.

A more recent issue of Time, dated July 23, takes no less liberty. On the cover is a painting of an ape-man called Ardipithecus ramidus kadabba, with the headline “How Apes Became Human.” Inside, the article begins: “Meet your newfound ancestor.” The painting is based on some fragmentary bones recently found in Ethiopia by a graduate student named Yohannes Haile-Selassie. Time assures its readers that the creature walked upright.

The evidence for this? A single toe bone. Time displays the bone with the unequivocal caption: “This toe bone proves the creature walked on two legs.” But not until the last page of the eight-page article do readers learn that the toe bone was actually found some ten miles from the other bones. What evidence exists that the toe bone belonged to Haile-Selassie’s other specimens? None, other than speculation.

There is great danger in basing conclusions on a single bone. In 1922, paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn, an ardent evolutionist, was shown a single tooth found in Nebraska by geologist Harold Cook. After examining it, Osborn declared it belonged to an early ape-man. It became known as “Nebraska Man.”

Osborn hailed the tooth as “the herald of anthropoid apes in America.” At the American Museum of Natural History, William K. Gregory and Milo Hellman, specialists in teeth, said after careful study that the tooth was from a species closer to man than ape. In England, evolutionist Grafton Elliot Smith convinced the Illustrated London News to publish an artist’s rendering of Nebraska Man. The picture, which appeared in a two-page spread and received wide distribution, showed two brutish, naked ape-persons, the male with a club, the female gathering roots. All this from one tooth.

However, further excavations at Cook’s site revealed that the tooth belonged neither to ape nor man, but to a peccary, a close relative of the pig.

Or take the Piltdown Man. It was declared an ape-man, 500,000 years old, and validated by many of Britain’s leading scientists, including Grafton Elliot Smith, anatomist Sir Arthur Keith and British Museum geologist Arthur Smith Woodward. At the time the discovery was announced (1912), the New York Times ran this headline: “Darwin Theory Proved True.” For the next four decades, Piltdown Man was evolution’s greatest showcase, featured in textbooks and encyclopedias.

But what did the Piltdown Man actually consist of? A very recent orangutan jaw, which had been stained to look old, with its teeth filed down to make them more human-looking, planted together with a human skull bone, also stained to create an appearance of age.

Those who think such mistakes no longer occur need only consider the Archaeoraptor, promoted in a 10-page color spread in the November 1999 National Geographic as the “true missing link” between dinosaurs and birds. The fossil was displayed at National Geographic’s Explorers Hall and viewed by over 100,000 people. However, it too turned out to be a fake—someone had simply glued together fragments of bird and dinosaur fossils.

Even if Time turns out to be correct, and Ardipithecus ramidus kadabba walked on two feet, would it prove he was our “newfound ancestor”? This assertion is based on a long-standing evolutionary assumption, usually stated something like this: “Humans are the only creatures that have evolved to the point where they can walk on two feet; therefore, if we can find the fossil of an animal that could walk on two feet, such a creature was our ancestor.”

However, the assumption that two-footed mobility establishes human kinship is groundless. Gorillas occasionally walk bipedally; Tanzanian chimpanzees are seen standing on two legs when gathering fruit from small trees. So even if a fossil creature did have some limited ability to stand on two feet, it doesn’t make it man’s ancestor any more than these modern apes. And man is not the only bipedal creature. Birds are bipedal; so was the T. rex. Therefore, are they human ancestors?

Time refers to “fossil discoveries as far back as Java Man in the 1890s” as validating the relationship between man and ape. But Time does not relate much of what is known about those finds. The Java Man story began with Ernst Haeckel, the German zoologist who has become notorious for using fraudulent drawings of embryos to prove the theory of evolution. Haeckel was convinced that an ape-man must have existed, and he named it Pithecanthropus alalus: ape-man without speech.

One of Haeckel’s students, Eugene Dubois, became determined to find Pithecanthropus. Haeckel believed men might have separated from apes somewhere in Southern Asia. So in 1887, Dubois signed up as a doctor with the Dutch medical corps in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), intending to hunt for fossils during all his spare time. Dubois, it should be noted, had no formal training in geology or paleontology at the time, and his “archaeological team” consisted of prison convicts with two army corporals as supervisors.

Years of excavation produced little of significance. Then, in 1891, along Java’s Solo River, the laborers dug up a skullcap that appeared rather apelike, with a low forehead and large eyebrow ridges. Dubois initially considered it from a chimpanzee. However, the following year, the diggers unearthed a thigh bone that was clearly human.

Dubois, like Piltdown’s discoverers, presumed that an apelike bone somewhere near a human bone meant the two belonged to the same creature, constituting Darwin’s missing link.

In 1895, Dubois returned to Europe and displayed his fossils. The response from experts was mixed, however. Rudolph Virchow, who had once been Haeckel’s professor and is regarded as the father of modern pathology, said: “In my opinion, this creature was an animal, a giant gibbon, in fact. The thigh bone has not the slightest connection with the skull.”

In 1907, an expedition of German scientists from various disciplines traveled to Java seeking more clues to man’s ancestry in the region of Dubois’ discovery. However, no evidence for Pithecanthropus was found. The expedition’s report also noted a nearby volcano that caused periodic flooding in the area. Java Man had been found in volcanic sediments. The report observed that the chemical nature of those sediments, not ancient age, probably caused the fossilization of Pithecanthropus.

Nevertheless, the expedition’s findings and various deficiencies of Dubois’ work were largely ignored, and Java Man became one of evolution’s undisputed “facts.”

Then there was Peking Man, worked on and validated by a number of Piltdown alumni. In seeing textbook portrayals of Peking Man, few students learned that the skulls had been found in scattered little fragments, and that the reconstructions were actually composites taken from various individuals.

Where fragments were missing, plaster was substituted, and the famous final images of Peking Man were the creations of a sculptress named Lucille Swann. Later, all of the Peking Man fossils mysteriously vanished, except for a couple of teeth, preventing Peking Man from being subjected to the kind of checking that doomed Piltdown Man.

Neanderthals were long portrayed as ape-men, stooped over. This misconception was largely the result of a faulty reconstruction by French paleontologist Marcellin Boule, who mistook the skeleton of a man with kyphosis (hunchback) for an ape-man in the process of becoming upright.

Which basically leaves us with australopithecines, currently in vogue as man’s ancestor. [“Lucy” is purported to be an australopithecine.] However, australopithecine fossils show that they had long forearms and short hind legs, like today’s apes. They also had long curved fingers and toes, like those apes use for tree-swinging.

Charles Oxnard, former director of graduate studies and professor of anatomy at the University of Southern California Medical School, subjected australopithecine fossils to extensive computer analysis. Stephen Jay Gould called him “our leading expert on the quantitative study of skeletons.” Oxnard concluded:

“The australopithecines known over the last several decades are now irrevocably removed from a place in the evolution of human bipedalism, possibly from a place in a group any closer to humans than to African apes, and certainly from any place in the direct human lineage. All of this should make us wonder about the usual presentation of human evolution in introductory textbooks, in encyclopedias and in popular publications. In such volumes not only are australopithecines described as being of known bodily size and shape, but as possessing such abilities as bipedality and tool-using and -making and such developments as the use of fire and specific social structures. Even facial features are happily (and non-scientifically) reconstructed.” [Return]

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4-E: Micro Versus Macro Evolution

1 – Barrier of Sterility and Basic Gene Sturcture

The horse and donkey are two separate, but closely related species. Both belong to the equus genus which includes zebras and ponies. When a horse and donkey breed, their offspring is called a mule. Male and female mules cannot mate and produce offspring; they are sterile. There is a barrier of sterility there that will not allow them to create mule offspring. Sometimes a mule can breed with a horse or donkey and produce another horse or donkey respectively, but mules cannot breed with each other.

Chart Showing Mule Offspring

So this barrier of sterility works to some extent between different species of animals that are part of the same genus or family (like the horse and donkey). But for animals of different classes or families, that barrier of sterility between them is complete.

And it is good that this is so. What if a cat and a dog could mate and produce a cat-dog? The natural world would become awfully confusing if different species or classes of animals could breed and produce fertile offspring. But God designed it in such a way that each class of plant or animal can only reproduce within the boundaries of its own species or genus. And this maintains order in the natural world.

And, by the same principle, there is a “barrier” that prevents a species from evolving into another more advanced species. And for the same reason: to maintain order in the natural world.

Charles Darwin, in his later years, became aware of the lack of real evidence for his speculations about what we might call macro-evolution theory and wrote:

“As by this theory, innumerable transitional forms must have existed. Why do we not find them embedded in the crust of the earth? Why is not all nature in confusion instead of being, as we see them, well defined species?” (Origin of Species, chapter 6)

2 – Micro-Evolution: Genetic Variation Within Species

Although there is (for the purpose of maintaining order in the natural world) a limitation established that prevents different species from breeding together or changing into new species, there is nevertheless, allowance for plenty of variety and adaptability within the genetic boundaries of each class of plant or animal.

Genetic variation has allowed, for example, the many different races of humankind to come into being: very small pygmies in Africa, and as we have learned, there have been large-sized giants, but all of them belong to the same genome of humanity. Or the many different breeds of dogs: the Chihuahua and the Great Dane, as different as they appear, both still belong to the canine “family”.

Genetic variation injects variety and adaptability into the natural world, and we could give a name for this – micro-evolution. And for this we can give credit to Charles Darwin who explained micro-evolution in terms of “natural selection” and “diversification of species”. But here also is where he made his mistake. Darwin jumped to conclusions, assuming that the variations he observed in animal species (micro-evolution) was proof that a species could “evolve” into very different and advanced forms – what could be called “macro-evolution”, which, as as we will learn, lacks scientific basis.

3 – Can micro-evolutionary change lead to the formation of more advanced species?

• • Darwin observed that animal species could diversify in certain minor characteristics as they adapted to new environments. From this he jumped to the conclusion that a species could make a wholesale change from a lower to a more advanced species (macro-evolution).

• • Scientists have tried experimenting along these lines, but no matter how hard they try, they always run into a “barrier”. That is, a species cannot change beyond its basic gene structure.

• • Fruit flies, for example, have a very short life cycle, and scientists like to use them in their research. Despite thousands of experiments, however, no one yet has been able to create anything else but more fruit flies – different breeds, yes, but nothing more than that.

• • Scientists can create new breeds of plants or animals through genetic manipulation, or it can happen in nature through natural selection.

• • Natural selection, however, cannot create new genes. It can only sort existing genetic information. Observations of natural selection are not examples of evolutionary advancement; they are examples only of re-packaging, that is, different combinations of the same genetic information.

• • Even mutations, which are mostly harmful or neutral, when they do happen on rare occasion to be beneficial, do so only because a loss of a gene happens to benefit the organism.

• • In this process of micro-evolution, there is no gain in genetic information. In fact, genetic information tends to lessen as new breeds/varieties form.

• For example, the originally created dog-wolf (or whatever it was) would have had a larger gene pool than the diversified breeds of coyotes, jackals, dingos, dog breeds, etc. that were derived from it.

• • To evolve to a more advanced level of biological organization would require that a creature increase its genetic information. But that doesn’t happen in the process of evolutionary change. There is only diversity and loss of genetic information.

• Even the phenomenon known as speciation (new variants or species resulting from reproductive isolation) cannot be used as an example of macro-evolution. Although this type of variant is unable to breed with its former population, that does not mean it has advanced to a more complex stage of development. The speciated variant actually loses some genetic information along the way. In the process of separation from the original population, its genetic pool simply becomes more specialized. Speciation then is another example, albeit a more extreme one, of micro-evolution.

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4-F: The Problem with Darwinism

In his book Origin of Species Darwin states, “Let the strongest live and the weakest die.” This harsh statement undergirds certain philosophies that have come to the fore in modern times. For example, ideas justifying genocide of “inferior races” that characterized Hitler’s Nazism, these can be traced right back to the pages of Darwin’s Origin of Species. Macro-evolution theory offers no support for such practices as showing kindness to the weak or love for our fellow human beings.

The great emphasis nowadays on macro-evolution theory (e.g. ape changing its complex genetic machinery to evolve into human form) lacks scientific basis. As this study has tried to show, new scientific insights (such as in DNA genetics) and simple observation of the natural world offer plenty of confirmation.

Unfortunately, macro-evolution theory has already had its subtle, damaging influence on mankind’s philosophical orientation. (And this became tragically evident during the 20^th century in Adolph Hitler’s genocide campaigns, the philosophical underpinnings of which were rooted in macro-evolution theory.)

But monkeys are not our ancestors, and we are not merely animals driven by instinct. Nor are we some kind of accidental, mechanical by-product of natural processes. The truth is, we are thinking, intelligent beings created by God.

Our ancestor?…. or Divine Origin!

The first man and woman came to life as fully formed human beings through the supernatural power of the Creator

To accept the theory of macro-evolution would mean accepting the idea that some races of humankind must be more “advanced” than others. From the ethical point of view, that is problematic. But if we understand that our basic genome is fixed, then we can appreciate the great diversity in the human population, with its grand variety of races and types of people… without those nasty feelings of superiority, prejudice, and so on. And from the scientific point of view also, we are more on track and accurate in our thinking.

A further downside to the macro-evolution theory of origins: it tends to minimize the role of the Creator in the formation of the natural world; it easily leads to conclusions in impressionable minds that our lives have no meaning or accountability (since God seems so far away). If we believe that we are descended from animals, and that the Creator has very little to do with us (or doesn’t even exist), then who needs to worry about right or wrong? Everything is just a struggle for survival-of-the fittest anyway, so go ahead and fend for yourself.

As mentioned, macro-evolutionary thinking was the basis for Nazi philosophy and its belief in a superior race; it rationalized the cruel policy of eliminating other competing races in the climb towards evolutionary supremacy.

But if upcoming generations understand the Creator’s role in the formation of the natural world, then they will have a solid background from which their ethical development can mature in a positive direction – with a greater sense of responsibility to their Creator and to the welfare of others, as well as the reassurance of His existence and concern for them.

We human beings have the capacity to choose between right and wrong, as well as the desire to seek after God. Each one of us is very special to Him, and He loves each one of us as if we were the only person in the world. Of course, God has countless others whom He loves, and He expects us to treat others as the precious children of God that they are.

We are here for a purpose: to glorify God and to make our lives useful in service to our human beings. We are not here just to make ourselves rich or famous; our gifts, talents, education, and wealth should be directed to helping improve the lives of others and to making this world a better place to live.

To conclude, it is difficult to understand what all the fuss is about – why the teaching of Intelligent Design/Creationism is viewed as some kind of sinister deviation from truth. Instead, we should resolve to bring this teaching to light in our educational institutions; and by so doing, offer upcoming generations the kind of sound ethical and scientific principles that will better guide them through the challenges of the future.

Educationalists are justifiably concerned about non-rational viewpoints in science teaching. In the process, however, “the baby often gets thrown out with the bathwater.” Throw out superstition, yes, but keep a proper understanding of the Creator’s role in the formation of the natural world – not just for ethical considerations, but also, because such understanding is genuinely scientific.

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4-G: In Summary, What Does Science Tell Us about Evolution Theory?

Physics: The Laws of Thermodynamics tell us that the universe and the natural world are getting more scattered and disordered, not more complex and organized.

Biology: The Laws of Genetics reveal that a “barrier” exists to prevent species from changing their basic gene structures. In addition, the complex organization of DNA structures points to the hand of an intelligent Designer at work, not a mindless process of random probability.

Scientific Method: True theories about the past build on solid evidence. The fossil, geological, and other evidence supports the belief that the natural world was created by a Higher Power, and later re-created in the Flood catastrophe; the natural world did not create itself.

From all that we have learned so far, we can only conclude that evolution theory is flawed in many aspects. Of course, we should keep those aspects that have a scientific basis (micro-evolution) but be willing to reject that which defies scientific knowledge and discovery.

***

Belief in a Supernatural Creator, or Intelligent Designer, should no longer be labeled as superstition or a throwback to some primitive era but accepted as a genuinely scientific explanation for the origins of the natural world.

***

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Part 5: HOW OLD IS THE NATURAL WORLD?

From what we have learned so far, the scientific evidence points towards the Creation of the natural world through the handiwork of a supernatural Creator; and this brings us to the realization that the natural world must have had a definite starting point. So a good question to ask now might be, is the Earth really as old as is widely believed nowadays? If it did not create itself but was created by a Supernatural Being, then perhaps the natural world is younger than what we’ve always thought.

In previous chapters we’ve seen how the scientific world can make mistakes and hasn’t scored too well in understanding such obvious events as the Flood cataclysm and the resulting fossil record and geological re-construction of the Earth. Nor has it fully grasped the implications of recent DNA genetic research as evidence pointing to the intelligent design of the natural world – and consequently, to the hand of an Intelligent Designer behind its formation.

A major reason for supposing that such long ages of time preceded our present historical age has to do with the fact that such assumptions make it easier to explain the origin of the natural world in terms of (macro)evolution theory.

So far in this study we have learned that random natural processes cannot explain the emergence of life from non-living substances, or the advancement of species to more complex forms (such as ape-to-man evolution). But, just for the sake of argument, let us suppose that life could emerge by natural chance processes from non-living materials – that God and His supernatural power are not needed for that job – then how could we explain that?

Knowing how complex living organisms are – even a simple cell is anything but simple; it’s as complicated as a factory – then, for something like that to assemble itself by some natural (not supernatural) process, we can only think it would be incredibly difficult for that to happen. So if we ask how could anything so complex as the anything-but-simple cell ever come into being, and from there evolve into more complex structures by a process of unguided chance, this is the answer we would get. “Well, you see, there was lots and lots of time for that to happen – billions of years in fact.”

Then if we ask, “Well how do we know that the earth is billions of years old?” The usual answer for that one: “Radioactive dating methods have proven it to be so.” 

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5-A: What About Radioactive Dating Methods?

Much of Darwin’s evolution theory rests on the pillar of belief that Earth has existed for millions, even billions of years. And much of that belief rests on another pillar – what is thought to be a scientific reliance on the age-measurement techniques of radioactive dating.

Although radioactive dating methods were at one time thought to be infallible measures of the ages of rocks and fossils, many in the scientific world are beginning to realize that these methods are unreliable; in fact, these methods even prove the opposite of the “old earth” idea – that Earth is, in fact, rather “young” in comparison to what has always been thought.

For years radioactive dating was considered a nice scientific way of figuring out the age of the earth. That is, until recently. Below are some articles that will bring to light what scientific research has learned about radioactive dating methods:

Helium in Radioactive Rocks

(Excerpt from essay “Best Evidences from Science that Confirm a Young Earth” by Andrew Snelling, David Menton, Danny Faulkner, Georgia Purdom) in Best Evidences, pgs 35-36, published by Answers in Genesis, 2013)

During the radioactive decay of uranium and thorium contained in rocks, lots of helium is produced. Because helium is the second lightest element and a noble gas – meaning it does not combine with other atoms – it readily diffuses (leaks) out and eventually escapes into the atmosphere. Helium diffuses so rapidly that all the helium should have leaked out in less than 100,000 years. So why are these rocks still full of helium atoms?

While drilling deep Precambrian (pre-Flood) granite rocks in New Mexico, geologists extracted samples of zircon (zirconium silicate) crystals from different depths. The crystals contained not only uranium but also large amounts of helium. The hotter the rocks the faster the helium should escape, so researchers were surprised to find that the deepest, and therefore hottest, zircons (at 387^°F or at 197^°C) contained far more helium than expected. Up to 58% of the helium that the uranium could have ever generated was still present in the crystals.

The helium leakage rate has been determined in several experiments.²² All measurements are in agreement. Helium diffuses so rapidly that all the helium in these zircon crystals should have leaked out in less than 100,000 years. The fact that so much helium is still there means they cannot be 1.5 billion years old, as uranium-lead dating suggests. Indeed, using the measured rate of helium diffusion, these pre-Flood rocks have an average “diffusion age” of only 6,000 (± 2,000) years.²³

… The supposed 1.5-billion-year age is based on the unverifiable assumptions of radioisotope dating that are radically wrong.²⁴

Notes and References:

22. S. W. Reiners, K. A. Farley, and H. J. Hicks, “He Diffusion and (U-Th)/He Thermochronometry of Zircon: Initial Results from Fish Canyon Tuff and Gold Butte, Nevada,” Techtonophysics 349, no. 1-4 (2002): 297-308. D. Russell Humphreys, et al., “Helium Diffusion Rates Support Accelerated Nuclear Decay,” in Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Creationism, R. L. Ivey, Jr. (Pittsburgh, PA: Creation Science Fellowship, 2003), ed., pp. 175-196. D. Russell Humphreys, “Young Helium Diffusion Age of Zircons Supports Accelerated Nuclear Decay,” in Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth: Results of a Young-Earth Creationist Research Initiative, L. Vardiman, A. A. Snelling and E. F. Chaffin, eds. (El Cajon, CA: Institute for Creation Research, and Chino Valley, AZ: Creation Research Society, 2005), pp. 25-100.
23. Humphreys et al., 2003; Humphreys, 2005.
24. Andrew A. Snelling, “Radiometric Dating: Back to Basics,” Answers 4, no. 3 (July-Sept. 2009): 72-75; Andrew A. Snelling, “Radiometric Dating: Problems with the Assumptions,” Answers 4, no. 4 (Oct.-Dec. 2009): 70-73.

***

Potassium-argon Dates in Error
by Carl Wieland

Facts:
1. ALL dating methods (including ones that point to thousands, not billions of years) are based on assumptions—beliefs, no matter how reasonable-sounding, that you can’t prove, but must accept by faith. For example:

• Assuming how much of a particular chemical was originally present;
• Assuming that there has been no leaching by water of the chemicals in or out of the rock; [During the Flood there would have been much of this “leaching by water”.]
• Assuming that radioactive decay rates have stayed the same for billions of years, and more.

2. Radiometric ‘dating’ labs do not measure age—they measure amounts of chemicals, then from this they infer age, based on the underlying assumptions.

3. When the assumptions are tested by measuring rocks of known age—e.g. recent lava flows—they often fail miserably.

Potassium-argon dates in error

Volcanic eruption	When the rock formed	Date by radiometric dating
Mt Etna basalt, Sicily	122 BC	170,000–330,000 years old
Mt Etna basalt, Sicily	AD 1972	210,000–490,000 years old
Mt St. Helens, Washington	AD 1980	300,000–400,000 years old
Hualalai basalt, Hawaii	AD 1800–1801	1.44–1.76 million years old
Mt Ngauruhoe, New Zealand	AD 1954	3.3–3.7 million years old
Kilauea Iki basalt, Hawaii	AD 1959	1.7–15.3 million years old

4. Objects of the same age, tested by different methods, have been shown to give ‘dates’ varying by a factor of a thousand.

5. The fact that there is some consistency to radiometric dates is explained in part by the tendency to publish only data consistent with the ‘evolutionary age’ already ‘established’ by fossils. Most radioactive dating laboratories prefer you to tell them what age you expect. It is hard to see why this would be necessary if these were ‘absolute’ methods. The entire geological ‘millions of years’ system was largely in place, based on the philosophical assumptions of men like Charles Lyell and James Hutton, before radioactivity was even discovered. Where a radioactive date contradicts the ‘system’, it is invariably discarded.

6. If a ‘radiometric’ date and a ‘fossil’ (evolutionary) date conflict, the radiometric date is always discarded.

***

Food for thought: If you took your temperature and found it was 1,000 degrees, would you think there was something wrong with you (an awfully high fever), or maybe there was something wrong with your thermometer? If the dating method cannot give accurate readings for rocks whose date of formation we know (that is, when the rock changed from molten to a cooled state), then how can we trust it for rocks whose date of formation we don’t know?

Carbon 14 Dating of Dinosaur Bones
from http://www.genesispark.com/exhibits/evidence/paleontological/old-bone/carbon-14-dating-of-dinosaur-bones/

Carbon 14 (C-14) dating is used to establish the age of skeletons, fossils, and other items composed of material that was once alive. Very precise analysis from modern mass spectrometers can establish the date the living material in the sample stopped taking in carbon from the environment (the point of death). Because C-14 has such a short half-life (radioactively decaying into Nitrogen 14), all detectable C-14 should have disappeared well before 100,000 years. But careful analysis by researchers has substantiated the presence of Carbon 14 in dinosaur bones. Critics suggested that the samples became contaminated with modern Carbon 14. However, Carboniferous coal was carefully extracted from deep within mines (far below the layers containing dinosaur remains) and fully sealed till lab analysis. It was found to still contain Carbon 14! (Baumgardner, et. al., “Measurable ¹⁴C in Fossilized Organic Materials,” Fifth ICC Paper, August 2003.)

In 2012, researchers analyzed multiple dinosaur bone samples from Texas, Alaska, Colorado, and Montana. C-14 dating revealed that they are less than 39,000 years old. These remarkable findings were presented by the German physicist Dr. Thomas Seiler at a conference sponsored by the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society (AOGS) in Singapore. But apparently this evidence was unacceptable to influential evolutionists. The abstract was removed from the conference website by two chairmen because they could not accept these findings. Unwilling to challenge the data openly, they erased the report from public view without a word to the authors or even to the AOGS officers!

Accelerator Mass Spectrometer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

• The RATE (Radioactivity and the Age of The Earth) project began in 1997. Using the advanced equipment shown above, the scientists involved were able to measure Carbon-14 in fossils that older measuring devices were not able to detect.

…For example, a series of fossilized wood samples that conventionally have been dated according to their host strata to be from Tertiary to Permian (40-250 million years old) all yielded significant, detectable levels of carbon-14 that would conventionally equate to only 30,000-45,000 year “ages” for the original trees.⁸

…Coal samples, which dated millions to hundreds of millions of years old based on standard evolution time estimates, all contained measurable amounts of ¹⁴C… Since the half-life of ¹⁴C is relatively short (5,370 years), there should be no detectable ¹⁴C left after about 100,000 years. The average ¹⁴C estimated age for all the layers from these three time periods was approximately 50,000 years. However, using a more realistic pre-Flood ¹⁴C/¹²C ratio reduces the age to about 5,000 years.

[Excerpt from A Young Earth, pg. 41, by Answers in Genesis, 2010]

8. A.A. Snelling, “Radioactive ‘dating’ in conflict! Fossil wood in ancient lava flow yields radiocarbon,” Creation ex Nihilo 20 no. 1 (1997):24-27; A.A. Snelling, “Stumping old-age dogma: radiocarbon in an ‘ancient’ fossil tree stump casts doubt on traditional rock/fossil dating,” Creation ex Nihilo 20 no. 4 (1998):48-51; A.A. Snelling, “Dating dilemma: fossil wood in ancient sandstone,” Creation ex Nihilo 21 no. 3 (1992):39-41; A.A. Snelling, “Geological conflict: young radiocarbon date for ancient fossil wood challenges fossil dating.” Creation ex Nihilo 22 no. 2 (2000):44-47; A.A. Snelling, “Conflicting ‘ages’ of Tertiary basalt and contained fossilized wood, Crinum, central Queensland, Australia.” Creation ex Nihilo 14 no. 2 (2000):99-122.

***

Between 1984 and 1998 alone, the scientific literature reported carbon-14 in 70 samples that came from fossils, coal, oil, natural gas, and marble representing the fossil-bearing portion of the geologic record, supposedly spanning 500 million years. All contained radiocarbon.³³ Further, analyses of fossilized wood and coal samples, supposedly spanning 32-350 million years in age, yielded ages between 20,000 and 50,000 years using carbon-14 dating.³⁴ Diamonds supposedly 1-3 billion years old similarly yielded carbon-14 ages of only 55,000 years.³⁵

[Excerpt from Best Evidences, pp. 37-38,by Answers in Genesis, 2010]

33. Paul Giem, “Carbon-14 Content of Fossil Carbon,” Origins 51 (2001): 6-30
34. John R. Baumgardner, et al.,”Measurable 14C in Fossilized Organic Materials: Confirming the Young Earth Creation Model,” in Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Creationism, R. L. Ivey, Jr., ed. (Pittsburgh, PA: Creation Science Fellowship, 2003), pp. 127-142.
35. John R. Baumgardner, “14C Evidence for a Recent Global Flood and a Young Earth,” in Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth: Results of a Young-Earth Creationist Research Initiative, L. Vardiman, A. A. Snelling, and E. F. Chaffin, eds. (El Cajon, CA: Institute for Creation Research, Chino Valley, AZ: Creation Research Society, 2005), pp. 587-630.

• • From all of the above research we can only conclude, first of all, that radioactive dating is far from a reliable way of measuring the age of the Earth. And secondly, if radioactive dating does prove anything, it points directly towards a recent Creation of the Earth and its life forms.

• (For further information, see Appendix 3 below: “Radiometric dating breakthroughs” by Carl Wieland.)

*
Appendix 3

Radiometric dating breakthroughs – by Carl Wieland, Australia

A few years ago, some leading creationist geologists and physicists began a detailed research project into Radioactivity and the Age of The Earth (RATE). This RATE project began as a cooperative venture between the Institute for Creation Research (ICR), the Creation Research Society of USA (CRS) and Creation Ministries International (CMI).¹

With the release of key peer-reviewed papers at the 2003 ICC (International Conference on Creationism), it is clear that RATE has made some fantastic progress, with real breakthroughs in this area.
A young age for ‘ancient’ granites

When physicist Dr Russell Humphreys was still at Sandia National Laboratories (he now works full-time for ICR), he and Dr John Baumgardner (still with Los Alamos National Laboratory) were both convinced that they knew the direction in which to look for a definitive answer to the puzzle of why radiometric dating consistently gives ages of millions and billions of years.

Others had tried to find an answer in geological processes—e.g. the pattern was caused by the way the magma was emplaced or how it crystallized. This is indeed the answer in some cases.^2,3 But Drs Humphreys and Baumgardner realized that in other cases there were many independent lines of evidence that suggested that huge amounts of radioactive decay had indeed taken place. (These include the variety of elements used in ‘standard’ radioisotope dating, mature uranium radiohalos and fission track dating.) It would be hard to imagine that geologic processes alone could explain all these. Rather, there was likely to be an answer that concerned the nuclear decay processes themselves.

… There must have been speeded-up decay, perhaps in a huge burst associated with Creation… and/or a separate burst at the time of the Flood.

There is now powerful confirmatory evidence that at least one episode of drastically accelerated decay has indeed been the case, building on the work of Dr Robert Gentry on helium retention in zircons. The landmark RATE paper,⁴ though technical, can be summarized as follows:

• When uranium decays to lead, a by-product of this process is the formation of helium, a very light, inert gas, which readily escapes from rock.
• Certain crystals called zircons, obtained from drilling into very deep granites, contain uranium which has partly decayed into lead.
• By measuring the amount of uranium and ‘radiogenic lead’ in these crystals, one can calculate that, if the decay rate has been constant, about 1.5 billion years must have passed. (This is consistent with the geologic ‘age’ assigned to the granites in which these zircons are found.)
• However, there is a significant proportion of helium from that ‘1.5 billion years of decay’ still inside the zircons. This is, at first glance, surprising for long-agers, because of the ease with which one would expect helium (with its tiny, light, unreactive atoms) to escape from the spaces within the crystal structure. There should surely be hardly any left, because with such a slow buildup, it should be seeping out continually and not accumulating.
• Drawing any conclusions from the above depends, of course, on actually measuring the rate at which helium leaks out of zircons. This is what one of the RATE papers reports on. The samples were sent (without any hint that it was a creationist project) to a world-class expert on helium diffusion from minerals to measure these rates. The consistent answer: the helium does indeed seep out quickly over a wide range of temperatures. In fact, the results show that because of all the helium still in the zircons, these crystals (and since this is Precambrian basement granite, by implication the whole earth) could not be older than 14,000 years. In other words, in only a few thousand years, 1.5 billion years’ worth (at today’s rates) of radioactive decay has taken place. Interestingly, the data have since been refined and updated to give a date of 5,680 (± 2,000) years.

The paper looks at the various avenues a long-ager might take by which to wriggle out of these powerful implications, but there seems to be little hope for them unless they can show that the techniques used to obtain the results were seriously flawed.

More surprises on radiocarbon

Another dramatic breakthrough concerns radiocarbon. It’s long been known that radiocarbon (i.e. carbon-14, or ¹⁴C) keeps popping up reliably in samples (of coal, oil, gas, etc.) which are supposed to be ‘millions of years’ old. However, with the short half-life of ¹⁴C it should decay to zero in only some tens of thousands of years at the most.⁵ For instance, CMI has, over the years, commissioned and funded the radiocarbon testing of a number of wood samples from ‘old’ sites (e.g. samples with Jurassic fossils, samples inside Triassic sandstone, and samples burnt by Tertiary basalt) and these were published (by then staff geologist Dr Andrew Snelling) in Creation magazine and Journal of Creation. In each case, with contamination eliminated, the result has been in the thousands of years, i.e. ¹⁴C was present when it ‘shouldn’t have been’. These results encouraged the rest of the RATE team to investigate ¹⁴C further, building on the literature reviews of creationist physician Dr Paul Giem.

In another very important paper, scientists from the RATE group summarized the pertinent facts and presented further experimental data.⁶The bottom line is that virtually all biological specimens, no matter how ‘old’ they are supposed to be, show measurable ¹⁴C levels. This effectively limits the age of all buried biota to less than (at most) 250,000 years. (When one takes into account the probability that before the Flood the ratio of radioactive to ‘normal’ carbon was much lower,⁷ the calculated age comes right down…)

Interestingly, specimens which appear to definitely be pre-Flood seem to have ¹⁴C present, too, and importantly, these cluster around a lower relative amount of ¹⁴C. This suggests that some ¹⁴C was primordial (existing from the very beginning), and not produced by cosmic rays—thus limiting the age of the entire earth to only a few thousand years.

This appears to have been somewhat spectacularly supported when Dr Baumgardner sent five diamonds to be analyzed for ¹⁴C. It was the first time this had been attempted, and the answer came back positive—¹⁴C was present. The diamonds, formed deep inside the earth, are assumed by evolutionists to be over a billion years old. Nevertheless they contained radioactive carbon, even though, if the billion-year age were correct, they ‘shouldn’t have’.

This is exceptionally striking evidence, because a diamond has remarkably strong lattice bonds (that’s why it’s the hardest substance known), so subsequent atmospheric or biological contamination should not find its way into the interior.

The diamonds’ carbon-dated ‘age’ of about 58,000 years is thus an upper limit for the age of the whole earth. Again, this is entirely consistent with helium diffusion results reported above, which indicate the upper limit is in fact substantially less.^8,9

¹⁴C workers have no real answer to this problem, namely that all the ‘vast-age’ specimens they measure still have ¹⁴C. Labelling this detectable ¹⁴C with such words as ‘contamination’ and ‘background’ is completely unhelpful in explaining its source, as the RATE group’s careful analyses and discussions have shown. But it is no problem or mystery at all if the uniformitarian/long-age assumptions are laid to one side and the real history of the world, given in Scripture, is taken seriously. The ¹⁴C is there, quite simply, because it hasn’t had time to decay yet. The world just isn’t that old!

…

Related Articles

• Argon from RATE site confirms the earth is young
• Response to Geochronology: Understanding the Uncertainties, a presentation by Dr Justin Payne
• More on radioactive dating problems

References and notes

1. The Australian ministry’s contribution was mostly providing the expertise of geologist Dr Andrew Snelling; however, when he commenced work with ICR, the project rightly reverted to a joint project of ICR/CRS.
2. Snelling, A.A., The failure of U-Th-Pb ‘dating’ at Koongarra, Australia, Journal of Creation9(1):71–92, 1995.
3. Walker, T., The Somerset Dam igneous complex, south-east Queensland, Honours thesis [1^stclass Honours or Summa cum laude awarded], Department of Earth Sciences, University of Queensland, 1998.
4. Humphreys, D.et al., Helium diffusion rates support accelerated nuclear decay, static.icr.org/i/pdf/technical/Helium-Diffusion-Rates-Support-Accelerated-Nuclear-Decay.pdf, 16 October 2003.
5. Even with the most sensitive AMS techniques used today, nary an atom of ¹⁴C should be present after 250,000 years.
6. Baumgardner, J.et al., Measurable ¹⁴C in fossilized organic materials: confirming the young earth creation-flood model, <www.icr.org/research/icc03/pdf/RATE_ICC_Baumgardner.pdf>, 16 October 2003. See also: Baumgardner, J., Humphreys, D., Snelling, A. and Austin, S., The Enigma of the Ubiquity of ¹⁴C in Organic Samples Older Than 100 ka, Eos Transactions of the American Geophysical Union 84(46), Fall Meeting Suppl., Abstract V32C-1045, 2003. And also: Lowe, D., Problems associated with the use of coal as a source of ¹⁴C free background material, Radiocarbon 31:117–120, 1989.
7. Factors which would lower the ratio: (1) more ¹²C in the biosphere due to the much greater amount of plant and animal life on the planet, (2) possibly less¹⁴C production due to stronger magnetic field deflecting cosmic rays better, (3) ¹⁴C formed by cosmic rays started building up at creation, and in only 1,600 years before the Flood would not have reached equilibrium.
8. Chaffin, E., Accelerated decay: Theoretical models, in: Ivey, R.L., Jr., Ed., Fifth International Conference on Creationism, Creation Science Fellowship, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, pp. 3–15, August 2003; static.icr.org/i/pdf/technical/Accelerated-Decay-Theoretical-Models.pdf, 16 October 2003.
9. This burst of accelerated decay would be expected to have a greater effect, proportionately, the longer the half-life. Compared to the effect on a uranium isotope with a half-life of billions of years, the effect of speeded-up decay on ¹⁴C, with its half-life of the order of 5,000 years, would be much less, which would explain why there is still some of this primordial ¹⁴C left. Other papers by RATE scientists at the 2003 ICC dealt with theoretical grounds for accelerated decay and also gave further supportive evidence from isochron dates for this varying effect. I.e. ‘good’ isochrons obtained for different decay chains within the same rock sample, which should have all registered the same ‘date’, varied from one another indicating a greater effect on longer half-life isotopes. See Snelling, A.A. et al., Radioisotopes in the diabase sill (Upper Precambrian) at Bass Rapids, Grand Canyon, Arizona: An application and test of the isochron dating method, in: Ivey, R.L., Jr., Ed., Fifth International Conference on Creationism, Creation Science Fellowship, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, pp. 269–284, August 2003; <www.icr.org/research/icc03/pdf/ICCBassRapidsSill_2-%20AAS_SA_and_WH.pdf>.

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5-B: Age Estimates Based on Geological Evidence

Besides radioactive dating techniques, there are other ways to measure the age of the Earth. These are known as geo-chronological indicators, and there are several… which bring to light the very real possibility of an earthly environment much younger than what we’ve usually thought. (Adapted from “Creation vs Evolution”, a publication of THE FAX OF LIFE courtesy of Helping Hand)

Growth of Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta:

• • The Ganges-Brahmaputra delta is growing: The Ganges and Brahmaputra Rivers are washing dirt into the Delta, located at their combined mouth on the Bay of Bengal.

• • By calculating both the size of the Delta and rate of silt accumulation, scientists estimate that it must have begun about 11,000 years ago, a figure which seems to hold true for other major river deltas as well. (The time span may even be less, considering that the rate of erosion was probably much faster right after the Flood when the sediments were still soft.)

• • But if we’re thinking in terms of millions or billions of years or whatever, then not only the Bay of Bengal but probably the entire Indian Ocean should be full of dirt by now!

Earth’s Rotation Slowing:

EARTH’S ROTATION IS SLOWING DOWN. You’ve heard of Leap Year but not everybody knows about Leap Second! (No joke!) Every 10 months the scientific community sets the clock back one second. (Atomic clocks are very picky!) The Earth is presently spinning at a speed of 1,046.6 miles per hour at the equator. If the Earth is slowing down, that means it used to be going …FASTER! There are 31,557,600 seconds in a year, so if the Earth is only a few thousand years old, that’s no problem. But 4.5 billion years old? At 30 million years ago the Earth would have been spinning at the rate of one revolution per second. The sun would flash across the sky every second. If we believe what Evolution teaches, that the Dinosaurs went extinct around 70 million years ago… they didn’t die off, they were flung off into outer space!

Earth’s Decaying Magnetic Field:

Earth and the other planets in our Solar System all have strong magnetic fields, which are in the process of decay. This rate of decay for Earth’s magnetic field is known (5% per century); it was 40% stronger in A.D. 1000. Only 20,000 years ago, a much stronger magnetic field would have made Earth’s energy level so high that water could not have covered the planet. Earth and the other planets, it would appear, could not have been created very long ago.

Faint Young Sun Paradox:

o The faint young Sun paradox or problem describes the apparent contradiction between observations of liquid water early in Earth’s history and the astrophysical expectation that the Sun’s’s output would be only 70 percent as intense during that epoch as it is during the modern epoch. The issue was raised by astronomers Carl Sagan and George Mullen in 1972. (Science magazine, Volume 177:52-56, 4 Aug 1972) Explanations of this paradox have taken into account greenhouse effects, astrophysical influences, or a combination of the two. (WIKIPEDIA: “Faint Young Sun Paradox”)

o In layman’s terms: The Sun’s power comes from the fusion of hydrogen into helium deep in the Sun’s core. As this happens, it should change the composition of the Sun’s core, gradually increasing the Sun’s temperature… which means the Sun would have been colder in the past. At 3½ billion years ago, the Sun would have been 25% less bright than it is today, and Earth’s temperature would be below freezing. The fossil record shows plainly that Earth was warmer in prehistoric times. That is a problem if we believe Earth’s environment is millions or billions of years old. No problem, though, if we understand it to be only a few thousand years old.

Moon Moving Further Away:

These are separate images combined in this photo. They were taken by the Galileo spacecraft in 1992 as it went on its way to Jupiter.

• • THE MOON IS MOVING FURTHER AWAY. (2-3 inches per year.) That means that it used to be…CLOSER!

• • If the Moon is a few thousand years old, there is no problem. But 70 million years ago?

• • The Moon affects the tides, and the closer it gets, the greater the gravity! (Gravity increases by the “inverse square” – meaning if you half the distance you quadruple the gravity.)

• • Only a few million years ago the Moon would’ve been close enough to cause the tides to drown the entire surface of the Earth—twice a day!

Great Barrier Reef:

Great Barrier Reef: off the east coast of Australia

• • THE GREAT BARRIER REEF IS GROWING.

• • After a 20 year study of the coral formations of the Great Barrier Reef, all the measurements gathered showed that the average growth rate of the Reef indicated it was only a few thousand years old!

• • That brings us back pretty close to when the Flood is thought to have occurred according to the sacred histories of many ancient cultures.

Oil Gushers:

(L) 350-ft. Baku oil gusher on the border of Romany Lake, Azherbaijan (R) Spindletop gusher, East Texas, USA. Before oil-drillers understood how to cap wells, gushers were very common. Dykes were normally made around them in order to contain the oil in a pool around the well.

UNDERGROUND OIL DEPOSITS ARE UNDER GREAT PRESSURE: 20,000 pounds per square inch! Geologists say that under such great pressure the oil should have seeped through the Earth’s crust within 10 to 15,000 years after it was formed (like air seeping out of a tire). They can’t understand why it hasn’t de-pressurized yet! If the Earth is billions of years old, they’re right!—It should have a long time ago! But the Earth is not billions of years old.

Niagara Falls Movement by Erosion:

NIAGARA FALLS IS MOVING. Up until the 1930’s, when much of the water was diverted for hydroelectric generation, the edge of Niagara Falls was moving 5-7 feet south every year. It has moved about 10 miles, give or take a couple of miles, from its starting point at the Niagara Escarpment. (See yellow arrow in picture below.)

Scientists estimate that, moving at its present rate, the Falls seem to be about 9,900 years old. It could be less than that when you consider the cataclysmic nature ofthe Flood. But if Evolution’s millions and billions of years were true, Niagara Falls would have moved to Florida by now!—Or anywhere on the continent!—Or completely out of existence!—But not just 10 miles!

Lewiston-Queenston Bridge: near where Niagara Falls started

Some preservation work on the American side necessitated diverting the river temporarily. Note the evidences of erosion.

Rates of Erosion:

“Rivers dump tons of sediment into the world’s oceans every day. Sedimentologists have researched many of the world’s rivers and calculated how fast the land is disappearing. The average height reduction for all the continents of the world is about 60 millimeters (2.4 inches) per 1,000 years. This equals some 24 million metric tons of sediment per year going into the oceans. If the earth were even only one billion years old, a height of 60 kilometers of continent would have eroded. The earth’s highest mountain, Mount Everest, is only 8.85 kilometers high. Obviously the continents of the world have never been … seven times as high as Mount Everest, because that sediment would have had to have gone somewhere. That somewhere is the oceans, which means that the oceans would have had to have initially been correspondingly deeper, and we would today see the ocean floor miles thick in sediment – which is not the case [average thickness now: only 400 m.].

“Also, at this rate of erosion, North America should have been leveled in 10 million years. The Yellow River in China could flatten a plateau as high as Everest in 10 million years.”

[http://creation.com/eroding-ages]

(Related to erosion rates is the dilemma of salt in the oceans: the oceans should have 70 times more salt than they do now if the Earth were 3 billion years old.)

Conclusion:

From the geological perspective, the earth could not be billions of years old as required by the theory of evolution, or not just the mountains, but every landmass, would have been eroded away; the oceans would be full of dirt; oil reservoirs would not be under pressure; Niagara Falls would have disappeared… and so on.

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5-C: Estimates Based on Evidence from Outer Space

Theories often take on a “life of their own” so that they are no more just “theories” but take on the status of universally accepted principles. The field of astronomy is full of bold assertions and explanations based mostly on opinion; scientific proof becomes an inconvenient afterthought, usually ignored and forgotten under the preponderance of “expert opinion”.

Regarding the origin of the solar system, astronomers have gone to extraordinary lengths in trying to explain how its many “anomalies” came to be – peculiar features in our solar system that fit the Creationist viewpoint but don’t fit into the evolutionary perspective. The essay “Cosmic Catastrophes” by Spike Psarris (October, 2010) pokes fun at astronomers’ desperate efforts to explain the solar system’s origin according to standard evolutionary doctrine.

Supernovas

        These happen when a star’s nuclear fuel has been exhausted, triggeringsudden gravitational collapse. The result is a tremendous release of energy and an expanding cloud-like structure, which can be easily visible on Earth. Scientists know the rate at which supernovas are forming. The strange thing, however, is the fact that, if the universe is as old as is claimed, then there should be many more supernovas in our galaxy than are actually there. In addition, all the supernovas in existence now are in their early stages of development.

Transient Lunar Phenomena

Transient Lunar Phenomena – Result of Inner Core Heat and Activity

Astronomers tend to think that the Moon is geologically dead. If it is 3 billion years old, then the Moon, being small compared to Earth, should have cooled faster, and no hot magma would be left in its core. However, plenty of these Transient Lunar Phenomena are occurring. (In the Moon’s Aristarchus region, for example, 300 of them have been observed.) Again, here is another signpost pointing us to the realization that the Moon (and the Solar System and the Universe) are not that old.

Decaying Comets

As comets approach the Sun, they lose material, and some have burned out the first time they have been observed making this journey. If the universe were billions of years old, there shouldn’t be any comets left; all would have burned out by now. Secular astronomers have speculated that there is something called an “Oort Cloud” where comets are continually being manufactured; however, there is no scientific proof or observation to tell us that such a “cloud” actually exists. It is just a theory offered as an explanation for the unanswerable question of why our Solar System still has comets.

Matter versus Anti-Matter

If the formation of the Universe happened according to the “Big Bang” theory, that means the original energy of the original “singularity” (as it’s called) would have had to transform into equal amounts of matter and anti-matter. But from actual observation we know that the Universe is mostly made up of matter with only a small amount of anti-matter. And it’s a good thing this is so, because when the two get together, they violently destroy each other. The fact that the Universe is mostly matter is nothing less than a “design“ feature. That is, God made the Universe with the right balance of matter and anti-matter. This dilemma resembles a similar one in the biological domain mentioned earlier: “chirality”.

Creation of Stars

Veil Nebula

The prevailing theory about star formation asserts that they form out of collapsing nebulae (enormous “clouds” of extremely low-density hydrogen and helium gas). But gas has a natural tendency to expand, not compress. Such a process cannot happen under normal circumstances. Contrary to the impression given by secular astronomers, no one has ever seen a star forming. And the reason is, they could not have formed by themselves; they were created.

Presence of Blue Stars

Blue stars are the most massive and luminous type of star. They can only last a few million years because they expend their fuel rapidly. Yet we observe untold numbers of them in galaxies that are supposed to be billions of years old. Again, we see evidence pointing to the fact that even the Universe, as vast as it is, was created in the recent past, and by supernatural means.

Youthful Saturn

       Astronomers are perplexed by the fact that Saturn and its rings look pristine and youthful. “Because the icy particles that make up the rings are continually bombarded by space dust, they should be dark and sooty after billions of years. Instead, since the icy particles are still bright and shiny, they must be relatively young. And if the rings are young, Saturn itself might be young too!” [Quote from “Picture Perfect: a Youthful Saturn” by Dr. Jake Hebert, 24 Aug 2020]

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5-D: Age Estimates Based on Population Data

Besides all the evidence presented so far, the belief in a young age for the Earth also makes a lot of sense from the viewpoint of what we know about population growth:

It is estimated that in the century from 1910 to 2010 Earth’s population grew from 1.8 billion to 6.9 billion (increased by 383%). According to that rate of growth, if we work our way backwards mathematically – century by century – we would find that our present population began with only 2 people in 310 A.D.!

Of course, we know our present population could not have started in 310 A.D. But if you factor in certain things – like the lack of medical knowledge in days gone by – we can lengthen the time somewhat. So it doesn’t stretch the bounds of believability to understand that the human race began with 8 people (Noah and his family after the Flood) only a few thousand years ago … and some reasonable time before the Flood, another Beginning with two people (Adam and Eve) at the time of Creation.

What does stretch the bounds of believability is the conventional idea that mankind emerged from some primitive origin about 200,000 to 1,000.000 years ago. To have such a lengthy duration of population growth defies common sense.

– Chart by Scott Manning –

Many studies have been done by various people and organizations, including the League of Nations and the United Nations, but none of the population estimates stretch back any further than 10,000 B.C.

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5-E: Historical-Cultural Evidence

• • For a society to be faithful to keep a chronology over a span of thousands of years is no small achievement. Every culture has to endure so many changes, movements, and instability.

• • Nevertheless, some ancient societies did manage to guard their sacred records over the centuries – the Mayans, the Celts (Saxons, Scandinavians, Irish, Welsh), the Hebrews – were particularly gifted in this respect.

• • Other cultures, like the Greeks for example, soaring on the wings of their imagination, were able to produce a rich heritage of art, drama, and literature, but when it came to the mundane task of preserving old records, they were not so practical along those lines.

• Below are some estimates of the age of the earth since the Flood and since the original Creation. They are from ancient societies who were able to trace their origins all the way back to their beginnings:

• According to these ancient records from several sources, a relatively short span of time has elapsed since the Flood, and before that, since the original Creation. It’s actually a long time, but short in comparison to what we’ve been conditioned to think is the age of the earth.

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In the table below, Bill Cooper in his book After the Flood has “brought together the genealogies contained in no less than five diverse and ancient sources” (some from Anglo-Saxon tribes, some from ancient Roman scholars).

• • Three of the genealogies trace their origin all the way back to the same original Japheth, or Jupiter as he was known among the ancient Latin races. (In the Sanskrit Puranas he was known as Jyapeti.)

• • Six of the seven sons of Japheth (son of Noah) migrated northwards after the Flood and populated Europe long ago. As a result Japheth became honored as the father of the European races.

• • Because of the tendency of ancient tribes to worship their ancestors, eventually Japheth became exalted in Roman mythology as the chief of the gods, Jupiter.

Conclusion: Scientifically, according to our investigation so far into genetics and the 2^nd law of thermodynamics, we can understand that God created the first man and woman fully formed. (If God is who He’s supposed to be, then this would not have been a problem.) Neither scientific theory nor scientific evidence supports the idea that mankind evolved from a primitive ape-like form into a full-fledged human being. (Refer to “Monkey-to-Man Evolution?” in previous section 4-D.)

So, if humankind had a definite starting point, then it should be no surprise that we can find genealogical records from certain ancient societies that date all the way back to the very Beginning. The fact that a few such records have been found in separate societies and that these chronologies go all the way back to the same Beginning stands as further evidence that human history did indeed have a definite starting point… or two starting points really – first in the Garden of Eden, and then, after the Great Flood.

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5-F: Age Estimates Based on Fossil Evidence: Human-Dinosaur Co-existence!

Human-Dino Footprints Together

“This spectacular fossil footprint was found in July of 2000 by amateur archaeologist, Alvis Delk of Stephenville, Texas, and is now on display at the Creation Evidence Museum, Glen Rose, TX. Mr. Delk found the loose slab against the bank of the Paluxy River, about one mile north of Dinosaur Valley State Park. He flipped over the rock and saw an excellent dinosaur track, so he took it home where it sat in his living room for years, with hundreds of other fossils.

“Early in 2008 he had a devastating accident. He fell off of a roof incurring damage that required months of hospitalization. He still has a dangerous blood clot in his brain.

“When he returned to his home, he decided he would sell the dinosaur track, thinking Dr. Carl Baugh of the nearby Creation Evidence Museum would pay a few hundred dollars for it. He began to clean the rock, and that was when he discovered the fossil human footprint underneath the dried clay!

“The human footprint had been made first, and shortly thereafter (before the mud turned to stone), a dinosaur stepped in the mud with its middle toe stepping on top of the human track. You can actually see the displaced mud from the dinosaur’s middle toe inside the human footprint.

“Spiral CT scans are used to generate images of the inside of an object from a large series of two-dimensional X-ray images taken around a single axis of rotation. This technology provides an effective means of analyzing fossil footprints without physically destroying them. It allows us to see inside the rock, specifically, under the footprint.”

“The slab was taken to the Glen Rose medical center where spiral CT scans were performed on the rock. Over 800 X-ray images document density changes within the rock that correspond precisely with the fossil footprints. Of course, carvings would show no corresponding structures beneath them. The existence of following contours beneath the fossil footprints dramatically demonstrate the authenticity of both tracks.”

What Happened?

Crisscrossing Trail of Human-Dino Tracks

Here is the possible scenario of how these tracks came about: as the Flood waters rose, humans and dinos were both trying to escape to higher ground. In this case, they might have scurried across a newly-laid bed of silt or sediment, perhaps during a period of low tide or receding of the waters. After leaving their footprints behind, a new wave or tide came in, covering the tracks with another layer of silt, thereby preserving them. Thousands of years later, the forces of erosion wore away the covering layers of sediment to reveal these footprints once again, but now preserved in stone.

Conclusion: The fossil footprint shown above clearly demonstrates the co-existence of man and dinosaurs. This, by the way, is not the only evidence, but it does happen to be well documented and scientifically validated and, most important, it escaped getting tucked away and forgotten in some museum archive. Judging then by fossil evidence, it should be safe to conclude that man and dinosaurs coexisted. The dinosaurs did not disappear some 70 million years before the rise of mankind, as is commonly assumed.

• How mankind managed to co-exist with dinosaurs we don’t know. But if our species was larger in size, then perhaps it was not as difficult as we might think.

• It is quite possible too that, like today, Earth was divided into separate biomes. Indeed, the fossil record seems to reflect such an ecosystem where the great reptiles dominated vast inland lake and swamp regions, while the human population (and other larger mammals) occupied a separate biome at a higher elevation, well above the swamplands.

For more information on human-dinosaur co-existence, the following website is recommended: http://www.genesispark.com/exhibits/evidence/historical/ancient/dinosaur/

One other documented discovery, made recently, was that of well-preserved dinosaur tissue. How such tissue could have survived is a question that is very difficult to answer if one believes that the dinosaurs went extinct some 70 million years ago. For more information, see: https://answersingenesis.org/fossils/3-soft-tissue-in-fossils/

Food for Thought: Even if the Earth were millions or billions of years old, there is plenty of fossil evidence to show that humankind (in the basic form we are today) existed at the same time as other prehistoric creatures. That is to say, judging by the fossil record, humankind would have been created simultaneously with the other animals, regardless of whether it was a few thousand years ago or several million years ago.

***

(Article by Mr. M. Coppedge:)

“This giant footprint contemporary with dinosaurs was also found in Dinosaur Park at Glen Rose [Texas]. Pictured with my foot, it exceeds 45 cm (18 inches) in length. The cross-sectional cuts determined by compression studies [revealed] that it was a woman’s footprint [and that it was not a carving]. Estimates indicate her stature approximately 305 cm (10 feet) and 454 kg (1,000 lbs). Several strata of human prints with dinosaur prints have been excavated in this park. According to Dr. Carl Baugh, the archeologist who coordinated the excavations, these strata were laid down during the first few days of Noah’s flood when water levels were low enough to allow daily tidal changes to form layers of mud so fleeing creatures could seek higher ground— the upper strata showed no prints.

“Obviously the people who lived contemporary with dinosaurs were intelligent, and the footprints indicate that they were quite human, as the large toe on primates is located close to the heel to facilitate clinging to branches.”

***

Cambrian Explosion!

Food for Thought: If macro-evolution were true, then why don’t we see it operating now? There should be millions of “missing links” to bridge the gaps in the fossil record for all the other species of animals in the biological kingdom, but they’re just not there. Furthermore, if macro-evolution was going on in the past, then it should be going on now… But where is the evidence of it? We don’t see anything like this operating in our present environment.

(Above) Darwin theorized that the present natural world evolved from some very primitive origin. But the “evidence”, from fossils and genetic science, tells a very different story. It plainly shows that all species appeared abruptly and fully formed. (See below.) The evidence points towards the fact that we human beings and all the plants and animals were the result of the design and creation of a Higher Power.

The fossil record shows an abrupt arrival of the different classes of plants and animals. This is known as the “Cambrian Explosion” – something that evolutionary thinkers have trouble trying to explain. The Cambrian rock layer, considered to be the “oldest” layer of sedimentary rock, is actually just the “bottom” layer of sediment formed at the time of the Flood. It contains representatives of all the major plant and animal types – mollusks, arthropods, vertebrates, etc. And they are not any more “primitive” than those found in other rock layers, although they may be smaller in size generally.

The three “kinds” shown here and how they developed is typical of all species in the biological world. There are many “trees of life”, one for each species/genus of plants and animals, and each one originating from a fully developed original but having “branches” of different varieties, breeds, or races. (Diagram adapted from an illustration in The Genesis Flood by Whitcomb and Morris, pg. 67)

But what about the “geologic timetable”? – and the long eras (Triassic, Jurassic, Tertiary, etc.) representing the age of dinosaurs, the age of mammals, and so on?

According to this timetable, millions of years were supposed to have elapsed between the different “ages” of rock strata and their fossils. As we’ve already learned, the neat layers of rock strata could not have formed that way over such long periods of time without showing more evidence of erosion, vegetation, or deformation.

We’ve learned the same from the fossil evidence which plainly shows evidence of rapid and catastrophic burial of the prehistoric world’s plant and animal life. Quite obviously, these stratified sedimentary rock layers with their fossils were the result of the Great Flood.

So why would anyone come up with such an idea in the first place? Basically, it’s a question of jumping to conclusions before gathering all the facts. Without realizing it, those who came up with this geologic timetable simply misunderstood the “evidence” of what the Flood waters did in the process of sweeping away the Earth’s plant and animal life.

As the waters rose, there was a certain pattern that took place: the smaller, denser creatures like shells, mollusks, and so on were the first to get buried in the sediments created by the rampaging Flood waters as they churned up and excavated the Earth’s primeval soil layer and re-deposited that soil over the land surface. These smaller creatures appear mostly in the lower, supposedly older rock layers. Going up the levels of rock strata, the fossils tend to become more complex. That is because the larger, more mobile creatures were able to escape the onrushing Flood waters longer and so were drowned and buried later under the sediments… and thus at a higher level in the rock strata. So this is a pattern that does show up in the fossil-rock layers. And that, of course, was the “evidence” that the early evolutionary scientists latched on to as proof of this theory of geologic ages.

But there are plenty of exceptions to that general pattern, which could have acted as a “reality check” against accepting this theory: there are plenty of humans and dinosaurs, for example, in the same rock strata, or in reverse order; there are fossilized trees extending through several layers of rock strata; and there are many other such evidences pointing to a rapid burial in the Flood rather than a gradual, lengthy process of sedimentation and fossilization. (See Appendix 4 article below, “Dinosaur Fossil Wasn’t Supposed to Be There.”)

As pointed out above, the fossil record shows an abrupt arrival of the different species of plants and animals in the “Cambrian Explosion” – the sudden appearance of all the major plant and animal types in the “oldest” layer of sedimentary rock, which is nothing else but the “bottom” layer of sediment formed at the time of the Flood. These fossilized creatures are not any more “primitive” than those found in other rock layers, although they may be smaller in size generally.

Conclusion: The fossil findings disprove the popular belief that there was a progressive evolving of species from primitive forms into more highly developed forms.

Unfortunately, modern textbooks have not caught up yet with the updated information that we have now, so don’t be surprised if you see some of the old information still there. Just take it with a grain of salt, and appreciate all the helpful knowledge that you can gain from the rest of the material in your books.

Appendix 4

Dinosaur Fossil ‘Wasn’t Supposed to Be There’
by Brian Thomas, M.S. (Writer at the Institute for Creation Research)

Workers with the Canadian energy company Suncor unearthed ankylosaur remains while mining oil sands near Fort McMurray in Alberta. The carcass of the four-legged land creature was not flattened, as is the case with many fossilized vertebrates. But most strangely, it was found in an area known primarily for fossilized marine creatures.

Previous vertebrate fossils found in this oil sand formation were marine reptiles, like the ichthyosaur and plesiosaur. Marine invertebrates such as clams and ammonites are the more typical fossils found in the region, so a large, land-living ankylosaur “wasn’t supposed to bethere.”¹

But finding a mixture of fossilized marine and land creatures together is not an unusual occurrence. For example, the famous dinosaur beds in the Morrison Formation at Dinosaur National Monument contain logs, clams, snails, and mammals.²

And the Institute for Creation Research’s front lobby features a juvenile hadrosaur taken from the Two Medicine Formation—a sandstone formation which extends from the east side of the Rocky Mountains eastward to Edmonton, Canada—that was fossilized alongside marine clams and snails, as well as birds, mammals, and other dinosaurs.

Medical doctor Carl Werner actually used fossil-related criteria as a test for evolution.² He reasoned that if the evolutionary story were true and that dinosaurs lived in a unique “Age of Reptiles,” and if everyday natural processes were responsible for their fossilization, then no fossils of creatures from other “ages”—for example, creatures that had not yet evolved—should be mixed up with dinosaur fossils.

But Werner found that a fossil mixture of very different kinds was typical. He told Creation magazine:

Paleontologists have found 432 mammal species in the dinosaur layers….But where are these fossils? We visited 60 museums but did not see a single complete mammal skeleton from the dinosaur layers displayed at any of these museums.³

Werner also learned that dinosaur-containing rock layers have “fossilized examples from every major invertebrate animal phylum living today,” and that dinosaurs were mixed in with varieties of fish, amphibians, “parrots, owls, penguins, ducks, loons, albatross, cormorants, sandpipers, avocets, etc.”³ If museums displayed these real fossils instead of adorning dinosaur dioramas with feathers, then the evolutionary story that “dinosaurs evolved into birds” would be quickly seen as the fiction that it is.⁴

There are many other examples of land-dwelling dinosaur fossils mixed with sea creatures.⁵This kind of evidence is to be expected if a world-destroying flood was responsible for the bulk of the world’s fossils, dinosaur and otherwise, considering that “the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered.”⁶

References

1. 1. Gordon, J. Rare dinosaur found in Canada’s oil sands. Reuters, March 25, 2011.

1. 1. Werner, C. 2008. Living Fossils. Evolution: The Grand Experiment, vol. 2. Green Forest, AR: New Leaf Press.

1. 1. Batten, D. 2011. Living Fossils: a powerful argument for creation. Creation. 33 (2): 22. Emphasis in original.

1. 1. Thomas, B. Fixed Bird Thigh Nixes Dino-to-bird Development. ICR News. Posted on icr.org June 22, 2009, accessed April 13, 2011.

1. 1. Thomas, B. Canadian ‘Mega’ Dinosaur Bonebed Formed by Watery Catastrophe. ICR News. Posted on icr.org July 13, 2010, accessed April 6, 2011.

1. Genesis 7:19.

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Part 6: CONCLUSION

6-A: What Is Permanent?

o After learning about the different indicators pointing to how the Earth may be much younger than we think, it becomes evident that our earthly home is not a permanent dwelling; it is only temporary. Our bodies likewise are only a temporary dwelling for our spirits, our souls.

o What then is lasting and eternal? It is the unseen world which endures forever. Some call it the “spirit world”, and sometimes we catch glimpses of it in dreams, visions, or other kinds of spiritual experiences; some call this unseen world the “celestial sphere”, or the “heavenly realm”. To our human nature that doesn’t sound very solid; our natural tendency is to view the solid earth and the visible realm as the permanent features of existence.

Occasionally, we do get a taste of the temporary nature of our environment, such as in earthquake events when we are quickly jolted out of that feeling of stability. Or, when gazing into the cosmos, its enormous size helps us to realize the infinite, unfathomable nature of the Creator, so far beyond this tiny planet on which we dwell.

o Since we’re trying to be scientific here, we could call this unseen world the “5^th dimension”. In order for anything to exist in the physical realm, it must occupy space and time. These are known as the 4 dimensions: space has the 3 dimensions called length, width, and depth; and time is the 4th dimension. The 5^th dimension exists beyond the four dimensions of space and time and is not subject to the laws of the physical universe.

o And that is the dimension that our souls enter into at the time of the death of our physical bodies. People who have temporarily “died” and then been revived have often reported having unusual experiences while they were “dead”: floating above their bodies, able to go through walls, meeting beautiful angels, catching glimpses of heaven, and so on. The fact is, they were anything but dead, and their lives were continuing on in that spirit realm that exists for the most part beyond the reach of our physical senses.

        Knowing about these realities – that there is life after this life – should encourage us to live our present lives in a way that is pleasing to God so that we will be well prepared for our future lives in the Hereafter

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6-B: What does it Mean to have a Definite Starting Point for History?

All the evidence we have seen so far – in the fossils, in the geology of the earth, outer space, population estimates, and our own historical records – points to an Earth that is not billions, not even millions, but only a few thousand years old. Admittedly, this is a staggering thought for our minds to grapple with; we have been so accustomed and conditioned to thinking in terms of long ages of prehistory.

Here is an analogy that may help us to get a better handle on this: When someone builds a house, it may take a year, which is a short time compared to how long he and his descendants will live in it. The natural world also is like a “house” – the environment that the Creator made for us to live in. Like our earthly houses, it did not take Him a long time to do it; His building methods and tools were not natural processes (as we usually think), but supernatural. So our “house” (the natural environment) was built, and now we live in this beautiful home of planet Earth that He has created for us.

And speaking of supernatural processes, here is another helpful analogy: when a programmer designs some computer software, it takes considerable effort and time to prepare; once it is completed and installed, all that’s needed is to switch it on, and poof! There it is on the screen. The actual execution is instantaneous. The behind-the-scenes labor to create the program, however, takes a lot of effort and “time”. But in the case of the creation of the natural world, all that behind-the-scenes labor, the preparation, took place beyond our dimensions of time and space.

And isn’t this how God created us to be also? If we were created in His image, as explained in the Book of Genesis, then we must possess some of His attributes, one of which is the desire and ability to create. So, our inclination towards creative activity – inventions, constructions, artistic works – reflects God’s own desire and capacity to create.

We don’t know what it took for God to plan the natural world; that is not revealed to us. It helps to remember, though, that in God’s dimension “time” is different, far beyond what our finite minds could ever grasp or imagine. As far as we need be concerned, according to Genesis 1, it took only a brief amount of our time to execute whatever plans had been made behind the scenes in the Celestial Realm.

We know it is a simple matter to instantly activate a computer program that took someone, or a bunch of someones, hours and hours to prepare. Why then should we be surprised that God and His angelic beings were able to activate Their carefully laid plans for the natural world in the time span of only a few days?

Anyway, whether one believes the earth is a few thousand years old or millions of years old, what we have learned so far, if nothing else, has pointed to the realization that there had to be a definite starting point to history – not only geologic history, but human history especially. God created the first man and woman, fully formed. (And if God is who He is supposed to be, then that should not be a problem.) And from there the course of history began, and that not so long ago.

We may also conclude now that God, not Nature, is ultimately in control of things: the earth’s geological history, human history, and even your own personal history are all in His hands. Of course, there is lots of room for personal choice and preferences, but ultimately, God is the one in control. We are not just hapless creatures who accidentally came into being through a mechanical, chance process of evolution and therefore have no purpose in life other than to survive. We have the motivation, inspired by the knowledge of our Godly origin, to aim for higher goals… for we are ultimately responsible to the One who created us.

This awareness of our origins has faded considerably over the last 100 years or so because of (macro)evolutionary speculations – according to which we are supposed to have originated in some lost and forgotten age in the dim and distant past by a process that somehow excludes the Almighty from having anything to do with bringing into being the living and non-living realms.

But when we realize, from a scientific point of view, that history should have had a definite starting point, then we more easily understand that God created us. And if that is so, then there must be a purpose for our being here. God’s presence becomes more real to us.

We no longer need to think of ourselves as an accidental byproduct in a mechanical universe; we have instead the comforting knowledge that, no matter what happens to us in the earthly realm, we are His very special creation, and He will care for us no matter what. And while we dwell on this Earth, we will naturally have more inclination to understand God’s ways and to live our lives in a way that is pleasing to Him.

If it is true that God created human beings (and even from a scientific point of view, it’s hard to believe how it could have happened otherwise) so He could populate the earth and begin the course of human history, then why could He not have created the environment in which man was to live (the Earth and the solar system) also around the same time? After all, to create even one living creature or one intelligent human being is a much greater task than to create the vast outreaches of space and non-living entities of sun, moon, stars, etc.

In days gone by when man’s scientific knowledge about the universe was very limited, he did not have any trouble believing that Earth was the center of a universe created by God.

And from the spiritual point of view, that is true. One area of knowledge where this is evident is the discipline of astrology, which stations Earth at the center of the cosmos, while the stars and planets serve as “signs” and exert their particular influences on our personalities and activities. Anyone who has studied astrology can testify of the uncanny correlations that exist between zodiac/planetary positions and our personalities and activities here on Earth.

Even though astrology has been around for thousands of years, modern science, because of its over-emphasis on naturalism, has rejected it – as it does with any branch of knowledge that tends towards the supernatural and might lead to an acknowledgment of a Higher Power or Creator.

But these evidences of supernatural reality should not seem strange to us. For if it is true that God created the universe, then surely we can understand that He would fashion it in such a way that there should be this cosmological unity. That is, the distant stars and planets are not divorced from the earthly realm but were interwoven with us and our planet Earth.

But because science has discovered so much about the size of the universe and Earth’s physical situation, we find it difficult to think of Earth as the center of God’s focus and concern. And consequently, disciplines like astrology, which give evidence of Earth as the center of God’s attention, are ignored.

The question will come to mind, what about the stars and so on that are so unimaginably numerous, and judging by the speed of light and distances involved, should be millions and billions of years old? In the section 5-C (“Age Estimates Based on Evidence from Outer Space”), we learned that there are several features in the cosmos that point to its recent creation. In addition, some aspects of the universe appear very old. But this should not surprise us. If God created the cosmos for our use, then He would have created it mature, ready-made for us to dwell in.

But because God created it recently, then many aspects still appear young. If everything looked old, then we might have reason to think the universe really is billions of years old. But that is not the case. It is this peculiar, mixed-up, young/old appearance of age that is just what we’d expect in a natural realm that was created only a few thousand years ago.

What needs to be kept in mind here is that the time of Creation involved supernatural processes. We cannot assume that the natural processes that we see operating today were operating during those extraordinary days of Creation. If God wanted to, He could have created the stars and galaxies and so on only a few thousand years ago. It would not be beyond His power to do so, and we don’t want to underestimate that power.

If, let us say, God revved up the time dimension during the Creation period, then the universe would have been created very quickly, but relative to our slower time and measuring instruments, the stars and galaxies would appear very old. We only know time moving at a steady, unchanging rate. But Einstein’s Theory of Relativity proved that time’s speed can change. Time is flexible, in other words, and in the hands of God maybe a lot more flexible than we could imagine.

Another possibility to consider: Recent scientific discoveries have revealed the startling fact that the speed of light is not constant. And even more startling: it appears that the speed of light has been slowing down through the centuries. According to Alan Montgomery’s Cosecant Regression Curve, light could have been traveling 10 million times faster in 3000 B.C. than it is today. If this is true, then that would explain how the galaxies and stars can be seen by us on Earth even though they are so many millions or billions of light years away.

But whether these theories are true or not, the more important issue is this: We should not let our scientific knowledge cause us to lose sight of the fact that, as far as God is concerned, we, and our planet Earth, are very important and special to Him regardless of whether or not it is the center of the physical universe, as people used to think in ancient times. And these speculations about the universe and outer space should not be a matter of great concern for us.

We have enough difficulty trying to take care of our own planet and dwell on it peaceably and rule over it wisely, so why should we concern ourselves with what is going on in outer space, or with whether or not there are other worlds out there similar to ours? Even if indeed other worlds do exist somewhere in the vast outreaches of space, it doesn’t seem likely that God would allow mankind to discover or contact them in our present stage of spiritual growth and enlightenment. It’s interesting to speculate about such things, of course, but it shouldn’t distract us from the real purpose of our existence.

That is to say, we should not ignore the fact that our earthly lives are a sort of proving ground. Earth is like a battleground for the war between the forces of good and evil, the godly spirits and angels of Light versus the demons of Darkness. These are the “aliens” whom we must either cooperate with or contend against. They dwell in the spiritual realm, however, and are largely unseen by us. But this is where the focus of our attention should be: a spiritual seeking of contact with them – the good spirits of course – so that they can direct our minds and actions towards taking better care of the world we live in now.

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6-C: Closing Remarks

Background to Evolution Theory

Evolution theory (the macro version of it) has a big reputation for being “scientific”, but a closer look soon reveals that faith, not scientific truth, is the real basis of it. Too many aspects of it require believing in a process that cannot be seen, observed, or scientifically studied. In a sense, macro-evolution is a re-working of the ancient religions of nature worship, but clothed now in the guise of scientific credibility.

The natural world, as the Creation of God, has a sublime, supernatural beauty to it. And it is easy to want to worship it. Many peoples of the earth have in fact done so, not through any great fault of their own, but simply because, without having the true knowledge of God, it was natural to turn to worshiping the Creation. Ideally, though, we are supposed to worship God, not His Creation.

So nowadays something similar has happened; the old primitive form of nature worship has re-suited itself to fit the secular orientation of modern times; it has adoned itself with the veneer of scientific respectability.

Our modern predisposition towards macro-evolution theory has led us into misunderstanding the true nature of our ancient heritage; this has left us with a skeptical view of God’s hand in the Creation process. We have swallowed the idea that God didn’t create the natural world but that somehow it created itself; or that God got it started somewhere way back when but, since then, has had nothing more to do with it or us.

Pushing the Creator out of having anything to do with the natural world is just a short step away from pushing Him out of having anything to do with our personal lives. We lose the sense of responsibility or accountability that our behavior and our lives need to line up with the wishes and expectations of a Higher Power.

Not in a superstitious or fearful way, but the relationship is one of trust. As a father with his children, that relationship is built on love, but that love includes a healthy measure of respect for the Father who expects his children to do what is right.

Brief history of Evolution Theory

In the 1850’s the theory of evolution began to gain the attention of the world. The idea was revolutionary at the time, and this change was needed to buck the tide of conventional thinking on the question of our origins. Darwin’s concepts of natural selection and diversification of species expanded science’s understanding of how growth and change take place in the biological realm.

This quest to be open-minded in the search for truth was a powerful driving force behind the new wave of philosophical thought. And there is some merit to that line of thinking; much progress has come about because scientists were willing to think in out-of-the-box ways to find solutions for the difficulties and questions that confronted them. So that was the watchword in those days: abandon the stodgy old traditions of the past. Be open-minded and accept the new scientific discoveries.

Well, as we can see now, evolutionary thinkers were a little too open-minded and went overboard, promoting some misguided theories that are now being challenged – especially in the science of DNA genetics and in more thorough investigation of missing link fossils. The old beliefs (the “baby”) were still good; they only needed to incorporate what was genuine in the discoveries that scientists were making in the fields of biology, archeology, geology, paleontology.

Unfortunately, the new theories and discoveries of those days caused many theorists to jump to premature conclusions. This in turn convinced most of the academic world that the age-old belief in Creation by God and His subsequent re-creation of the Earth in the Flood were now nothing more than superstitious fables of man’s unenlightened past.

Anything that smacked of “religion” was dubbed as being non-scientific and therefore not to be trusted as a source of information. And so, the new wave of scientific thought “threw out the baby with the bathwater” (The “baby” being faith in the Creator and His role in human and geological history; the “bathwater”, superstitious beliefs and outdated concepts of biological growth and change.)

Open-mindedness is needed in order to forge ahead into new realms of understanding. But a sense  of balance and restraint is also needed to avoid, in this case, being led into the very serious issue of undermining faith in God’s power and love.

Briefly, here is how the new wave of thought developed:

1) Evolution of Species

Charles Darwin started off with his observations about what happens to animals after entering a new environment; after a few generations they can develop new physical traits that help them to better adapt to their new surroundings. From this observation he theorized that one species could “evolve” into another, more advanced species.

Darwin did not realize that he was merely observing the genetic variation (or “micro-evolution”) that God has built within the natural world to allow plants and animals to have more variety and adaptability within their particular genetic grouping; and this makes it easier for them to adjust to new surroundings.

Even amongst human beings, this is fairly obvious: Eskimos, for example, have developed certain features that help them survive better in a cold environment: short stature, layer of fat, etc. Black Africans have a type of skin that protects them from getting burnt under bright sunlight, whereas White people need the type of skin that can absorb better the meager amount of sunlight available in northern latitudes.

So Darwin wasn’t entirely wrong. There is a certain amount of the process of “natural selection” and “diversification of species” operating in the natural world. But it was a mistake to conclude that the evidence of superficial changes in species could mean there is a macro-evolutionary process going on whereby one species can cross the bounds of its genetic genome and change into another more advanced species.

From our study of DNA genetics and from scientific observation in both the fossil record and the present natural world, we know that to be a scientific impossibility. To cross the boundaries like this would cause untold confusion in the natural world, not to mention violate the original order that God had built into it long ago.

Darwin had no idea in his day about the complexity of organic matter, which has become known to us now in the modern science of genetics. Sidestepping God’s role in Creation, he did not see that the genetic variation he observed in the natural world was simply God’s in-built mechanism to allow for variety and adaptability within the originally created classes of plants and animals.

Darwin’s version – with its emphasis on survival-of-the-fittest – tended to ignore the role of the Creator; it led all too easily to justification for “racial cleansing” and creation of a “super race” – ideas that wound up having negative repercussions in our modern history.

2) Uniformitarian Geology

The next major “advance” (so-called) in evolutionary thinking came from another Charles – Charles Lyell. This is the famous geologic timetable with its millions of years of separate eras of prehistory: the Cretaceous period, the Jurassic period, and so on.

As we have learned, this was just a case of misinterpreting the trail left by the Great Flood and re-casting it into an entirely different mold. To do this, of course, required a considerable amount of ignoring the plain evidence left behind in the rocks and fossils. Poor detective work!

Where to Now?

Regrettably, in their zeal to promote evolutionary philosophy, its early proponents brought forward and established their ideas before enough facts or scientific investigation could be brought forward to rectify it; and by then it was too late.

Macro-evolutionary philosophy had captured the collective imagination of the scientific world. And it seems no amount of evidence to the contrary has been able to dislodge it; it is just as difficult now to retire this antiquated model of prehistory as it was, in Galileo’s day, to relinquish the outmoded belief in an earth-centered universe.

Several renowned scientists, however, are standing up for the Intelligent Design model as a better explanation for the origins of the natural world. The Discovery Institute published a declaration in 2001, signed by 600 PhD scientists from around the world, stating,

“We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.”

And anther list of 3,000+ academics, scientists, and scholars who are skeptical of Darwinism was compiled by Jerry Bergman (PhD), 24 Aug, 2014.

It is a sloppy sort of wisdom that tries to frame the evolution-creation debate as an issue of science versus faith (with the implication that faith walks hand in hand with ignorance). But if there is one thing this study has tried to show, it is that science and the sacred are fully compatible. Real wisdom understands the creation-evolution debate as an issue of science AND faith versus pseudo-science (ignorance) and unbelief.

As it stands now, macro-evolution theory (the macro version of it) has taken deep root in the collective psyche of humankind and has done much to distance us from the Divine – contributing much skepticism by undermining faith in a benevolent Creator and in the Sacred Heritage that was meant to reveal to mankind God’s handiwork and plan of history.

If God is a God of Love, then He would not leave us in darkness about our origins. He would want us to have the reassuring knowledge of knowing where we came from (and where we’re going). As one author said about the barren consequences of modern skepticism,

“We are left as beasts, groping in the dark. No God-given ancestry to look back upon, and no certain expectation for the future; no sweet assurance for the present.” (from Hem of His Garment by Virginia Berg)

Hopefully, in days to come our human society will retrieve its lost heritage, learn to retrace its true historical roots, and in the process, re-discover the loving Creator who planned it all.

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Review of “Retrieving Mankind’s Lost Heritage” Study

1) The Prehistoric world was a different and warm environment because of the water vapor shroud that once surrounded the Earth.

2) As a result giant-sized animals, plants, and even humans existed at that time, even in polar regions of the Earth.

3) Gradual processes cannot explain the kind of geologic and fossil evidence that we see today. It took a sudden cataclysm, the Great Flood, to cause the formation of fossils and the sedimentary rocks that contain them.

4) Nor can gradual processes account for the Ice Age, which is easily understood as resulting from the climactic conditions introduced into the environment by the Great Flood cataclysm.

5) Our biological make-up is far too complex to have evolved by itself.

6) We are not descended from monkeys. We are a creation of God.

…and finally,

7) We have a loving Creator and a wonderful purpose for being here in this life and on this Earth.