I’m going to keep this pretty simple and straightforward and try not to get off on too many tangents, even though there are many to cover.
- To start. Yes. I believe in God. The one true One. Not one attached to a particular theological belief system.
- Yes, I believe He created the universe.
- I do consider myself a “Christian”. Despite my “radical beliefs”.
Ok, now that those statements are out of the way, let me begin.
When you tell stories to your children about things such as “where a baby comes from”, do you tell them that “Daddy inserted his penis into mommy until…”? Well, you get the picture.
No. You tell them allegories like “the stork brings babies…”, “God brought you to mommy” or any number of other simplified stories meant for toddlers, passed down over generations. A child’s mind is just too young to understand the complex nature of physical human mating rituals. So, allegorical stories, told to “children”, sets the stage for how I believe the biblical creation story came to be.
Genesis
It is pretty widely accepted among theological circles that the first five books of the bible are attributed to Moses.
Let’s look at Moses from a traditional biblical perspective. Word was, he was set adrift in a river, by his mother Jochebed, when the Egyptian Pharaoh ordered all Hebrew male children to be killed by drowning in the Nile (river).
During his non-eventful flotation, he was eventually found by the Pharaoh’s daughter (Asiya) and retrieved by one of her servant girls. Asiya basically adopted him and the rest is history, so to speak.
According to some stories, she ensured the well-being of Moses throughout his early life and played an essential role in lifting the Hebrew slaves out of bondage in Egypt, their journey to the Promised Land, and the establishment of the Ten Commandments.
The main point of mentioning Noah’s Egyptian upbringing is to point out that he was wholly educated in Egypt, he was practically and Egyptian, even walking like one, as a de-facto member of a royal family. Not much is specifically known about his day to day upbringing, but it is quite likely he had access to almost ALL the knowledge known to Egyptians at the highest level (the elite) and could not become a Pharaoh only due to not being of the royal bloodlines.
If he is the one who wrote the first five books of the Old Testament, then it is only logical to assume that they be based on the Egyptian knowledge he had accumulated up until that point. Names may have been translated and changed. The Egyptian’s ancestors, the “knowledge bringer’s” books he learned from, were most likely either directly written or derived from earlier civilization’s stories such as Sumer, Atlantis or Lemuria (Mu).
Based on the above, regarding the book of Genesis and the creation story, why are people so blindly adamant to take it [Genesis] so literally? Especially since it wasn’t even written by someone who was educated in areas many others in those days were. People, in the day of Adam, if he truly existed as a single entity, could not even begin to comprehend the complex scientific nature of the universe.
Personally, as stated in the intro, I believe in God, but strongly feel that he created the universe using the same “Laws of Physics” that He created for us. Here are a few obvious questions. Feel free to ponder them and create your own opinion.
- Why would God chose to break the “Laws of Physics” to create the entire universe in 6 human days and rest on the 7th?
- Why would an almighty, omniscient being, such as God, even need “to rest”, or was it allegorical?
- Why would God even need to create the universe in 6 days when he has all eternity to guide it scientifically, using the “Laws” that he put in place and do it in a way that He knows best?
That’s what I would do, have fun, create DNA, create a “source” code that could adapt to changes, evolve over time and become fascinating new, amazing life forms that continue living their lives as their “spirits” dictate. Maybe every now and then inserting a bit of “code” now and then to throw a monkey-wrench into the process, or enhance it in an immediately unpredictable way.
Perhaps God is the ultimate programmer, creating/writing the universe from nothing. He guided, changed and tweaked tiny details for billions of human years (Genesis days), and eventually it came around to us and where we are today. We are nothing more than a small piece of the “program”. God is perfect, but that doesn’t mean He can’t change things on the fly (different versions of the universe) and use resources that He has already created to do His will. If God has existed forever, then why wait until only 6000 years ago to create the entire universe and everything in it? Perhaps “we” are not even His first civilization or even universe.
I believe the scientific “Big Bang Theory” lines up pretty well with “…and God created the Heavens and the Earth…”, each subsequent “day” in Genesis align pretty closely with the different scientific eras that have been discovered. Of course, ALL details of actually how God created the universe were left out of the Bible. If the creation story was conveyed via divine intervention as many say, then most likely God [our Father] told us [his children] a simple story that we could understand without scientific backgrounds. In those times, there would be no basis of knowledge for humans to understand even the most basic scientific explanation of creation. “In the beginning…” sounds a lot like “Once upon a time…” to me. How about you? So what happened?
God told us a story…
Along comes us humans here on Earth, our time, our paradigm. It is almost indisputable that there was intelligent life on Earth, or elsewhere in the universe, long before the biblically accepted timeframe. For example, the land of Sumer, home of the Sumerians, was first settled about 6000 years ago, circa 4000 BC, near the beginning of biblical times. Sumer loosely translates as “land of the civilized lords” or “native land”. Even in those days, they had their own “ancient history” that is not wholly connected with Genesis, but some of the stories are… Various parts of the Epic of Gilgamesh correlate with Biblical stories like the great flood, but I digress. The Sumerians had science and math that was very advanced for the period and was only rivaled by the “great thinkers” of the last few hundred years. (1600-2000)
Where did our ancestors, the descendants of Sumer, get that knowledge?
It couldn’t have come from nowhere. All naturally gained knowledge has a fairly linear progression from the basic to the super advanced and that takes a long time. The only way for a civilization to quickly advance is have a cultural merging between a very advanced and a simple civilization. For example, look at the Aborigines, the Pacific Islanders, or any other society touched by 1st world cultural influence. They went from being very “primitive” to being just as “civilized” as us within 1-2 generations. There are many legends from the destruction of Atlantis & Lemuria (Mu) that the scholars and “well off” people made it to other lands and passed on their knowledge in the distant past. Thus accelerating the “primitives” (our ancestors) into what we are today.
As for their creation, the Sumerians attribute it to the Annunaki, loosely translated as “Those who from Heaven to Earth came”. Some may say that is just them talking about God and the angels, whom some believe “assisted” God in the creation of the universe. But the Sumerians even go so far as to call the Earth the seventh planet instead of the third, from the outside the solar system in. The late Zecharia Sitchin covers a lot of this information, Google him. Personally, knowing that the cosmos is so much older than 6000 years, the correct explanation is much more complicated than the simple allegory of Genesis.
Why am I so convinced that the universe is much older? Let us take a scientific look at things.
We know how fast light is and we can, with relative ease, measure the distance to all the stars and objects in the sky. Most of the stars we can see in the night sky are only 1500 light years from earth. Galaxies, such as Andromeda, the closest, is 2.5 million light years away. In the case of quasars, many billions of light years.
If you don’t understand what a light year is. It is how far light can travel in a year (about 6 trillion miles). Even with a number associated to it, it is still hard to comprehend. Our solar system, from the sun to the orbit of Pluto is only about 5.5 light HOURS. So one “measly” light year of travel would take you FAR outside of our entire solar system’s neighborhood.
If the universe really is as large as we scientifically perceive, things are as far away as we’ve measured and you still believe that universe is only 6000 years old, then that means God literally, manually, had to stretch the light “beams” from every object in the universe (that we have been able to perceive) so we can see them. Not only what we see with our eyes, but even what the powerful Hubble Space Telescope can see. That makes no sense whatsoever. This is a bit to wrap your head around, but think hard about it.
So, by now you are probably wondering what my take is on our “creation”. Simply, I don’t think we originated here on Earth. Before you spit out your food or drink, hear me out.
For a while, a theory called Cosmic Plurality, also known as Plurality of Worlds, was considered quite possible by some well-known thinkers such as philosopher John Locke, astronomer William Herschel and politicians John Adams and Benjamin Franklin. Some churches even accepted and taught Cosmic Plurality. But as many theories do, it fell out of favor over time, not due to its lack of possibility, but to diversification of scientific knowledge and subsequent updated observations of the universe.
I think there have been many civilizations over the eons not only here on earth, but also across the universe. Given time, overcoming great obstacles, a few of those civilizations in nearby systems could very likely have gained enough knowledge to “travel the stars”, across great distances and perhaps settle (either physically or genetically), perhaps modifying or creating new humanoid life here on Earth using methods such as “panspermia“.
People like us. We can almost do this now, what if we were only 1,000 years more advanced. This goes back to “God using resources he already created” to “create us”.
I won’t even get into the stories of civilizations more distant, such as the traditional Atlantis, Lemuria (Mu) or the writings of the Bhagavad Gita (from India). They are chock full of fantastic adventures of love, war, loss and much more. There is even compelling evidence of multiple nuclear wars that took place on Earth in ancient times, such as Mohenjo Daro, Sodom and Gomorrah, etc.. Almost every desert on earth contains evidence of nuclear blasts in ancient times. The stories from the Bhagavad Gita even inspired J. Robert Oppenheimer (“Father of the atomic bomb”) to quote as passage saying, “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds”.
There are so many other fantastic possible origins of life on Earth, that to expand on would extend this article into a book. YOU now have virtually all human knowledge at your fingertips. Seek out these things I’ve discussed. Educate yourself. What you choose to accept and believe of our origin is up to you. I know what I believe and it’s not the traditional allegories of the book of Genesis and other generalized teachings of traditional christianity (small “c”).
Our origins are a very complicated and fascinating maze of new discovery and possibilities. We are capable, as humans, of so much more, both physically, spiritually and scientifically. Why let that go to waste by settling on the first things we were taught in life by institutions that have proven that they have their own ulterior theological and financial motives?
Who are we (today) to say that the one book we read, the Bible, is the end all, say all history of the universe?
For example, the Chinese were a well established and very advanced civilization even during the days of the bible. Read all of history instead of what you just hear from biblical sources. There were other civilizations on this planet, even during biblical times that had just as much, if not more, knowledge than the scholars who penned the book that some now take so literally.
For example. Most think the Christopher Columbus was the first “civilized” person to reach North America, but to show how quickly names can be changed, “Christopher” was not even his real name. It was Cristóbal Colón. The first settlers were most likely the Norse (the Vikings) and there are even stories of the Chinese visiting the US West Coast well before European contact. They described the fires that he western indigenous north Americans set to drive wild game inland to hunt and provide sustenance. There are also copper mines in Michigan, in places such as Isle Royale, that were mined long before good ‘ol Cristóbal hit the shores of the “new world”. There was a documentary series that covers the potential greek mining of copper in America long before Columbus came here.
Here is a book to read…
The Native Americans did not mine, they were hunter gatherers. So it was very likely it was the Vikings or Romans who were the miners. There was even at least one movie made about their early visits here and interactions with Native Americans. Also, check out a book, America B.C. – Ancient Settlers in the New World, by Barry Fell to learn more about the ancient interaction between the eastern cultures and the west.
To conclude. In my opinion, as God’s children, I think He would be proud that some of us are “growing up”, asking difficult questions and openly seeking the truth. Aren’t you proud of your children when they figure things out for themselves?
If “cleanliness is to godliness” then why not “intelligence is to godliness”?
In the end, The Bible is a “history book” of a small geographic area and with all the new discoveries, history can easily be revised if we just open up our minds and accept the truth. Perhaps an international, non-partisan Earth History Council needs to be established to record history based on pure evidence. Have it completely open and transparent to all the world’s people. Most archaeologists and paleontologists don’t like to revise history, but we MUST.
If you made it this far, I suppose thanks are in order. Feel free to leave comments, both positive and negative, below. All I ask is for you to use simple logic, common sense and intelligence, instead of supernatural allegorical beliefs, to come to a conclusion on how we came to be.
