Wednesday, October 31, 2018

Not From Adam's Rib- Neanderthal Rib Cage Study Shows Differences With Humans

I have noticed a full-court press in science media to make Neanderthals "human". They keep saying it over and over and over again as if it were an established fact. They repeat it even as they report of facts which show there were substantial differences between us and them.

The attempt to stretch and re-define the term "human" to include other hominids such as Neanderthals is so broad that a contrarian like me automatically wants to resist it. Especially when this rush to redefine words comes in tandem with a stream of evidence indicating this attempt is incorrect.

The ability to make a fancy flint scraper is not what makes us human. When we say "he's inhuman" we don't mean that a person can't make a fancy flint scraper. We don't even mean that they can't draw a picture or think abstractly. We mean that they lack the moral and empathetic condition, the ability to connect on a level deeper than instinct, which is typical of our species, and so far as we know our species alone. We can connect to each other, and our Maker, in a way that animals cannot. Even hominid animals.

In previous articles I showed that Neanderthals were genetically distinct from humans and that despite claims to the contrary they almost certainly did not do cave art in Spain 64,000 years ago (again not that the ability to do so is what makes us human).

This article noted..
"The differences between a Neanderthal and modern human thorax are striking," said Markus Bastir, senior research scientist at the Laboratory of Virtual Anthropology at the National Museum of Natural History in Spain.......
 "The wide lower thorax of Neanderthals and the horizontal orientation of the ribs suggest that Neanderthals relied more on their diaphragm for breathing," said senior author Ella Been of Ono Academic College. "Modern humans, on the other hand, rely both on the diaphragm and on the expansion of the rib cage for breathing."
They didn't even breathe like us. The differences were "striking". And yet this article made haste to dismiss the significance of its own findings, declaring "Neanderthals are a type of human that emerged about 400,000 years ago, living mostly from what is today Western Europe to Central Asia." Well, why do they keep saying that when the closer they look, the more differences they find? Why the dogged determination to make "human" broader? The title of the article is a good example of the bias with which science reporting on this issue is done. It said "Neanderthals Might Not Be Hunched Over Cave Men", which while technically true also implies they were more like us than believed. But what the researchers were really saying is that they were less like us, and the differences were striking. 

The rib cage of a gorilla also has ribs which are curved at the back, along with a funnel shape in its overall structure like a Neanderthal. The article implies that Neanderthals walked even more upright than humans because of this feature. The back may have been straighter, as with that of the gorilla, but the head of the Gorilla still has a lean to it lacking in humans. I think its an example of ruggedness with an attendant lack of flexibility. Perhaps Neanderthals charged straight ahead like gorillas do when they fight. That aspect, rather than an even more "erect" posture than humans seems to me to be a more reasonable consequence of this discovery.

Rib cage of a gorilla from the inside. Note the curves of ribs at spine attachment.

I've seen so many articles repeating that this or that hominid is some kind of "human". It seems to me the fundamental question of what we are is too important to be established by mere repetition and propaganda tactics. It should be addressed on the basis of evidence, not emotional impulses in either direction.
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While scientists need to change some of their ideas, the church also needs to change some mistaken ideas about what the text of early Genesis is actually saying. It's a far more Christ-centered document than generally accepted theology accounts for.  The book below, available at no change for those with access to Kindle Unlimited, peels back the layers of misunderstanding and reveals the truth of Early Genesis and how it points to Christ. It takes some work, but for someone willing to do the work  the knowledge of the mystery of Christ in early Genesis is there for the having. 

Saturday, October 13, 2018

The Transmission of the Tablets in the Tablet Theory

The Tablet Theory, sometimes called the Wiseman Hypothesis, is that Moses had help when he compiled the book of Genesis from a series of clay tablets inherited from his ancestors. The original hypothesis has some difficulties in the text, but a modified version of the tablet theory as described in "Early Genesis, The Revealed Cosmology" addresses the main criticisms which have been leveled at it. I will not repeat them here, but these modifications to the theory make it much more palatable.

The competing "Documentary Hypothesis" that Genesis was written much later by scribes who falsely attributed it to Moses is strongly refuted by, among other things, the summation of each account with a phrase popular in clay tablets in Mesopotamia around the time of Abraham (around 1800-1700 BC). Perhaps some place names were updated, as was a common practice then and today, but the essence of the text is from great antiquity.

There is no doubt that there are similarities and common threads in many ancient stories from Mesopotamia and the words of Genesis. It would be a book in itself to lay all this out, and one better written by an archaeologist, but I see signs that those stories are distorted versions and mutations of the account in Genesis, and not vice-versa. Are the pagan versions the only ones found when we excavate temples and palaces? They simply had the advantage of being the "party line" of ruling dynasties who could give their version of events from a state sponsored platform. The accounts we have in early Genesis were those from the family history of the line leading back to Adam. And in the Christ-centered model that was not everyone.

One difficulty with the Tablet Theory is that writing seems to have only been around in a crude form for five thousand years or so. And that was in cuniform not the proto-Hebrew/Canaanite script likely used by Moses (which is basically Hebrew). So far as we know, early Hebrew didn't come into use until about the time of Abraham. 

Unfortunately the answer may be lost in the mists of time. We are therefore forced into speculation within the bounds of what is reasonable or possible. One possibility is that the clan of Adam had a system of writing among themselves which resembled Canaanite (who were of common ancestry with the Hebrews after all) for a very long time and we simply did not find any samples of it until around the time of Abraham. Another possibility is that the original tablets were written in an even more ancient script. In such a case someone would have to know that ancient language and translate them. 

Perhaps it was Moses, with all the learning of Egypt at his disposal. Perhaps he didn't have to because Abraham translated the old tablets into new ones using the then-current language of the land. It is mighty suspicious that of the eleven "generations" or accounts in Genesis, none are from father Abraham, greatest of the patriarchs. This lack would be explained if he were the translator of them all. None were called the "generations of Abraham" because it was Abraham's family library. His job was to put the old accounts into proto-Hebrew, not write one with his own name on it.















Monday, October 8, 2018

Nine Hundred and Seventy Four Generations Before Adam?

It was recently brought to my attention (thank you J.D. Everett) that there is some indirect support in the Talmud for the idea that Adam was not the first man. This is intriguing because part of the Christ-centered model is that Adam's biblical role is not to be the sole father of humanity, but to bring the line of Messiah- he is a figure of Christ (Romans 5:14). To be sure this connection is more tenuous than that suggested by the Two Powers Theology which was a significant minority position of first century Jews, but it is another data point which suggests that the Christ Centered Model for Genesis dove-tails nicely with ideas which have long been on the periphery of theological debate.

The Talmud is a book of ancient Jewish commentary on what Christians call the "Old Testament", I don't consider the Talmud authoritative. It is people commenting on scripture, not scripture itself. Still, I find it interesting that ideas which can be connected with the Christ-centered model from Early Genesis the Revealed Cosmology have been to some extent a part of the conversation for a long time. In this case the idea is that the Torah was given "1,000 generations" prior to its compilation by Moses. Moses is only twenty-six generations from Adam.

The basis for the contention of these rabbis is found in the 105th Psalm. They translate it a little differently than I have seen it in English Bibles. For example the NIV has verses eight and nine saying...
8 He remembers his covenant forever, the promise he made, for a thousand generations,
9 the covenant he made with Abraham, the oath he swore to Isaac.
Their translation of verse eight reads....
He remembered His covenant forever, the word He had commanded to the thousandth generation,
And on the face of it their translation makes more sense than the NIV. Otherwise if taken literally it implies that God's promise to Abraham is limited to 1,000 generations. This doesn't seem to line up well with the attributes or character of God. Thus the Jewish rabbis translated the verse like they did. Since they viewed the giving of the Torah as the written delivery of that promise, and Moses - in the 26th generation from Adam - compiled the Torah, they reasoned that there must have been 974 generations prior to Adam.

Here is an example of their commentary on the issue...
"R. Joshua b. Levi also said: "When Moses ascended on high, the ministering angels spoke before the Holy One, blessed be He: 'Sovereign of the Universe! What business has one born of woman amongst us?' 'He has come to receive the Torah,' answered He to them. Said they to Him, 'That secret treasure, which has been hidden by Thee for nine hundred and seventy-four generations before the world was created."
This is described by Shabbat as being done "before the world was created". That's time before the beginning and leads to some other logical and scriptural problems. If there was no creation and no people, how does it even make sense to measure time at all, much less time in "generations"? Note: this idea is not the same thing as I am saying when I point out that a close look at the text show that there was an unspecified amount of time before the first day.

Some of these scholars thought that the previous people were on a different "plane of existence" and with the creation of Adam there was also a new plane of existence created. I would argue that the Garden of Eden was the new plane of existence and after the Fall it was lost to Adam and Eve, forcing them into the same environment as the rest of mankind. Others thought the souls of the previous 974 generations pre-existed creation but were inserted into the world after it was created. See for example this quote from Chagiga 13b-14b:

"It is taught: R. Simeon the Pious said: These are the nine hundred and seventy four generations who pressed themselves forward to be created before the world was created, but were not created: the Holy One, blessed be He, arose and planted them in every generation, and it is they who are the insolent of each generation. "

All kinds of "odd" ideas were suggested by the commentators as to who the 974 generations were that in their view existed, yet did not exist. Modern Jewish scholars continue to try and reconcile the paradoxes in the text. Here is one that, after reviewing some of the more bizarre speculations, suggests, along with other speculations with which I disagree, that there were people before Adam:
The question is, if Adam had progeny who did not possess a Divine soul, could he have had ancestors who also were similarly spiritually challenged?12 
When the Torah describes a part of Adam's core as the dust of the earth, could this refer to people who "existed yet never existed"? Could it describe an existence that may have had a physical effect on this world but no spiritual effect? Could Adam have physically had a mother while spiritually the breath of God served as an impetus for a new world?13
That is not at all what I teach at all about the "host" created on earth (Gen. 2:1), but I do think they were there. His view of Genesis 6:1-3, like the Christ-centered model, recognizes that there were two groups of humans being discussed, but in my view gets things muddled after that. The commonality is that it recognizes in the text that there were other people walking around which were not the offspring of Adam and Eve:

The introduction to the flood story includes a description the forced relations between the sons of Elohim and the daughters of man-Adam: powerful brutes taking innocent, refined women. The result was the flood, and the eradication of the brutal species. The only survivors are Noach and his descendants. These verses clearly outline the strained co-existence of two types of people. Were these other "men" descendants of Adam, or vestiges of an earlier world?
 My point is not to endorse any particular part of the Jewish speculation on the problem as being correct. My point is that they realized there was a problem. In their view, the text pointed to, in some sense, 974 generations occurring prior to the formation of Adam. They tried to reconcile that with their belief that creation was only six thousand years old, but they never quite developed a clean resolution to the paradox. The Christ-Centered Model does so, without the potentially racist implications about the "brutal species" (which is all of us due to sin).

A generation according to scripture is most often forty years, but seventy years and one-hundred years are also used to describe a generation. The latter figure is a generation connected to a promise and thus might be more reasonable to connect to this verse about God's promise. Regardless of the lack of coherence of their proposed solutions to the paradox, there is a long history to suggest the Jewish people recognized in their scriptures the possibility of generations before Adam. The solution to the paradox is to adopt the Christ-centered model of Early Genesis which places Adam as a figure of Christ for the "host" of humanity created before him. Though by now he is likely to be found somewhere in the family tree of all of us (a view called "Genealogical Adam"), he is the father of the line of Messiah, not all of humanity.

Get the book.


Saturday, September 22, 2018

Neo-Darwinism is Dead. What Replaces it?

Classical Darwinism died about fifty years ago as we understood more about how genetics worked. Neo-Darwinism replaced it, but it too is dead. Not that you would know that from either what is taught to your children in government-run schools or the media, but scientists on the cutting edge of the issues (that's not Bill Nye or Neil DeGrasse Tyson) know it.

Here are just a few of the many quotes I could use to show this:

“Unless the discourse around evolution is opened up to scientific perspectives beyond Darwinism, the education of generations to come is at risk of being sacrificed for the benefit of a dying theory.” – Stuart Newman ( professor of cell biology and anatomy at New York Medical College in Valhalla, NY)

“There is no consistent tendency of evolution towards increased genomic complexity, and when complexity increases, this appears to be a non adaptive consequence of evolution under weak purifying selection rather than an adaptation.” (Eugene Koonin, Darwinian evolution in the light of genomics, Nucleic Acids Research, 37(4), 2009, pp. 1011-1034) Note "Purifying selection" here just means that genomes have a weak tendency to 'heal themselves'. When there is a mutation that has reduced function in a population, it can sometimes get fixed and restored- thus "increasing complexity" by taking things back to where they were before the mutation occurred.

“The Altenberg 16 … recognize that the theory of evolution which most practicing biologists accept and which is taught in classrooms today, is inadequate in explaining our existence [emphasis added]” (p. 19).

“A wave of scientists now questions natural selection’s role, though fewer will publicly admit it” (p. 20).

Both from "The Altenberg 16: An Exposé of the Evolution Industry by Suzan MazurNorth Atlantic Books, Berkeley, CA, 2010

Natural selection isn't strong enough to explain what we see. The more savvy evolutionists know this and have been adopting the "neutral theory of evolution" and abandoning Darwinism. Computational Biologist Dr. S. Joshua Swamidass  declared "Kimura replaced Darwinism in 1968. No need to make up a pseudo history. Neo-Darwinism as understood within science was falsified a long time ago" . This "new theory of evolution" is not the same thing as Darwinism or even neo-Darwinism because "natural selection" is not in the driver's seat.  

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The evolutionary "Tree of Life" is also facing some serious challenges. It looks like "horizontal gene transfer" is a lot more common than we thought back when the evolutionary tree of life was developed. That is and for example, certain genes may be found in sponges and mammals- and nothing in between! Genes are found in two groups of creatures far apart in the classical evolutionary scenario and not found in vast gaps of creatures which are supposed to be between the two on the evolutionary scale. That doesn't fit the idea that a creature gets all its genetic information from its ancestors as modified by random mutations. Rather, it appears that a living creature is more like a cell phone that can download apps from vastly different sources to supplement and integrate with its main operating system.

But perhaps an even bigger challenge to the evolutionary tree of life is the work of Winston Ewert (see a rundown here). The idea of "nested hierarchies" has in recent times past constituted some of the strongest evidence for evolution. Oh it was not as clean and clear-cut as advocates tried to make it, but it is hard to deny that certain genes and mutations show up in what looks like nested hierarchies in a way consistent with the idea that all groups within them evolved from a common ancestor. And it is doubtless true to the extent which it applies: a group of similar species are a "nested hierarchy" within the same Genus for example. The problem for Neo-Darwinism is that efforts to extend that idea up the tree of life don't produce as good a fit at the higher taxonomic levels. What Ewert has done is used sophisticated mathematical analysis which shows that a "Dependency Graph" based on function is a somewhat better fit for the data than the idea of a Nested Hierarchy.

So "natural selection acting through random mutations" is not powerful enough to explain the complexity and diversity of all of Earth's biota throughout its history. It turns out chance dominates "natural selection". For example, humans have maybe 22,000 protein-producing genes. Each one of them is either more helpful than the average same gene in the rest of the population, or less helpful, or the same. Say one gene gets a hugely beneficial mutation and becomes three times as helpful as that same gene location in the average of the rest of the population. That is a huge leap. The vast majority of mutations are harmful. But even that huge leap would only help overall fitness increase by 3/22,000. Maybe other mutations that person has are more harmful and so overall fitness averages out. Maybe he gets eaten by a lion or steps on a snake and that mutation has no role in saving him. Chance overwhelms natural selection. This is true whether we are talking about weeding out mildly harmful mutations or spreading helpful ones.

Scientists are facing the probability that natural selection plays a minor role shaping life on earth. It weeds out only the most hurtful mutations and effects the details of creatures within their current forms. It's not the major player and perhaps not much of a minor player in increasing complexity and the arrival of new forms.

So if "Natural Selection" has been demoted to a minor player in the shaping of life on earth, what was the major player? "Chance" is all evolutionary scientists are left with. I have heard a couple respond to the inadequacy of natural selection by saying words to the effect of "but that's the old theory, the new one is that chance is the dominant change mechanism." Well, if that's what the data is pointing to then it's only honest to say so, but I am old enough to remember the days when creationists would say that it is not reasonable to assume that chance produced all the diversity and rise of complexity that we see in the earth's living things throughout time. And I remember the response "but we are not saying it was chance, we are saying that it was natural selection acting through chance." So it seems to me they are arguing in a circle, albeit one which has taken two decades to swing round.

Chance doesn't operate like this though. It may produce repeating patterns, but it doesn't drive increasing complexity and any increasing diversity it produces is through a loss of form and function into chaos, not exquisite adaptation. The explanation of "chance" is as unsatisfying now as it was decades ago when evolutionary scientists were assuring people like me that it was natural selection, not chance, driving evolution. 

Of course science is bound operationally by methodological naturalism. As scientists, they couldn't see God if God were standing right in front of them. Nor even acknowledge the gray areas between Evolution, Intelligent Design, and Special Creation. As men and women however, we ought to be able to take off that "science" cap which binds what we are allowed to consider (natural causes only) and realize that natural forces alone are insufficient to explain the diversity of life in Earth's history. To ascribe "chance" as the driving force of evolution is as close to ascribing life's diversity and complexity to God as science can get. And the scripture to some extent agrees. The New Living Translation of Proverbs 16:33 says...

We may throw the dice, but the LORD determines how they fall.

Even the events we see as random are really ordered by Him.

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While scientists need to change some of their ideas about evolution, the church also needs to change some mistaken ideas about what the text of early Genesis is actually saying. It's a far more Christ-centered document than generally accepted theology accounts for.  The book below, available at no change for those with access to Kindle Unlimited, peels back the layers of misunderstanding and reveals the truth of Early Genesis and how it points to Christ. It takes some work, but for someone willing to do the work then the knowledge of the mystery of Christ in early Genesis is there for the having. 


Thursday, August 23, 2018

Quotes from Justin Martyr in "Apologia"



Justin Martyr believed that the Old Testament figure of Yahweh was the Son:

"Apology" Chapter 63:

"No one knoweth the Father, but the Son; nor the Son but the Father, and those to whom the Son will reveal Him."(7) The Jews, accordingly, being throughout of opinion that it was the Father of the universe who spake to Moses, though He who spake to him was indeed the Son of God, who is called both Angel and Apostle, are justly charged, both by the Spirit of prophecy and by Christ Himself, with knowing neither the Father nor the Son. For they who affirm that the Son is the Father, are proved neither to have become acquainted with the Father, nor to know that the Father of the universe has a Son; who also, being the first-begotten Word of God, is even God. And of old He appeared in the shape of fire and in the likeness of an angel to Moses and to the other prophets; but now in the times of your reign,(8) having, as we before said, become Man by a virgin, according to the counsel of the Father, for the salvation of those who believe on Him, He endured both to be set at nought and to suffer, that by dying and rising again He might conquer death. And that which was said out of the bush to Moses, "I am that I am, the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, and the God of your fathers,"(9) this signified that they, even though dead, are let in existence, and are men belonging to Christ Himself. 

That Christ was the first born of God, as the Word. And this word "Logos" means rationality or reasoning principle, and thus he equates reasonable men as godly men of faith and unreasonable ones as wicked...

Chapter 46

But lest some should, without reason, and for the perversion of what we teach, maintain that we say that Christ was born one hundred and fifty years ago under Cyrenius, and subsequently, in the time of Pontius Pilate, taught what we say He taught; and should cry out against us as though all men who were born before Him were irresponsible—let us anticipate and solve the difficulty. We have been taught that Christ is the first-born of God, and we have declared above that He is the Word of whom every race of men were partakers; and those who lived reasonably(5) are Christians, even though they have been thought atheists; as, among the Greeks, Socrates and Heraclitus, and men like them; and among the barbarians, Abraham, and Ananias, and Azarias, and Misael, and Elias, and many others whose actions and names we now decline to recount, because we know it would be tedious. So that even they who lived before Christ, and lived without reason, were wicked and hostile to Christ, and slew those who lived reasonably. But who, through the power of the Word, according to the will of God the Father and Lord of all, He was born of a virgin as a man, and was named Jesus, and was crucified, and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, an intelligent man will be able to comprehend from what has been already so largely said. 

Christ is the Word and First-begotten

Chapter 23

that we claim to be acknowledged, not because we say the same things as these writers said, but because we say true things: and (secondly) that Jesus Christ is the only proper Son who has been begotten by God, being His Word and first-begotten, and power; and, becoming man according to His will, He taught us these things for the conversion and restoration of the human race: 


The whole work is here.

Is Two-Population Model more Christ-centered than Traditional Teaching on Adam?

An excerpt from a post I made on "Peaceful Science".

I very much enjoyed the office hours with Lutheran guests (and regulars) at Peaceful Science. If you have not read it, it is worth checking out for the distinctive 1 (and I think proper) way they have of looking at creation and the tension between tradition and exploring new ideas. The have a tradition of “Sola Scriptura” like Luther himself, but at the same time they have doctrine on some things which means that they don’t go only from the scriptures, but the scriptures through a lens of their own tradition. On matters such as this I think it creates a natural tension, which they are more comfortable with than some denominations. In looking at creation for example, they start with the Resurrection and look back to see what that says about Creation rather than starting with Creation. The beginning point is always Christ. And properly done He’s the ending point as well. 
Unfortunately the dialog ended just as they were beginning to explore the viability of the two-population model. That is, the idea that the biblical role of Adam is not to be the sole genetic progenitor of humanity, but rather to be the progenitor of the line of Messiah who would redeem humanity. There were other humans present outside the garden of Eden. 
It is my contention that this view of Adam is far more scriptural and Christ-centered than the traditional view. IOW, it should be a better fit for Lutherans than the traditional view. Romans 5:14 says of Adam that he is a “figure of Him who was to come”. That is, Christ. That’s his scriptural role. And of course Christ is portrayed in scripture as a brother to those of us who are believers, not a father. See Hebrews 2:11, 2:17, Romans 8:29. 1st Cor. 15 says that Adam was the first man, in the way that Christ was the last man! 
I could go on, but I’d like to start a conversation, not a monologue. The two-population model is more Christ-centered than the traditional view because it is a better fit at making Adam a figure of Christ than the traditional view. That this view of the text was not publicly supported in ancient Judaism is not surprising. Pandora’s family wouldn’t want to go around hollering that they were the clan that opened the box either. Best to pass over that part, especially given the history of persecution they endured. 
That it is hinted at but not discussed in the epistles is not so much cause for concern as one might think either because the epistles tell us that they didn’t tell us everything. Consider the last half of Hebrews Chapter Five and the first few verses of chapter six. 
1Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith in God, 2instruction about baptisms, the laying on of hands, the resurrectionof the dead, and eternal judgment. 3And this we will do, if God permits.… 
It was clear there was more the writer wanted them to know but they were hung up on the “milk of the word”. He had a lot to say (5:11) about the mysterious OT figure Melchizedek which he didn’t get around to saying. And if you go down that list in chapter six, that milk is pretty much all the Lutherans are talking about now. The other evangelical denominations don’t even talk about that! When is the last time there was “a lot to say” about Melchizedek from your pulpit? 
So let’s talk about the two-population model, any of them not just the one I am advocating, but Genealogical Adam or whatever else is out there.. Not just because it best matches what nature is saying to us about humanity, but because it is more Christ-centered than the version of events which the Christian church inherited from Judaism.

Sunday, August 19, 2018

Science and Perceiving God

That "science" doesn't see God isn't an argument. It's a rhetorical trick. Under methodological naturalism science can't see God even if God were standing right in front of it. Science is a procedure which is conducted to detect for laws only. It is incapable of detecting any lawgiver.

An analogy would be lawyers trained to go about the legal libraries looking in various texts with a mission of determining what the laws were. If they were constrained to that process, then by that process they could never detect the human beings- the legislators - who drafted the bills which became those laws. Even if the legislators wandered the halls of the libraries crying out "it was me, I drafted such and such a law" the process of looking at the text for what is written there could not detect them. If the lawyers doing the searching desired to be obstinate and deny the existence of the legislators, they could semi-honestly report back that their search of the laws gave them no indication that any legislators existed.

To see the lawgiver one must take off the "hat" of methodological naturalism and look at things as a human, not very narrowly as a "scientist". If it weren't for sin in our hearts this would be easy to do. This is because the order, diversity, interconnectedness and beauty of nature cries out "there is a Creator God" as mentioned in Romans chapter one. But the respectability of science and what it has done for mankind has allowed some hearts to use this as a shield to prevent them from perceiving that which they ought to see, not as scientists but as men. They can deny the Lawgiver exists because they have found, in their search for the laws, only laws and no Lawgiver. That they could not expect to find a  Lawgiver in a search only for laws is conveniently set aside for the temporary comfort that escape from accountability brings. The pity is that lasting comfort for escape from accountability is only available through that same Lawgiver in the mercy and atonement accessed via faith in Christ.

My book on Early Genesis