What Does God Know in the Christ-Centered Model

 The Christ-Centered model for early Genesis has provided answers to many perplexing questions in history, science, and theology. It now suggests a solution for the question of "What does God know?" Specifically the debates between Open Theism and more traditional views of God's omniscience. 

I don't intend to get into the definitions and proofs here. I will assume the reader knows the basics. Instead, I want to demonstrate how the Christ-centered model for early Genesis naturally fits with a scenario which reconciles many seemingly contradictory passages of scripture and also elegantly resolves some apologetics questions. 

One point of order here: My basic view on the choice for salvation is a Lutheran one. This is that though man does have ordinary free will, choosing God over self is not a decision that man can make by man's own will. Rather, God must enable such a choice. You could not say "yes" to God from your own heart. BUT, you can say "no" to God from your own heart. So He is completely responsible for our salvation and we are completely responsible for our condemnation. It isn't Synergist, and as monergism it is an odd sort. The agent depends on the outcome- God is the agent in our salvation, we are the agent in our condemnation. Now onto how the Christ-centered model fits into the question of what God knows...

It starts with the belief that all of the anthropomorphic occurrences of Yahweh in the OT, including the "Angel of the Lord" (Malach Yahweh) were God the Son, not God the Father who the NT tells us cannot be seen by man. When the Israelites saw God, it was the Son they were seeing. This isn't too unusual an idea, and church fathers such as Justin Martyr held it to be true. The idea of "Christophanies", OT appearances of a pre-incarnate Christ, is even more widely accepted. All this does is take that idea and understand that every time God interacted with man in an anthropomorphic form, it was God the Son. Including in the Garden of Eden. 

What the Christ-centered model adds to this is that God the Son was not jumping in and out of (incorruptible) human form throughout the OT, but assumed that form in the beginning, in Genesis 1:27, and is presently in that form seated at the right hand of God. Whether this is eternal or He reverts to His condition before Genesis 1:27 once we become like Him (1 John 3) as He is now is a separate question. The point is that there was a pre-incarnate God the Son, who merged with humanity in the eternal realm and became the Man of Heaven, of whom Adam was an earthly copy. Mankind is the product of the Heavenly Man. Further, the Christ-centered model has Yahweh as regularly present among the clan of Adam right up until the flood.

Let's step back a bit and talk about God's complete foreknowledge. It makes sense that God would have complete foreknowledge of even our choices in any given situation, because He created us. Naturalists typically maintain that Free Will is an illusion on the basis that Nature is all there is, so we are just bouncing molecules whose outcomes can be known with enough information. Quantum forces are not an end-run to this because, in their thinking, they are random and cancel out. Sabine Hossenfelder is among the atheists who promote this view. 

The (non-Calvinist) theist answer to this is that there is more than nature to man, so we can have true free will. We are not just bouncing molecules. But that part from man which is beyond nature isn't independent from God. It is from God. So this may permit freewill, but probably not without God's foreknowledge. After all, He is the source of the eternal within us, which makes man more than bouncing molecules whose free will is an illusion (and thus our future "choices" are knowable to one with enough information). 

But there is an exception to this rule. There are three Persons in the Trinity, each uncreated. Does each Person of the Trinity have free will? I would argue they do. Does each have complete access to all knowledge about the future choices of the other members? I would argue that if they do, it would not be for the same reason they would have access to complete knowledge about the future choices of created beings, and there would be a caveat. 

The three Persons of the Trinity share the same nature. In substance, they are the same. Therefore, if their knowledge and perspective is the same, One would always choose as the other were they making the same choice. Thus God's classical omniscience is retained even here, though for reasons that are different from that which applies to created beings. 

But notice the caveat. If one Person of the Trinity set aside their Divine Perspective and took a more limited one, they would still have the same nature as the rest of the Godhead, but not the same perspective. Thus they could make different choices based on what they knew, though still in accord with their character. These choices would be the choices of a being with "true Libertarian Free Will". Would the other members of the Trinity have foreknowledge of those choices? Perhaps not. Would it be a case of limited Open Theism for this one condition only? 

Now you might think that this is describing a very limited Open Theism indeed. It is only among the members of the Trinity, intramural to God Himself. But consider the consequences of the Son taking this limited perspective and then exercising His libertarian free will among men throughout history as recorded in scripture. His actions therefore influenced, and changed, the actions of other men. Which rippled and changed those of yet more men. 

If I can know all the future choices of the members of Group X but not individual Y, then what happens when individual Y acts in such a way as to change the future choices of Group X? I suspect that my knowledge of the future choices of Group X is "reset" by the actions of Y. 

Did you know the "random" number generators for most computer code isn't truly random? They use an algo. Suppose you have a 0-9 "random" number generator that just uses the second indicator on the computer's clock and selects the digit of Pi to the right of the decimal the corresponding number of digits back. At second 23 it goes 23 digits back, and so on. If one knows the digits of Pi back 60 digits, and one knows the second in which a "random" number is generated one can predict the number. Indeed one can predict the number for every second of the clock. But suppose someone could reset the clock to a number of seconds of their choosing? Once they made the choice, you could predict the next "random" number, but until they make that choice the number is unknown to you. I am suggesting that a member of the Trinity acting in such a way resets the clock. 

What this means for Christianity is that God can be both all-knowing even of our future choices and aware of our eternal fate, yet have created us without knowing our all of our future choices or the eternal fate of all of us. This need not be all-encompassing. There could be some who will wind up in one fate or the other regardless of the possible range of actions of the Son -  a range of action which could be known from His character alone. But in the main, the Libertarian Free Will of the Son temporally impacted the foreknowledge of the Father. In some cases, He doesn't know because in His wisdom and majesty He has found a way to not know, to reset the conditions so that what the conditions were when He handed off to the Son were changed.

Eternally, His foreknowledge remains, but not from Genesis 1:27 to the last Libertarian Free Will action the Son had with humans (though each succeeding ripple in time will have less and less consequence). It is a space in which even that was set aside. 

This condition is now over. It may have never affected God knowing who is saved, if one also folds the in the "Complete Reconciliation in Christ" theory, also a consequent of the Christ-centered model. What changes is the list of the saved grows to what it would be in the best possible world, because the work of Christ completely undoes the fall of Adam. See video for details. 

 If there was any question before the ascension, there is no longer. God knows those who are His. What is left is for us to know. And the critics who dare to shake their fist at their Creator for "creating me and then sending me to hell for being who He knew I would be" should close their mouths and thoughtfully re-consider. It could be that He is smarter than you, a lot smarter. And has found a way to create you with free will without knowing what your choice will be and yet still knows it. Therefore, He will not be responsible for your choice. Maybe He never was- unless it is for life everlasting. Glory to His Holy name! Amen. 

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Breakthrough: Autism Studies Point to Cause/Treatments

This recent astonishing study (summary) showed that mice genetically engineered to have autism were successfully treated by an application of neuronal nitric oxide synthase (nNOS) inhibitor, 7-nitroindazole (7-NI or S-nitroso-N-acetyl penicillamine), for 10 consecutive days. They tested two types of mice with different autism-inducing mutations. In one type treatment reversed autism symptoms in both sexes, the other reversed them in males.

This study shows not only that oxidative stress from N2O contributes to autism pathology, but that there is another compound (NDGA) which helps the body convert N2O into the non-deleterious form also effectively treats autistic symptoms.

Here is yet a third study that shows yet another N2O inhibitor (catechin hydrate)(or convertor to another form) successfully treats autistic symptoms in rodents.

Indeed, even curcumin seems to have some positive effect, though I suspect it is mopping up the damage after the excess N2O is created rather than cutting of the problem at its core. Also, the study was done on rats where autism-like symptoms were artificially induced whereas the other studies also used rodents genetically modified to have autism. Just as in the Revesterol study, which also had positive results for the same reason. I don’t say these two will be effective as they are general, not nervous-system targeted, and deal with mopping up the damaging excess N2O after it has been present.

You may say “but that was with rodents”. It turns out they have understood the connection for years. Here is a human study from 2013 where children were given a compound (sapropterin) that was more broadly targeted but also impacted N2O. It is an anti-fungal too I believe, so it may be promising for more than one reason. It showed significant improvement on some but not all of the spectrum. And they suspected even then that it was the effect on NO that was making the difference. They also did a human study with the closely related Tetrahydrobiopterin and found that it did not improve everything but did improve social awareness, autism mannerisms, hyperactivity, and inappropriate speech. This was ten years ago.

I suspect that if their brain had years to heal and repair, they would see improvements in the other areas too. Take a brain that has been battered by long-term immune response, just because you remove the source of the abuse doesn't mean the brain heals right away.

The epilepsy/bipolar drug I had noticed before was effective if the cause of autism is a mutation in a particular gene, but the N2O theory of autism would apply to a wide variety of stem issues. There are lots of ways the N2O balance could be off, and restoring the balance would treat a wide variety of things that could lead to the same issue.

The body needs N2O. So using a general inhibitor over a long time without monitoring would be too risky. Inhibition interventions are best when targeted and there is monitoring of levels from time to time. But leaving the nervous system with all of this excess is a known problem.

Opening a Can of Worms on Annelid Origins

 The headline proclaimed "Ancient Fossils Shed New Light on Evolution of Sea Worms" But the text of the article tells a different story. 

The report is about finding fossils of an ancient sea worm in formations 515 million years old. Since it was doubtful that these were the first such worms in existence which just happened to be fossilized, scientists concluded that these worms were a part of the Cambrian Explosion, which occurred about 543 million years ago according to current scientific consensus. This find lopped off an astounding 200 million years off the supposed diversification of annelids. As the piece puts it...

The fossilized remains included evidence of the worms' guts and kidneys and revealed they had an unexpectedly complex structure similar to that of other annelid worms.

The researchers say this means that annelids—or segmented worms—diversified into different lineages some 200 million years earlier than previously thought and were part of the evolutionary leap known as the Cambrian explosion.

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Study co-author Dr. Martin R. Smith, in the Department of Earth Sciences, Durham University, said, "We know that the main animal lines we see today emerged during the Cambrian explosion, but we always thought annelid worms were late to the party, and their major subgroups didn't begin to diversify until nearly 200 million years later.

"But the amazingly preserved fossils we have studied and the structure of these amazing little creatures challenge this picture, and show that annelid worms—including Iotuba chengjiangensis—seemed to follow the pattern of events initiated by the Cambrian explosion

The report goes on in this vein, with Dr. Smith declaring "there must have been a dramatic unseen origin of modern annelid diversity in the heat of the Cambrian explosion.". He is basing this on finding worms that already have stomachs and livers that far back. Now these are worms, and we have just found some this far back, so it is possible there was "dramatic, unseen evolution" that produced this early diversification. I mean, it isn't like they have shells or something that is commonly preserved. 

Still, this phenomenon is not restricted to segmented worms. The origin of complex features so early in so many things should give pause to the fair-minded truth-seeker, if indeed there are any of those left out there. I recently reported on how amazed they were to find that vertebrates had complex stomachs from the start - about 450 million years ago anyway- and that all the current forms without them must have lost them rather than being a holdover from a "more primitive stage of evolution". Now we find the same of worms. Well, if these complex features show up at the start of the group, then where is the evolution? Oh, sure it fiddles with the limbs and edges, but why are so many things showing up complex in their basic body plan so early? 

It isn't just with stomachs/diversification in segmented worms. It happened in comb jellies. It happened in chordates. It happened in vertebrates. It is the norm for new forms to appear complex at their start and later some members of the group lose complexity over time. This repeated finding is not what one would expect, indeed not even be a reasonable possibility, under naturalistic evolution. Instead of continuing to shrug it off and just claiming "evolution must be stronger than we thought", how about someone on the other side at least be honest enough to admit there is a problem? How else can you find the answer to the problem, if such an answer exists?

The way I see it, they really only have one alternative. That is to connect the extinct Ediacaran forms to Cambrian forms. So far, with one or two possible exceptions (and take away one of those because it appears that sponges didn't come early, they showed up with the crowd around the Cambrian), this has not been fruitful. They don't seem to fit. But the very fact those forms existed and fossilized puts to bed the idea that this missing evolution is missing because things didn't fossilize before shells came along. We've found too many exceptions for this to be the case. That was the other excuse and it has been undermined. So all that's left is "they came from the pre-existing forms in the Ediacaran". But that's not working either. I say the only alternative, but I meant the only alternative which permits them to cling to naturalistic origins. Divine Creation fits the facts just fine. See this link for where I think the Ediacaran forms fit rather elegantly and specifically in under the Christ-centered model. Of course such thinking is anathema to many. I can't help how they feel about it, these ideas fit the facts better than naturalism.  

I do wish some of the advocates for naturalistic evolution would consider altering their origins beliefs to take into account the facts of the broader picture. At the very least, quit dismissing a position which accounts for the known facts better than their own as unreasonable or silly. So far, a few have, but way too few. For most, it is tied to their identify and humans are very resistant to accept information which conflicts with the way they self-identify. My experience has been mere facts are not enough. It pretty much takes a miracle to get someone to change their mind when they think their identity is threatened, so Lord God, send many such miracles, I beseech Thee!

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This book is mostly not about evolution issues, it is about something much more important- how Early Genesis points to Christ. Obviously this could not be true unless He really were who scripture says that He is and that scripture is Divinely inspired. But those things are true, so it can say it. And if they are true, it would be a shame to go your whole life never knowing it. 

 

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I Don't Have the Stomach to Swallow This New Naturalistic Fairy Tale

 Stomachs they tell us, "evolved" 450 million years ago, unique to vertebrates. Having a sealed-off bag connected to an acid pump and other digestive enzymes is a huge advantage. It allows us to digest more proteins faster than other phyla. Functionality alone does not mean that a complex structure will be made though. It doesn't explain how it was made. Only that it would be useful if it would somehow come about. That the earliest vertebrates seem to have one is starkly at odds with what we would expect to see if nature is all that is at work here.

This is a specific instance of something I have noted before. Living phyla seem to show up complex and if anything some members lose stuff (de-evolution) over time if they don't need it for a particular niche. The evolution of the gaps religionists simply shrug and say that no matter what happened, "evolutiondidit". But you can't get from molecules to man by losing complexity. The pattern seems to be phyla show up with different complex structures, then some members lose some of them if not needed. None of that explains how they were complex right from the start. 

Stomachs are another example of what I mean. It turns out that a few vertebrate forms have lost their stomachs. The evolutionists count at least 18 times this happened. Including a couple of monotremes and a quarter of all fish. I guess that part can happen by nature alone. We don't need to appeal to a designer for something to lose a complex feature. Let's say they were in a niche where they did not need to digest a lot of complex proteins. Maybe they can do without it. 

The thing is, if it is so easy for a vertebrate to go without a stomach, even in a world where competing vertebrates have one, then what could have been the driving force for nature to start churning out vertebrates with this complex feature right from the start? Supposedly, a complex new feature would offer a powerful advantage, but 18 times at least it hasn't made the stomachless forms uncompetitive. Do complex new structures just immediately show up in phyla without even biological necessity? If so, when did this stop and why? It surely looks more like ID than the trial-and-error process of evolution as it has been described. 

EDIT- this article originally included two paragraphs talking about the the genes for stomachs in these agastric species appeared to be GONE, not just silenced and mutated. Some language in the report led me to believe that was the claim. Props to Sean Ovis for doing some good science and demonstrating beyond a reasonable doubt that Zebrafish have the remains of stomach genes, they are just so fragmented that one has to look close to find them. So I deleted the two paragraphs that it turns out were not accurate. 

Something is odd about all of it, whether the evolution-of-the-gaps folks want to admit it or not. 

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The Tune Changes on Human-Chimp differences

 I guess all of us have heard those arguing for a strictly naturalistic origin for humans say something about how similar chimps are to humans genetically. It is assumed to be some of the strongest evidence out there for common descent. 

But did you know that while they were confidently assuring us of this, on the QT they were investigating just how it could be that humans are so very different from chimps in the places where we are different? They didn't understand how we could change that much by natural means in the time they think it happened.So they did a study to try and find out what could be causing this problem that they otherwise confidently assured people didn't exist. (A problem which creationists have pointed out in other contexts, see this not perfect but still peer-reviewed study on "Hominid Evolution Rate Problem"). 

Imagine that cars evolved through natural means and not intelligent design. They see a Model T, and then a Model A and they figure that the latter evolved from the former because they are 98% or more similar. But then they notice one of the places the Model A is different is that it has a computer-controlled fuel ignition system using a microchip developed in 2020. In other words, within that two percent where they are different, they are VERY different. Unnervingly so. 

That is a fair analogy for what scientists call "Human-Accelerated Regions" or "HARS".  Hars are areas that changed too fast for scientists to feel comfortable about. Especially since in many cases they stayed conserved in mammals for ages, then all of a sudden you get to us and they get changed a vast amount in an evolutionary blink of the eye.

So they went about searching for reasons to explain why these areas were changing faster than evolution would normally work. Mind you, this was at the same time the village atheist was mocking you for believing in a Divine Origin for humanity on the basis that chimps and humans were so alike genetically that it was "obvious" that we evolved from a common ancestor, and that by natural means. 

Since they think they found an answer, they are now willing to fess up and admit there was a problem with what, up until this moment, they assured us was undoubtedly true. They noticed that many of these HARS regions contained genes that acted in opposition to one another. That is, one would turn some trait up, maybe too high, so another region would turn it way down. So it was a balancing act. That's the story anyway. 

Personally, I don't see how a need for rapid change to balance something produces the capability of rapid change. For it to be naturalistic evolution (instead of at the least God intervening in evolution), no matter how badly a change was needed, nature can only do so much in a given amount of time. Nor is it clear why this would regularly be in the form of an opposite-number gene ALSO being turned up instead of the original gene that got turned up too much acquiring another mutation that turned it down some. 

What I suspect is that as they keep learning about how these genes work they are going to find that in some stages of human development we need these genes activated and turned way up and at other times we need them tamped down. IOW, both the stronger "on" switch and the stronger damper switch are needed. That would imply that the balancing act is even more intricate than they thought- highlighting that humans are unique and in what makes us human we are very different from even our supposed "closest living relatives". 

Scripture tells us how Adam and Eve were formed. It gives details of the Divine Acts which produced them. I believe that scripture teaches there were also people outside the garden, and as a figure of Christ, Adam was the stand-in for them before God. Scripture says less (but not nothing) about them and their origins, but does say they are the result of a Divine Act of some kind. Maybe it was something very similar to what happened with Adam and Eve, or maybe it was some kind of creationism where God used a lot of evolution but had His finger on the scale when it mattered. 

Which is it? I don't know, and I don't much care. I just know that naturalism is a bad explanation for humanity on many levels and gives too many people a false sense of security that they don't need to believe what the bible says about the Lordship of Christ and their own need for repentance and forgiveness leading to life and peace. Therefore, I must oppose it. Fortunately, science is finally learning enough to become my ally in the case against philosophical naturalism, it is just that many don't know it yet (in part because they don't want to know it). 

***UPDATE***

I tried to engage some pro secularists in the field on this and true to the bromide of Upton Sinclair, they refused to understand anything I was saying. One did a calculation where he said that the rate of change for human enhancer genes (based on one sample he gave related to limb development, not cognitive function) only mutated four times faster than the rate for any neutral section of the genome. That is, the differences between humans and chimps was 13 while the 'expected' number according to him was between 3 and 4. See graphic below though...click on image for larger view...

It shows this region has only three differences between chicken and chimp! More between dog and chimp but the bottom line is that is is highly conserved over 150 million years or even more of evolutionary time- yet it has 13 changes fixed in the six million years they say was between chimps and humans. And this is just ONE of the "Human Accelerated Regions" There are over 2,000 such regions. 

He tipped over the chessboard and changed the subject to how ignorant I must be when I pointed out that he was comparing apples to oranges. The expected amount of change in a region of the genome that is highly conserved in all land vertebrates should not be compared to the mutation rate in the average neutral region. It should be very much lower because conserved regions by definition resist change. 

I suggested the true magnitude of the odds against this change be calculated thusly...

. What I THINK should be done to figure whether these HARS are sending a significant signal that something beyond chance was at work would be to ...

1) tally up the differences for each animal tested from chimp, then compare it with the time difference since the purported MRCA of each group, then doubling this number (for the same reason the number should be halved going the other way)

2) Turn these differences into 6 million year segments, IOW, how many mutations get fixed in six million years on average? My guess would be the number would be far less than 1.

3) Will have to do the same procedure to enough HARS genes to get a sample for the group. Maybe 40 if there are 500-1000 such genes?

4) Figure out the number of standard deviations that the average HARS has in terms of changes vs. the average of all other groups PER six million years. If they are all like this, the value would be 13 for humans and maybe 0.01 for everything else.

5) Once you have figured out how many standard deviations from average the observed effect is for a single HAR, you would then turn that into an "odds" and multiply it by the number of HARS.

I don't need to look that data up and run those numbers (a difficult task for me if I could do it at all)  to know that it will show this to be a very very remote occurrence. Though I do wish someone who is in the business and has a fair and open mind about it either would, or describe exactly why what I am proposing isn't the right way to get the answer. 

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What I really care about is the theology. here is my 400+ page tome on early Genesis. If you want to know about the Christ-centered model of early Genesis, this is the place to go....

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Paper May Shed Light on Timing and Location of the Flood

 In the Christ-centered model for early Genesis, the flood is a local or regional one aimed at the line of Messiah and the limited set of creatures formed in chapter two in the relatively recent past and not the wider set of people and animals formed in chapter one over a longer period of time. It is far beyond the scope of this post to demonstrate that the text of Genesis is speaking about such a flood rather than a global one. Rather this post is limited to comments on a paper which may shed light on the timing and location of such a flood. 

Timing is based on a range of dates, taking the Ussherian method of date calculation from the Genesis genealogies as a "theoretical minimum" since it can be used only to obtain a minimum date rather than an exact date for reasons which are beyond the scope of this post. In the Masoretic text this would set 2348 BC as the minimum date for the flood. The numbers in the Septuagint indicate something around 3311 BC would represent this minimal date. The upper limit when applying the methods discussed in Early Genesis the Revealed Cosmology to the latter would put the upper limit of the flood at around 4400 BC. 

The location of this flood is constrained in that it must at least abut what is known as "the mountains of Ararat". This is a much wider area than what is now known as Mt. Ararat, but still a limited area. The two regions I have been looking at the most is the Araxes River Valley down to Lake Urmia and the region north of the Sinjar Mountain Range. This paper examines pollen samples in the former location. 

The study looked at pollen samples from the Arishat Mire in Armenia. The report noted "

Van 5 (ca. 5900 to ca. 4100 cal BP) is characterized by a large
expansion of Poacea and ferns at the expense of trees. Sparganium decreases but Typha increases. A wet meadow grows on Vanevan mire."

Interesting but not remarkable. It is squarely within the proper time frame for the proposed flood, but there could be another explanation for the growth of grasslands at the expense of trees- humans could have converted forests to crop fields and pasture. Unfortunately the data was not granular enough here to document how abruptly the change occurred. 

But then there was this:

Occurrences of crops and grazing pollen indicators disappear during LPAZ Van 5 :only Centaurea cyanus, Rumex acetosa and Juglans are recorded from ca 4890-4520 cal BP.

That last is Walnut trees but the first are wildflowers. The period is 370 years so if the Walnut appeared last of the three it would still be consistent with what I am looking for- signs of a flood which ended human habitation of the area. To be consistent with the event, it would have needed to occur just before the period in which crops and grazing pollens vanish. That is just before 2877 BC (the paper is from 2013). 

While this is within the range of dates for the flood, I consider it too early by 800 years given what seems to have occurred with known human habitation of the rest of the area. The Kura-Araxes culture was in the area before 2877 BC and persisted afterward for up to another 800 years. The Shulaveri-Shomu culture disappeared from this area around 3800 BC., prior to the arrival of the Kura-Araxes. If they were the clan of Adam, then the break in pollen should be earlier.  

While their results are not consistent with my hypothesis unless their date is shifted back 800 years, they are also not consistent with the human record of the area. The Kura Araxes culture was known to have been there before, during and after the time they say grazing and crop pollens vanished. I wish I had more details about the mechanics of pollen deposition after floods. I'd also like more details on their collection process. 

The break at 5900 years BP fits well with the hypothesis that the flood was in this location and time. If there was a sudden break in the occurrences of crops and grazing pollen around 5900 BC, or even somewhat later, but other marshy or wetland pollen is found for centuries after then the results of this study are still consistent with my hypothesis. It would represent a period where a flood took out crops and grazing pollens, but there was a several-hundred year period where a series of different foliage competed until by 4890 BP those few reported pollens dominated. 

Were the Chief Sumerian Gods a Distorted Trinity?

Maybe. At least we can say that the belief that Genesis and the Trinity came later and the former drew on ANE myth is not the only way to look at the data.