Browsing the Neanderthal entry on Wikipedia, we see a vast tome of detailed dates and assertions. Consider that the detail of a crafted lie lends credibility. What is anybody to think when told that in the face of all of this detail that humans didn’t evolve from apes which evolved from goo? Well, Data Point One points us to the truth that God created Earth, and people. The idea that this is not true is an opinion formed in ignorance or doubt of the truth of Christianity. I’m saying it’s an opinion that we evolved from cavemen, but not necessarily an intentional lie.
How could there be so much scientific data to support the opinion? Well, seeing as no people were around 30,000 years ago to offer any confirmation, we’re left with conjecture based on a scant amount of skeletal remains that happened to become unearthed, and projections about how old they might happen to be. Various bad science is converged to paint an erroneous picture. It’s like we have these puzzle pieces and large sections of pieces are missing, so we’re just going to make up our own pieces and make them fit, and paint in what we think might go there. But when you start so afield from the truth that generations upon generations of people in western civilization have grown up with, the result also diverges in the truth with a wrong bias which is stood up as if it were scientific and as if it were valid. Over the past two thousand years western civilization has been guided and shaped by the Christian faith, which holds the Biblical view of God creating everything in six days.
What of the archeologist or the paleo-anthropologists? Well, how much are they seeing with their own eyes, and how much puzzle are they inventing? The human mind is capable of cognitive dissonance, where two incompatible things can be in the same part of the mind. The human mind is capable of imagining things that are impossible to exist, like lightsabers and warp drive. (I know some of you are still waiting on those.)
People like stories. What of the comic book enthusiast who memorizes story arc after story arc of various characters, places, other planets, other realities, other rules of living? These stories were crafted in intricate detail by writers and artists in the profession of juvenile entertainment. The reader suspends their disbelief and goes along for the ride with the monthly comic which, serialized, keeps telling pieces of a larger story. There tends to at least be value in these stories as telling of heroism, personal growth, and good winning victoriously over evil.
There is no value in leading people away from the truth of God’s existence, and His love. He wants for all people to be saved, and rescued from having to go to hell, however this requires the individual to understand at minimum, faith in Goodness, that good is correct, and corruption is not. A turning to good, and to God, and away from the trappings of “the world” is what’s required. More on that in a future post.
The value of the detailed narratives of human evolution over millions of years is likewise of no value. Not only that, but it’s a negative – a detriment in challenging people’s belief in God. The Neanderthal narrative is held up as scientific in its details when it is misleading conjecture – a theory.
What of the archeologist or the paleo-anthropologists in their professions? For that matter, what of the sinner who’s wasted their life without religion? Let them earn a living digging or writing, meandering, or whatever. But let them accept the truth of God. Part of that is that it’s not enough to be “spiritual”. We have to become saved in the Christian faith, eliminate habits of behaviors of sin, and especially worship on Sunday as generations upon generations in the past have. For some people this is all new and very foreign, and so they have to adapt to having their eyes opened to something for which proof may have always seemed out of reach. God is where goodness comes from.
There’s a quote attributed to Mark Twain that I recently came across.
“It’s impossible to convince a man of something when his job depends on believing the other.”
To the digging professional who says, “well you can’t prove God exists,” you can. Data Point One.
The Big Bang theory is even irrational, because only God can make something out of nothing. Absorb this, contemplate it, and adjust course!