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Thoughts
On Evolution And Cosmogony, Part 1
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John Onyido
The centerpiece of this article was crafted over a decade ago in an attempt to explore what common grounds existed, if any, between the theory of Evolution and Creation and also proffer a few personal insights on Cosmogony. In the past 10 years however, my thoughts have become somewhat more refined having passed through the crucible, resulting from maturity and experience. In addition, a number of excellent books on related subjects have crossed my path strengthening and clarifying my long held views on these matters, that perhaps the time has come to venture some propositions on Cosmology and Cosmogony, by weaving together present knowledge on the subject.
At the outset, let me make the proposition that there is in my view a common ground between the theory of Evolution and that of Creation, although this is not apparent on initial observation. Life has been on the planet Earth (Terra) for quite a long time, but probably not as old as the planet itself, that is if we accept the estimation of scientists that the earth is some billions of years old, between 4 and 6 billion years, while life at least in its mineral state has existed on earth for over 18 or so million years. On the other hand, the biblical account of creation dates back to just about 7000 years, with the Great Deluge put between 5,000 – 6500 years ago. It is apparent that the biblical account attempts to capture a much later creation of life on earth and not necessarily its very first manifestation. Traditional folklore and some Eastern religions, on the other hand reflect a more ancient era compared to what the Bible attempts to portray in the book of Genesis, not to mention the archeological findings and other fossil remains that date far back in time.
Some religious scholars have attempted to give an allegorical interpretation to the process of creation, as opposed to a mere literal interpretation. In their opinion, the Hebrew word for ‘day’ could mean different lengths of time depending on the context. It could apply to time in a general sense, usually a long period of time being under consideration or “ a particular season or time when any extraordinary event happens”. For instance when the Bible talks about ‘40 days and 40 nights’ – this might not necessarily refer to a 40-day period of 24 hours each, as we now know it. Thus it is envisaged that the process of creation must have lasted over a period of time, each aspect of creation haven taken its time to unfold. The Catholic Patriarch, Saint Augustine seemed to have favored a similar view. A clear scrutiny of the Bible reveals on occasion different layers of meaning to different people and indeed very deep mystical meaning are unraveled when read with the right background information and with a more than average spiritual understanding. The picture becomes even clearer when we realize that much of the Old Testament or Jewish Torah was compiled and written by Rabbis versed in Jewish mysticism- the Qabala, which portrays God’s created universe in symbolic terms and through Gematria or the science of numbers.
As though in attestation to the deeper and more mystical relevance of the Bible, only recently, a few Jewish Mathematicians were able to stumble on some kind of code long suspected to be inherent in the Hebrew version of the Bible, such that when a method of mathematical sequencing was superimposed on particular passages in the Hebrew Bible, revelations of present day occurrences can be obtained. Using this method certain world events of the more recent past, the present and the near future have been predicted with unbelievable accuracy, raising the pertinent question of how a book (or more appropriately a compilation of books) written some thousands of years ago could predict with an uncanny precision, present day occurrences with the benefit of computers which were unavailable at the time the Bible was compiled.
A careful look at the book of Genesis reveals an attempt to compress a magnitude of information within a few pages and also gives an idea of how life manifested on the planet in a manner that approximates the Theory of Evolution somewhat. Genesis Ch.1 states that: “ In the beginning (of this dispensation, of this period) God created the heavens and the earth (maybe the planetary bodies within this universe). The earth was without form and void; (a mass of gaseous substances extruded from a much bigger mass, hovering in space) and darkness was on the face of the deep (most probably referring to some primordial force). And the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters (other versions of the Bible use different words like ‘ divine melody,’ ‘word of God’ etc.). ” The first thing that God created was Light on the first day which is different from the lights created on the third day set in the firmament to illuminate the earth. In Verse 26 God resolves to create man and woman which he did on the 6th day. However in Ch.2. Verse 27, God further creates man out of the dust of the ground/ earth and breathed into him the breath of life thus making man a living being. In Verse 22 and 23 God proceeds to make woman out of a rib taken from man. This apparent repetition is not an error but is intended to convey the sequence of events and the appearance of different creations and races of man in different epochs. If Adam and Eve were the only ones created at the outset, then were did Cain’s wife come from and Seth’s wife after Abel was murdered? The Holy Bible just did not bother with irrelevant details, it seems.
Man is made up of two basic aspects, earth (materiality) and breath (spirit), two aspects which originate from different sources since man is a product of consensus and approval, for God said: “let us create man in our image, according to our likeness; let them (not one man) have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that moves on the earth”. The God referred to here probably consulted with other Forces, inter-planetary Beings, Deities and Powers with equivalent status or with a part to play in the process of making man (not necessarily the Angels). The creator of the spirit of man or the Soul, in the opinion of the writer, is thus distinct from the maker of the body and other aspects of man, for man is a product of consensus. The process of creation also gives a clue as to the stages of the evolution of matter. As already indicated God created Light on the 1st day and on the 2nd day He created the firmament and the waters above and below the firmament, on the 3rd day the heavens, the earth/ dry land, which begins to yield fruits and herbs, while the seas were created, on the 4th day. He also created the Heavenly bodies and the planets and stars. On the 5th day the great sea creatures and every living thing that moved of which the waters abound and on the 6th day the living creatures of the earth after their kind sprang forth and finally man was also made. On the 7th day God rested. Another perspective would be to regard the 6 days of creation as 6 different epochs or dispensations of creation culminating in the emergence of Adam and the peoples of his era, with the demise and disappearance of the Atlantean Continent – the receding generation of men on the planet at the time.
Science on the other hand postulates a Big Bang Theory arising from Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. It is apparent that the earliest forms of life must have begun in the most minute elements in nature and the idea of man must have been a gradual process through the Paleolithic, the Neolithic and the Neanderthal man, incorporating the Homo Habilis, the Zinjanthropus, the Australopithecus, the Pithecanthropus Erectus, the Homo Neanderthalensis and the Homo Sapiens, each showing a gradual process of development physically, mentally and spiritually, as man became more conscious and appreciative of his surroundings and more aware of his spiritual destiny. A typical evolutionist would therefore envision the process leading to the manifestation of life in the following elementary manner: 1) the existence of the right primitive atmosphere 2) the concentration in the oceans of an organic soup of simple molecules necessary for life 3) from which result proteins and nucleotides/ or complex chemical compounds that 4) combine and acquire a membrane and thereafter 5) develop a genetic code and start making copies of themselves. According to them life must have been sparked off by some form of spontaneous generation, attributing life to a chance occurrence. While some scientists/ evolutionists contend that oxygen must have been present at the initial stage, others believe that the synthesis of compounds of biological interests only takes place under reducing conditions.
In further support of an evolutionary trend in man is Haeckel’s Biogenetic law on the developing human embryo, which states that: “ the human embryo lying in the foetus during the nine month gestation period, passes in a general way through a recapitulation of the ancestral stages of man’s evolution on this planet. The whole history of the Human Race is depicted in the developing baby as it forms in the womb of the mother”. According to this theory, the appearance of the pineal gland (an organ acclaimed to represent the position of the Third Eye) is followed up in the sixth week by the first evidence of individual characteristics confirming correspondingly that the development of early man, sexually, changed at this stage from what appeared to be Haemaphroditism to separate sexes. And this is supposed to have happened around the time of the 3rd root-race, approximately 21 million years ago.
The one clear area of misunderstanding is the absurd position of science that this whole specter of life was accidental and fortuitous, sometimes blindly denying the order and harmony in the apparent contradictions that are visible to the naked eyes. On certain occasions Paleontologists have stumbled on fossil finds showing no transition links between the various species, the sporadic generation of life apparently explaining in their view the sudden appearance and disappearance of specie types. However, when we look at the order and system in nature, the ebb and flow of the tidal waves, the movement of the stars and planets in an orderly sequential fashion, our essentially sophisticated nucleotides, the structural units of DNA containing the genetic code, the harmony of music and mathematics, the proportion in Geometry, the diastole and systole of the heart, the beauty of nature, the remarkable sense of direction exhibited by the migratory birds, we arrive at the unavoidable conclusion that there is some intelligent direction behind existence. When we observe the “bats that use sonar, Eels that make electricity, Gulls that desalt sea water, Wasps that make paper, Termites that install airconditioners, Octopuses that travel by jet propulsion, birds that do weaving or build apartment houses, Ants that do gardening or sewing or keep livestock, Fireflies with built-in flashlights”, we are amazed at the sheer ingenuity of creation.
I am compelled to share the views of Geddes MacGregor when he opined: “ in some religious circles today it is fashionable to set creation and evolution each in opposition to the other as though the one excluded the other. On the contrary...the creative process is evolutionary in the sense that it is the way God does things, and evolution is creationist in the sense that it is eternally governed by the heart and mind of God who is at the core of all things, being the eternal principle that like a magnet draws all things to itself. By recognizing the evolutionary character of all things, we can be led to perceive that that principle is both supra-personal and supra-impersonal and permeating all things to their uttermost edges, setting the kingdom of God indeed within us.”
Closely connected to the concepts of Evolution and Creation is the emergence of different races on the planet, some now extinct while others still Co-exist up till today. At every point in time one race is on the ascendancy and takes the position of the dominant race. The White race, which appears to presently occupy that position, has not always done so. Clearly, each race represents a particular consciousness and brings forward peculiar traits and distinctive physical features. These physical traits are not however mutually exclusive. The oldest race on the planet today, the black race is alleged to have come out of the Central/ East Africa area (perhaps Ethiopia and the Congo Basin) some hundreds of thousands of years ago and evolved a very sophisticated civilization whose final phase of glory was the ancient Egyptian culture. Apart from confirmatory fossil finds, the customs, traditional practices, myths and cultures of the Black peoples are clearly the most ancient available on the planet, set in the remote and misty past far in antiquity and before recorded history. Indeed recent accounts reveal that the very first settlers in the primitive parts of the planet were dark skinned Negroid peoples with predominantly curly hair and broad nose, especially in areas like Asia and the Far East, including India, China, Russia, Tibet, Vietnam, Mongolia and of cause Africa. Few vestiges of this can still be traced in some of these territories even up till today. Very recently a team of researchers in Northern Chad (Western Central Africa) unearthed the fossilized remains of a previously unknown Hominid and early precursor of man that lived probably some 6 to 7 Million years ago raising the hopes of a whole new genus and species of mankind, now officially referred to as the Sahelanthropus Tchadensis.
It is possible that the black race may have been preceded by a more ancient race or races of men who came forward far before the antediluvian period, traces of which appear no longer available at all, or perhaps could still be found when the ice caps finally shift and melt off around the regions of the Artic and Antarctic. They may have frozen into the ice during the great polar shifts – possibly the early inhabitants of Atlantis and Lemuria of yore. Other records state that the Biblical account of the Garden of Eden (Cordemia) and the four rivers which flowed out of its confines referred to the various races of men, the White, Yellow, Red and Black race, symbolically represented by the Cross of equivalent lengths, the four elements, the four sides of the square, or the four corners of the world.
The Black race was followed by the Yellow race specifically from Tibet, Asia, Mongolia and the Orient and then came the White race, who are classically referred to as Aryans. It is possible that a further race of men will yet inhabit the earth before the end of the times. According to science about 100,000 years ago, mankind could have been more or less physically the same. The man of that time being classified anthropologically as of the Neanderthal type. This period is said to be linked to the time of the recession of the North Polar cap of ice after the 3rd glacial descent. Man started exhibiting intelligence a little higher than that of an intelligent animal at this point. The two broad division of mankind’s legendary descent began due to the elaborate changes the earth was undergoing at the time. A lot of people are said to have migrated to the grasslands fringing the northern end of the Arabian Peninsula and the Western end of the Mediterranean Sea. From this end of mankind descended the various Semitic peoples and their various civilizations like the Babylonians, the Chaldeans and the forefathers of the Jews. The other division dispersed across Europe and Asia stretching from England across the steppes of Russia and down to Northern India. Traces of their relationship could be noticed from various similarities of words in Greek, German, Latin, English and Persian languages. Members of this northern group who finally settled in the regions around the east of the Caspian Sea call themselves Aryans. Part of this group moved Southeast-reaching India through the Punjab region while the other group moved along the region parallel with the Tigris River settling in a place known as Iran.
There are some pre-historians who believe that it would be incorrect to suppose that man descended exclusively from Apes. They are of the view that man has always been a distinct specie, perhaps bearing some similarities to the ape family in its early evolutionary stages. In support of this assertion they contend that man has always expressed a higher intelligence than the ordinary animals. Perhaps man is a product of extra-terrestrial genesis i.e. a crossbreeding of native earthlings and peoples from beyond the earth; “the angels of whom the bible speaks, the initiators who appear in virtually all mythologies” – man must have had superior ancestors. They draw our attention to the lost city of Atlantis (Kusha) and the continent of MU or Lemuria (Shalmali) as being realities of a mysterious era, not merely the figments of the imagination of spiritualists like Edgar Cayce or the foremost proponent-Plato. “In this sense the Atlanteans and Hyperboreans were our direct ancestors, the magicians of civilizations of electrical forces, controlled waves and nuclear energy. If they made disastrous discoveries then we have an explanation for the punishment of the deluge and the loss of the ‘earthly paradise’, and the chain of deteriorated but long-lived traditions that have come down to us. We also have an explanation for initiation, the vestiges of unknown civilizations that have so far left us perplexed, and the scientific inventions and ideas of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Hindus, Incas and the Mexicans”
Robbert Charroux in his book Lost Worlds makes reference to the possibility of successful heart transplants occurring over a hundred thousand years ago, about the time of the pithecanthropus. According to him, it would be funny and absurd to imagine a semi- apelike man that could barely make a flint tool performing the most delicate surgical operation on the human body. Instances of the vestiges of lost civilizations include: the Menhirs, Phalluses and Megaliths in France, Great Britain, Germany and Russia, Bolivia, the Mariana Islands, the Guanche Islands of the Canaries, the Senegal, Gambia and so on, all showing remarkable similarities. Other vestiges include the Egyptian Pyramids (especially the great Sphinx at Cheops, Giza- essentially a Negroid statue) constructed in alignment with the constellation of Orion, the Long man of Wilmington in Sussex (an outline of a man 250 feet long formed by an immense ditch) similar to the candlestick of the Andes and the Nazca lines, obviously dug by an ancient perhaps pre-Celtic civilization, the enormous blocks of stones forming the first wall of the Inca fortress of Sacsahuaman near Cuzco, the Machu Picchu in the Andes; the secret city of the Incas rediscovered in 1911, the Puerta del Sol said to represent some kind of Venusian Calendar and of cause the Giant heads found on Easter Island. Not to mention the sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects UFO’s in various parts of the world (suspected in certain quarters to be our regular visitors from Mars or Venus).
A few examples of likely visitations of extra-terrestrial beings or phenomena can be found in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. For instance is that passage of the Bible in the book of Exodus that refers to the descent of God on Mount Sinai. One recalls that Moses was the only one permitted to climb up to the top of the mountain, whilst members of the Aaronic Priesthood (the Levites) and the Children of Israel were to wait at the base of the mountain. We are told that the mountain was covered with smoke and the glory of God was like devouring fire on top of the mountain. This definitely was an unusual and interesting phenomenon and it was only natural for the Chroniclers of the stories in the Bible to place a limited interpretation on what they thought they saw, based on the level of understanding and enlightenment at the time. In the book of 2nd Kings the story of Elisha and the departure of his master Elijah into the clouds is recounted. “ And it came to pass, as they still went on and talked that, behold there appeared a chariot of fire and horses of fire and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirl-wind into heaven” Even the account of the Transfiguration and the Ascension of Jesus in the New Testament are almost identical to these preceding unusual occurrences normally attributed to divine or miraculous interventions by God or his angels.
Finally is the story in the Synoptic Gospels of the ‘three wise men’ from the East and the ‘Star of Bethlehem’. The book of Matthew puts it as follows: “…when they had heard the king, they departed; and lo, the star which they saw in the East went before them till it came and stood where the young child was”. With a little knowledge of Astronomy, the movement of the stars and the planets, it is not feasible for a star to leave its orbit without disastrous consequences. What exactly happened on that faithful day when Jesus Christ our Savior was born remains a mystery and only conjectures could be made. Throughout the entire Bible a few personages literally disappeared without a trace or at least we are not told what happened to their bodies after their earthly life e.g. Enoch, Melchizedech, Moses, Elijah and Jesus. Who were these personages and were exactly did they come from?
The golden thread that runs throughout the various myths and traditional folklore on cosmogony in virtually all tribes and ethnic groups all over the globe are just too real to be attributed to sheer coincidence. Most myths make reference to some form of link between human animals and ordinary animals. The founding fathers of most races/ tribes are reputed by folklore to have been half- man half- animal for reasons that do not readily lend themselves to an easy explanation. In Nigeria for instance, the indigenes of Kogi and Benue States according to a particular traditional version of their folklore are descended from a relationship between a lion and a human. The Ibos in their traditional mythologies give instances of tribes linking themselves in terms of origin to one specie of animal or the other, some to pythons or green snakes and others the fish. And of cause the story of the mermaid reappears in most tribes both indigenous and foreign. Some of the foreign tribes accept the dolphin –an extremely intelligent animal -as the ancestor of man. Science has for a while been studying this interesting sea creature that exhibits great empathy for the human species. The account of the deluge is found in practically all ancient folklore and legends suggesting some form of reality and confirmation for that particular occurrence. Even the concept of Ancestral worship that reappears in African, Caribbean, Asian and South American cultures and traditional religious practices allude to a very ancient art and to primordial archetypal forces that only survives in fragments and is much misunderstood today. Indeed a number of modern/ Judeo –Christian practices owe their origin to some of these so-called pagan practices as a few Christian Holy days like Christmas and Easter owe their origin to these ancient beliefs.
The Incan civilization of Mexico talks of their mother and originator Orejona, who was believed to have come from some form of oceanic planet of some kind. The original civiliser of man according to the Chaldean tradition was their god Oannes of whom Berossus wrote: “ he was a monster, half man and half fish, who came from the Erythrean sea”. On the other hand, the Greek and Roman divinity of Olympus, the goddess Venus was born of the foam of the sea. Other traditions talk of their founding fathers having come from the skies. According to Robbert Charroux, “in the Celtic tradition, the magician king, Bran is a traveler from the mysterious regions who goes westwards to the land of the beyond in a chariot that never touches the water…here then is a genealogy which combines the Celtic gods and the Phoenician gods, the planet Venus, mysterious flying machines, America and the Venusian gods of the Incas and Mayans, Virecocha and Quetzalcoatl, who set off eastward, across the ocean, that is in the direction of Europe and Africa…these similarities among the South American, Celtic, Phoenician and Assyro- Babylonian myths clearly indicate their common origin and the identity of their heroes”.
In Persian and Hindu mythology, Aryaman the ancestor of the whiteman or the Gwyon of the Celts was supposed to have come from the milkyway. In Assyrian and Babylonian mythology, their gods Baal Bel and Astarte-Ishtar are said to have come from the planet Venus. These find their counterparts among the Persians as the flying god Ahura Mazda and the Venusian goddess Anahyta. On the other hand the Egyptians believe that the first divine men must have come from the sky of Horus in flying machines. Among the Yoruba’s of Southern Nigeria on the West Coast of Africa, Oduduwa their founding father was believed to have come mysteriously from the sky.
The marriage of Science and Religion throughout recorded time has been controversial indeed and infact remains unsettled till the present day. In early medieval times one of the foremost areas of controversy involved the position of our planet in the grand scheme of things. While the Church/ Religion held the firm view that the sun and all the then known planets revolved round the earth, in other words held a geocentric view and that the earth was flat, science on the other hand supported a heliocentric view probably backed by Pythagorean scientific analysis of the cosmos that the earth actually revolved round the sun and not the other way round. Prominent proponents of the scientific position included Nicolaus Copernicus (1473 – 1543) whose analysis and delineation of the Cosmos appeared more accurate than those of his predecessor, Claudius Ptolemy; and Galileo Galilei (1564 – 1642) who carefully articulated the scientific position in his Dialogo published in 1630 for which he was severely persecuted by the church. In the same vein Charles Darwin’s propositions (supported by A.R. Wallace) on evolution contained in his Origin of Species, 1859 was violently opposed by Samuel Wilberforce then the Bishop of Oxford in June 1860. People like Archbishop James Ussher contended that creation took place around 4004 B.C and received the support of people like John Lightfoot and to a limited extent Sir Isaac Newton (1642 – 1727). Giordano Bruno (1548 – 1600) who greatly influenced Liebnitz and Spinoza and who was burnt at the stake for heresy proposed an evolutionary philosophy in the form of a progressive development of nature in his seminal work entitled: “ Spacio de la Bestia Trionfante” 1584.
Illustrious personalities who supported the evolutionary theory at varied levels of understanding included personages like Immanuel Kant in his General Natural History of the Heavens 1755 which dwelt on cosmic evolution; Pierre Simon, (Marquis de Laplace) in his Exposition du Systeme du Monde 1796, who is reputed to have been the very first to propose a nebula hypothesis. Others include the Scottish Lord Monboddo (1714 – 1799) in his Origin and Progress of Language 1773, Jean Baptiste de Monet (the Chevalier de Larmarck) 1744 – 1829, Georges Louis Leclerc (Comte de Buffon) 1707 – 1788, and Charles Darwin’s grandfather Erasmus (1731 – 1802). Earlier precursors include Greek philosophers like Anaximander (6th century B.C.E.), Plutarch (A.D. 46 – c.120), and St. Augustine (AD 354 – 430) under the influence of the Neoplatonist philosophers. American influence on the topic of evolution can be found in people like John Fiske (1842 – 1901), Lyman Abbot (1835 – 1922), James McCosh (1811 – 1894), Minot Judson Savage (1841 – 1918), and Henry Drummond (1851 – 1897).
Darwin’s theory was based on the principle of natural selection or the survival of the fittest (not necessarily based on strength but on adaptability) in the struggle for existence in which variation, heredity, adaptability and genetics combine in the evolutionary process. He however did not conclude that adaptability through natural selection necessarily implied a universal law of advancement or development of the species as such. As earlier identified, the theory also did not explain the random appearance and disappearance of species, mutation and quantum leaps except to admit that these were coincidental or were based on chance. This singular inadequacy makes the theory of evolution badly in need of something more transcendental and unmanifest. For example, Sir Fred Hoyle in dismissing the accidental and fortuitous occurrences in man’s development as unjustified, observes that human beings depend for their functioning on about 200,000 chains of amino acids arranged in a particular pattern. Although this view has most probably been improved upon based on available scientific knowledge, it only needs to be ventured that the order found in these bio-materials are such that they must have been the result of very intelligent design.
CONTINUED AT PART 2
(CONCLUSION)
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