PART ONE
THE OLD MODELS DON'T WORK

DARWINISM AND CREATIONISM UNDER FIRE
 

1 - Darwin's Demise

On the Futile Search for Missing Links

Will Hart

Charles Darwin was a keen observer of nature and an original thinker. He revolutionized biology.

Karl Marx was also an astute observer of human society and an original thinker. He revolutionized economic and political ideology. They were contemporary nineteenth-century giants who cast long shadows and subscribed to the theory of "dialectical materialism" - the viewpoint that matter is the sole subject of change and all change is the product of conflict arising from the internal contradictions inherent in all things.

And yet, as much appeal as dialectical materialism had to the intellectuals and working classes of certain countries, by the close of the last century it had failed to pass the test in the real world.

 

Charles Darwin

(PHOTOGRAPH BY BENJAMIN CUMMIN'GS)

Darwinism is beginning to show similar signs of strain and fatigue. It is not just creationists who are sounding the death knell.

Darwin was well aware of the weaknesses of his theory. He called the origin of flowering plants "an abominable mystery." That mystery remains unsolved to this day.

As scientists have searched the fossil record assiduously for more than one hundred years for the "missing link" between primitive nonflowering and flowering plants without luck, a host of other trouble spots have flared up. Darwin anticipated problems should there be an absence of transitional fossils (chemically formed duplications of living creatures).

At the time, he wrote:

"It is the most serious objection that can be urged against the theory."

However, he could not have predicted where additional structural cracks would appear and threaten the very foundation of his theory.

Why? Biochemistry was in an embryonic state in Darwin's day. It is doubtful that he could have imagined that the structure of DNA would be discovered in less than one hundred years from the publication of Origin of Species.

In a twist of fate, one of the first torpedoes to rip holes in the theory of evolution was unleashed by a biochemist. In Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, Michael Behe, a biology professor, points to a strange brew bubbling in the test tube.

He focuses on five phenomena: blood clotting, cilia, the human immune system, the transport of materials within cells, and the synthesis of nucleotides. He analyzes each phenomenon systemically and arrives at a single startling conclusion: These are systems that are so irreducibly complex that no gradual, step-by-step Darwinian route could have led to their creation.

The foundation of Darwin's theory is simple, perhaps even simplistic. Life on Earth has evolved through a series of biological changes as a consequence of random genetic mutations working in conjunction with natural selection. One species gradually changes over time into another.

And those species that adapt to changing environmental conditions are best suited to survive and propagate and the weaker die out, producing the most well-known principle of Darwinism - survival of the fittest.

The theory has been taught to children for generations. We have all learned that fish changed into amphibians, amphibians became reptiles, reptiles evolved into birds, and birds changed into animals. However, it is far easier to explain this to schoolchildren - with cute illustrations and pictures of a lineup of apes (beginning with those having slumped shoulders, transitioning to two that are finally standing upright) - than it is to prove.

Darwinism is the only scientific theory taught worldwide that has yet to be proved by the rigorous standards of science. Nevertheless, Darwinists claim that Darwinism is no longer a theory, but rather an established scientific fact. The problem is not a choice between biblical creation and evolution.

The issue to resolve boils down to a single question: Has Darwin's theory been proved by the rules of scientific evidence?

Darwin knew that the only way to verify the main tenets of the theory was to search the fossil record. That search has continued since his day. How many paleontologists, geologists, excavators, construction workers, oil- and water-well drillers, archeologists and anthropologists, students and amateur fossil hunters have been digging holes in the ground and discovering fossils from Darwin's day until today? Untold millions.

What evidence has the fossil record revealed concerning Darwin's transitional species?

The late Harvard biologist Stephen Jay Gould, the antithesis of a Bible-thumping creationist, acknowledged:

"All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are characteristically lacking."

Notice he didn't say that there is a dearth of fossils - just of the ones that are needed to substantiate Darwin's theory.

There are plenty of fossils of ancient forms and plenty of newer ones. For example, we find fossils of early and extinct primates, hominids, Neanderthals and Homo sapiens, but no fossils of the transition linking ape and man. We find a similar situation with Darwin's dreaded appearance of flowering plants, his Achilles' heel.

Water deposits in the ancient past have left millions of fossils in a vast geologic library. Why do we find representative non-flowering plants from three hundred million years ago and flowering plants from one hundred million years ago still alive today but no plants showing the gradual process of mutations that represent the intermediate species that (should) link the two?

There are no such plants living today. nor are they found in the fossil record. That is Darwin's cross.

This is a serious. even critical issue that needs deep and thorough analysis. In an interview about his penetrating critique, Facts of Life: Shattering the Myth of Darwinism, the science journalist Richard Milton describes what made him write the book:

"It was the absence of transitional fossils that first made me question Darwin's idea of gradual change. I realized. too. that the procedures used to date rocks were circular. Rocks are used to date fossils; fossils are used to date rocks. From here I began to think the unthinkable: Could Darwinism be scientifically flawed?"

Milton makes it clear that he does not support those who attack Darwin because they have a religious ax to grind:

"As a science journalist and writer with a lifelong passion for geology and paleontology -  and no religious beliefs to get in the way - I was in a unique position to investigate and report on the state of Darwin's theory in the 1990s." he said. "The result was unambiguous. Darwin doesn't work here any more."

According to Milton, who had been a firm Darwinist, when he began to rethink the theory, he became a regular visitor to Great Britain's prestigious Natural History Museum.

He put the best examples that Darwinists had gathered over the years under intense scrutiny. One by one they failed to pass the test. He realized that many scientists around the world had already arrived at the same conclusion. The emperor was as naked as an ape.

Why had no one gone public with papers critiquing the theory?

Darwin*$ exploratory ship, the Beagle,

beached for repairs in New Zealand

What trained, credentialed scientist earning a living through a university or government position wants to jeopardize a career and earn the disdain of colleagues in the process? Apparently none.

Rocking the boat is never popular. The HMS Beagle is still afloat and it appears to be buttressed by a Darwinist army that is every bit as dogmatic about its beliefs as are the creationists, who, Darwinists complain, have a religious, nonscientific agenda.

Scientists have dropped hints, however. During a college lecture in 1967, the world-renowned anthropologist Louis B. Leakey was asked about "the missing link."

He replied tersely,

"There is no one link missing - there are hundreds of links missing."

Gould eventually wrote a paper proposing a theory to try to explain the lack of transitional species and the sudden appearance of new ones. He called this theory "punctuated equilibrium."

The public is not generally well informed about the scientific problems associated with Darwin's theory of evolution. And while the average person is aware that there is a war going on between creationists and evolutionists. that is seen as a rear-guard action. an old battle between science and religion over matters that the Scopes trial settled more than a generation ago.

And there is some consternation over "the missing link" between apes and man.

The true believers among Darwinists have long been puzzled by the lack of transitional fossils. The reasoning goes something like this: They must be out there hidden in the record somewhere. How do we know this? Darwin's theory demands it! So the search goes on.

But just how long a time and how many expeditions and how many years of research are needed before they finally admit that there must a good reason that the transitional fossils are not there?

Critics contend that the reason for the lack of transitional fossils is simple: Darwin's theory fails to meet the rigorous scientific criteria for proof because it is fatally flawed. The main tenets did not predict what has proved to be the outcome of more than a hundred years of research: missing links instead of transitional species.

Darwin knew the flak would come should the fossil record not contain the necessary transitional species.

Geneticists have long known that the vast majority of mutations are either neutral or negative. In other words. mutations are usually mistakes. failures of the DNA to accurately copy information. It would appear that this is not a very reliable primary mechanism and it needs to be. because natural selection is obviously not a dynamic force that could drive the kinds of changes that evolutionists attribute to the theory.

Natural selection operates more like a control mechanism. a feedback system that weeds out poor adaptations and selects successful ones.

The problem with mutation being the driving force is several-fold. As Behe pointed out in his book. life within a cell is just too complex to be the outcome of random mutations. But Darwin didn't have the kind of lab technology that molecular biologists today have at their disposal. Darwin was working with species. not the structure of cells. mitochondria. and DNA. But the mutation theory doesn't work well on other levels. either.

Now we must return to the problem of the sudden appearance of flowering plants. There is a high degree of organization in flowers. Most flowers are specifically designed to accommodate bees and other pollinators. Which came first. the flower or the bee?

We'll get to that momentarily; the first question is: How did the alleged primitive non-flowering plant, which had for eons relied on asexual reproduction, suddenly grow the structures required for sexual reproduction?

According to Darwin's theory. it happened when a gymnosperm mutated and then changed over time into a flowering plant. Is that possible? Let's keep a few facts in mind: In flowering plants. the transfer of pollen from the male anther to the female stigma must occur before seed plants can reproduce sexually.

The mutation had to start with one plant, somewhere. at some point. There were no insects or animals specifically adapted to pollinate flowers because there were no flowers prior to that time.

This is where the idea of combining mutation, natural selection, and gradualism breaks down. When faced with the dilemma of advanced organization and the leap from asexual reproduction to sexual reproduction, Darwinists will say that evolution simply operates too slowly for the links to be apparent. That is a non sequitur. If it acts slowly, then there should be a superabundance of fossils demonstrating the existence of the missing links.

Natural selection would not select a gymnosperm (let's say a fern) that suddenly mutated a new structure that required an enormous amount of the plant's energy but had no purpose. In other words, flowerless plants could not have gradually grown the flower parts in a piecemeal fashion over tens of millions of years until a fully functional flower head was formed.

That would go against Darwin's own law of natural selection, the survival of the fittest.

The more you isolate the logical steps that had to occur for Darwin's theory to be correct, the more trouble you get into.

How would a newly evolved flower propagate without other flowers nearby? Why do we find numerous examples of gymnosperms and angiosperms in the fossil record but no transitional species to demonstrate how mutation and natural selection operated to create flowers?

If Darwinism cannot explain the mechanisms responsible for speciation and how life on this planet evolves, what can? Sir Francis Crick, the codiscover of DNA's double helix structure, proposed the concept of "panspermia," the idea that life was brought to Earth by an advanced civilization from another planet. It is obvious that Crick was not sold on Darwinism.

Behe ends his book with an argument for integrating a "theory of intelligent design" into mainstream biology.

Other biologists, like Lynn Margulis, think that Darwinism leans too heavily on the idea that competition is the main, driving force behind survival. She points out that cooperation is as readily observed and as important, perhaps more important.

Nature contains many examples of symbiosis: Flowers need bees and vice versa. Another example is the relationship between mycorrhizal fungi and forest trees. There are bacteria that fix nitrogen for plants. The list goes on.

What is a human body but a collection of different kinds of cells and viruses working together to create a complex organism?

The old paradigm is starting to give way to new thinking and new models such as intelligent design and extraterrestrial intervention. Marx and Freud were nineteenth-century pioneers who blazed trails, but so was Newton.

Their new paradigms inspired new perspectives and they solved old problems. Still, they had their limits. Their theories were mechanistic and materialistic. Newton's decline came with the introduction of Einstein's theory of relativity. The new paradigm of the laws of physics fit the facts and

answered more questions. and that meant it had greater utility. Is Darwin next?

Until a more comprehensive theory of how life originated, changed, and continues to evolve emerges, as Richard Milton put it.

"Darwin doesn't work here anymore."

2 - Evolution vs. Creation

Is the Debate for Real?

David Lewis

Genesis. the biblical story of creation. tells us that God created the universe in six days. He made Adam.

the first man. the Bible tells us. from the dust of the earth. an event many Christians believe took place in the Garden of Eden six thousand years ago. Scientists and religious scholars call this scenario "creationism."

In 1859. Charles Darwin came up with another idea. He said man's existence could be explained within the context of material creation alone. through evolution and natural selection - that is. "the survival of the fittest."

According to Darwin. man evolved from the apes. an idea distinctly at odds with the biblical scenario.
 

Adam and Eve,

by Raphael

The debate over human origins has raged ever since. It surfaced recently in Abbotsford, British Columbia, where a school board dominated by Christians requires the teaching of "intelligent design," a form of creationism, along with the theory of evolution.

Reports Maclean's magazine.

"The issue they are debating is a large one... arguably the biggest question of them all: how did life begin... with a Big Bang or a Big Being?"

Critics of the Abbotsford policy fear the school board would place the Book of Genesis on a par with Darwin's Origin of Species.

They accuse the board of imposing their religious beliefs on students. while some Christians believe that teaching Darwinism amounts to the same thing. the imposition of a de facto religious belief system.

Recent studies show. however. that adherents to both sides of this wrangle would do well to rethink their positions. A reexamination of old and new research reveals that the creationism-versus-Darwinism debate may be missing the mark entirely.

Richard Thompson and Michael Cremo, coauthors of Forbidden Archeology (and its condensed version, The Hidden History of the Human Race), have assembled a body of evidence that testifies to the existence of modern man millions of years before his supposed emergence from southern Africa 100.000 years ago.

 

Evolution
(AftT ErV TOM Mll.T.KR)

On "The Mysterious Origins of Man," an NBC documentary that aired in February of 1996.

Thompson and Cremo make their case along with other experts. The evidence they reveal suggests man neither evolved from apes nor rose from the dust of the earth just four thousand years before the time of Christ. The implications are profound and may force a reevaluation of the entire issue of human origins.

Narrated by Charlton Heston and drawing on evidence largely ignored by the scientific establishment. "The Mysterious Origins of Man" steps outside the usual Bible-versus-Darwin debate. At issue are human footprints discovered in Texas. side by side with dinosaur tracks; stone tools dating back fifty-five million years; sophisticated maps of unknown antiquity; and evidence of advanced civilization in prehistory.

Based on research assembled as Darwin began to dominate scientific thought at the turn of the nineteenth century. and also upon more recent archeological discoveries.

"The Mysterious Origins of Man" exposes a "knowledge filter" within the scientific establishment. a bias that favors accepted dogma while rejecting evidence that does not support conventional theory.

As a result. fossil evidence indicating that man is far more ancient than conventional theory allows. and that he did not evolve from apes. has gathered dust for over a century. It has been suppressed. in effect. because it conflicts with an entrenched belief system. the NBC documentary reveals. Moreover. scientists who challenge accepted dogma can find themselves not only on the outside of the debate. but also unemployed.

Thompson. the science investigator Richard Milton. and other experts trace the problem to "speculative leaps" made by researchers too eager to find the missing link in human evolution. the long-sought-after ancestor of both man and apes.

"It seems any missing link will do," Milton says, regarding the 120-year effort to prove Darwin's theory.

In the case of the so-called pithecanthropus ape-man (aka Java Man, Homo erectus), the anthropologist Eugene Dubois found, in Indonesia, a human thighbone and the skullcap of an ape separated by a distance of forty feet.

The year was 1891. He pieced the two together, creating the famous Java Man. But many experts say the thighbone and skullcap are unrelated. Shortly before his death, Dubois himself said the skullcap belonged to a large monkey and the thighbone to a man. Yet Java Man remains to this day, to many, evidence of man's descent from the apes, having been featured as such in New York's Museum of Natural History until 1984.

In the case of Piltdown Man, another missing link wannabe, this one "discovered" in England in 1910, the find proved to be a sophisticated fraud perpetrated, in all likelihood, by overly zealous Darwinists. And even the crown jewel of alleged human ancestral fossils, the famous "Lucy," found in Ethiopia in 1974, is indistinguishable from a monkey or an extinct ape, according to many anthropologists.

The physical anthropologist Charles Oxnard and other scientists have drawn a picture of human evolution that is radically at odds with the conventional theory, a fact usually ignored by universities and natural history museums.

Oxnard placed the genus Homo, to which man belongs, in a far more ancient time period than standard evolutionary theory allows, bringing into question the underpinnings of Darwin's theory.

As reported in Cremo and Thompson's Forbidden Archeology, Oxnard says,

"The conventional notion of human evolution must now be heavily modified or even rejected... new concepts must be explored."

What pains other opponents of standard evolutionary theory is its inability to account for how new species and features originate - the supposition that the innumerable aspects of biological life, down to the pores in human skin, and a beetle's legs, and the protective pads on a camel's knees, came about accidentally through natural selection.

The notion of intent, or inherent purpose, within creation does not fit in to the Darwinian version of reality.

Life, to a Darwinist, can exist only in the context of absolute materialism: a series of accidental events and chemical reactions that are responsible for everything in the universe.

Even common sense seems to take a backseat to scientific dogma. In the case of the human brain, for instance, its advanced capacities (the ability to perform calculus, play the violin, even consciousness itself) cannot be explained by the "survival of the fittest" doctrine alone.
 

WHAT ABOUT THE BIBLE AND CREATIONISM?
The creationist argument derives from orthodox religious doctrine, rejecting allegorical and metaphorical interpretations of the Book of Genesis.

It is a belief system many Christians do not accept literally and which the Bible itself may not support. It also lacks scientific support, in that fossil records reveal that man has existed on Earth for far longer than six thousand years.

The six days of creation scenario, moreover, taken literally, bears no resemblance to the time it took for the universe to be born.

The more commonsense notion of intelligent design (creationism without the dogma) strikes a more palatable note, even among some scientists who find it hard to deny that an inherent intelligence exists within the universe.

The problem with creationism lies, then, not in the idea of intelligent design, but in its dogmatic and inflexible interpretations of the Bible with regard to the debate over human origins.

NEW GROUND OR ANCIENT WISDOM?
Evidence for extremely ancient human origins will lead many into foreign territory, terrain some would rather avoid.

But to others, the standard creationism versus evolution debate was wanting all along. Once looked upon with raised eyebrows, and still facing dogged opposition, the "catastrophist" point of view has made headway of late in the scientific community. This theory holds that sudden disruptions in the continuity of planetary life have taken place, altering the course of evolution. ("Gradualism," on the other hand, a Darwinist tenet that assumes all life evolved slowly and without interruption, has fallen out of favor in some circles.)

Indeed, it has become clear that all sorts of catastrophes have taken place on the globe and in the universe at large. A well-known catastrophist theory proposes that the extinction of the dinosaurs resulted from a huge meteor crashing into the planet with the force of thousands of hydrogen bombs. Other catastrophic theories have to do with drastic changes in climate, seismic upheavals and fluctuations, and even reversals in Earth's magnetic field.

The catastrophism versus gradualism debate, while revealing how little science knows for certain about prehistory, also exposes a distinct prejudice within the scientific community - an antipathy, dating to the time of Darwin, toward anything remotely resembling biblical catastrophes such as the Great Flood, even if the connection has to do only with sudden rather than gradual changes in the course of evolution.

Catastrophism, though, avails another scenario regarding human origins and prehistory.

As presented in Graham Hancock's Fingerprints of the Gods - The Evidence of Earth's Lost Civilization and in Rand and Rose Flem-Ath's When the Sky Fell: In Search of Atlantis, a sudden, catastrophic shifting of the earth's lithosphere, called "crustal displacement," may have occurred at some time in the past.

Lent credibility by Albert Einstein, the theory suggests that the earth's outer crust may have suddenly (not gradually, as in continental drift) shifted on the surface of the globe, causing continents to slide into radically different positions.

Drawing on the work of Charles Hapgood, who developed the theory with Einstein's assistance, the Flem-Aths explain that this may be the reason carcasses of hundreds of woolly mammoths, rhinos, and other ancient mammals were found flash-frozen in a "zone of death" across Siberia and northern Canada.

Remarkably, the stomachs of these mammals contained warm-weather plants, the implication being that the very ground upon which the animals grazed suddenly shifted from a temperate to an arctic climate. Hapgood and Einstein theorized that a sudden shifting and freezing of the continent of Antarctica, which may have been situated two thousand miles farther north than it is now, could have occurred as a result of crustal displacement.

Ancient maps accurately depicting Antarctica before it was covered in ice also support the idea that the continent was situated in a temperate climate in recent prehistory.

Copied from source maps of unknown antiquity, the Piri Ri'is, Oronteus Finaeus, and Mercator maps derive, Graham Hancock and the Flem-Aths propose, from some prehistoric society with the capacity to calculate accurately longitude and chart coastlines, an accomplishment that did not take place in recorded history until the eighteenth century.

As outlined in the Flem-Aths' and Hancock's books, the maps, along with a body of evidence, testify

to the existence of a sophisticated prehistoric civilization. Charlton Heston. narrating NBC's "The Mysterious Origins of Man." likens this scenario to Plato's description of the lost continent of Atlantis.
 

LOST CIVILIZATIONS. THE REAL MISSING LINK?
Examining stonework at ancient cites in Bolivia, Peru, and Egypt, Hancock argues that these megalithic marvels could not have risen from the dust of nomadic hunter-gatherers, which is what conventional science would have us believe.

The magnificent city of Tiahuanaco, Bolivia, said by the Bolivian scholar Arthur Poznansky to date to 15.000 B.C.E.. emerges as a case in point. Precision stone cuttings performed on immense blocks at Tiahuanaco. and at the other sites. to tolerances of one fiftieth of an inch. and then the transporting of these blocks over long distances. reveal technical capabilities that match or surpass those of modern engineers.

How supposedly primitive people transported these megaliths to the summit of Machu Picchu in Peru, for instance. remains a great mystery and is a feat that conventional science is at a loss to explain.

Hancock asserts that even if we accept the later dates most archeologists ascribe to these structures, the knowledge and technical abilities of the builders would had to have been the product of a civilization that evolved over a long period of time, pushing the appearance of civilized man to the predawn of recorded history.

"My view," Hancock says, "is that we are looking at a common influence that touched all of these places. long before recorded history. a remote third-party civilization yet to be identified by historians."

A wide range of natural evidence and recorded human experience points to the existence of such a civilization.

Etymology. the study of word origins. postulates that a prehistoric Indo-European language must have existed to account for the deep similarities in the world's languages. Could this have been the language of Hancock's prehistoric civilization?

Hamlet's Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge and Its Transmission through Myth, written by M.I.T. professor of science Giorgio de Santillana and University of Frankfurt professor of science Hertha von Dechend. is a study of how ancient myths depict the procession of the equinoxes. As such. it weighs in on this common-language issue also. testifying to the existence of advanced knowledge proliferated among prehistoric peoples.

Discussing myths that originate in the mists of antiquity. and the numerical values and symbology recorded therein. Santillana and von Dechend reveal that the ancients of many cultures shared a sophisticated knowledge of celestial mechanics. knowledge that has been matched only recently. with the help of satellites and computers.

The proliferation of closely related biological species on continents separated by vast oceans. a phenomenon that puzzles Darwinists. can also be explained by the existence of an advanced. seafaring civilization in prehistory. An entire body of evidence. in fact. supports man and civilization having existed at a far earlier date than orthodox science or religion concedes is the case.

Could the existence. then. of such a civilization be the real missing link in human history?
 

WHY LIMIT THE DEBATE TO WESTERN MODELS?
The conventional debate over our origins. as we find it characterized in the major media. ignores concepts of human and cosmic origins that are shared by a large portion of the world's population: those of the mystic East.

Einstein himself entertained such ideas because they supported his belief in a universal intelligence. More recently. the physicist and Nobel laureate Brian Josephson and others have drawn parallels between Eastern mysticism and modern physics.

Fritjof Capra, in The Tao of Physics, harmonizes Vedic, Buddhist, and Taoist philosophy with the subtleties of quantum theory.

The Vedas. in fact. present a scenario similar to the expanding and contracting universe of modern physics. the Great In breath and Out breath of creation. the projection of omnipresent consciousness. Brahman. the essence of which remains intrinsic to all things as creation evolves. Taoism. on the other hand. offers an understanding of conscious reality that closely resembles Heisenberg's "uncertainty principle." wherein perspective. or consciousness. shapes objective reality.

To Einstein. especially in his later years. the idea of consciousness-based reality - the awareness of a universal. conscious presence inseparable from identity and creation - became naturally apparent. as it does now to others in the fields of physics. philosophy. and religion.

"As I grow older." Einstein said. "the identification with the here and now [his famous space-time] is slowly lost. One feels dissolved. merged into nature."

The greatest minds. then. of our time and of the greatest antiquity reject Darwin's often unstated premise. his belief in absolute materialism. which holds that all life evolved from primitive matter. accidentally. without purpose or design.

At the same time. consciousness-based creation offers an alternative to strict biblical interpretations and the concept of an anthropomorphic creator separate from man and nature.

Establishment science. though. has had a hands-off approach to consciousness. never daring to explore what. by definition. cannot be explained by matter-based beliefs about the origins of life.

An article by David Chalmers. in the December 1995 issue of Scientific American, "The Puzzle of Conscious Experience." emphasizes the point.

"For many years." Chalmers says. "consciousness was shunned by researchers... The prevailing view was that science. which depends on objectivity. could not accommodate something as subjective as consciousness."

Chalmers goes on to say that neuroscientists. psychologists. and philosophers are only recently beginning to reject the idea that consciousness cannot be studied.

He proposes. while insisting that consciousness is materially based. that,

"[it] might be explained by a new kind of theory . . . [that] will probably involve new fundamental laws [with] startling consequences for our view of the universe and of ourselves."

The eminent physicist Steven Weinberg, in his book Dreams of a Final Theory, puts it another way.

He says the goal of physics is to develop a "theory of everything" that will tell us all there is to know about the universe - a law or principle from which the universe derives. So stating, Weinberg exposes the limitations of scientific materialism, while at the same time trying to transcend it, as he butts up against an Absolute, a Logos, if you will, that cannot exist within the context of matter-based creation.

The real problem, he admits, is consciousness, because it is beyond what could have derived from material processes alone.

Darwinism, therefore, which depends upon the assumption that all existence is matter-based, cannot account for the most human characteristic of all, consciousness, which cannot derive from the process of natural selection in a random, mechanistic creation - the capacity of the human mind being far beyond what is necessary for mere survival. And strict creationism, when pitted against a Darwinism that ignores the origin of consciousness along with other crucial factors, appears to be merely a foil that Darwinists use to make themselves look good.

To understand human origins, then, and to develop a "theory of everything," a true scientist must not only evaluate the tangible evidence presented in Forbidden Archeology and in Hancock's Fingerprints of the Gods, he also must study consciousness, without which he neglects the most basic capacity of human beings - the ability to think creatively. He would have to experiment in the internal, subjective world, delving into what the scientific establishment considers a forbidden realm.

He would have to devote himself, independent of any dogma, to the essence of his own conscious existence, as well as to the study of material creation. Like Einstein, he would see this pursuit as the essential goal of both science and religion, the search for knowledge in its purest sense, or sciere in the Latin, from which the word science derives.

By so doing, science might arrive at a theory of everything.
 

3 - Exposing a Scientific Cover-Up

Forbidden Archeology Coauthor Michael Cremo Talks about the "Knowledge Filter" and Other Means for Cooking the Academic Books
J. Douglas Kenyon
 

In 1966. respected archeologist Virginia Steen-McIntyre and her associates on a U.S. Geological Survey team. working under a grant from the National Science Foundation. were called upon to date a pair of remarkable archeological sites in Mexico.

Virginia Steen-McIntyre

Sophisticated stone tools rivaling the best work of Cro-Magnon man in Europe had been discovered at Hueyatlaco, while somewhat cruder implements had been turned up at nearby El Horno.

The sites. it was conjectured. were very ancient. perhaps as old as 20.000 years. which. according to prevailing theories. would place them very close to the dawn of human habitation in the Americas.

Steen-McIntyre. knowing that if such antiquity could indeed be authenticated her career would be made. set about an exhaustive series of tests. Using four different but well-accepted dating methods. including uranium series and fission track. she determined to get it right. Nevertheless. when the results came in. the original estimates proved to be way off. Way under, as it turned out.

The actual age of the sites was conclusively demonstrated to be more like a quarter of a million years!

As we might expect. some controversy ensued. Steen-McIntyre's date not only challenged accepted chronologies for human presence in the region. but also contradicted established notions of how long modern humans could have been anywhere on Earth.

Nevertheless. the massive reexamination of orthodox theory and the wholesale rewriting of textbooks that one might logically have expected did not ensue. What did follow was the public ridicule of Steen-McIntyre's work and the vilification of her character. She has not been able to find work in her field since.

More than a century earlier. following the discovery of gold in California's Table Mountain and the subsequent digging of thousands of feet of mining shafts. miners began to bring up hundreds of stone artifacts and even human fossils.

Despite their origins in geological strata documented at nine to fifty-five million years in age, California state geologist J. D. Whitney was able subsequently to authenticate many of the finds and to produce an extensive report. The implications of Whitney's evidence have never been properly answered or explained by the scientific establishment, yet the entire episode has been virtually ignored and references to it have vanished from the textbooks.

For decades, miners in South Africa have been turning up - from strata nearly three billion years in age - hundreds of small metallic spheres with encircling parallel grooves. Thus far, the scientific community has failed to take note.

Among scores of such cases cited in Richard Thompson and Michael Cremo's Forbidden Archeology (and in its condensed version, Hidden History of the Human Race), it is clear that these three examples are by no means uncommon.

Suggesting nothing less than a "massive cover-up," Cremo and Thompson believe that when it comes to explaining the origins of the human race on Earth, academic science has cooked the books.

Though the public may believe that all the real evidence supports the mainstream theory of evolution  - with its familiar timetable for human development (i.e., Homo sapiens of the modern type go back only about 100,000 years) - Cremo and Thompson demonstrate that, to the contrary, a virtual mountain of evidence produced by reputable scientists applying standards just as exacting, if not more so, than those of the establishment has been not only ignored but, in many cases, actually suppressed.

In every area of research, from paleontology to anthropology and archeology, that which is presented to the public as established and irrefutable fact is indeed nothing more, says Cremo,

"than a consensus arrived at by powerful groups of people."
 

Michael Cremo

Is that consensus justified by the evidence? Cremo and Thompson say no.

Carefully citing all available documentation, the authors produce case after case of contradictory research that has been conducted in the last two centuries. The authors describe astonishing discoveries made, and then go on to discuss the controversies that ensued from those discoveries and the suppression of evidence that invariably followed.

Typical is the case of George Carter, who claimed to have found, at an excavation in San Diego, California, hearths and crude stone tools at levels corresponding to the last interglacial period, some 80,000-90,000 years ago.

Even though Carter's work was endorsed by some experts such as the lithic scholar John Witthoft, the establishment scoffed. San Diego State University refused to even look at the evidence in its own backyard and Harvard University publicly defamed Carter in a course entitled "Fantastic Archeology."

What emerges is a picture of an arrogant and bigoted academic elite interested more in the preservation of its own prerogatives and authority than the truth.

Needless to say, the weighty (952-page) volume, Forbidden Archeology, has caused more than a little stir. The establishment, as one might expect, is outraged, but it is having a difficult time ignoring the book.

The anthropologist Richard Leakey wrote,

"Your book is pure humbug and does not deserve to be taken seriously by anyone but a fool."

Richard Leakey

Nevertheless, many prestigious scientific publications, including The American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Geo Archeology, and the British Journal for the History of Science, have deigned to review the book.

While generally critical of its arguments, they have conceded, although grudgingly, that Forbidden Archeology is well written and well researched, and some indeed recognize a significant challenge to the prevailing theories.

As William Howells wrote in Physical Anthropologist,

"To have modern human beings... appearing a great deal earlier, in fact at a time when even simple primates did not exist as possible ancestors, would be devastating, not only to the accepted pattern, it would be devastating to the whole theory of evolution, which has been pretty robust up until now."

Yet despite its considerable challenge to the evolutionary edifice, Forbidden Archeology chooses not to itself with the familiar creationist point of view, nor to attempt an alternative theory of its own.

The task of presenting his own complex theory - which seeks, Cremo says, to avoid the "false choice" between evolution and creationism usually presented in the media - Cremo has undertaken in another book, entitled Human Devolution.

On the question of human origins, he insists,

"We really do have to go back to the drawing board."

As the author told Atlantis Rising recently:

'"Forbidden Archeology' suggests the real need for an alternative explanation, a new synthesis. In Human Devolution, I've gone into that in detail. It's got elements of the Darwinian idea, and elements of the ancient astronaut theory, and elements of the creationist nature, but it's much more complex.

 

I think we've become accustomed to overly simplistic pictures of human origins, whereas the reality is a little more complicated than any advocates of the current ideas are prepared to admit.”

Time line of anomalous artifacts

Both Cremo and Thompson are members of the Bhaktivedanta Institute - the Science Studies Branch of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.

Cremo and Thompson started their project with the goal of finding evidence to corroborate the ancient Sanskrit writings of India. which relate episodes of human history going back millions of years.

"So we thought," says Cremo, "if there's any truth to those ancient writings. there should be some physical evidence to back it up. but we really didn't find it in the current textbooks."

They didn't stop there, though.

Over the next eight years. Cremo and Thompson investigated the entire history of archeology and anthropology. delving into everything that has been discovered. not just what has been reported in textbooks.

What they found was a revelation.

"I thought there might be a few little things that have been swept under the rug," said Cremo, "but what I found was truly amazing. There's actually a massive amount of evidence that's been suppressed."

Cremo and Thompson determined to produce a book of irrefutable archeological facts.

"The standard used." says Cremo. "[meant] the site had to be identifiable. there had to be good geological evidence on the age of the site. and there had to be some reporting about it. in most cases in the scientific literature."

The quality and quantity of the evidence - they hoped - would compel serious examination by professionals in the field. as well as by students and the general public.

Few would deny that they have succeeded in spectacular fashion. Much in demand in alternative science circles. the authors have also found a sympathetic audience among the self-termed sociologists of scientific knowledge. who are very aware of the failure of modern scientific method to present a truly objective picture of reality.

The problem. Cremo believes. is both misfeasance and malfeasance.

"You can find many cases where it's just an automatic process. It's just human nature that a person will tend to reject things that don't fit in with his particular worldview." he said.

He cites the example of a young paleontologist and expert on ancient whalebones at the Museum of Natural History in San Diego.

When asked if he ever saw signs of human marks on any of the bones. the scientist remarked.

"I tend to stay away from anything that has to do with humans because it's just too controversial."

Cremo sees the response as an innocent one from someone interested in protecting his career. In other areas, though, he perceives something much more vicious, as in the case of Virginia Steen-McIntyre.

"What she found was that she wasn't able to get her report published. She lost the teaching position at the university. She was labeled a publicity seeker and a maverick in her profession. And she really hasn't been able to work as a professional geologist since then."

In other examples Cremo finds even broader signs of deliberate malfeasance.

He mentions the activities of the Rockefeller Foundation, which funded Davidson Black's research at Zhoukoudian, in China. Correspondence between Black and his superiors with the foundation shows that research and archeology were part of a far larger biological research project.

The following is a quote from that correspondence:

"...thus we may gain information about our behavior of the sort that can lead to wide and beneficial control."

In other words, this research was being funded with the specific goal of control. "Control by whom?" Cremo wants to know.

The motive to manipulate is not so difficult to understand.

"There's a lot of social power connected with explaining who we are and what we are," Cremo says.

 

"Somebody once said 'Knowledge is power.' You could also say 'Power is knowledge.' Some people have particular power and prestige that enables them to dictate the agenda of our society. I think it's not surprising that they are resistant to any change."

Cremo agrees that scientists today have become a virtual priest class, exercising many of the rights and prerogatives that their forebears in the industrial-scientific revolution sought to wrest from an entrenched religious establishment.

"They set the tone and the direction for our civilization on a worldwide basis," he says.

 

"If you want to know something today, you usually don't go to a priest or a spiritually inclined person, you go to one of these people because they've convinced us that our world is a very mechanistic place, and everything can be explained mechanically by the laws of physics and chemistry, which are currently accepted by the establishment."

To Cremo, it seems the scientists have usurped the keys of the kingdom and then failed to live up to their promises.

"In many ways the environmental crisis and the political crisis and the crisis in values is their doing," he says.

 

"And I think many people are becoming aware that [the scientists] really haven't been able to deliver the kingdom to which they claimed to have the keys. I think many people are starting to see that the worldview they are presenting just doesn't account for everything in human experience."

For Cremo, we are all part of a cosmic hierarchy of beings, a view for which he finds corroboration in world mythologies:

"If you look at all of those traditions, when they talk about origins they don't talk about them as something that occurs just on this planet. There are extraterrestrial contacts with gods, demigods, goddesses, angels."

And he believes there may be parallels in the modern UFO phenomenon.

The failure of modern science to satisfactorily deal with UFOs, extrasensory perception, and the paranormal provides one of the principle charges against it.

"I would have to say that the evidence of such today is very strong," he argues.

 

"It's very difficult to ignore. It's not something that you can just sweep away. If you were to reject all of the evidence for UFOs, abductions, and other kinds of contacts, coming from so many reputable sources, it seems we have to give up accepting any kind of human testimony whatsoever."

One area where orthodoxy has been frequently challenged is in the notion of sudden change brought about by enormous cataclysms, versus the "gradualism" usually conceived of by evolutionists.

Even though it has become fashionable to talk of such events. they have been relegated to the very distant past. supposedly before the appearance of man. Yet some individuals. like Immanuel Velikovsky. have argued that many such events have occurred in our past and induced a kind of planetary amnesia from which we still suffer today.

That such catastrophic episodes have occurred and that humanity has suffered from some great forgettings Cremo agrees:

"I think there is a kind of amnesia that. when we encounter the actual records of catastrophes. makes us think. oh well. this is just mythology. In other words. I think some knowledge of these catastrophes does survive in ancient writings and cultures and through oral traditions.

 

But because of what you might call some social amnesia. as we encounter those things we are not able to accept them as truth. I also think there's a deliberate attempt on the part of those who are now in control of the world's intellectual life to make us disbelieve and forget the paranormal and related phenomena.

 

I think there's a definite attempt to keep us in a state of forgetfulness about these things."

It's all part of the politics of ideas.

Says Cremo.

"It's been a struggle that's been going on thousands and thousands of years. and it's still going on."

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