Protohistory Genesis 1-11
Lecture Items to Remember:
ALIENATION
ARARAT
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN
ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE
BLACK SEA
BRANDEN CARTER
CARL SAGAN
CATHOLIC TEACHING AND EVOLUTION
DECREATION STORIES
ENOCH
FRED HOYLE
MIRCEA ELIADE
NEBUCHADNEZZAR
PARADIGM
PARADIGM SHIFT
PRESUMPTION
PROTOHISTORY
QUANTITATIVE VS QUALITATIVE USE OF NUMBERS
ROBERT JASTROW
ROBERT BALLARD
SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM
SECULARISM
SIR LEONARD WOOLLEY
THE MARK OF CAIN
UR
ZIGGURAT
PROTOHISTORY BACKGROUND: "The Power of a Paradigm"
The social and historical Context helps explain the revolutionary importance and depth of God's creation message. It contradicts long held paradigms regarding the nature of "god," creation itself, and humanity's relationship to "god(s)."In the ancient world, Israel was surrounded by societies whose gods were virtually innumerable. Each aspect of nature, each little region had a presiding deity, from the gods of the Nile in Egypt to those of the Fertile Crescent. The gods of these myths were very capricious and unforgiving. Human fear imagined them powerful and distant - gods and goddesses who held the fate of a human life in their unpredictable hands. Though divine, they were as prone to the dangerous sentiments of any self centered, human potentate. Anger, hatred, lust, envy and cruelty were not beneath them. In this paradigm, human beings were weak, expendable pawns, caught up in the web of dangerous cosmic forces which were spun by the unpredictable contests of an aloof group of gods. A simple change in the circumstance of one of them could doom an entire family or nation as we saw exemplified in our viewing of "Jason and the Argonauts."
Substantial historical and archaeological evidence reveals that this paradigm was so controlling that it led to the most desperate of acts - parents sacrificing their own children to appease an imaginary god whose whims held their nation in a self induced state of intimidation. Men created gods and goddesses demanding death, who cheapened the sublime gift of a human life. The sad record of this stretches across regions, oceans and continents in a trail of sacrificial bones from the shrines of the Aztecs and Incas in the Americas to the "high places" of the Canaanites,- a silent witness to the destructive force of the poisoned paradigms of pre biblical mythologies.
Creation itself was seen as a great cosmic accident - the result of feuding gods, clashing and vying for power. It was the most haphazard of events, guided not by a loving and reasoned god, but by their primal urges.
In contrast to this, the Creation accounts in Genesis are marked with order and care. One God creates the "heavens and the earth." There is no need to worry about many gods; He is One, and has brought all of creation about in a planned, caring way. Repeatedly, the story reminds us "Then God said... and it happened.... and it was good."
Not only is creation itself a planned event, full of the goodness of the one true God, but human beings are like children to Him. He breathes his life breath into us (Gen 2:7) and makes us, male and female, in "His own image." (Gen 1:27). Far from being pawns, the stories proclaim a human dignity which exceeds all of Creation. There is no need to be caught in a desperate fear, to sacrifice children upon bloodied mountains and horrible altars. These stories represented a major paradigm shift for the world. Where they spread, the sacrifice of children, young men, virgins and widows, ceased. Recognizing our God-given dignity has given start to the freedom and human rights movements around the world.
Our own Declaration of Independence and Constitutional Revolution is based on this Biblical notion. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with unalienable rights..." This is the foundation for human rights. Without this, human rights are left to the whims of political leaders. The former USSR and its satellite countries, as well as present day China, bares witness to this. If rights do not come from God, they come from the state. If the state grants rights, the state can easily invent a cause to remove them... from the elderly? the unborn? Perhaps all those who are burdensome or disagreeable.
Those who would like to remove the connection between religious beliefs and the state, might ask themselves what else would make human rights "unalienable?" Rights created by the state are far from "unalienable;" what the state gives, the state can take away.
The poison of ancient paradigms are not yet behind us. This has been forwarded by a pseudo-scientific view which itself cannot be proven scientifically, ie. that all things can be explained by attributing them to chance, physical causes. It is the new "religion" of our day. Carl Sagan said, "The Cosmos is all there is, ever was or will be." The modern mythology of scientific materialism presents us with the idea that we are nothing more than a cosmic accident, a result of chance forces in a primordial soup. As Robert Jastrow, Fred Hoyle, Branden Carter and many other scientists point out, however, the universe appears so finely tuned to produce life that it itakes a great deal of faith to believe it purely a chance event. In fact, the "Big Bang" itself points in the direction of an intelligent cause which is not only outside the reach of science, but is beyond time and space itself.
Still, the abandonment of the Biblical paradigm grows as our culture becomes more secular, and we become more confused about the basis for human rights. Many unborn children, for example, become dehumanized and are killed simply because they are not wanted. Some equate the killing of chickens as the moral equivalent to the Nazi holocaust. And, as we read slogans such as, "Eating Meat is Murder, " we are reminded that if we are not "endowed by our Creator..." with any special rights, we are just like chickens and crickets to many people. After all, they believe that a chicken and a cricket, like ourselves are only the result of blind evolutionary forces. Without God, what IS the difference?