05.20.07
Line of Symmetry
Although organized Creationists use basic and popularly accepted operational science as their backbone of support, after the Bible of course, a rather intriguing aspect of Creationism involves the unique predictions it makes. One of them in particular, though not so advertised, is of great interest to me, and I believe should be of great interest to UFO archeologists. However, the starting point of this prediction is not Creationist models. It goes back over two thousand years, not to the modern proponents of special creation, but to the writings of the wisest man ever to have walked the earth. The prediction was made by one King Solomon, son of David and the third king of Israel. It was recorded in the first chapter of the book of Ecclesiastes and it stretches across three verses as part of the book’s introduction.
“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, ‘Look! This is something new’? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time. There is no remembrance of men of old, and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9-11)
What exactly is the prediction being made here? After doing a Google search some time ago, I came across some page or other that was discussing how the phrase “there is nothing new under the sun” meant that whatever man designed, the principles of that design can already be found in nature. That’s something that Creationists have been saying for some time, that God’s designs found in nature will always be more efficient than anything humans can dish out. But I think that takes the verse out of context. At the very least, that phrase goes along with all the sentences from verse 9 through to 11.
“It was here already, long ago.”
“There is no remembrance of men of old.”
Do not the emphasized parts above seem to indicate that this is not simply referring to man being outdone by nature, but rather to man being outdone by men of the past?
The Bible indicates people before the Flood as well as a little while after had extended life spans, and that it was not uncommon for people to reach six hundred years of age. The record holder is the well known Methuselah, who lived an incredible 969 years. Unlike evolutionists, who believe that things evolve from less complex to more complex (despite any word games they might like to play), Creationists believe that the world is deteriorating. In fact, the farther back one goes in time, the more likely one will be able to find people capable of mental and physical feats of strength. We today are only a shadow of what once was. Our ancestors of several thousand years ago were not unintellectual brutes barely stepping out of the fog of the “caveman” life, although they sure were capable of great atrocities in the same way we today are capable of. Contrary to what fish to philosopher evolution would predict, we find such “anomalies” as the great Egyptians starting out with the grandest of pyramids and then deteriorating in architectural skill until the newest structures were able only to stand short for a little while before crumpling into jumbled mounds.
And this brings the topic to what Solomon may actually have meant. Every kind of technology that we have today was already invented and implemented before the time of Solomon. That’s right, we lost the space race before we even started for us. This is a ridiculous claim for sure, but only if one does not stop and consider what a mind such as Edison’s or Tesla’s or Einstein’s or da Vinci’s would have been able to achieve given several hundred years with which to work. Adam had a quick enough mind that he was able to name all the kinds of animals in less than a day, and he eventually reached the age of 930!
But wait. This is all fine and dandy as a religious or philosophical hypothesis, but the idea of advanced technology in the past doesn’t float when looking at the archaeological evidence. Or does it? Aside from the example of the pyramids given above, there is ample evidence from all over the world. The link on the blogroll to the right has a site called s8int.com, which is devoted to compiling stories of “out of place artifacts” (ooparts) that support such things as past technological sophistication. The list of evidences is actually quite astounding.
So everything that we have today is nothing new. This isn’t the whole picture, since Solomon didn’t say only that there is nothing new. He actually started off by saying that “What has been will be again.” What he did was to effectively mark the line of symmetry in the timeline of the world. Before the time of Solomon, mankind had already advanced as far as he was allowed. After the time of Solomon, it would all be repeated. What we have today was in the past, and what was in the past we will have sometime in the present.
I admit that I’m a sci-fi nut, and this may have theoretically skewed my reasoning in some way, but hey.
Marlakins Blog » How Old is Old? said,
May 21, 2007 at 3:34 pm
[...] So, Abram was 75 years old at the start of his journey. How old was Sarai? Abram told her to say that she was his “sister,” so I’m assuming she was somewhat close to his age, otherwise he could have said that she was his daughter. So how old was Sarai? Seventy, maybe? How many 70 year old women today do we know of who looks so striking that a “Pharaoh and his princes” would find favor in her and give her “brother” sheep, oxen, menservants and maidservants? I would guess that Sarai looked pretty darned good for what we consider a senior citizen today. And yet today in our “advanced” and “life extending” modern society, girls who are in their 30s are considered old for the modelling business. For those who aren’t familiar with the story of Abram and Sarai, they later became known as Abraham and Sarah. Sarah had a son when she was about 100 years old, and according to the Bible, she died at 127 years old. That’s almost twice as old as our senior citizens today who are suffering from all kinds of ailments. Perhaps one might argue that the people who wrote the Bible didn’t count numbers and years like we do today? Then perhaps we should consider the ages of other people mentioned in the Bible. Let’s take a look at Joseph, whose was the last documented death in Genesis. According to Genesis 50:26, Joseph died at 110 years old. Sounds closer to our age. I think the author of Genesis knew how to count, and I believe the days and years he used was relatively similar to a day and year we use today. As is documented in Genesis, “morning and evening” was one day. If the Bible is accurate, then it looks like our life expectancies have been decreasing, and is thus consistent with our observed laws on entropy, a law of science, and also consistent with death entering the world after the sin of Adam and Eve. Evolution teaches us the exact opposite of the law of entropy in that our species first started from some slime, which continued to defy the laws of entropy for millions of years until you have complex living beings like humans. That is not science. But I digress. . . the life span of man is the topic I was originally contemplating, and before I close, I wanted to share an interesting link called Living in Three Centuries, the Face of Age. That link has a slideshow of people and their ages. Click onto the thumbnails if you want to see an enlarged picture with a short narrative next to it. Several of those pictured are over 100 years old. Check out the first picture on the left, top row. He is #72 and is said to be 112 years old, the 16th oldest person in the world, and the oldest person in the USA. Although some of these guys are old, in comparison to Adam, Noah, Seth, Enos, etc., they’re just young whipper snappers! Ha! But for some reason, I don’t think the guys of old looked as beat. Just my “suspicion” given the account of Sarai when she might have been around 70 or so. And then finally, this morning I read my son’s recent blog entry. I think some of what he writes fits right in with what I’ve just been thinking about. Here’s Andrew’s post. [...]
Jon Saboe said,
July 24, 2007 at 7:52 am
I wanted to point out that at the time Sarai and Abram went to Egypt, the average life expectancy IN Egypt was around 120. However, at that same time, in Mesopotamia, the average life expectancy was much higher – around 250! This was well known by the Egyptians who were dealing with the fear that comes from constantly decreasing life-spans.
The Egyptian often resorted to desperate measures in attempts to increase their life-spans — including breeding siblings of longer-lived parents in hopes to ‘artificially select’ for greater longevity.
When Pharoah saw this good-looking, middle-aged woman (just barely 70) from up north, he was extremely excited at the prospect of getting breeding material to increase the lifespans of his progeny. Abram knew this, and feared (correctly) for his life.
This saga of decreasing lifespans is a very interesting one. For example, if you were alive 200 years after the flood, you would have never known anyone to die of old age. However, if you were alive 300 years after the flood, you would now know of many people who had died of old age — but they would be the younger people!! Those dying of old age would still be survived by their parent and grand-parents.
For example, when Nahor died, his father, Reu; his grandfather, Serug; his great-grandfather, Peleg; and so on up to Shem were still alive.
The terror and fear of this inexplicable aging ‘epidemic’ is the sub-plot of my book, “The Days Of Peleg”, reviewed on this blog, and available from Amazon, B&N, or ordered from your local bookstore — and also from the DaysOfPeleg.com website.
It is amazing when one thinks of this as a possible cause of ancient Egypt’s obsession with death.
Jon Saboe
Marlakins Blog » Some Follow Up on the Life Expectancy of Man said,
July 29, 2007 at 10:22 am
[...] July 24, 2007 at 7:52 am [...]
Marla said,
July 30, 2007 at 8:28 am
I really appreciate your insight and the time you have taken to respond, Jon. Thanks. I am interested to know more about your reference to the average age of the Egyptians being around 250 years. How did you come to learn about that?
Marla