David Livingston<\/b><\/p>\n
Terra Is Truely Firma<\/b><\/p>\n
An article in US News & World Report<\/i> told a marvelous story about \u201cTerra,\u201d the supercomputer program at Los Alamos NM which was designed \u201cto prove that the story of Noah and the flood of Genesis 7:18. .. happened exactly as the Bible tells it.\u201d<\/p>\n
It seems that John Baumgardner, who designed it, is the world\u2019s pre-eminent expert in the design of computer models for geophysical convection, the process by which the earth develops volcanoes, earthquakes, and the movement of the continental plates. He is also a fundamentalist Christian \u201cwho believes, in accordance with the Bible, that the earth was created by God less than 10, 000 years ago.\u201d Terra is an attempt to reconcile the most literal reading of Scripture with the most advanced science in existence.<\/p>\n
Some time went by after his conversion before evolutionist Baumgardner gave much thought to the creation of the universe by God. But as his walk with the Lord deepened he became convinced that \u201cindeed there had been a major catastrophe in the Earth\u2019s past that accounts for a large fraction of the geological features we observe at the earth\u2019s surface today.\u201d And this catastrophe was the Flood of Noah\u2019s day.<\/p>\n
The enormous significance of this is seen, for instance, in that the 100 mile-an-hour runoff of the water covering the earth back into the oceans could easily create the Grand Canyon \u201cin about a week!\u201d<\/p>\n
Most physicists \u201cbelieve\u201d the earth is 4.5 billion years old. And the results of Terra, run with that assumption, works out OK. On the other hand, run the program assuming the earth is less than 10, 000 years old, and that there was a catastrophic universal Flood, and all the geology works out OK that way also! But, as Baumgardner points out, scientists wrongly take for granted that geology happens consistently, without catastrophes. \u201cIf you look at the geological record,\u201d he insists, \u201cthere are fingerprints of catastrophe everywhere one looks.\u201d<\/p>\n
Details of the Terra program and <\/p>\n
BSP<\/i> 11:3 (Summer 1998) p. 70<\/p>\n
how it works, as well as more of Baumgardner\u2019s evidences for a young earth, make the article well-worth looking up.<\/p>\n
(US News & World Report<\/i> 6\/16\/97:55\u201358.)<\/p>\n
Where Did the 40 Days and Nights of Rain Come From?<\/b><\/p>\n
The answer, or part of it, may be found in a recent theory proved correct. Louis Frank of Iowa University published an article in 1986 postulating that small icy comets continually pelt the earth.<\/p>\n
Other scientists scoffed at the idea. A leading atmospheric expert sniffed that no atmospheric expert supported such a thing. Another snarled, \u201cIf he\u2019s correct we\u2019d have to burn half the contents of the libraries in the physical sciences.\u201d<\/p>\n
Well, he IS correct! A report in US News and World Report<\/i> noted stunning evidence from three cameras on NASA\u2019s Polar satellite actually have captured images of comets as big as a house(!) plunging into the atmosphere. Between five and 30 comets hit the upper atmosphere every minute! \u201cThe ice becomes water vapor that later comes down as rain.\u201d That could be a lot of rain! (US News & World Report<\/i> 6\/23\/97.)<\/p>\n
Tale of Two Cultures:
Ancient Chinese Dynasty Linked to New World\u2019s Earliest Civilization<\/b><\/p>\n
Abroad for the first time in his life, Han Ping Chen, a scholar of ancient Chinese, landed at Dulles International Airport near Washington DC the night of September 18, 1996. Next morning, he paced in front of the National Gallery of Art, waiting for the museum to open so he could visit an Olmec exhibit\u2014works from Mesoamerica\u2019s spectacular \u201cmother culture\u201d that emerged suddenly with no apparent antecedents, 3, 200 years ago. After a glance at a 10 ton basalt sculpture of a head, Chen faced the object that prompted his trip: an Olmec sculpture found in La Venta, 10 mi south of the southernmost cove of the Gulf of Mexico.<\/p>\n
What the Chinese scholar saw was 15 male figures made of serpentine or jade, each about 6 in tall. Facing them were a taller sandstone figure and six upright, polished, jade blades called celts. The celts bore incised markings, some of them faded. Proceeding from right to left, Chen scrutinized the markings silently, grimacing when he was unable to make out more than a few squiggles on the second and third celts. But the lower half of the fourth blade made him jump. \u201cI can read this easily,\u201d he shouted. \u201cClearly, these are Chinese characters.\u201d<\/p>\n
For years, scholars have waged a passionate\u2014and often nasty\u2014debate over whether Asian refugees or adventurers might somehow have made their way to the New World long before Columbus, stimulating brilliant achievements in cosmogony, art, astronomy and architecture in a succession of cultures from the Olmec to the Mayan and Aztec. On one side are the \u201cdiffusionists,\u201d who have compiled a long list of links between Asian and Mesoamerican cultures, including similar rules for the Aztec board game of patolli and the Asian pachisi (also known as Parcheesi), a theological focus in ancient China and Mesoamerica on tiger-jaguar and <\/p>\n
BSP<\/i> 11:3 (Summer 1998) p. 71<\/p>\n
dragonlike creatures, and a custom, common both to China\u2019s Shang dynasty and the Olmecs, of putting a jade bead in the mouth of a deceased person. \u201cNativists,\u201d on the other hand, dismiss such theories as ridiculous and argue for the autonomous development of pre-Columbian civilizations. They bristle at the suggestion that indigenous people did not evolve on their own.<\/p>\n
Striking Resemblances<\/b><\/p>\n
For diffusionists, Olmec art offers a tempting arena for speculation. Carbon-dating places the Olmec era between 1000 and 1200 BC, coinciding with the Shang dynasty\u2019s fall in China. American archaeologists unearthed the group sculpture in 1955. Looking at the sculpture displayed in the National Gallery, as well as other Olmec pieces, some Mexican and American scholars have been struck by the resemblances to Chinese artifacts. In fact, archaeologists initially labeled the first Olmec figures found at the turn of the century as Chinese. Migrations from Asia over the land bridge 10,000-15, 000 years ago could account for the Chinese features, such as slanted eyes, but not for the stylized mouths and postures peculiar to sophisticated Chinese art that emerged in recent millennia.<\/p>\n
Yet, until Chen made his pilgrimage to the museum, no Shang specialist had ever studied the Olmec. The scholar emerged from the exhibit with a theory. After the Shang army was routed and the emperor killed, he suggested, some loyalists might have sailed down the Yellow River and taken to the ocean. There, perhaps, they drifted with a current which skirts Japan\u2019s coast, heads for California and peters out near Ecuador. Betty Meggers, a senior Smithsonian archaeologist who has linked Ecuadorian pottery to 5,000 year old shipwrecked Japanese pottery, says such an idea is \u201cplausible\u201d because ancient Asian mariners were far more proficient than given credit for.<\/p>\n
But Chen\u2019s identification of the celt markings sharpens the controversy over origins even further. For example, Mesoamericanist Michael Coe at Yale University labels Chen\u2019s search for Chinese characters as insulting to the indigenous people of Mexico. There are only about a dozen experts worldwide in the Shang script, which is largely unrecognizable to readers of modern Chinese. When Prof. Mike Xu, a professor of Chinese history at the University of Central Oklahoma, traveled to Beijing to ask Chen to examine his index of 146 markings from pre-Columbian objects, Chen refused, saying he had no interest in anything outside China. He relented only after a colleague familiar with Xu\u2019s work insisted that Chen, as China\u2019s leading authority, take a look. He did and found that all but three of Xu\u2019s markings could have come from China.<\/p>\n
Xu was at Chen\u2019s side in the National Gallery when the Shang scholar read the text on the Olmec celt in Chinese and translated: \u201cThe ruler and his chieftains establish the foundation for a kingdom.\u201d Chen located each of the characters on the celt in three well-worn Chinese dictionaries he had with him. Two adjacent characters are usually read as \u201cmaster and subjects,\u201d but Chen decided that in this context they might mean \u201cruler and his chieftains.\u201d The character on the line below he recognized as the symbol for \u201ckingdom\u201d or \u201ccountry\u201d \u2014 two peaks <\/p>\n
BSP<\/i> 11:3 (Summer 1998) p. 72<\/p>\n
for hills, a curving line underneath for river. The next character, Chen said, suggests a bird but means \u201cwaterfall\u201d completing the description. The bottom character he read as \u201cfoundation\u201d or \u201cestablish,\u201d implying the act of founding something important. If Chen is right, the celts not only offer the earliest writing in the New World, but mark the birth of a Chinese settlement more than 3, 000 years ago.<\/p>\n
At lunch the next day, Chen said he was awake all night thinking about the sculpture. He talked about how he had studied Chinese script at age 5, tutored by his father, the director of the national archives. But Chen\u2019s father did not live to enjoy the honors the son reaped, such as a recent assignment to compile a new dictionary of characters used by the earliest dynasties\u2014the first update since one commissioned by a Han emperor 2, 000 years ago.<\/p>\n
Color Nuances<\/b><\/p>\n
Chen was so taken with the Olmec sculpture that he ventured beyond scholarly caution. The group sculpture, he said, might memorialize \u201ca historic event,\u201d either a blessing sought from ancestors or the act of founding a new kingdom or both. He was mesmerized by the tallest figure in the sculpture\u2014made from red sandstone as porous as a sponge, in contrast to the others, which are highly polished and green-blue in hue. Red suggests higher status, Chen said. Perhaps the figure was the master of the group, a venerated ancestral spirit. The two dark blue figures to the right might represent the top noblemen, more important than the two others, carved out of pale green serpentine.<\/p>\n
The Smithsonian\u2019s Meggers says that Chen\u2019s analysis of the colors makes sense. But his reading of the text is the clincher. \u201cWriting systems are too arbitrary and complex. They cannot be independently reinvented.\u201d More than 5,000 Shang characters have survived, Chen says, even though the soldiers who defeated the Shang forces murdered the scholars and burned or buried any object with writing on it. In a recent excavation in the Shang capital of Anyang, archaeologists have found a buried library of turtle shells covered with characters. And at the entrance lay the skeleton of the librarian, stabbed in the back and clutching some writings to his breast.<\/p>\n
The Olmec sculpture was buried under white sand topped with alternate layers of brown and reddish-brown sand. Perhaps it was hidden to save it from the kind of rage that sought to wipe out the Shang and their memory.<\/p>\n
(U.S. News & World Report<\/i>, 11\/4\/96.)<\/p>\n
Why This is Important<\/b><\/p>\n
1. It demonstrates that shortly after Noah\u2019s Flood, there was wide migration of the families who were descendants of Noah. They were intelligent\u2014not evolving brute beasts\u2014and by 1200 BC (actually even much earlier) were able to navigate on the world\u2019s oceans.<\/p>\n
2. This diminishes the need for a Siberia-to-Alaska ice bridge crossing. In fact, the scanty evidence for ancient settlements in Alaska could remain from migrants from south of Alaska instead of from Siberia!<\/p>\n
3. The American \u201cIndians,\u201d then, were of oriental descent and did not \u201cevolve\u201d locally from some lower form of life in the Americas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
David Livingston Terra Is Truely Firma An article in US News & World Report told a marvelous story about \u201cTerra,\u201d the supercomputer program at Los Alamos NM which was designed \u201cto prove that the story of Noah and the flood of Genesis 7:18. .. happened exactly as the Bible tells it.\u201d It seems that John … Continue reading “THE
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