God and the gods

























If you read Plato, you may have been struck by the fact that the speakers sometimes seem to jump back and forth between referring to "God" and referring to "gods," without any explanation, and without any indication that it might be considered somewhat unusual to do so.

Certainly we would find it strange if, for example, a preacher in a sermon were to jump back and forth between the two. What has changed between the time of Plato and our time? Obviously that's a silly question -- the answer is, "a lot" -- but by asking the question specifically as regards to the use of the terms "God" and "the gods," it may be possible to uncover some fairly interesting observations.

As an example of this kind of jumping back and forth, take this passage from the Phaedo, 108 c-d:
[Socrates is initially speaking] So now in the case of the immortal, if it is conceded that this is also imperishable, soul will be imperishable as well as immortal. Otherwise we shall need another argument.

There is no need on that account, said Cebes. If what is immortal and eternal cannot avoid destruction, it is hard to see how anything else can.

And I imagine that it would be admitted by everyone, said Socrates, that God at any rate, and the form of life, and anything else that is immortal, can never cease to exist.

Yes indeed, by all men certainly, and even more, I suppose, by the gods. [Translation by Hugh Tredennick, in the Collected Dialogues of Plato, including the letters. Edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1969].
Notice that in this very short passage we observe Socrates saying that "God at any rate, and the form of life [. . .] can never cease to exist," and then we observe in the very next moment his companion Cebes conceding that all men will admit to that statement, and "the gods" will probably admit to it "even more." This seems rather curious.

Even more curious is the assertion by the prodigious scholar of ancient Egypt and Assyria (and Keeper of the British Museum) E.A. Wallis Budge (1857 - 1934) in his discussion of the Egyptian Book of the Dead that the ancient Egyptians appear to have jumped back and forth between talking about "God" and "the gods" in much the same way that we find in Plato.

In his section on "The Egyptians' Ideas of God" Wallis Budge asserts that "To the great and supreme power which made the earth, the heavens, the sea, the sky, men and women, animals, birds, and creeping things, all that is and all that shall be, the Egyptians gave the name neter." He then notes: "But side by side with neter, whatever it may mean, we have mentioned in texts of all ages a number of beings called neteru which Egyptologists universally translate by the word 'gods.'"

Budge then provides examples from the Pyramid Texts, some of the oldest texts surviving from ancient Egypt, in which the two uses are juxtaposed without any indication that such juxtaposition might seem strange in any way. For example, from the tomb of Pepi I (circa 2289 BC to 2255 BC), he quotes:

sesep-nek aru neter aaa-k am xer neteru

Thou hast received the form of God, thou hast become great therewith before the gods.
What is going on here? There are other examples from the ancients, such as the fragments of the pre-Socratic philosopher Xenophanes (c. 570 BC - c. 475 BC), whose declarations about the nature of the gods are somewhat more blunt. After criticizing the conception of gods and goddesses whose activities seem to be composed of "all things that are a shame and a disgrace among mortals, stealings and adulteries and deceivings of one another," Xenophanes declares in a rather profound statement "one god, greatest among gods and men, not at all like mortals in body or in thought. Whole he sees, whole he thinks, and whole he hears. But completely without toil he shakes all things by the thought of his mind" (this last part is the translation of J. H. Lesher).

One possible explanation for these very curious statements from the ancients is intimated in the observation from de Santillana and von Dechend's Hamlet's Mill that we have quoted previously in this post. They note that "the constellations were seen as the setting, or the dominating influences, or even only the garments at the appointed time by the Powers in various disguises on their way through their heavenly adventures" (177). These Powers of which they speak were the planets -- the gods. De Santillana and von Dechend propose that the gods were named after the planets, not the planets after the gods; there is a profound difference.

While it is certainly true that the planets (and the gods) were worshiped in ancient times, if we substitute the word "planets" (the "active powers" in the heavens) for gods in the discussion at the beginning of this post, we would have no problems, even in our modern sensibilities. It would not seem strange at all for a preacher in a sermon to speak of "God" and then mention "planets" in the next sentence.

This may be something of an over-simplification, and there is certainly more to the topic than just this one angle, but it is a useful angle to consider.

There is a lot to think about in this subject.

Mammoths and the Flood




















In spite of the evidence of a catastrophic global flood in earth's past (see here and here for example), conventional geologists and scientists are loath to admit the possibility.

We have discussed the fact that catastrophic explanations for geological or archaeological evidence have been out of favor for almost two hundred years, because geological paradigms and biological paradigms are closely related, and gradualist or uniformitarian geological theories support the biological paradigm of Darwinian evolution that became popular in the second half of the 1800s, while catastrophic geological theories severely undermine the Darwinian paradigm and its need for tremendous lengths of time (if the features we see on earth were shaped by a catastrophic event, then that event could have taken place fairly recently; gradual processes, on the other hand, require vast amounts of time, just as the Darwinian theory does).

The existence of hundreds of well-preserved mammoths found over the past three centuries in Siberia, Alaska, and in the frozen Arctic Ocean and on certain Arctic islands provides compelling evidence of a widespread catastrophic event unlike anything that takes place today. In his book, all of which can be accessed for free online, Walt Brown explains several scientific details of these mammoth finds that defy an explanation involving ordinary processes going on today.

Some of these details include the body position of many mammoths, such as the strange position of the Berezovka mammoth pictured above in the St. Petersburg museum, as well as the fact that the mouths and stomachs of frozen mammoth (including Berezovka) contain dozens of pounds of undigested vegetation.

Other details Dr. Brown discusses include the distinctive type of ice found near frozen mammoths, and the fact that these animals are found in harsh, barren locations that could not have supported their massive appetites and need for abundant water.

Theories that mammoth finds of modern times are the product of animals that simply fell into glacial crevasses and were preserved or wandered into freezing peat bogs or lakes and drowned cannot explain the preservation of undigested food in the mouths and stomachs of these large animals. Dr. Brown explains that:
at normal body temperatures, stomach acids and enzymes break down vegetable matter within an hour. What inhibited this process? The only plausible explanation is for the stomach to cool to about 40o in ten hours or less. But because the stomach is protected inside a warm body (96.6o for elephants), how cold must the outside air become to drop the stomach's temperature to 40o F? Experiments have shown that the outer layers of skin would have had to drop suddenly to at least -175o F! Independently, Sanderson concluded, "The flesh of many of the animals found in the muck must have been very rapidly and deeply frozen, for its cells [had] not burst. [. . .] Frozen-food experts have explained that to do this, starting with a healthy, live specimen, you must suddenly drop the temperature of the air surrounding it down to a point well below minus 150 degrees Fahrenheit." 7th edition, 165.
While falling into a crevasse or an icy lake or bog might preserve the skin and flesh of an unfortunate mammoth, it would not stop the stomach enzymes from continuing to break down the food in the stomach. In fact, the body heat of large animals that fall into crevasses usually cause ongoing decomposition and leave the carcass in a very bad state, quite unlike the hundreds of mammoths found across northern Siberia and Alaska.

However, the hydroplate theory provides a satisfactory explanation for these and other mysterious details surrounding the numerous frozen mammoths. Dr. Brown explains that the violent rupture of the earth's crust along the mid-Atlantic ridge (which quickly circled the globe but was later over-ridden by the western edge of North America on its other half) created torrential rain, followed by "tons of cold, muddy ice crystals" from water that was propelled high above the atmosphere and cooled to extreme cold temperatures.

This muddy ice suffocated, buried, and compressed large animals such as mammoths that had not yet succumbed to the torrential rains and flooding, freezing them rapidly at a very low temperature and then sealing them under hundreds of feet of ice and mud during the flood phase. While the recovery phase after the flood caused such ice and mud to melt in most latitudes of earth (and the carcasses of animals encased therein to rot away thousands of years ago), the big roll of the earth described in previous posts rotated the specimens we find today into Arctic climes where they never thawed out and were preserved.

This theory explains the posture of the mammoth pictured above. Ice can flow slowly over centuries without melting, as it does in glaciers. "Such a flow," Dr. Brown explains, "pushing Berezovka's body tail first, would explain his forward swept hind legs, humped back, displaced vertebrae, and spread front legs bent at the 'ankles'" (175). The massive violent hailstorm of muddy hail would also explain the dirt in the lungs of these frozen mammoths, which other theories cannot explain, as well as the distinctive type of ice found in conjunction with mammoth specimens (which Dr. Brown explains in greater detail as "type 3 rock ice").

Even other catastrophic theories advanced by other alternative theorists, such as the earth-crust displacement theory, have a difficult time explaining how the mammoths could have been frozen so rapidly that their stomach contents were preserved, or why they apparently died of suffocation and experienced the vertical compression and contortion of their posture that the hydroplate's theory of a hailstorm of tons of dirty ice would explain.

These details deserve careful examination. It is fairly clear that the existence of mammoths provides strong evidence of a violent catastrophe in earth's past, and that these creatures provide powerful refutation for the gradualist explanations favored at the expense of all other theories since the acceptance of Darwinian evolution in the late 1800s.

Malta: where's the drift?


















The megalithic temples of Malta stand as mysterious evidence of a long-vanished people. Some of the stones used in these temples weigh between forty and fifty tons. Some of the temples featured precise solar alignments, and others contain windows that may have had lunar or stellar alignments.

Graham Hancock devotes considerable space in his book Underworld to an examination of these mysterious sites. He notes that the kidney-shaped layout of many of the temples appears to have no precedent in other megalithic architecture, and that there is little if any evidence of earlier or simpler temples on Malta -- those incorporating massive stones or precise alignments appear "out of nowhere" archaeologically speaking, as the earliest ones we find on the island.

He notes lower ocean levels in the past may have meant that Malta was not always an island, and that later sea level rise might have isolated Malta. We have discussed in previous posts the fact that sea level rise accords very well with the hydroplate theory of Walt Brown.

However, the megalithic remains on Malta make an even more powerful testimony in favor of the hydroplate theory, and that is the fact that they remain aligned with the equinoxes and solstices even after multiple thousands of years.

The southernmost room of the temple at Mnajdra contains precise alignments with the equinox and the solstices. As illustrated in the diagram above, the sun's rising on the summer solstice will cast a beam into the chamber to align with the edge of a prominent southern stone on the back wall, while the sun's rising on the winter solstice will cast a beam into the chamber to align with the edge of a prominent northern stone on the back wall.

In the northern hemisphere, the sun rises and sets from its most northern point on the summer solstice (hence the beam's angle illuminates furthest south within the chamber on this day), and rises and sets from its most southern point on the winter solstice (hence the beam's angle illuminates the furthest north within the chamber on this day). On the equinoxes, when the sun rises due east, the beam will enter the chamber directly through the east-aligned entrance, as shown in the diagram.

Even conventional historians place the date of construction of Mnajdra in the period between 3200 BC and 2800 BC (Hancock presents some arguments that the megalithic temples on Malta could in fact be much older). Even if we work with a date of 2800 BC for Mnajdra, this would imply over 4,800 years of continental drift, according to prevailing theories of plate tectonics. The continuing solar alignments of the Mnajdra temple contradict the theory of plate tectonics.

On the other hand, the hydroplate theory asserts that the continental plates did in fact slide as part of the events surrounding a worldwide flood, but that they came to a grinding and often violent halt prior to the runoff of the floodwaters (the buckling and uplift of the continents being part of the mechanism that initiated the runoff of the floodwaters, as well as the violent downward movement of the Pacific floor).

Since the structures on Malta (and all other structures still existing on earth today) had to have been built after the sliding finished and the floodwaters drained into the ocean basins, we would not expect major continued drifting to go on (according to Brown's theory, earthquakes are caused by shifting, rather than drifting).

Thus the alignments of the temples on Malta (whether they were built in 2800 BC or at some earlier date) support the hydroplate theory, while providing further arguments against the plate tectonic theory.

Sunken ruins near Cuba would fit hydroplate theory




















Earlier this month, Archaeo News published a short article entitled "An ancient 'lost civilization' in Cuba?" discussing the discovery of what are alleged to be the ruins of large structures submerged in waters off the western end of Cuba.

The article references an earlier piece published in National Geographic in 2002 ("New Underwater Finds Raise Questions About Flood Myths," by Brian Handwerk). That article notes that the structures are located in waters at depths between 1,900 feet and 2,500 feet. It also cites a geologist who declares, "If I had to explain this geologically, I would have a hard time" (in other words, he would find it difficult to come up with geological processes that could have created the structures, rather than the deliberate hand of man).

The National Geographic article leaves the impression that the end of the Ice Age and the rising seas that would result can explain sunken ruins, this explanation runs into some problems. Most importantly, unlike the man-made ruins located off the coast of Japan and India, these ruins are under thousands of feet of water. The melting of the Ice Age ice sheets would probably be able to account for no more than three hundred feet of sea level rise world-wide.

Another problem conventional explanations encounter is the fact that current theories of mankind's ancient history argue that man was a primitive hunter-gatherer during those distant millennia before the ice sheets melted, and only began to live in cities and have division of labor and the ability to construct sophisticated stone monuments much later.

Nevertheless, the National Geographic article confidently declares: "While images of catastrophic floods are popular, many scholars argue that the real rising sea level slowly invaded the Stone Age hunting territories for thousands of years, and the stories compress this event into overnight floods, storms, and destruction," apparently without realizing the contradiction of describing "Stone Age hunting territories" and submerged ruins built by a civilization that was clearly not a bunch of Stone Age hunters.

If these Cuban ruins are in fact genuine remnants of human civilization, they create big problems for conventional theories (perhaps this is why the academic community does not seem to be in any particular hurry to examine them more closely).

However, they would not pose a problem for the hydroplate theory of Walt Brown, discussed in previous posts. According to Dr. Brown's theory, the events surrounding a cataclysmic global flood led to continents being violently buckled like train cars in a train wreck, which thickened the continental plates and led to a period during which the continents were higher and the seas lower. Over time, the force of gravity caused the continents to sink and the sea floors to experience a corresponding rise, which raised the sea levels by thousands of feet.

The hydroplate theory explains many geological mysteries around the globe, but it has been largely ignored as an explanation for the many archaeological mysteries of mankind's ancient past. Alternative theorists have largely focused on theories such as a near miss from a planet or the crustal-displacement theory. The Mathisen Corollary discusses the possibility that the hydroplate theory could explain mankind's ancient past much better, and certainly better than the prevailing theories, which are full of contradictions, as we can see from this discussion of the undersea Cuban ruins.

Faulty theories can hurt you



















Steven Malanga, the senior editor of City Journal and a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, has just published an article entitled "The Washington Diet: Following the government's nutritional advice can make you fat and sick."

He cites extensive evidence that the arguments for a connection between cholesterol and heart disease are based on very scanty evidence, and possibly on erroneous interpretation of ambiguous studies. Similarly, he cites studies involving 350,000 subjects which found absolutely no connection between consumption of saturated fats and heart disease (although not from lack of looking for such a connection). The article even cites evidence that lowering levels of cholesterol could lead to an increased vulnerability to disease, including cancer.

This is exactly the type of evidence that Uffe Ravnskov discusses in his books and scientific articles, as we discussed in this earlier post on the subject dated May 9. Dr. Ravnskov argues that the scientific consensus is absolutely wrong on this very important, life-and-death question over what to eat and how to prevent heart disease.

While the question of what to eat and whether cholesterol actually causes heart disease (or if it is in fact part of an important defense system in our bodies that helps prevent diseases including cancer) is beyond the scope of the Mathisen Corollary (which examines the connection between a theory of a cataclysmic global flood within human memory and the extensive evidence of an advanced ancient civilization not taught in conventional historical timelines of mankind's past), the entire issue is a perfect illustration of the way a "scientific" consensus can take on a life of its own and drown out alternative theories, even if it may in fact be based on incorrect analysis. Dr. Ravnskov also gives examples of the ways the defenders of orthodoxy tend to attack and ridicule individuals who challenge the ruling paradigm, rather than discussing the arguments based on the merits of the evidence (see the previously-mentioned post and Dr. Ravnskov's descriptions of his books being publicly burned by those who wanted to marginalize his arguments).

This new carefully-argued and well-documented piece from Steven Malanga of City Journal serves to reinforce the points we made earlier this month. It also does an excellent job of focusing on the real danger in faulty theories: they can have very unhealthy repercussions in society and in the lives of individuals.

We have argued in the past that the question of mankind's ancient history is not simply an esoteric question for debate between specialists, akin to the famous struggle over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. On the contrary, if we hold a completely incorrect view of our collective past, based on incorrect analysis, it has major ramifications for the way we see ourselves and the questions we ask at this important juncture in history. It impacts very real aspects of our everyday life -- including what we eat (just look at how many diets are based upon Darwinian assumptions of man's origins which may in fact be completely wrong).

Ignorance of our past can also have a deleterious impact on our ability to avoid a slide from technological prowess into outright barbarism. The human record indicates that such a fall has taken place in mankind's past on a scale far beyond the supposed transition from classical Rome into the "Dark Ages," on a scale in fact that would parallel a fall from modern civilization into widespread cannibalism and violence. However, if we don't even recognize that such a fall took place, we cannot ask ourselves how or why it happened or how it could have been avoided.

These questions are every bit as important as the question of whether eating saturated fat or foods high in cholesterol are bad for you or not. In many areas of modern life, faulty theories can hurt you. It behooves every one of us to become engaged in these matters, and to learn to examine such things carefully for ourselves and our families.

Planet Queen by T. Rex


In the previous blog post and in past blog posts such as this one, we've talked about going outside and looking at the planets yourself.

While you're getting ready to look at planets, if you're looking for an LP to put on the stereo, you could do a lot worse than to choose Planet Queen by T. Rex, from the album Electric Warrior (1971). Or, if it happens to be cloudy or rainy outside when you were planning to look at the stars and planets, you can stay in and have a glass of wine and listen to "Planet Queen" instead.