According to Genesis aka "People of the Book", as what some people believe, God started building the universe just over 6,000 years ago. Islam does not have any theory on this while Hinduism places the date much earlier. Scientists, anthropologists and archaeologists say we are talking about 4.5 billion years.
According to the Abrahamic faiths or "People of the Book" who agrees on is that Adam was not just the first human but the first Prophet of God as well. In other words, Adam was God’s messenger who was given the task of bringing the message of God to humankind, which did not exist yet at that time until he and Eve started having children and their children had sex with one another to bless Adam and Eve with grandchildren.
So that means Adam and his family had a religion back then. And their religion was the true religion of God. From there, the descendants of Adam and Eve migrated all over the world until the great flood when they were then all wiped out because they had sinned They no longer followed the true religion of God.
Hence God decided to wipe out humankind and start all over again with Noah and his immediate family and a pair of each of the animals in existence. Then the great migration started yet again with the descendants of Noah populating the earth.
According to what the Holy Books tell us, all the animals of this world plus the handful of people from Noah’s family assembled in one place. After the flood had subsided, they then went back to where they were originally from. And that is why we do not find the same animals in every country but different animals in different countries.
To conduct a study on the history of religion and a study on comparative religion, you cannot avoid the question of whether God created humankind or humankind created God. This would in particular be very apparent if you study the early religions of humankind.
Humankind was supposed to already have known God from the beginning of time. But early men were hunter-gatherers who prayed to trees, the river, the sun, the moon, etc. — or what we call animism in anthropology of religion and psychology of religion.
Does this mean after receiving an education regarding religion and God, humankind forgot what it had learned and eventually deviated from the true religion of God?
The history of religion, according to the Gospels, if compared to what the anthropologists have to say, deviates drastically. There is a large gap in the history of humankind, which the Gospels do not explain. We start with one family and from this one family and one religion many nations emerge. All these nations are then wiped out in a great flood and humankind starts all over again with just one family and one religion.
Today, we again see humankind divided under so many nations and so many religions plus so many sects of the same religion. Were we really one and then became divided (twice) or were we never one in the first place.
Religion says we were once one and then we became divided. Anthropologists, historians and archaeologist say we were never one in the first place, as the scientific evidence seems to show.
Scientific evidence and religious evidence are not of the same view regarding the origin of the species, in particular how religion came about. But religionists appear very confident that they know the truth although this truth is based on faith and not evidence. And they will kill and die to defend this truth.
Scientists also say that around 2.4 million years ago, around 1 million years after humans first walked the earth, the Ice Age came and it last until just about 11,500 years ago when earth began to get warm enough to support life.
Of course, if you read the Book of Genesis literally then either religion is wrong or the scientists are wrong. Both cannot be correct. So those who want both to be correct argue that you cannot read Genesis literally but must read it metaphorically. Only then would both religion and science agree.
Hence the six days of Genesis have to be interpreted in ‘God days’ and not earth days of 24-hour cycles. So one ‘God day’ could, for example, be 500 million or 1 billion years.
In that case each ‘God day’ would not be of equal length. If each ‘God day’ is 500 million or 1 billion years then this would explain the age of earth: 4.5 billion years. But then how do you explain the age of humans, which is only 3-3.5 million years old, when the day humans were supposed to have been created was 500 million or 1 billion years ago?
As you can see the maths just do not add up if we go by the Genesis account of the Creation. The ‘God days’ have to be of unequal length and the final ‘God day’ the shortest day of all.
Okay, assuming that the ‘God days’ are not the same as earth days, how then can we explain the day and night, light and darkness, that Genesis talks about when the day and night that Genesis refers to is the same day and night that we get because of the earth’s rotation, which is 24 hours?
The story of the Creation from Genesis is very crucial to Judaism, Christianity and Islam. If that Book were debunked then the very foundation that these three religions rest on would shatter. It all starts from the beginning. And if the beginning were flawed then everything that comes thereafter would not have a leg to stand on.
Anyway, the Great Flood was supposed to have occurred around 4,400 years ago. The Ice Age ended around 11,500 years ago. Around 10,000 years ago there was already a very advanced civilisation in India. There is also evidence that Hinduism already existed around 9,000 years ago.
But everything was supposed to have been wiped out 4,400 years ago and only Noah and his family existed. The evidence, however, shows that this is not so.
So what is the conclusion you can arrive at from all this? The conclusion is do not read too much. Just listen and believe without thinking. That would make your life less complicated.
Nevertheless, one fact still remains the same — and that is either religion is right or science is right, which means the other must be wrong.
(AFP) – In 1974, anthropologists in Ethiopia found the astonishing fossilised remains of a human-like creature who last walked the planet some 3.2 million years ago.
Was “Lucy,” as the hominid was called, the direct ancestor of Homo sapiens? Was she “The Mother of Mankind,” as some headlines claimed?
Over the years, the dramatic assertion has come under attack by doubters, who point to ancient yet inconclusive finds in Kenya and Chad.
But a new fossil, reported on Wednesday, may have dealt Lucy’s claimed status an irreversible blow.
Another species of hominid lived at the same time and in the same Afar region of Ethiopia, according to the paper, published in the journal Nature.
Named Australopithecus deyiremeda, the hominid and Lucy are probably only part of a wider group of candidates for being our direct forerunners, the finders said.
“The new species is yet another confirmation that Lucy’s species, Australopithecus afarensis, was not the only potential human ancestor species that roamed in what is now the Afar,” said Yohannes Haile-Selassie of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.
“Current fossil evidence… clearly shows that there were at least two, if not three, early human species living at the same time and in close geographic proximity.”
The find, in the Woranso-Mille area of the Afar region, comprises fossilised remains of an upper and lower jaw, dated to a range of 3.3-3.5 million years ago.
This overlaps with the range given to Lucy, of 2.9-3.8 million years ago.
The bones are clearly different from Lucy’s, with teeth of different size, shape and enamel thickness and a more robust lower jaw, said the study.
They were found in March 2011 on top of silty clay in the Burtele area, about 500 kilometres (325 miles) northeast of Addis Ababa and 35 km north of Hadar, where Lucy was found.
The estimated age is derived from radioactive dating of the soil and “paleomagnetic” data, which traces changes in Earth’s magnetic field, recorded in iron-bearing sediment, as a calendar.
The name “deyiremeda” means “close relative” in the language of the Afar people.
Heated debate
Understanding the human odyssey has always been a fraught business, complicated by the rarity of fossil finds and sometimes fierce squabbles about where — or even if — they should be placed in the family tree.
The same team had previously found the 3.4-million-year remains of a foot in the same region, but were unable to assign the fossil to a particular hominid species.
“Some of our colleagues are going to be skeptical about this new species, which is not unusual,” Haile-Selassie admitted.
“However, I think it is time that we look into the earlier phases of our evolution with an open mind and carefully examine the currently available fossil evidence rather than immediately dismissing the fossils that do not fit our long-held hypotheses.”
Only a week earlier, anthropologists shook the coveted position held by Homo habilis, the hominid deemed to have come before Homo sapiens.
Habilis — “handy man” in Latin — has traditionally been enshrined as a benchmark of hominid smartness, endowed with a bigger brain and greater dexterity than his predecessors.
But earlier hominids may have had some of his skills, if the May 20 study is right.
It reported finding the world’s oldest stone tools in northwestern Kenya.
The implements date back to around 3.3 million years ago, which is some 500,000 years before Habilis emerged and 700,000 years before the first known Habilis tools.
