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10 Frequently Asked Questions by CTF readers/audiences
1. Where did Cain get his wife?
It is clear from the context of the Genesis account, that Cain -- and indeed all of his many brothers and sisters -- must have taken mates from among their siblings. This would not have been medically dangerous at this point in the genetic history of mankind.
2. Where did races come from?
People of African ancestry are not dark because the sun made them that way. It's the other way around. Because of the equatorial sun, only dark people could survive there. This is called "natural selection" or "survival of the fittest" -- which was not an evolutionary idea. A Christian man named Edward Blythe wrote about it long before Charles Darwin did.
Only dark people could stand the African sun. Only light people could survive in the weak sun conditions of northern Europe. That is why Caucasians (particularly Scandinavians) are light. Both these peoples developed inbred differences the longer they were isolated from the rest of mankind, after the dispersion at the Tower of Babel. Inbreeding also explains the unique characteristics of the Asians, Native Americans, Pacific Islanders, and others.
4000 years ago, inbreeding would not have been medically dangerous. Today, it has become much more dangerous to mate within one's own ancestral people group. Genetic out-breeding preserves "hybrid vigor" among humans today, just as it does among the animal groups.
3. How do dinosaurs fit into the Bible?
Reports of giant reptiles living in the air, land and sea abound in the histories of the peoples of Asia, Europe, Africa, Australia, and the Americas.
4. How does the Ice Age fit into the Bible?
Except for at high altitudes (as found in the mountains of Ararat) the Ice Age would have passed without being noticed by people living in the Middle East during the Biblical historical accounts.
5. If Earth is only 6000 years old, then how can we see light
from stars that should have taken longer than that to get here?
6. What about Global Warming?
7. Couldn't God have made Adam and Earth both with
"an appearance of age"?
Both Adam and Earth were new when they were created. They had no wear-and-tear on them. They were perfectly designed to carry out their functions in God's new creation. Adam was complete. Earth was complete and ready to support life. Neither of them "looked old" at the beginning.
8. Who were "the sons of God" in Genesis 6?
9. How could there be days or time before God created the sun and Adam?
All you need is a light-side and a shadow-side for Earth to have day and night. Everyone knows that on the first day God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. He then separated the light and the darkness into day and night. This made a day. The Bible says so. The sun did not need to be the source of light for this.
Just as there can be day and night without the sun, there can be time without Adam. In fact, the Bible states that there were five full days before God created Adam. To say that there was no time before Adam was there to mark it, is the same as saying that there were no days before the sun was there to mark them. All that is needed for day and night is light and dark. All that is needed for time is the existence of the universe. The Bible says that both of these things were begun at "the beginning" in Genesis One.
10. Is the world going to end on December 21, 2012?
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Below are the more technically detailed portions for the answers to the above questions:
1. Where did Cain get his wife?
Adam and Eve were created perfect. This would have included their DNA. After the Fall, many things about life and the universe began an immediate course of decline. Mutations began to happen in the DNA, and were inherited by each new generation. At first, the genes damaged by mutations in one parent would have been few enough to be compensated for in the genes from the other parent. Eventually, the same mutated genes would accumulate enough within a family line that two inbreeding parents might hand down the same bad gene to their child. This would not have been true in the first generation. The bad effects were not completely felt until the time of Moses. Abraham was in the 19th generation after Adam, and he married his half-sister Sarah. This pairing was genetically sound and spawned the Jewish nation, which still exists today. Joseph was the 22cd generation after Adam. 400 years after that, God tells Moses in Leviticus, to forbid the marrying of siblings. Today, it is taking a very high genetic risk to marry even a distant cousin. People must now marry outside of their extended families, and it is even better if they marry outside of their ancestral people group. So, contrary to the racist thinking of many today, so-called "mixed" marriages will produce children of the best genetic health possible.
2. Where did races come from?
The main skin pigment molecule is melanin. The more melanin, the darker the skin, and the more protected it is against the harmful rays of the sun. In high-sun areas, this prevents sun poisoning and skin cancer. This same dark pigmentation, however, in low-sun areas will be harmful, by blocking too much of the sunlight used by the the vitamin D production in the skin. Vitamin D deficiency can be as unhealthy for dark skin in Sweden, as skin caner is for light skin in Ethiopia. Only light skin can make enough vitamin D under such northern less-bright conditions. The difference is only in the amount of melanin. All human skin contains melanin, just in different concentrations.
Other facial, skin, and body features characteristic of the different people groups are easily explained by their magnification due to inbreeding within the same population for many generations. Genetic drift, the founder effect, and genetic bottlenecks are accentuate the formation of these survival-neutral characteristics.
Don't forget that all human DNA that we have today, came from only three mated couples aboard Noah's Ark, which had as their own ultimate source a single mated pair named Adam and Eve. Today, when we "mix bloodlines" we are not only increasing the chances of genetic health, but we are breeding back to the original appearance of humans from the time of Noah, and ultimately from the time of our first parents. This may explain why "racially mixed" individuals are in such high demand as models and movie stars -- their looks are closer to the look of our ancestors, at an earlier stage in the generational effects of Adam's sin on us all.
3. How do dinosaurs fit into the Bible?
Job 40 describes the behemoth as a long-neck sauropod. Job 41 describes the leviathan as an ocean-going tylosaur. Isaiah 30 gives a list of animals, naming the "flying serpent" among them. The Hebrew word "tanniyn" refers to and is often translated "monsters" or "whales" or "dragons." The Chinese and British are the most famous legends of the dragons. Again, the ancient writings of these cultures describe dragons within lists of other animals that are accepted today today as "normal" and as having been seen by humans during their existence on Earth. Many other cultural icons and artifacts, in addition to some fossil footprints, have provided evidence that dinosaurs and humans once lived at the same time. Therefore, the evolution model has the history of the world all wrong.
4. How does the Ice Age fit into the Bible?
Evolutionary scientists coined the term "hypercane" describing each of the four gigantic hurricanes that raged above the oceans for centuries during atmospheric conditions like those following the Flood. Warm mild air temperatures would rule the seacoasts and the midlands worldwide, with torrential rains. In the uplands and in the higher latitudes nearer the poles, these rains would have fallen as blinding heavy snowfalls for the majority of the seasons. The pile-up of snow would compress into massive ice sheets and glaciers, that would press their way from each of the poles and downward from any high mountain areas. These conditions would have prevailed long enough for the ice to come as far south in North America, as Long Island, the Ohio River, and northern Kansas. Once this episode of favorable ice-conditions was over (approximately 300-500 years) the ice would have begun a rapid melt-down and receded pole-ward once again, and likewise back up into the mountaintops from whence they have originated. Today only Greenland and Antarctica are covered with ice sheets. Some inland mountains still have glaciers today, even at lower latitudes if they are high enough (like Mount Kilimanjaro on the equator). Japanese researchers have analyzed oxygen isotope ratios from the Greenland ice sheet and have concluded that once the Ice Age melt began, it only took 30 years for the ice to diminish to the coverage that we see today on the earth's surface.
The historical record of the Bible makes no mention of the Ice Age, simply because the people and events recorded during that time period all were located in the area of today's Middle East. If an Ice Age were to occur today, the people living in the modern Middle East would also have no knowledge of it (were it not for the worldwide weather reports on the media).
5. If Earth is only 6000 years old, then how can we see light
from stars that should have taken longer than that to get here?
According to Genesis One, there was a time when all there was in the universe was Earth and "the waters above." One promising cosmology that is both Biblical and scientific, explains that the waters would have severely depressed the fabric of space by their gravity throughout the entire universe. Earth's tiny effect would have only been felt locally.
The gravitational warping of space by the waters at the edge of the universe, would slow down time drastically. The addition of the stars and their galaxies on the fourth day of the creation, would have gravity-depressed time to the point of a stand-still. The continual stretching of space by the Hand of the Creator, would ultimately hoist the edges of the universe up and out of the time-well first. Time would then make its comeback from the edges of the universe and gradually back toward the middle of space toward the location of Earth. When time re-began at Earth's location, the outer galaxies had already experienced 15 billion years while waiting for us to re-start. On the fourth day of our world, light from the most distant objects in the universe would have had plenty of time to appear in Earth's view of the night sky, without any violation of the known laws of nature, and without Earth being more than four days of age.
This stretching continues today. Big Bang theorist claim that "Dark Energy" is pushing the galaxies apart from each other. But really, they are just riding on the space that is stretching beneath them. This view of space-stretching is confirmed by an observation of our deep-space probes, called the "Pioneer Anomaly." It is called a "discrepancy," but is equal to the Hubble Constant for the "expansion" of the universe. Galaxies are not receding by the residual of the Big Bang explosion. They are merely attached to the stretching fabric of the space of our universe, by the Hand of God.
6. What about Global Warming?
7. Couldn't God have made Adam and Earth both with
"an appearance of age"?
Think of Adam as a new car on the showroom floor, "fully loaded" and ready for the road, but with zero mileage and no wear on the tires. Earth was created in much the same situation.
Could God have created Earth and Adam with "appearance of age"? Yes. Did He do so? There is no reason to believe that He did or would do so.
Could God have used the Big Bang as "His way" of creating the universe and used evolution as "His tool" for creating all species of life on Earth? Yes. Did He do so? There is no reasoning toward believing that He did so, nor that He ever would do such a thing. The Bible tells us so. Verifiable science speaks against such imaginings.
8. Who were "the sons of God" in Genesis 6?
9. How could there be days or time before God created the sun and Adam?
As for day and night, all that is needed is a light source and a spinning Earth. When God "separated the light from the darkness," it could have been that God was gathering the light that He had created into one place; into a point source. This would have left one side of the Earth in the light, while the other side would be in the dark on the shadow-side. There is no reason to believe there were not days before the sun. There was light before the sun. There was evening and morning before the sun. The Bible says so. Even the Big Bang theory says there was light before there were stars. Why can't Christians believe it when the Bible says it?
10. Is the world going to end on December 21, 2012?
Theories about a "nemesis planet" or "nemesis star" are not based in observational science, nor even in rational hypothetical science. They are based upon a superstitious misplace and misread trust in ancient science outside the Bible. Such things are by definition therefore placed outside of the Biblical worldview and therefore cannot be trusted.
Many will remember a similar alarm at the Y2K or "year 2000" prediction of doom. The Apocalypse will come when the Lord returns to set up His Kingdom, and to put all others under His feet. When it does come, it will not be a day of doom for the ones who have put their trust in Him. Amen.
