November 2020 – Thinking Accurately Education

Cro-Magnon Man 3

A Biblical Analysis

We are putting a bathroom and kitchenette in our basement, and I bought a Formica-covered countertop and a drop-in sink for the project. The next step is to figure out how to insert the sink in the countertop.

Have you ever been in this situation? I thought the process was pretty straight-forward, until I saw that I needed a new jig saw blade.

So–being a product of the 21st century–I checked out some YouTube videos. Since I had to buy a new blade, I wondered if there was one that was preferred for cutting through Formica (though I kind of expected to use just a simple, regular fine-tooth blade).

Well…was I wrong! It turns out you need to buy a special blade, determined by whether you are going to cut downwards from the top, or upwards from the bottom. Who knew?

The reason I tell this story is to illustrate that sometimes we have to go beyond what seems obvious–what seems to be true–to find out the real truth in any situation.

For example–regarding Cro-Magnon Man…

There is a word that I use a bit more than most people would like, “epistemology”. Epistemology describes the study (or science) of knowledge, especially in the sense of knowing what is true.

What do you think is the source of truth? Like if you’re building a wall, you usually use a level and a measuring tape.

For that kind of project, those are your sources of truth.

When the Bible and what Scientists say seem to disagree, why do you believe the Scientists? Have they earned your trust? Have they proven their trustworthiness?

Did you know that:

Cro-Magnons were–for all intents and purposes–not very different, physically, from modern Europeans.
- “(They) carried a mtDNA sequence that is still common in Europe…” (https://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0002700)
Carbon dating is not as reliable as most people think, and the assumptions on which it is based are open to question.
- “The amount of Carbon-14 in the atmosphere has not been steady throughout history. In fact, it has fluctuated a great deal over the years.” (https://anthropology.msu.edu/anp264-ss13/2013/02/07/radiocarbon-dating-a-closer-look-at-its-main-flaws/)
Radiocarbon dating is periodically “tweaked” (recalibrated using new data).
- “The result could have implications for the estimated ages of many finds…which according to the latest calibrations are 1,000 years younger than previously thought.” (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01499-y)

Let me ask you a question–Are you willing to base your opinions about the Bible, God, heaven and hell on what the Scientists are saying…today?

Cro-Magnon 2

A Biblical Analysis

This blogsite is about helping people to look at information in a whole new way– an alternative way–to at least question whether the information we are being given is adequate anymore for living a successful life.

For example, a few months ago, we had a shortage of chicken in the grocery stores. It was a real problem for most people. Later, the governor of our home state of Virginia explained that several major processing plants had been closed due to COVID19. Fortunately, my wife and I buy our chickens from a local farm, so we never had a problem. We never bought meat from a farm before. But now, we find that’s it’s far better (for many reasons), and we’ve been starting to do the same with milk, eggs, and vegetables as well. And, we’ve been finding that we can make 4-5 quarts of home-made, high-grade soup from our left-over pasture-raised chicken and organic vegetables that is better than the bone-broth that we used to buy at Whole Foods for about $5/qt.

As another example, we got a strange notice from our water company last year, which indicated that the quality of our city’s drinking water was not as good as we had previously thought. At first, we thought of buying bottled water, but then we realized that we could double-filter the water from our refrigerator and get much better quality water for about 1/3 the price of buying it.

What’s that got to do with Cro-Magnon Man you may ask?

My question is, Why do you believe what they tell you anymore? Have you researched it for yourself?

Let me give you a couple of things to consider:

Cro-Magnon Man was discovered in 1868, right?
Radiocarbon dating was not developed until 1946.

How did they know how old Cro-Magnon Man was in the mean-time? What made them think he was older than 8,000 years (the time-frame that the Bible gives for the history of the human race)?

Cro-Magnon Man

A Biblical Analysis

A friend told me other day that they did not know whether they could believe the Bible, and they mentioned Cro-Magnon Man as evidence that the Bible could not be taken seriously. After all, isn’t Cro-Magnon Man a million years old?

I looked, for starters, at the old Encyclopedia Britannica my mother bought for us in 1973. This is what it says:

“CRO-MAGNON MAN, the name originally given to a small number of human skeletons of prehistoric age found in a rock shelter at Cro-Magnon near Les Eyzies in the Dordogne department of France.”
Encyclopedia Britannica 1973, volume 6, p. 795

The Encyclopedia went on to say, “The skeletons themselves were fragmentary, but three crania were fairly well preserved…” and “proved to be typical of a race widespread throughout Europe at this time, most common in France, but stretching north to Belgium and from Wales to eastern Europe.”

What did they mean, when they used the word, “race”?

The authors went on to say:

“In classification he (Cro-Magnon Man) falls into the ‘caucasoid‘ subspecies of modern man…(and) only had a few characteristics which would serve to distinguish them from some modern western and north Europeans.”
Encyclopedia Britannica 1973, p. 796

So–all that being said–how do we know how old these fragmentary skeletons actually are?

The Encylopedia says:

“Radiocarbon age determinations from certain sites in France suggest that the earliest known Cro-Magnon skeletal remains date from about 330,ooo years B.C…”
Encyclopedia Britannica 1973, p. 796

But one thing you should think about: Radiocarbon dating CANNOT be used to date remains that are thought to be 330,000 years old.

“Samples that are older than about 40,000 years are extremely difficult to date due to tiny levels of carbon-14. Over 60,000 years old, and they can’t be dated at all.”
National Geographic, JULY 12, 2019