Conceived in Sin: The Bible ^Usn

By George W. Barclay Jr.

This is the Bible for the twenty-first century and requires a scholarly knowledge of science and metaphysics.

"Earth Sciences will be taught in the third grade. Quantum Physics, General Relativity, and the Theory of Everything will be taught in the eighth grade. Religion will merge with science, philosophy, and metaphysics and be taught as Social Science."

Dr. Amy Omikami, Professor of Astrophysics, USN.

"Life was a Cosmological imperative. We all came from star stuff. Doctrinal seminaries are obsolete, absurd, and boring. Our university will present philosophy, religion, and science as a single mosaic of cognitive experience."

Maria Tantalia, Present of Board, USN.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jul 31, 2006
• ISBN: 9780595851317

George W. Barclay Jr.

Dr. George W. Barclay Jr. is retired Beaumont Cardiologist. He writes adventure, mystery, science fiction and metaphysics. This is his twenty-sixth novel. He is graduate of Texas AM and Southwestern Medical School (MD FACC).

Book preview

1      

Today I will discuss the creation of our universe and the end of time. In an absolute vacuum at absolute zero temperature, all molecular and atomic activity stops, and only quantum mechanics fluctuate. Imagine an infinite space of nothing and inside a tiny virtual universe of nothing so small that the initial image cannot be seen by the strongest microscope. Our universe was a small virtual speck of nothing having infinitesimally small dimensions in a nothing space of infinite size at absolute zero temperature and pressure. By quantum fluctuation it developed ever so briefly a negative volume at the tiniest negative time, and then burst into flames at millions of degrees, a giant expanding ball of fiery energy so hot that nothing existed but fire and radiation. In just fractions of a second it expanded enormously to near its present size and began to cool. Quarks and electrons formed atoms; atoms formed molecules, gases, and dust. Stars were formed and gave off light, photons of energy. Gases and dust drawn together by gravity formed stars, planets, galaxies, meteors, asteroids, and comets, and all the other things out there that astronomers find so interesting. Expansion has now continued fifteen billion years, and our earth has existed five billion. Our star, the sun, has enough energy to last five billion more years. Then it will expand, engulf our planet, and we will all become toast. Not to worry! Before that happens, a comet will strike earth and break us apart. What I have just described is the ULTIMATE FREE LUNCH. Dr. Amy Omikami smiled ever so briefly.

There are one hundred billion billion stars in our universe, and ifit weren’t for dark matter, everywhere would be bright. Our earth rotates on its axis, and at night we see dark matter. You walk in a closet, close the door, and you see dark matter. Dark matter does not emit electromagnetic waves so we can’t measure it or weigh it. DARK MATTER COUNTS because it will decide the ultimate age and fate of our universe.

The density of our present universe is three hydrogen ions per cubic meter at absolute zero temperature and pressure. The first law of physics is that matter cannot be created or destroyed. We started out with nothing, and we will end with nothing. If the true density were greater than three hydrogen ions, then our universe would eventually run out of energy, and gravity would pull it together and it would destroy itself by fire one hundred and eighty five billion years from now. If the density were three or less, then the universe would expand forever until it ran out of energy, then become an icicle, and ultimately disappear. On the one hand you end up as a ball of fire after two hundred billion years, or you go on forever and end up a ball of ice at infinite time. What I didn’t discuss today, were neutrinos, negative gravity, and gravitons. You get that next semester, if you elect to stay in my course. Briefly, after four billion light years, expansion of the universe accelerated due to the effect of negative gravity, and neutrinos formed dark matter. Also, at the atomic level, gravitons and negative gravity may account for the stability of orbiting electrons in the non-excited state. These exciting new discoveries along with the effect of anti-matter will be studied next semester.

Dr. Omikami paused, paced, and thought. "Wednesday, I will discuss black holes, worm holes, and clusters of grapes. If any of you didn’t understand today’s lecture, let me suggest www.britannica.com or the text I recommended for this course. Your tests will be essay, and I count off for errors in spelling and punctuation and incomplete sentences."

2      

"How would you like to go to a medical lab, get a blood test and find out just how religious you really are? It would separate the true believers from the hypocrites and tell us who the criminals, car salesmen, and politicians will be. When the human genome studies are complete, you will be able to do just that.

"Geneticist have long known that humans pass on a religion gene. It is a dominant, non-sex linked gene, passed by both parents to each offspring. If the offspring receives a double dose, he’s highly religious. You might find double dosers in priests, nuns, etc. Single dosers are your poor churchgoers, backsliders, and most of us, since single dosers make up seventy percent of the population. No dosers would probably end up in jail. It is very important to select your parents carefully!

"The Neanderthals went back about three hundred thousand years. They ranged in packs, lived in caves, thought their shadow was a soul, and worshiped animals, bears, spirits and just about everything and anything. Most of you saw the movies Cave Bear, Ada, etc. Hollywood gave a very good depiction of early prehistoric humans. The Cro Magnum evolved at least one hundred thousand years ago, and their caves have been found all over Europe, the Middle East, Africa, China, Australia, etc. They buried their dead with their weapons and utensils, put flowers on their graves, and painted animals on the walls of their caves.

"Recorded history goes back five thousand years or earlier. The Sumerians developed cuneiform, the Egyptians hieroglyphics, and the Chinese characters.

"Gilgamesh, an epic poem written in cuneiform, was recorded two thousand years before Genesis was penned in ancient Phoenician. Gilgamesh sets out to find immortality. He interviews an ancient couple that were the only survivors of a great flood. They tell Gilgamesh about the plant of eternal life which he subsequently dives and retrieves from the bottom of a great sea only to have the serpent eat the plant oflife while he is changing into dry clothes. So the serpent achieved immortality and sheds his skin every year, and Gilgamesh went back to rule Urick and die a natural death like all mortals.

"The thought of death and nothingness is incompatible with human mentality. People just won’t accept a nothing hereafter. The one big exception is Buddhism where Nirvana in the here and now and escape from the cycle of birth, suffering, death, and rebirth is their goal, but most are destined to come back again.

"Socrates, around 400 bce, was first to conceive of heaven, soul, and rebirth. Both Zoraster of Persia, and priests of Ancient Egypt developed the concept of afterlife and judgement at least a thousand years before the Hebrews started their westward migration. The Hebrews developed the concept of a single living God, final resurrection, and judgement. Isis resurrected Osiris from the Nile long before Jesus was resurrected from the grave.

Religion is a cultural phenomena. When you travel at the speed of light, distances shorten, time slows down, space time curves, triangles have more than one hundred and eighty degrees, and history seems quaint. The future is youth, and the present is old age.

In space, religion is even more of a regional cultural phenomena. You can’t understand a civilization or its people without knowing their superstitions and religious beliefs. Most of you have watched enough Star Trek to understand that. You people are thinking about going to Mars. Your children will think about our galaxy, and your children’s children will think about our universe.

I’m sorry, I got carried away and ran overtime. Next Thursday I will address a new religion, Rap Hip Hop, and, if we have time, extraterrestrial cultures and religions. I will have a few comments regarding generic Islam and English planned for our space colonies.

3      

"Monday, I discussed dark matter and it’s consequences concerning the longevity of our universe. If we can measure dark matter, then we can find out if the universe terminates as a fireball in two hundred billion years or ends up an icicle at infinite time.

Our sun is a star. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, revolves around a black hole so dense that Its gravity attracts everything in our galaxy. It’s the garbage can from which nothing can escape, not even light, therefore the descriptive term black hole." There are a hundred billion stars in the Milky Way revolving around the black hole, and the distance across is a hundred million light years. To escape from our galaxy traveling at the speed of light would take generations. We’d have to give birth enroute and train our offsprings to carry on.

"There are a hundred billion galaxies in our universe, and our universe is expanding at near the speed of light. The furtherest galaxy we can see is fifteen billion light years away, and the image in our telescope is fifteen billion years old at the time we see it. So if we can travel at the speed of light toward the edge of the universe it will take us fifteen billion years to get where it was thirty billion years ago. In other words, our universe, would have doubled in age. To escape from our universe we would have to develop a spacecraft that would go faster than the speed of light.

"Faster than the speed of light? Impossible! Einstein said it cannot be done. Here’s the hooker. Don’t forget quantum fluctuation and the uncertainty principle. Anything conceived by the human brain, no matter how improbable, can become probable given enough time. Billions of years and thousands of generations!

"Worm holes are passages through the black hole at the center of every galaxy. To transverse a worm hole to enter another universe you must travel faster than the speed of light. It’s that simple. Universes are connected with each other by worm holes. So, a short cut out of our Milky Way is through our own Milky Way by our own worm hole. There are billions and millions of other universes out there connected by worm holes, like a cluster of grapes, waiting for us to explore them traveling at greater than the speed of light.

"I hope you are sitting out there saying to yourself that Dr. Amy Omikami is crazy. We’ll all be dead and gone long before they build a rocket that powerful. We can’t even get off the earth and put jellyfish and mosquitoes on Mars without our spaceship blowing up. I’m sure by now you’ve seen the morning papers or last night TV that our latest attempt to land life on Mars ended in disaster. NASA keeps saying we’re going to Mars by 2000.

"I’d like to say a few words about Mars. It’s red because it’s rusted all over. It’s too cold to sustain life, and there’s no oxygen or water. Just dry ice at the poles. They say they’ve found fossils of primitive worms from meteors indicating that four billion years ago microscopic worms might have existed, but there’s no life now.

"You’ve all heard me say this before. That, if we’re going to explore the universe looking for another Goldilocks planet like earth, we need to develop a controlled nuclear fusion powered spaceship.

"Friday, I will discuss Supernova and the formation of the elements that complete the chemical periodic chart. No heavy elements were made here on earth. They were all extraterrestrial. Everything was all extraterrestrial. Everything on earth is extraterrestrial! You people are made up of star stuff.

"There will be an examination Monday, open book, and essay. I’ll count off for spelling and punctuation.

Remember! Dr. Amy Omikami said it first. If you want to fly like a star, you’ve got to harness the power of a star, controlled nuclear fusion. She smiled, picked up her lecture notes, and put them in a briefcase.

4      

"Before the end of the ice age, the beaker people occupied the British Isles, and the Cro magnum were scattered over Eurasia and Africa. 30,000 years ago the Aborigines migrated from southeast Asia to Australia, and the Japanese migrated across from Korea. 20,000 years ago the isolated voyages, and the long migrations began to the Americas. 12,000 years ago the glaciers melted, and our present interglacial period began and should last another 10,000 years. The Siberian migrations covered both North and South America. At the beginning of the BRONZE AGE, the Egyptians were flourishing along the Nile, the Sumerians in Mesopotamia, the Hittites in Asia Minor, the Mycineans in Greece, the Minoans on Crete, the Etruscans in Italy, the Phoenicians along the Mediterranean, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Hindus, the Germanic tribes around Denmark, the Celts around Salzburg and Austria, the Vietnamese, Koreans, Mongolians,

Chinese, the Polynesians, island hopping eastward across the Pacific, the Lap Landers inside the arctic circle, the Eskimos and on and on. Most practiced human sacrifice and cannibalism as a religious ritual. Early on, Isis resurrected Osiris from the Nile and gave birth to the Egyptian gods. Each migration had its own gods and goddesses adapted to fit their needs and culture. With the onset of the IRON AGE, weapons and tools got better, and conquests got serious. The great religions that survived were: Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Shintoism, and Judaism.

"Every tribe, every island, every nation, every civilization had its own creation story, deity, and religious customs. Each tribe had their own set of beliefs and their own revealed truths. Religion is hereditary in humans, and instead ofbeing classified Homo Sapiens we should have been called Homo Religiosus. Only humans have a soul and an afterlife. All the other animals do not, and that includes Charlemagne’s horse and your dog. My dog is human, and he’ll be there when the roll is called up yonder.

Today, I would like to talk about Rap Hip Hop as a new religion in America. Dr. Nigera held up her new book: "From the Bushman of the Kalahari to the drums of the Congo Basin, their drums, rhythm, and chants spread across Africa to the west coast and then to the West Indies until Rap Hip Hop was roughly perfected in Jamaica over centuries. In the last decade it has spread to New York, to Los Angeles, and to all the major inner cities of our country. It now grips teenagers in all our cities and towns like wildfire across a prairie. The chants relay a message, and the chaotic rhythmic beat causes euphoria in the minds ofits converts. Rap stars have become priests, and it is only a matter of time until one is resurrected and ascends to heaven as a supreme deity.

"There is one downside, however. In some susceptible individuals the human mid brain is stimulated to point of intense rage, and mass murders by children and teenagers have been committed. Those cases get wide publicity, but statistically they are rare and absolutely random. I would say that for the average teenager Rap is no more dangerous than marijuana.

Our time is running out. I recommended Islam for the interplanetary and intragalactic colonies because of my KISS philosophy. Keep it simple and stupid. What could be more simple than there is no god but Allah, and Muhammed was his prophet? It spread across Asia and half of Europe in less than a hundred years, and it will spread across our galaxy and the universe like corral in a worm tropical sea.

"A final few words about what to expect about EXTRATERRESTRIAL CULTURES and INTERGALACTIC RELIGIONS which is the title of my next book.

There are tens of millions ofGoldilocks’ inhabitable planets in our own galaxy. There are hundreds of billions in our universe. If the ET contact us first or visit us first, then they are superior to us in technology, intellectual power, and advanced capability. Like the South Sea Islanders submitted to the first Europeans, we will probably accept and adapt their superior religion and culture.

"Like the prehistoric geographical distribution of our earth’s population, they will each have their own culture and religion adapted to their own needs. If we contact them first, then we are superior, and they will submit to our superior technology, culture, and religion. It is as simple as KISS.

There will be an open book, essay-type, examination next Tuesday. Be brief and concise. I will count off for sentence structure, spelling, and punctuation.

Dr. Nigera ran late, and Sandra rushed out with the rest to find the powder room and go to lunch. Then she went to the Student Book Store, selected a little gold ankle bracelet, and stood in line to pay. Since she didn’t have to take the examination, she decided against buying a text. They changed every year, anyway, and you could read it by clicking on brittanica.com.

5      

Today I’d like to discuss briefly the THEORY OF EVERYTHING, the REALITY OF NOTHING, and the RAISEN BREAD CAKE. Amy smiled when she saw Sandra rush up the steps of the little amphitheater and take her seat in back. In her haste, Sandra had brought her Teddy Bear.

Today’s lecture will be tested as a bonus question on Monday’s exam, but I’ll still count off for misspelled words, incomplete sentences, and errors in punctuation.

"I don’t usually cover ET in any detail in this course. However, in answer to some of your questions, yes, there are ET. Why not? They won’t be little green men or whatever. They’ll look and act like us, but they’ll be technologically superior and smarter, and they will be here for a good reason, not on holiday. Detection would require autopsy, microscopic examination, and biochemical tests. The only difference might be submolecular. Counter Astrobiology is a separate specialty and out of my field, so I won’t comment further.

"Previously, you learned that there were four forces: gravity, electromagnetic, weak and strong nuclear forces. On the atomic level they are combined by quantum mechanics to a grand unified force subject to quantum fluctuations and uncertainty which is THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING or more scientifically known as the RELATIVISTIC QUANTUM THEORY.

"The distance between orbiting electrons and the quarks of the nucleus is large and filled with nothing.

"Our universe began as nothing and will end as nothing at infinite time. Since matter cannot be created or destroyed, overall, at any point in time we live in a nothing universe. YOU AND I ARE NOTHING IN A NOTHING UNIVERSE, so enjoy!

"We are preparing to extend intelligent life across our galaxy and ultimately to the whole universe, hopefully in a spaceship powered by controlled nuclear energy with all the comforts of home. So let’s make a RAISIN BREAD CAKE.

Pretend that our star, the sun, is one of many raisins mixed up in a batter which when baked begins to expand. All raisins expand away from the center and away from each other. In our universe all stars are expanding away from the center and away from each other at/or near the speed oflight. No matter which star you are orbiting it’s all the same. Dr. Amy giggled.

"The Japanese got it right thousands of years ago. Everything is star stuff, and we live on the land of the rising sun. You heard it from Amy Omikami first!

"In summary, we began as nothing in a nothing universe, and our cosmic future depends on unmeasured dark matter. We are star children receiving succor from our mother sun.

"Monday, the exam! Next Wednesday, I’ll discuss Quantum Gravity, Planck’s String, eleven dimension space time, and end with Mars Bar and the Milky Way.

Let’s go eat some of that NOTHING FOOD.

6      

"There’s no such thing as life without water. Bacteria, fish, and tiny organisms can live without oxygen. You can drill a mile down in the ground and find bacteria that get their energy and nutrients by metabolizing rock, but they must have water. All new water comes from molten rock and active volcanoes which we have in abundance on earth. At the bottom of the ocean along the expanding volcanic ridges and around deep thermal wells there is an abundance of fish and aquatic life that survive without oxygen. On Mars, there are no active volcanoes, no water, and no oxygen.

"At first our earth was just a ball of molten rock with a metal core. Every element and all the matter on earth came from exploding supernova. Our sun came from exploding supernova. It’s a third generation star, only five billion years old, and has only five billion years left to go.

Most of you did well on your examinations. Dr. Amy passed out the examination booklets one row at a time amid the squeals of delight and groans of disappointment. Then she returned down front.

"Remember, the universe began from nothing at negative time and volume by Quantum Fluctuation in infinite space at zero temperature and pressure and will terminate as either a fireball at two hundred billion years or as an icicle at infinite time when it runs out of energy.

"A googol is a very large number, ten to the hundredth power or one with a hundred zeros behind it. Measured in years, it is very tiny compared with infinite time in infinite space. A googol is not a comic strip. I didn’t count off for that one, since so many of you missed it.

People living in the world of the fourth dimension are invisible. It doesn’t mean they are not there. It means we can’t see them, because we live in a three dimensional world. You got extra credit if you got that one. Friday, I will talk about the origin of life, and how we all evolved from the little Tree Shrew sixty-five million years ago.

7      

Late in the fourth century, Augustine was in a severe anxiety state, pacing and crying, trying to make up his mind about the priesthood. Since early manhood, he had a common law wife and several concubines and prayed ‘Celibacy yes, but not yet, oh Lord’. In a severe emotional state, he heard a child’s voice say ‘Pick up and read. Pick up and read’. The great Augustine, professor ofRhetoric and the most distinguished man of letters in the Roman empire, picked up his Bible and read from Paul’s Letter to the Romans 13:12-14.

Dr. Plotinus picked up the big Hail Mary, turned it upside down, opened it and began to read from right to left. He turned the Bible toward the class so they could see, and then turned it back and read upside down and right to left.

"The night is far advanced; the day is at hand. Let us therefore lay aside the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light. Let us walk becomingly as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in debauchery and wantonness, not in strife and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and as for the flesh,

Take no thought for its lusts. Holy Bible. Hail Mary Edition, 1961." Dr. Plotinus put down the Bible.

Do I have a volunteer? Several hands went up. He nodded to one. A student stood up. You have downside up and mirror image dyslexia. He remained standing.

Explain dyslexia please.

It’s a congenital hereditary reading disorder in which a child reverses letters, words, and sentences. It’s usually detected in pre-school and first grade and is more severe in boys. The student started to sit down.

Don’t sit down. Let’s explore learning disorders further. Are you pre-med?

No sir, I’m studying to be a child psychologist.

Name some other learning disorders.

Attention span, hyperactive, hypoglycemia, poor nutrition.

How about cognitive?

Red and green color blindness, autism, chronological disassociation, extreme idealism. He paused. Maybe congenital deafness; no that’s not right; that’s sensory deprivation.

Very good! Differentiate between autism and idealism.

In autism, a child lives in a fantasy world as an escape from reality. He’s Superman, Batman, some great football hero. He play acts the role. In extreme idealism, he creates with his mind’s eye a world with characters, houses, dialogue. Exciting characters with exciting adventures, quite apart from his dull existence. He likes to visit his ideal world so much, that he neglects the real world.

Fantastic! What do extreme idealists grow up to be?

Novelists! Dr. Plotinus and his classmates laughed.

Okay, explain chronological disassociation, and I’ll go to today’s lecture.

Chronological disassociation is a memory impairment in both the short memory and long memory cortex of the brain and their synapses. They can remember things, but can’t tell you when they occurred or in what order. They try to compensate by guessing, causing extreme anxiety. In school they do well with open book examinations, but panic without a calendar in front of them, and they usually keep a diary. They are compulsive note takers, constantly write themselves notes, and carry a list of things to do in their pockets. The student sat down. His classmates clapped, and Dr. Plotinus smiled and held out his hand in salute. He paused for a while and then began his formal lecture.

"Physics deals with the mysteries of the natural world and uses scientific and mathematical proofs to reveal God’s wonders. Metaphysics deals with the human soul and its relationship to God, the creator. Meta means behind, hence Metaphysics is behind physics in order.

"No one has ever seen the One, the Divine mind, and the human soul. Consequently, they are abstract thoughts and dwell only in the human mind which has a mind’s eye, abstract thought, inner self, a great deal of imagination, and a remarkable capacity for suspension of disbelief. Metaphysicians refer to the mind as the soul. Heaven contains the One, Creator of the Universe, Divine Mind, and souls. When a soul falls to earth and enters a human at birth it remains temporarily until death of the body, then returns to heaven to join the Divine Mind. During the soul’s stay on earth, it yearns for contact with the Divine Mind. Connecting with the Divine Mind through the human mind’s eye and inner self is the ultimate expression of the human soul. Faith is the soul’s love of the Divine Mind, and Grace is receiving love from the Divine Mind in return. In Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the One is God. The Divine Mind is Jesus, Torah, or Koran. They all three believe in heaven and the human soul.

"When the soul connects with the Divine Mind, it’s like falling in love. The mind’s inner voice says ‘Ah hah! Now I have it.’ And the human experiences a religious conversion like exiting from a shadowy cave into the full light of day.

Friday I will discuss Entropy and the Arrow of Time. Next Monday, we’ll have your second examination.

8      

"One hundred thousand years ago modern humans evolved in Africa and spread throughout the world. By forty thousand years ago, the Neanderthals, except for Laplanders, had either been assimilated with Cro-Magnon or exterminated.

"Only six thousand years ago, genre fiction began, first by professional storytellers who went from campfire to campfire, tribe to tribe, and village to village. They memorized by rote and by verse: love stories, war stories, creation stories, stories about gods, great beasts with many heads and breathing fire, cyclops, mysterious places, and apocalyptic stories like the gothic mysteries, vampire and werewolf, science fiction and horror stories today. Sex, violence, and mystery sell, and the people loved entertainment.

"Five thousand years ago, the Sumerians invented cuneiform marks on baked clay tablets. Hammurabi wrote out his one hundred plus laws handed down by their god, Marduk. The first epic poem, Gilgamesh, was written in cuneiform. Gilgamesh goes on a journey looking for immortality. He meets an old couple that had survived a great flood, and they tell him about the plant of eternal life which Gilgamesh retrieves from the bottom of the sea only to have it eaten by a snake who achieved eternal life by shedding its skin. Three thousand years ago the Hebrew creation story was written in Phoenician, and two hundred years later the Iliad and Odyssey were written in Greek alphabet which we use today in Western civilization.

"There was an interesting story about Emperor Chin who built the great wall of China and was buried with an army of full size terra cotta soldiers. He caught his favorite daughter, Lotus Flower, reading love stories instead of studying her mathematics and astronomy. He turned and remarked to her eunuch teacher that she’d probably learn more about real life reading that trash than studying the stars.

"The great Hebrew scholars Philo of Alexandra in 20 a.c.e. and Maimonides of Cairo in 1100 a.c.e. specifically warned that the Torah was not to be interpreted literally, but the beautiful old stories were allegories, not true, and were symbolic representation of the human condition in relation to the Hebrew god, YHWH, or Adonai, as they pronounced it in the synagogues.

"Genre fictional apocalyptic literature was the rage in the two centuries 100 b.c.e. to 100 a.c.e. Most did not survive, but two made it into the Holy Bible. Daniel in the Hebrew Bible, written around 100 b.c.e., and Revelation in the Christian Scriptures written around 90 a.c.e. in Greek.

"John the Baptist, Jesus ofNazareth, and Saul ofTarsus were all apocalyptic Hebrew prophets that traveled from place to place predicting the Eschaton. The Dead Sea scrolls made no mention of Jesus, and Flavus Josephus, Hebrew historian of the time, made only brief reference to Jesus’ execution by Pilot, after being found guilty of heresy by the Hebrew Sanhedrin.

Next Tuesday, we’ll begin a study of the bushmen of south mid Africa because that’s where humans evolved from apes four million years ago.

9      

"Every five hundred million years the continents all come together to form Pangea. It’s been determined that it has occurred three times; the last was two hundred million years ago. Two hundred and ten million years go the huge dinosaurs gained dominance over the earth and oceans as the Atlantic ridge formed. Multiple datings of the Atlantic floor find no rocks older than two hundred million years. The Americas broke off from Europe and Africa. The Amazon and the Niger Rivers were once one and the same. Africa joined Europe and formed the Mediterranean and the Alps. Australia broke off from Antarctica. India banged into Southeast Asia and formed the Himalayas, and on and on. The Austin Chalk, which is so famous in Texas for its oil, extends from southwest Texas to Southern Ireland, to the White Cliffs of Dover, to the coast of Spain, to Turkey, and on into Russia. It was formed by limestone deposits from microscopic sea organism long before the continents split apart, and the dinosaurs gained dominance. Sixty five million years ago, a huge meteor struck the Yucatan Peninsula with such force that it killed off all the large dinosaurs, blanketed the entire atmosphere for months and months blocking off the life giving energy of the sun. Plant life died and the remaining huge reptiles that could not fly perished because they couldn’t find food. Birds came from feathered dinosaurs that could fly. All reptiles, like birds, snakes, turtles, alligators, crocodiles, and some lizards lay eggs with hard calcium shells. So when you eat Kentucky Fried Chicken, you are eating the descendants of the flying dinosaurs that survived earth’s greatest tragedy sixty-five million years ago. Not to worry! Before our earth is burned up by our expanding sun five billion years from now, a meteor or comet will strike us, break earth apart, and we’ll take our place in the asteroid belt. The tiny little tree shrew which hid under roots, climbed trees and burrowed in the ground and no bigger than a field rat, survived the destruction of the dinosaurs all over the earth and evolved into all the mammals on earth today, including you and me.

Next Monday we will study the biochemistry of the origin of life on earth and speculate as to whether we’re descendents of early extraterrestrial life forms that blew in on solar winds from other goldilocks planets.

10      

Physics tells you what and how. Metaphysics tells you who and why. Wednesday we discussed the One, the Divine Mind, the human soul, the mind’s eye, the inner self, memory, idealism, and the union