Have They Found King Solomon’s Mines?

An 18th century Russian icon depicting King Solomon. Image from Wikipedia.

Joel Kontinen

The Old Testament describes King Solomon as a man of great wisdom, wealth and power. Jesus Christ spoke about him in the Gospels. A recent article in Biblical Archaeology Review suggested that a first century AD painting depicting his wise judgement has been found in the ruins of Pompeii.

The fame of King Solomon has also made its way into popular literature. For instance, the British writer Sir Henry Rider Haggard (1856-1925) published a fictitious novel describing the adventures of Allan Quatermain, who eventually finds the mines in South Africa. Several popular films are based on the book.

However, some archaeologists known as minimalists have doubted the veracity of the Old Testament’s description of King Solomon. Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University has suggested that archaeological evidence does not support the biblical record of Solomon.

A new radiocarbon dating of an old copper smeltery challenges Finkelstein’s claim. Recently, Los Angeles Times reported on a spectacular find that throws more light on the issue. In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Thomas E. Levy of the University of California, San Diego, who has directed the excavations in Jordan, says a huge copper smelting plant found in the biblical land of Edom is at least 300 years older than previously thought.

While Levy does not say the find proves the veracity of the biblical record of Solomon, he says, “we've brought empirical data that shows we have to reevaluate those questions. We're back in the ballgame now."

Archaeologist William Schniedewind supports Levy. In his view, Levy “is completely right. The scientific evidence seems to be going in his favor."

While Finkelstein and other minimalists still doubt the significance of the find, the new radiocarbon dates square nicely with the biblical dates for King Solomon’s reign (971-931 BC).

The site Levy reports on is known as Khirbat en-Nahas or “ruins of copper” in Arabic. It is a 24-acre area 30 miles (50 km) south of the Dead Sea and 30 miles (50 km) north of Petra. It includes over 100 buildings. The huge amount of black slag, which is up to 20 feet (6 metres) deep, shows that the place was by far the largest iron age copper mine.

It is thus very likely that Levy is right and the remains of King Solomon’s mines have indeed been found.

This would be no surprise. We would expect the Bible to be a record of true history.

Recently, an old seal impression found in Jerusalem indicates that the old Testament writers recorded history meticulously and accurately.

Sources:

Feder, Theodore. 2008. Solomon, Socrates and Aristotle. Biblical Archaeology Review 34:5, 32-36 (September-October 2008).

Maugh II, Thomas H. 2008. Copper ruins in Jordan bolster biblical record of King Solomon. Los Angeles Times. (28 October)
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-sci-solomon28-2008oct28,0,1332762.story

The Thought of the Week: Fear is Embedded by Evolution in Our Lizard Brain

Brains inherited from this creature bring about fear, at least in the mind of the evolutionist.



Joel Kontinen

A recent issue of Time magazine had an interesting view on the current financial turmoil. Discussing the panic that started with the bank crisis in the USA, John Cloud said, “Fear is a persistent emotion, one embedded by evolution in our lizard brain.”

Cloud’s diagnosis is based on the assumption that humans are the product of natural selection and mutations.

However, the Book of Genesis tells us that man was created in the image of God. Knowing this, we have no need of believing in Darwinian storytelling.

Genesis is real history. We would not understand the New Testament without it. Jesus believed in a literal creation. He did not die for a myth but for the sin of Adam and Eve.

The Bible brings us comfort even in the midst of turbulent times. Repeatedly we see the words Do not be afraid on the pages of the holy book. The apostle John for instance wrote:

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. (1 John 4:16-18).


Source:

Cloud, John. 2008. The Moment 10/6/08: New York. Time (European edition) 20 October, page 9.

New Scientist on the Warpath - Once Again!

Expelled! seems to haunt New Scientist


Joel Kontinen

With Charles Darwin’s 150th birthday approaching, the popular British science magazine New Scientist has recently featured some rather militaristic articles. In early July it had an article entitled New Legal Threat to Teaching Evolution in the US and a recent print edition had an ever more exciting title: Creationists Declare War Over the Brain. Both articles were written by Amanda Gefter.

So what is going on? The July article was a report on the Louisiana Science Education Act that allowed a critical examination of Darwinian evolution in classrooms. Gefter used expressions like “the latest manoeuvre in a long-running war” to present her case that criticism of evolution endangers science education. Darwinian rhetoric notwithstanding, it seems that the only thing this act could threaten is an uncritical presentation of evolution as self-evident truth.

The more recent headlines had to do with the research of neurosurgeon Michael Egnor and other scientists who believe that matter cannot explain consciousness – a view that Darwinists consider heresy. In reporting on an international symposium called Beyond the Mind-Body Problem: New Paradigms in the Science of Consciousness that was held in September in New York, she used expressions like “battleground” and “war on science”.

New Scientist has a track record of using the terms creationism and intelligent design as synonyms, although the only thing that is common to both of them is criticism of Darwinian evolution. Moreover, in a typically Orwellian manner, by “science” the magazine almost always means “Darwinian evolution”.

When the Darwin centennial was celebrated in Chicago in 1959, Sir Julian Huxley announced that creationism was essentially dead. The recent articles adorning the pages of New Scientist magazine are at least proof of the growing suspicion that Huxley’s comment was probably slightly premature.

Could it be that Ben Stein’s documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, which is now available as a DVD, bothers Darwinists more than they are willing to admit?


Sources:

Gefter, Amanda. 2008. New legal threat to teaching evolution in the US. New Scientist 9 July 2008. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg19926643.300

Gefter, Amanda. 2008. Creationists declare war over the brain. New Scientist 22 October 2008. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026793.000?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=mg20026793.000.

Whitcomb, John C. 2006. The History and Impact of the Book, "The Genesis Flood". Acts & Facts 35:5, I-iv. (May 2006) http://www.icr.org/article/2719/

Is Barack Obama's Agenda Anti-Christian?

Image from Wikipedia.


Joel Kontinen

Senator Obama said St. Paul’s teaching on the consequences of rejecting the Creator is an “obscure passage in Romans”. This is a very odd claim. Paul was the greatest theologian of the Christian Church and Romans is probably the most comprehensive account of early Christian theology.

There is nothing obscure in Romans 1. Paul teaches that people intuitively know that there is a Creator God but have refused to acknowledge this. The New International Version puts verse 20 like this: “For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. “

Nothing very obscure here. The next verse describes how people reacted to God’s revelation in nature: “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.”

Paul says that men exchanged “the truth of God for a lie.” They were immoral, murderers and full of “every kind of wickedness”.

Senator Obama’s views of abortion and same-sex relations are diametrically opposed to what the Bible clearly teaches. In his second letter to the Thessalonians, Paul speaks about “the man of lawlessness” who will lead the rebellion against God. The Bible calls this man the Antichrist who, as his name implies, has an Anti-Christian agenda. Could he be Barack Obama?

The Old Testament Prophet Daniel says that this man “will speak against the Most High and oppress his saints and try to change the set times and the laws.”

History has already seen some little antichrists. The depression of the 1930s brought Adolf Hitler to power in Germany. Like Obama, he succeeded in hypnotising the masses, both Christians and non-Christians, to vote him to power. Hitler changed many laws – to the detriment of Jews, Gypsies and Slavs who were unfortunate enough to live within the clutches of the German eagle.

Keeping this in mind, Obama’s low view of Scripture and his opinion on abortion seem extremely disturbing. In some European nations, abortion was followed by euthanasia. Like in Nazi Germany, it is the defenceless that are persecuted.

While I do not think that Senator Obama is the Antichrist of the Book of Revelation, his views might make him into a little Antichrist that the Gospel writer John warned about in his first letter: “This is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come.”


Source:

Riley, Jennifer. 2008. Obama Uses Jesus' Sermon to Bolster Gay Civil Unions. Christian Post (4 March). http://www.christianpost.com/article/20080304/obama-uses-jesus-sermon-to-bolster-gay-civil-unions.htm

Dinosaurs in Alaska

How could dinosaurs find food in Alaska?



Joel Kontinen

We would not expect to see dinosaurs in Alaska. But Arctic Dinosaurs, a recent Nova program, examined an intriguing mystery: how could dinosaurs live in an arctic environment?

Palaeontologists have “unearthed dozens of dinosaurs—adults and juveniles—their bones jumbled together, fossilized, then locked in permafrost for eons, until now.” They have found eight different species at two sites along the Colville River. They dug up hundreds of fossils, including a 10.5-metre (35-foot) Edmontosaurus, a duck-billed herbivore or plant eater just 80 kilometres (50 miles) from the Arctic Ocean and a 9-metre (30-foot) Gorgosaurus, a carnivore.

There are three potential solutions for the existence of these dinosaur graveyards: (1) Alaska was warmer in the past, (2) the dinosaurs migrated there each year or (3) they were warm-blooded after all. As Hans-Dieter Sues of the Smithsonian Institution says in the program, “The traditional view was that dinosaurs were all overgrown reptiles that lived under tropical conditions. When we found polar dinosaurs, however, it was driven home to everyone that dinosaurs could live under different...and thrive under very different climate conditions.”

Migration would probably have to be dismissed as there was not much food in Alaska and the winters might have been too severe for dinosaurs even in near-by areas. While the warm-blood hypothesis might not be ruled out completely, it still leaves an all-important question unsanswered: how could giant plant-eaters find enough food during the severe winters?

This would seem to leave us with just one feasible solution to the riddle: perhaps Alaska was warmer in the past.

That scenario would fit in well with the biblical view of origins. The flood of Noah’s days would leave animal graveyards in its wake. It would also have changed the weather permanently. Creation scientists such as Michael Oard believe the post-flood conditions caused the ice age. In any case, the pre-Fall "very good" world would not have had any harsh weather.

Thus, from a biblical perspective the existence of dinosaur graveyards in Alaska is no mystery at all. On the contrary, if we believe that the Bible is a reliable account of history, we would expect to find traces of the great flood that destroyed all the people and land animals that were not on the ark.




Source:

Nova Transcripts. Arctic Dinosaurs. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/3511_arcticdino.html

The Oldest Rocks in the World?

The Helvetinkolu Gorge in southern Finland. Estimates for the age of these rocks vary by a factor of over ten, from 150 million to 1.9 billion years.

Joel Kontinen

A group of geologists claims they have found the oldest rocks in the world. In a paper published in the journal Science they say that a piece of Nuvvuangittuq greenstone is 250 million years older than any known rock.

Samples taken from the rock were sent to the Carnegie Institute in Washington for a chemical analysis. The rocks were dated by the samarium-neodymium method. The age of the rocks ranged from 3. 8 to 4.28 billion years.

Don Francis, a professor of geology at the McGill University in Montreal, thinks 4.28 billion years is the most likely date.

The rock also contains ”a chemical signature” that may be evidence of life.

People often suppose that radiometric dating methods are reliable but they almost regularly give incongruous results. Radiometric methods do not measure age but the amount of certain isotopes. Researchers can never be absolutely sure of the original amounts of the isotopes and they also have to make several other assumptions. Thus, they have often had to re-date fossils, rocks and even caves.

In addition, the discovery of soft tissues in T. rex bones and of carbon-14 in diamonds weakens the belief in millions of years. Comets , Mercury’s magnetic field and Saturn's moon Titan also speak for a young solar system.

The belief in millions of years can be a very ideological issue especially for non-theists. The idea of an old earth is actually an assumption that saw daylight before the discovery of the earliest dating methods.




Source:

Morgan, James. 2008. Team finds Earth's 'oldest rocks' . BBC News. (26 September)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7639024.stm

Evolution in Action?

The cichlids of Lake Victoria found their way to the cover of Nature.

Joel Kontinen

Since the time of Charles Darwin, scientists have pondered how new species come into being. According to the Darwinian great story, all living beings are descendants of a single unicellular being that was not created but was formed accidentally.

Evolution needs changes and new species, otherwise it will stop.

Recently, the journal Nature published a study on the speciation of cichlids in Lake Victoria. A research team led by Ole Seehausen of the University of Bern observed the life of these East African fish. They noticed that in the murky waters of the lake, red light penetrates deeper than blue light. Thus, in shallow water the male cichlids were mostly green or blue whereas in deeper water they were bright red.

Karen Carleton of the University of Maryland explained that the fish specialise to different microhabitats or life at different depths. As reported by Physorg.com she went on to say, “The visual system then specialized to the light environment at these depths and the mating colors shifted to match. Once this happened, these two groups no longer interbred and so became new species."

There is no shortage of species in the world of evolutionists. For instance, Lake Victoria holds an estimated 500 species of cichlids.

Many evolutionists suppose that rapid speciation refutes creation. However, this is by no means true. The kinds of Genesis do not correspond to the biological concept "species". For instance, the dog kind (dog, wolf, dingo, coyote) belong to the same biblical baramin or created kind. Likewise, the horse, donkey and zebra belong to the same created kind.

Thus Noah did not have to take as many animals on board the ark as skeptics suppose. God created an enormous potential for change in each kind. But there is absolutely no proof of any created kind ever changing into a different kind. Thus all the cichlids of Lake Victoria belong to the same biblical kind.

The credibility of Nature’s cover story is weakened by the fact that the researchers did not observe the birth of a new species. As doctor Jonathan Wells explains, they merely examined existing species and drew conclusions that are rather misleading.

The recent article in Nature is a typical example of Darwinian storytelling, It is based on the assumption that evolution is a fact and that it happens all the time.

Sources:

Blake, Kelly. 2008. The Color of Evolution: How One Fish Became Two Fish. Physorg. Com. http://www.physorg.com/printnews.php?newsid=142615133

Seehausen, Ole, Yohey Terai, Isabel S. Magalhaes, Karen L. Carleton, Hillary D. J. Mrosso, Ryutaro Miyagi, Inke van der Sluijs, Maria V. Schneider, Martine E. Maan, Hidenori Tachida, Hiroo Imai & Norihiro Okada.. 2008. Speciation through sensory drive in cichlid fish. Nature 455, 620-626 (2 October 2008).

Wells, Jonathan. 2008. One Long Bluff. Evolution News & Views. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008/10/one_long_bluff.html#more