Evolution by Catastrophe: Does it indicate Intelligent Design? (cont.)
By Bibhu Dev Misra (IIT, IIM)
Every new discovery
pushes the antiquity of man back millions of years. However, the
incongruous evidences, as and when they come up, are simply filtered
away as anomalies. In L'Anthropologie, 1995, Marylène
Pathou-Mathis wrote: ‘M. Cremo and R. Thompson have willfully
written a provocative work that raises the problem of the influence
of the dominant ideas of a time period on scientific research. These
ideas can compel the researchers to orient their analyses according
to the conceptions that are permitted by the scientific community.’[ix]
And in British Journal for the History of Science, 1995, Tim Murray
noted ‘that archeology is now in a state of flux, with
practitioners debating ‘issues which go to the conceptual core
of the discipline.’’[x]
While the discovery of
man-made artifacts, which date back to around 55 million
years, seems to indicate that anatomically modern human beings may
have appeared on the earth soon after the extinction of the dinosaurs
65 million years ago, we should also remain open to the possibility
that these stone implements may have been created by the various
human precursors, which were supposedly created in the
previous Days of Brahma, as mentioned in the ancient texts.
It is worthwhile, in
this context, to take a fresh look at the accounts of creation in the
Genesis. As per the Genesis, creation took place in six
days and six nights. However, the text specifically mentions that
birds and sea-creatures were created on the fifth day
while land animals and man are created on the sixth.
Therefore, although the entire process of creation took six days and
nights, all living creatures are created in only two days and
nights.
We can reasonably
assume that the creation account in the Genesis describes the
events that took place at the beginning of one of the Days of Brahma.
In this context, it is easy to see that the ‘day and night’
mentioned here does not refer to a normal 24 hours day and night of
the humans; since humans did not exist when the creative process was
initiated. It is far more likely that it refers to a ‘day and
night of the gods’.
Endnotes
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