666 anti-Christ Technology

Introduction and Thesis Statement

[NOTE: This article was originally one of my 300-level Computer Science term papers.]

Kings, tyrants, madmen and exploiters have been abusing mankind for thousands of years. Using the simple tools of spies, informants, bribes, torture and intimidation they have very effectively oppressed populations both large and small throughout the history of civilization. Until the middle part of the nineteenth century of the Christian era, however, these oppressors were restrained by basic physical limitations. That is, their rule extended only as far as their most distant military outposts, and only as fast as their orders could be carried to those outposts by horse, runner or sailing ship. Anyone taking a single step outside the boundaries of the Realm could be free of the oppression; or at least free from that particular oppression.

The period from the mid nineteenth century through the first three-quarters of the twentieth century saw the arrival of some truly amazing inventions: self-powered ships, railroads, airplanes and automobiles; the telegraph and telephone, radio and television; hydro-powered, fossil-fueled, and nuclear driven electrical power generation; electric lights, motors, heaters and—last but not least—the electronic computer.

As important as those inventions were, they did not substantially increase the range or oppressive potential of tyrannical regimes. What increased was the speed by which information or commands could be disseminated throughout those regimes. However, the tyrant's tool bag was not fundamentally increased by those inventions.

One invention during that period did have the potential to fundamentally increase the capabilities of tyrants: The mass-produced large-scale integrated circuit microprocessors on which virtually all modern electronic devices are founded. That invention (and associated software) leads directly to this article's thesis statement:

“In the past thirty years, computer and microprocessor technology has spawned a range of devices particularly employable for tyrannical purposes. This report will examine the key technologies related to this issue in order to determine if special concern is actually warranted.”

Section One

Almost Omniscient: Databases and Telecommunications

When Winston Smith climbed the stairs in his dreary apartment building that cold, blustery London morning in 1984, he came face-to-face with the outsized poster visage of his peerless leader reminding him of the universally known fact that “Big Brother is watching you (Orwell, 5).” This should not have come as a surprise to him or anyone else who has ever lived under tyrannical rule. Big Brothers have always been watching! Indeed, it is difficult to imagine an oppressive regime that could endure for any length of time without some significant effort at identifying and monitoring its subject population.

Dr. Baase pointed out in her textbook A Gift of Fire that the Communist East German secret State police acquired and maintained paper-based dossier files of approximately six million people. Those files filled over a hundred miles of shelf space. All of this was done without computers (Baase, 36). This section will provide an overview of the present capabilities of electronic data mass storage and management, and the communications infrastructure feeding the databases.

Databases:

The computer disk/tape hardware and software systems related to databases and data storage have literally become commodity items. Besides the obvious sources such as IBM and HP, a ready sample of manufacturers and suppliers of database materiel can be found at the website for the latest symposium on mass storage hosted by StorageVisions (Storage Conference).

IBM, in partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy, has developed and markets the High Performance Storage System (HPSS). As described on its promotional website, “HPSS is software that manages petabytes of data on disk and robotic tape libraries (HPSS)”. The University of California's San Diego Supercomputer Center maintains an extensive data processing and storage system available for a wide range of uses (SDSC).

Although the HPSS and San Diego systems are geared primarily towards large-file scientific research needs, the systems currently available on the open market represent a vast—and growing—resource that could be used for virtually any purpose (fair or foul) by any entity (good or evil). Time will only improve the effectiveness, capacity and speed of the software and hardware underlying these systems.

Telecommunications: Landlines

Databases—whether high speed electronic disks or cave drawings—must be accessible for input and output, or else they are rendered worthless. Present day database systems require high-speed, high capacity communication systems to convey the tremendous amounts of data generated by modern global society. Although this portion of the article emphasizes communications in the United States , there is a growing trend towards a seamless global communications system.

Much has been made over the breakup of “Ma Bell”, the AT&T/Bell Telephone monopoly that existed during much of the twentieth century. Although the judicial “Final Judgment” in the antitrust action occurred in 1956, the actual breakup of Ma Bell did not begin in earnest until the Modified Final Judgment by US District Court Judge Greene in 1984, and was not complete in a practical sense until the Telecommunications Act of 1996. However, the individual component parts of that breakup (Regional Bell Operating Companies, interexchange carriers, Internet service providers, etc.) are really creatures of the US Justice Department. That is, they are in no way required for the operation of a fully functional telecommunications system. Therefore this article mentions them only in passing (Hill Associates, 14-15).

Of prime importance are the ‘AT&T Long Lines’ type of operations that are capable of long distance, high speed, high volume telecommunications. These are the workhorse companies that actually make modern databases possible and relevant. However, the technology that is truly allowing the explosive growth in telecommunications is fiber optic transmission. Copper wire and coaxial cable transmission lines have limits imposed by basic physics that render them unsuitable for the data rates and distances demanded by modern database operations.

When the actual breakup of Ma Bell created new phone companies, it became obvious to them that in order to function, a new way of interconnecting was going to be required. Fiber optics lines were to be the preferred medium, and Bellcore provided a set of unified standards for fiber optic communications. This standard was called Synchronous Optical NETwork, or SONET. Fundamental to this new standard was the requirement that it not only be compatible with existing US-based copper wire systems, but also allow international compatibility. As Hill Associates put it:

“The designers of the SONET standards crafted those standards in such a way as to encompass the transmission requirements of the entire world into a single system. Thus, the global counterpart to the SONET standards in North America came to be known as the Synchronous Digital Hierarchy, or SDH. …unlike the potpourri of incompatible data rates that characterize metallic transmission networks around the globe, SONET and SDH were designed from the ground up to support interoperability among global optical transmission networks (Hill Associates, 205).”

A single SONET/SDH communications channel has a maximum data rate of almost 40 gigabytes per second—SONET level STS-768 (ibid). As impressive as that data rate is, fiber optic lines allow many individual SONET communications channels to be transmitted on a single fiber by using (or ‘multiplexing’) multiple modulated lasers operating at different wavelengths. The performance of fiber optics is being further enhanced by recent developments in amplification that will substantially increase the distances a single fiber optic line can travel.

For example, ‘Erbium-doped fiber amplifiers’ take advantage of a quantum phenomenon that energy from unmodulated lasers can be injected into a fiber optic line at specially manufactured locations and combine constructively with the data-carrying laser light, thereby amplifying the signal. This could replace the bulky and inefficient current technique of periodically converting fiber optic laser signals to regular electronic signals, cleaning up and amplifying the signals, and then reconverting them back to laser light for retransmission down the line. This could extend a single fiber line to as long as three thousand miles. Further developments in the areas of diffraction gratings and micro-electromechanical mirrors for SONET channel routing and manipulation could result in purely fiber optic long distance communications systems (ibid, 221-222).

Telecommunications: Wireless

An overview of telecommunications would not be at all sufficient without mentioning the growing world of wireless communications. Wireless (or ‘cellular’) phones and data devices are really just variants of FM (frequency modulated) mobile radios. There are, however, several technical features of wireless systems that separate them from the older mobile radio systems. First (though not at all obvious) is that wireless devices typically do not communicate directly with each other. That is, most customer/user devices communicate through the intermediary of a wireless company Mobile Base Station (MBS), and possibly through a Mobile Switching Center (MSC) and a land-based phone company as appropriate.

Second, both user devices and MBS's operate at low power. This requires a rather large number of MBS's to provide continuous, uninterrupted communications service. In rural settings this might be a string of Mobile Base Stations along a main highway. In an urban setting, the MBS's would take on a honeycomb shape. Each MBS and its transmission/reception area is called a ‘cell’. It is in the urban setting that the full suite of technology must be brought to bear to successfully execute a commercial wireless system.

The third point separating wireless from old-fashioned FM mobile radio is that the customer unit is capable of operating at multiple frequencies, but the frequency is computer program controlled from the MBS, not by the customer, so as to minimize interference and allow the maximum number of users within each MBS wireless cell.

Fourth, each customer unit and MBS is also capable of automatically adjusting its transmission power to the lowest level that will complete a connection so as to maximize usage and minimize interference between adjacent cells. This, also, is computer controlled by the MBS.

The fifth difference between current wireless and mobile radio (and older cellular) is the switch currently being made from analog modulation to digital modulation. This has the effect of increasing data rates from three to eight times that of analog (Hill Associates, 278-279).

A well developed technology that is used extensively in other countries and is gaining attention in the U.S. is adaptive phase-array antenna systems. These systems use banks (or ‘arrays’) of individual antenna elements on an MBS cell tower to receive the customer's signal. A powerful computer program analyses the signals from each antenna element to determine the time the signal was received by each element. This timing information allows the computer program to determine the precise direction of the customer unit. The program can then use this information to focus on that particular customer. Other customers are similarly focused upon by this software analysis, allowing the antenna to service multiple customers within a single cell even if they are using the same frequency.

Transmission from the adaptive array antenna is basically the reverse of reception. Since the antenna knows the direction of the customer unit, the computer adjusts the timing of the individual transmission signals going to the array elements, thereby focusing the outbound signal towards the specific customer. Other users—even on the same frequency—are unaffected. Adaptive arrays can greatly increase the number of simultaneous users in a single wireless cell (Cooper, 49-55).

International Standards:

One of the great hindrances of science, technology, government and commerce down through the ages has been the lack of universal standards. A patchwork crazy quilt of individual, local, regional, national, trade and professional standards produced the technological equivalent of medieval feudalism. A notable feature of the twentieth century was the rise of international organizations dedicated to establishing and validating standards for government, business and industry.

Highly relevant to this section are organizations such as the United Nations sponsored International Telecommunications Union-Telecommunications Standardization Sector (ITU-T), International Organization for Standardization (ISO), American National Standards Institute (ANSI), European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Internet Society (ISOC), and the Alliance for Telecommunications industry Solutions (ATIS).The priciples underlying the efforts of these organizations were conveyed by ISO President Oliver R. Smoot at the 67th International Engineering Consortium general meeting in Montreal on 17 October 2003:

“We in ISO and IEC also share common values when it comes to the development of globally relevant international standards. We have both been able to demonstrate that we implement fully the six principles for international standardizing bodies identified by the World Trade Organization as the criteria needed to promote the use of international standards to eliminate technical barriers to trade, whether or not related to technical regulations. These principles are: transparency, openness, impartiality and consensus, effectiveness and relevance coherence, and consideration of the needs of developing countries. In addition, to our common 1+1+1 objective (one standard, one test, accepted everywhere), we have developed jointly a widely used ‘tool box’ of good conformity assessment practices, guides, and standards.”

Although International standards are not a requisite for modern technology, their acceptance and implementation have greatly accelerated the pace of electronics innovation and the worldwide dissemination of the resulting products, services and capabilities.

Section Conclusion:

Up to this point we have considered the subjects of mass storage databases, telecommunications, and international standards. The capacity of commercially available databases is limited only by funding; that is, effectively endless. These databases can be fed at tens-of-gigabytes per second with current global telecommunications technology. International standards allow worldwide compatibility and usage. A ‘Big Brother’ or 666 anti-Christ tyrant could quickly become all but omniscient.

However, so far we have not found anything inherently evil or sinister. The worst of the criticism against this technology is little more than nuisance. Indeed these technologies have been, for the most part, blessings to mankind increasing productivity, efficiency, income, convenience, safety and security.

Perhaps danger lurks elsewhere…

Section Two

I know who you are: Biometrics and RFID

As relates to this article, biometrics is the ability to automatically check and verify the identity of a person, without need for human intervention, using intrinsic characteristics of that person's body. RFID is a recent technology that allows a non-contact radio interrogation of the information on a microchip physically attached to or inserted into an object.

Biometrics:

There has always been a legitimate need in civilized society to verify the identity of individual people. Business transactions, property claims, citizenship, inheritance claims, etc. can hinge on establishing the true identity of persons involved in the actions. From the dawn of animal existence individual creatures have been distinguished by features such as appearance, odor, and sound. People have always identified each other by facial features, body build, and voice. The challenge to modern computer technology is to automate the process of recognizing and verifying the identity of individual humans. The three most common and prevalent biometrics points are fingerprints, voice, and the eye.

Fingerprints have been used as a distinctive identifier for over two thousand years. However, it has only been since the mid 1800's that a real science of fingerprints has developed (Higgins, 45-47). In the early 1970's, research into the digital scanning of live fingerprints commenced, with the first commercial fingerprint scanning units being marketed in the early 1980's. In the early 1990's ANSI and NIST (National Institute for Standards and Technology) were requested by the FBI to establish standards for electronic data-basing and transmission of digitally scanned fingerprints. This resulted in ANSI/NIST-ITL 1-2000, commonly known as ANSI/NIST Standard (Higgins, 57-58).

The human voice is rich in distinctive characteristics. Voice (or ‘speaker’) recognition works by recording and digitizing a sample of a person's voice while that person is speaking a specific word or string of words. The voice sample becomes the database standard for that person's identity. During authentication, a person is asked to repeat that specific phrase. It is digitized and analyzed against the voice recorded in the database to determine if there is a match (Orlans, 82-84).

Iris and retina scanning take advantage of the uniquely distinctive features of the human eye. Iris scans map the pigmentation of the colored part of the eye. Retina scans map the unique configuration of veins at the back of the eye. Both types of scan-maps are digitized and stored in a database. Those seeking recognition have their eyes scanned and the test scan is compared with the database scan (ibid, 89-99).

RFID:

RFID stands for Radio Frequency IDentification. Unlike biometrics, RFID does not have anything to do with the characteristics of the human body. It is much more closely related to a stick-on label or a barcode on a product box. That is, RFID is as inorganic as a cell-phone.

RFID takes advantage of two facts of electronics. First, modern microcircuits truly are very small but can pack a lot of information. They also require very little power to operate. Second, RFID takes advantage of the fact that a radio frequency broadcast signal has energy that can be tapped and used by the receiving device. An RFID ‘tag’ consists of an information-bearing microcircuit, a tiny radio receiver/transmitter, and a small antenna. All of this can be housed in virually anything from tiny surgical glass vials to credit cards.

The trick with RFID is that a special reader unit emits a radio signal at the frequency to which the tag is tuned. The tag's antenna picks up the RF energy from the reader, uses that energy to power both the RFID microcircuit and transmitter, then the information in the microcircuit is broadcast out of the tag's antenna and received back at the reader which decodes the information and takes whatever action it is programmed to take such as update inventory, report to database, grant entry, sound alarm, notify police, etc. (Want, 58-65).

Of special interest to the author is theVeriChip implant. It is an RFID tag encapsulated in a surgical grade glass vial about the size of a grain of rice which can be quickly and easily inserted under the skin with a simple hypdermic needle. Its microchip is uniquely encoded for personal or medical identification purposes.(VeriChip)

Section Conclusion:

There is nothing inherently wrong or evil in wanting to positively identify someone. In most instances this is a good and desirable thing. Biometrics is just the computer assisted, automatic version of looking at someone's face and saying, “Yup, that's you all right! Come on in.”

However, the idea of RFID implants in humans does start to get a little creepy. There's really not that much difference between tracking pets or cattle and tracking/monitoring humans. It would be all too easy to post RFID detectors in the doorways or ‘bottlenecks’ of virtually every publicly accessible place in the world to monitor and record who passes through. Targeted persons injected with an RFID tag could be automatically detected and dealt with as provided for by Law.

Section Three

I know where you are: GPS and Video Surveillance

GPS:

The Glogal Positioning System (GPS) was established primarily to aid the U.S. military. It consists of twenty-four broadcast satellites placed in geosynchronous orbit at about 12,600 miles above the earth at 55 degrees tilt relative to the equator. A single satellite would be in view from the ground for about twelve hours, and the full constellation of satellites are placed in orbits so that at least four of the satellites (the minimum needed for a 3D position fix) will be in view at all times at all location on earth.

These satellites transmit timing and orbit information that can be received and processed by earth-based receivers in order to determine a three-dimensional location; that is, latitude, longitude and altitude (Larijani, 4-5). As relates to this article, present day commercially available GPS receivers are about the size of a typical cell phone. Indeed, many new models of cell phones have built-in GPS capability. Current civilian accuracy for GPS is somewhere between a radius of thirty to one hundred yards. Scheduled improvements in GPS satellites in the next few years should improve these accuracies further (Enge, 91-97).

The small size of GPS receivers would allow this technology to be utilized virtually anywhere, and in any way. For example, Government regulations in a Big Brother/anti-Christ regime could mandate that new automobiles be fitted with combination GPS/cell phone systems (e.g., OnStar) in order to monitor (or even have control over) automobiles. Older cars could be retrofitted with GPS/cell phone units for monitoring purposes. A company in Uruguay called HunterPro is in the business of producing aftermarket kits for this very purpose in support of large-scale vehicle fleets. Part and parcel of this kit is powerful computer software for monitoring the location and movement of the vehicle fleet (HunterPro). Big Brother would smile.

The enforcement of court-issued restraining orders against domestic violence offenders and home detention sentences of non-violent criminals has created an actual market for GPS/cell phone units that can be strapped to the person. Commercial vendors are marketing hardware and monitoring services for this very purpose (Electronic monitoring). The technology, hardware and software are now ubiquitous.

Video Surveillance:

“The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it; moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to (Orwell, 6).”

Companies such as ObjectVideo produce software to enable the large-and-growing number of private and public surveillance camera systems to automatically computer analyze what they “see” in accordance with user parameters. As ObjectVideo CEO Raul Fernandez put it, “The problem with large closed-circuit television infrastructures is there are a lot of cameras, but nobody's watching them. That's where technology comes in (Video Surveillance).” With the help of computers and high-speed telecommunications networks, a Big Brother or anti-Christ really could be watching all of the time—even in his sleep.

Section Four

Constitutional Considerations

This section assumes the nicety that the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights would still have some force in an anti-Christ tyrannical environment. The books Biometrics and A Gift of Fire both adequately cover the usual aspects of privacy and constitutional civil rights such as the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments. This article will add a single observation on one generally ignored area: Foreign treaties.

Article. VI., paragraph two states, “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”

This really does mean that foreign treaties are coequal with the United States Constitution, although a reasoned view of the matter would indicate that treaties should not abuse or modify our Constitution (American Jurisprudence, 419-423). Unfortunately, this author doubts that the typical U.S. history or civics course provides adequate coverage of the subject of foreign treaties. Therefore, the general population is probably unaware of the ‘backdoor’ option for the abuse of authority. However, considering that if an abusive treaty were actually to be made by the President of the United States and ratified by “two thirds of the Senators present (Art. II, Sect. 2, Para 2)”, it would literally take a U.S. Supreme Court decision—or revolution—to undo the damage.

Conclusion:

With the possible exception of injecting RFID tags into humans, there is simply nothing inherently evil or sinister about any of the technologies examined in this article. Virtually all such technologies have been quite beneficial, and virtually all legitimate concerns about these technologies are being addressed through normal legislative, regulatory or market-force avenues.

If, however, a worst-case Biblical Apocalyptic situation were to befall mankind, then the technologies examined above could be put to truly evil use in such ways as would materially increase the effects of tyranny above that of pre-modern societies. Most hurtful would be the ability to individually tag each human (or a target population), and use RFID detectors at strategic locations (grocery stores, banks, government buildings, etc.) to physically control access or monitor movement. Another very plausible tactic would be for a tyrannical regime to actually convert to a smart-card or RFID tag controlled cashless society so as to monitor or control all significant transactions on a global basis. Modern high capacity databases and nearly instantaneous global telecommunications would allow worldwide tracking, monitoring, recording and control. You could run, but your could not hide.

Only time will tell if the doomsayers are right or wrong. One thing is for certain, however: the technology of the future will only increase in speed, capacity and power. If Big Brother—or the 666 Anti-Christ—ever takes over, he will find a tremendously powerful tool of oppression in modern computer electronics technology.

Bibliography

Baase, Sara
A Gift of Fire
Prentice Hall (2002)

Cooper, Martin
Scientific American
June 09, 2003

Enge, Per
Scientific American
April 26, 2004

Higgins & Orlans
Biometrics: Identity Assurance in the Information Age
McGraw-Hill Osborne Media (2002)

Hill Associates
Telecommunications: A Beginner's Guide
McGraw-Hill Osborne Media (2001)

Larijani, L., Casey
GPS for Everyone
AIAA (1998)

Orwell, George
1984
Signet (1961)

Want, Roy
Scientific American
December 15, 2003

Table of Contents

Abortion

I start this subject with quotes from Mr. Justice Blackmun's majority opinion in Roe v Wade (1973) as recorded in the lawyers reference book 35 L Ed., 2nd: “We forthwith acknowledge our awareness of the sensitive and emotional nature of the abortion controversy, of the vigorous opposing views, even among physicians, and of the deep and seemingly absolute convictions that the subject inspires. Our task, of course, is to resolve the issue by constitutional measurement, free of emotion and of predilection. We bear in mind, too Mr. Justice Holmes' admonition in his now-vindicated dissent in Lochner v N.Y.” (1905):

“The Constitution is made for people of fundamentally differing views, and the accident of our finding certain opinions natural and familiar or novel and even shocking ought not to conclude our judgment upon the question whether statutes embodying them conflict with the Constitution of the United States.”

From pages 164 through 173 the High Court examined the medical/religious/legal histories of abortion. These histories revealed a wide range of policies regarding abortion, from total acceptance to total prohibition (e.g. Hippocratic Oath, the AMA report of 1859, etc.). In considering the legitimate interests of the State, the Supreme Court was persuaded in argument (pgs 175-176) that the idea of the personhood of the fetus was a very recent development, and that most laws and court decisions focused on the rights and well-being of the pregnant woman.

Regarding the issue of a woman's right to privacy, the opinion stated, “This right of privacy, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. The detriment that the State would impose upon the pregnant woman by denying this choice altogether is apparent.”

The Court listed medical and psychological harm to the mother, problems and expense of unwanted children, and social stigma as prime reasons for abortion. They made no mention of the personhood of the fetus. The Court did recognize that the privacy-based right to abortion was not absolute. At viability, the fetus could be protected as a function of a compelling interest of the State: “…that the right, nonetheless, is not absolute and is subject to some limitations; and that at some point the State interests as to protection of prenatal life, become dominant. We agree with this approach.”

The lawyer representing Roe claimed that a woman has an unrestricted right to abortion; Wade claimed that the State has a compelling interest in the unborn. The Court said, “As noted above, we do not agree fully with either formulation. The appellee and certain amici argue that the fetus is a ‘person’ within the language and meaning of the 14th Amendment. In support of this, they outline at length and in detail the well-known facts of fetal development. If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellants case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life is then guaranteed specifically by the [14th] Amendment. The appellant conceded as much on reargument. On the other hand, the appellee conceded on reargument that no case could be cited that holds that a fetus is a person within the meaning of the 14th Amendment.

“The Constitution does not define ‘person’ in so many words. But in nearly all these [previously cited] instances, the use of the word is such that it has application only postnatally. None indicates, with any assurance, that it has any possible prenatal application. All this, together with our observation, supra, that throughout the major portion of the 19th century prevailing legal abortion practices were far freer than they are today, persuades us that the word ‘person’, as used in the 14th Amendment, does not include the unborn.

“Texas argues that, apart from the 14th Amendment, life begins at conception and is present throughout pregnancy, and that, therefore, the State has a compelling interest in protecting that life from and after conception. We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.

“If the State is interested in protecting fetal life after viability, it may go so far as to proscribe abortion during that period, except when it is necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother.”

Clearly the Supreme Court was fully aware of all aspects and implications involved in this decision. However, they deliberately chose to take a fairly narrow view of the question and refrained from making a moral stand. Christian conservatives have often criticized the federal courts for being “activist”; that is, of forcing social change through judicial rulings. Roe v Wade, however, is clearly a case where the High Court deliberately chose to not be activist, by taking the most cautious and constitutionally well founded path to its final Opinion. Social Conservatives really need to recognize and respect this Judicial restraint, even if they disagree with the overall final result.

Though the subject of abortion is much better covered on other websites, I want to make the observation that if the Pro-life Movement should ever succeed in legally establishing the 14th Amendment personhood of the unborn, we must be prepared to deal with the full consequences flowing from such an event. Consider the logical chain of events that would unfold from a determination that the unborn are protected by the 14th Amendment. The matter would be turned over to Justice Department law enforcement bureaucrats for physical implementation. The first thing that would spring to their minds is that in order to protect the fetus, one must first detect the fetus. That means that the federal government would have to set up a nationwide system of mandatory pregnancy testing for all females who might conceivably conceive (pun intended). This would require the establishment of a truly massive federal agency with the resources to test all of these women on at least a quarterly basis, and the authority to compel them all to come in and ‘pee on the stick’.

If a pregnancy is detected, then the Agency must have the power to appropriate the woman's body as an incubator for the full term of the pregnancy, with frequent mandatory prenatal care and examinations. Should the pregnancy terminate before delivery, a thorough investigation would have to be conducted to determine if a crime was committed. This will require a substantial expansion of general law enforcement resources and authority. Inevitably, women and medical practitioners will run afoul of this system; that is, be arrested and prosecuted. The general mass media will have a field day spotlighting every case brought to court. One needs little imagination to see the political and legal firestorm that would be ignited by a bureaucratic solution to ending abortion.

I feel that the most effective (and least disruptive) course of action for the Pro-life Movement would be a four-pronged agenda. First, to step-up the existing campaign to encourage abstinence from premarital sex, and to convince the general public that the fetus is actually a person in need of protection and respect from the moment of conception. Second, to persuade drug companies and the government to develop truly effective birth control methods that will prevent conception rather than chemically abort the fertilized egg. I realize that birth control is a very controversial subject in its own right, but this point really needs to be done in order to prevent unplanned pregnancies in the first place. Third, the Pro-life Movement must pressure the government to establish a well-funded, well-equipped nationwide system of pregnancy support centers so that any woman who gets pregnant—regardless of age, marital, or economic status—will have the ready resources and assistance to bring the baby to full birth for adoption. That is, every incentive should be to avoid abortion and bring the pregnancy to full term. Fourth, the members of the Pro-Life Movement must roll up their sleeves for the vitally important work of actually adopting and raising the millions of babies that will be brought into this world through the success of their activist efforts.

In the end, these four initiatives would bring to fulfillment President Bill Clinton's failed campaign promise to make abortion safe, legal—but RARE. And the rarer the better, as far as I'm concerned.

I close this article by posing a question to Pro Choice advocates: Would you support a law allowing a mother to ‘choose’ to terminate an infant within 48 hours after birth? Of course you recognize that I am laying a bit of a trap. If you answer “Yes”, then you would be supporting outright and obvious infanticide. However, if you answer “No”, then you would be face-to-face with the Pro Life assertion that the fetus is a human in the womb that deserves recognition and protection. This is because the infant 48 hours after birth is exactly the same infant as 48 hours before birth. Only the physical location differs. 48 hours after birth the infant is in its mother's arms; 48 hours before birth the infant is in its mother's belly. Otherwise, it is exactly the same infant.

Table of Contents

The Bill of Rights and Barron v Baltimore

by Brian Bloedel

bloedel@verizon.net

In this article I will be swimming against two very strong currents of longstanding Supreme Court precedent and Constitutional legal doctrine. First I will be arguing that, contrary to Barron v Baltimore (1833), all of the general provisions of the Bill of Rights amendments were originally effective (as of December 15, 1791) against the State and local governments as well as the federal government without need for recourse to ‘Fourteenth Amendment Selective Incorporation’. Second, I will be arguing that the First Amendment's ‘Religion Clause’ is badly misinterpreted, misunderstood, and misapplied.

To understand my first assertion we must refer to Article V of the original Constitution. In abbreviated form it reads: “The Congress…shall propose Amendments to this Constitution…which…shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States…”.

This was reiterated in the Congressional preamble to the Bill of Rights amendments thusly (and do bear in mind that the term ‘Bill of Rights’ is a popular term, and was not used in the written instruments submitted to the several States for their consideration nor by the Barron Court to describe the first ten Amendments): “RESOLVED …that the following Articles be proposed…as Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, all or any of which Articles, when ratified…to be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of the said Constitution; viz..ARTICLES in addition to, and Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America,…pursuant to the fifth Article of the original Constitution.” [Note: Bold ink emphasis actually used in the original script of the handwritten documents submitted to the several States for their consideration.]

It should be quite clear from the above that properly ratified amendments to the U.S. Constitution are full-blooded ARTICLES of the U.S. Constitution, and must not be regarded as redheaded stepchildren, footnotes, or inferior afterthoughts. They are fully equal in force, stature and effect to the original seven Articles framed during the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention of 1787. Further underscoring this is the fact that in the original documents submitted to the several States, each proposed amendment was termed an ‘Article’, as in “Article the first”, “Article the second”, &c. Indeed, of the twenty-seven Amendments ratified to our Constitution, eleven specifically denominate themselves as an “article”. For example, the 13th Amendment clearly states, “Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

At this point we must clearly understand a critically important difference between the ratification process of the original Constitution and the ratification process of the Bill of Rights amendments. The original seven-Article Constitution proposed by the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 was presented to the specially convened State Ratification Conventions as a package deal that had to be accepted or rejected as a whole. The Bill of Rights amendments produced by the First Congress in 1789, on the other hand, were a bundle of individual proposed amendments submitted to the existing State legislatures that were to be ratified or rejected by each State on an Article-by-Article basis.

The two proofs of this are that, first, the Congressional Preamble to the Bill of Rights amendments clearly stated: “…all or any of which Articles, when ratified…”. Second, there were twelve original proposed amendments submitted to the several States for their consideration. The first two proposed amendments (“Article the first”, and “Article the second”, that dealt with the operation of the Congress) failed at that time to gain sufficient support for ratification and effectively dropped off the table. What we call the First Amendment was originally the proposed “Article the third”. The fact that the bundle was sent out by the Congress to the several States on the same day (Sept. 25, 1789), and that all of the surviving Articles were certified and reported to Congress by Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson on December 15, 1791 does not change the fact that each proposed amendment was a separate entity individually considered and ratified—or rejected—by the several States over a period of more than two years.

That being the case, each Article in the finalized Bill of Rights stands on its own two feet and must be interpreted and applied solely on the basis of its own internal content as a fully ratified, fully incorporated, and totally separate Article of the U.S. Constitution. The First Amendment (more properly called “Article VIII of the U.S. Constitution”) obviously limits itself to effect only on the general government: “Congress shall make no law…”. The remaining (and independent) Articles of the Bill of Rights, on the other hand, have no such internal limitations, and it is totally improper to extend the Congressional limitation found in the First Amendment to the rest of the Bill of Rights. After all, there was no requirement that the proposed “Article the third” had to be ratified. It could have failed ratification just as its preceding two siblings failed ratification. This means that the words “Congress shall make no law” would not have appeared in the Bill of Rights. It is also improper to treat the Bill of Rights as a single Article or Section composed of ten internal Clauses, all prefaced and limited with the words “Congress shall make no law”.

This bring us to the range of effect, or ‘scope’, of the ten independent Articles popularly and collectively known as the “Bill of Rights”. In abbreviated form we find these words in Article VI, Clause 2 of the original Constitution: “This Constitution…shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.” Since amendments to the U.S. Constitution immediately become fully incorporated, independent Articles upon proper ratification by the several States and certification to the Congress (or take their proper designated places inside the original Constitution so as to modify its content), the range and extent of such Articles are determined solely by their own internal content.

An Amendment in the Bill of Rights is exclusively binding on the general government only if it so limits itself, as in the case of the First Amendment. It would be exclusively binding on the State governments only if it so limits itself, as is the case with each Clause in Article I, Section 10 of the original Constitution. If, however, there is no limiting, qualifying, or restricting language in an Article of the Bill of Rights, then that Article is universal in its range and effect. That is, it becomes “the supreme Law of the Land.” Full consideration of Article V and Article VI, Clause 2 of the original Constitution should have compelled the Supreme Court to rule in favor of the plaintiff in this Case.

The High Court in Barron said, “The question thus presented is, we think, of great importance, but not of much difficulty. [p247]” and two pages later: “We search in vain for that reason. [p249]”; “that reason” being the application of the 5th Amendment in the Bill of Rights at the State and municipal levels—the Mayor & City Council of Baltimore, to be specific. I maintain that the Court gave the critically important questions presented in Barron a superficial gloss quite amazing—downright shocking!—considering the Constitutional brainpower sitting on that Bench. The Opinion, written by Mr. Chief Justice John Marshall for an unanimous Court (which, by the way, included Justice Joseph Story, famous for his Commentaries), did not even mention Articles V & VI found in the original Constitution. Their exclusive considerations in deciding this Case were the expectations and suggestions from the various State Constitutional Ratification Conventions regarding a bill of rights, the general temper of the First Congress as expressed in its official Preamble to this bundle of suggested amendments, along with an analysis of the grammatical construction of Article I, Sections 9 & 10 in the original Constitution.

I feel that the High Court was quite reasonable and correct in its conclusion that these amendments were originally intended to be operative only against the general government formed under the U.S. Constitution. It is absolutely essential, however, to comprehend that any expectations or suggestions from the State Constitutional Ratification Conventions or intentions of the First Congress—be they express or implied—are moot and irrelevant if not “averred in positive words [p249]” within each individual and independent Article of the Bill of Rights.

The Court illustrated its reasoning with a comparison of Article I, Sections 9 & 10 in the original Constitution. Because Section 9 simply continued the obvious flow to that point of provision for the legislative Branch of the general government, there was no need to expressly mention “Congress” in each subject dealt with in that Section. On the other hand, Section 10 was totally exceptional in Article I in that it dealt exclusively with the State governments, therefore each Clause was prefaced with the words “No State shall”; or as the Court put it: “the restrictions contained in the tenth section are in direct words so applied to the States. [p249]”

My conclusion is that the Supreme Court in Barron v Baltimore was both right and wrong. They were correct in their assessment of the original intent of the Bill of Rights as being restrictive of the general government only. They were wrong in not considering the full implications of Article V & Article VI, Clause 2 of the original Constitution as regards proposed amendments (by whatever popular name or term of art) that achieve full ratification by the several States. That is, the U.S. Supreme Court in Barron v Baltimore failed to resolve a Constitutional question “of great importance” by Constitutional means.

This Case brings to light the serious blunder committed by the First Congress. If their original intent was a Bill of Rights operative only against the general government of the United States of America, then each individual Article in that Bill of Rights needed to be framed “in direct words” to that effect. For example, the Second Amendment (Article IX of the U.S. Constitution) should have carried forward the explicit limitation from the First Amendment by ending: “…keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed by Congress.”; the Third Amendment: “…but in a manner to be prescribed by Congress.”; the Fourth Amendment: “…papers, and effects, against unreasonable search and seizures by the general Government, shall not be…”; &c., &c. Indeed, by the very logic used by the Barron Court, the fact that the First Congress made the explicit limitation of “Congress shall make no law” in the First Amendment but did not do so in the following Amendments clearly shows that the remainder of the Bill of Rights was effective against the State and municipal governments per Article VI, Clause 2 of the original Constitution.

However, the blunder was committed by the First Congress of 1789, formally ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, and properly reported to the Congress by Thomas Jefferson on December 15, 1791, therefore the U.S. Supreme Court was duty bound in Barron v Baltimore to interpret the individual “Articles in addition to, and Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America” according to the explicit provisions mandated by Article V & Article VI, Clause 2 of the original Constitution. Their failure to do so in this Case seriously undermined, if not nullified, the applicable provisions in those two original—and clearly worded—Articles. Indeed, this Case set the very dangerous precedent that Constitutional questions “of great importance” can be resolved by extra-Constitutional considerations and materials while totally ignoring explicit provisions within the Constitution of the United States of America itself, thereby establishing the U.S. Supreme Court as a standing nine-person Constitutional Convention that can change the U.S. Constitution at will by simple majority vote.

This is particularly important as regards the highly controversial Second Amendment: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” This independent Article, as written and ratified, is totally unrestricted and unqualified in its wording (to borrow from the Court on page 248, “No language can be more general…”) and is therefore an universal declaration and guarantee; binding at the federal, State, and municipal levels. Not only was the McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010) ‘Fourteenth Amendment Selective Incorporation’ Supreme Court case unnecessary, it was quite improper. The Second Amendment stood on its own internal content as a fully ratified, fully incorporated Article of the U.S. Constitution effective December 15, 1791 courtesy of Article V & Article VI, Clause 2 of the original Constitution. (From the Table of Contents please select my Second Amendment and D. C. v Heller article below, for further elaboration.)

To close the subject of Barron v Baltimore I make the personal observation that the Justices on the High Court used this question in order to very deliberately constrict the civil rights of the people of America to the greatest extent that could possibly have been done in this Case. It is impossible that all of the Justices on that Bench were unaware of Article V and Article VI, Clause 2 of the original Constitution, or the implications of those Articles regarding the Bill of Rights as actually written by the Congress and ratified by the several States. At least one Justice should have filed a Dissent. This decision was a very intentional, cold-blooded, and unanimous attack on civil rights. This was an attack that forced the stare decisis status of Binding Precedent to this decision; a precedent that was continued without question by every subsequent Supreme Court until the invention and implementation of Fourteenth Amendment Selective Incorporation beginning with Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Co. v. City of Chicago in 1897. Even then, our fundamental Constitutional civil rights were doled out to us in dribs and drabs over the course of more than a hundred years. This matter should have been correctly resolved by the High Court in 1833, not dragged out piecemeal into the twenty-first century via Judicial gymnastics.

I now take up the Religion Clause in the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;…”. The common—and official Judicial—understanding of this clause is that the federal government shall not make laws that in any way could work towards establishing a State religion or forcing religious practice upon the People, nor shall it make laws that would tend to interfere with the free practice of religion by the People. While I quite agree with these sentiments, and they were almost certainly the original intent of the Clause, I must call them down as incorrect. To support this understanding, the Religion Clause would have had to have been constructed thusly: “Congress shall make no law that would establish a religion, or prohibit the free exercise of religion by the people;…”. However, as actually phrased in the First Amendment, the construction, word-choice and grammar of the Religion Clause simply do not allow the official interpretation. As above, it is the duty of the Supreme Court and federal Judiciary to interpret and apply all parts of the Bill of Rights as they were actually written by the First Congress and ratified by the legislatures of the several States after lengthty consideration.

As used in the Religion Clause, the main problem here is that the word “establishment” is incorrectly understood as a verb so as to mean ‘make’, ‘create’, ‘form’, ‘institute’, or ‘found’. That is, the noun (“people, places, things, and ideas”, Hodges' Harbrace 15th ed., pg. 6) word “establishment” is being confused with the word ‘establish’, which is most definitely a verb (“n. a word or words indicating action or occurence or being…”). Granted, the word “establishment” can also have a meaning of “n, 1. establishing, being established”. However, the use of the preposition “respecting” (“prep. concerning, with respect to.”) and the article “an” speak strongly against this understanding. (NOTE: All quoted definitions taken from the Oxford American Dictionary (OAD), Heald Colleges Edition, 1980)

If the object of this Clause was to prevent Congress from creating or founding a State religion, then an action verb such as ‘effectuating’ (“v. to cause to happen.”) should have been used in place of the preposition “respecting”. Also, the article ‘the’ should have been used in place of the article “an”. There is a subtle but important difference between the phrases “an establishment” and ‘the establishment’. The phrase ‘effectuating the establishement of religion’ would speak strongly to the act of making or forming a State religion. The phrase “respecting an establishment of religion” speaks strongly to the noun physicality of religion in general as it exists, as opposed to the act of the Congress making, creating, or founding a State religion from scratch or endorsing an already existing religion or favored denomination within an already existing religion.

This becomes a major grammatical issue because of the word “thereof” at the end of the clause. At first blush, the phrase “…or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;…” would reasonably seem to point back to the word “religion”, thereby guaranteeing freedom of religion to the People. However, the word “religion” is part of the prepositional phrase “of religion”; and as we all know, a prepositional phrase modifies another element in the sentence—in this case, it modifies the noun “establishment” (Harbrace., pg.32).

The misunderstanding of words and poor grammar displayed in the common (and official) understanding of the Religion Clause result in an actual meaning of, “Congress shall make no law to establish a State religion, but shall have the free exercise of establishing a State religion.” This, of course, is grammatically and logically absurd, and cannot be the actual meaning intended by the First Congress. All absurdity is avoided if we correctly understand the word “establishment” in its strict noun sense so as to mean “n. 2 an organized body of people maintained for a purpose, a household or staff of servants etc. 3. a business firm or public institution, its members or employees or premises (OAD).” This is underscored by the preposition “respecting” and the article “an”, that clearly mark the word “establishment” as a physical noun (Harbrace, pg. 7). The correct understanding of the Religion Clause as actually written is: “Congress shall make no law concerning the physicality of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise of religion therein.”

This leaves us with a strange question: “What did the First Congress actually mean with the Religion Clause of the First Amendment?” If they actually intended the common understanding of the Religion Clause, then they did a shocking botch job on the grammar while constructing this Clause. If they intended what they actually wrote, then everyone—especially the ratifying State legislatures and the federal Judiciary—since 1789 have totally misunderstood and misapplied the Religion Clause, with the members of the First Congress doing absolutely nothing to correct the confusion.

Very strange indeed.

To close, the practice of corporate religion involves both the profane physical and the heavenly Divine. That is, the physical (noun) aspects of grounds, buildings, equipment, accessories and staff along with the spiritual (adj.) aspects of teachings, doctrines, rites, rituals and ceremonies conducted within the confines of the physical “establishment”. Whether intended of not, the Religion Clause of the First Amendment as written and ratified actually speaks to both aspects of corporate religion, and prevents federal interference with either of them.

But let's do keep the prohibitions of State established religion or federally mandated compulsory religious practice. Those are excellent safeguards of rights and liberties whether enumerated or not.

Questions? Comments?
e-mail the author!
bloedel@verizon.net

Table of Contents

Gravity: A Weighty Subject

(NOTE: There's no ‘deep thought’ here. This article is just for fun. It is a modified version of my Physics 101 term paper.)

Introduction

Prof. Paul G. Hewitt's 101-level textbook Conceptual Physics, 9th edition is an excellent and delightful work. The textbook chapter on gravity was, for me, worth the price of book and tuition. I had often wondered about the question of a hole extending from pole to pole, and what would happen to a person who jumped into that hole. And now I know!

I've also shared the general public interest in ‘black holes’. In this article I intended to expand a little on the information presented in Chapter 9 of the text by considering the gravitational characteristics of planet Earth as it is, and what they would be if Earth were collapsed into a ‘black hole’.

Section One: The Big APE

Standing on the surface of the Actual Planet Earth (APE), we make tangential contact with the vast bulk of the mass of the planet. Discounting the trivial mass of our above-ground surroundings, 100% of the mass of Earth is below our feet. Because the gravitational vector resultant of all that mass is straight down through the center of the planet, we may lose sight of the fact that all of the mass of the APE contributes to that vector, even the mass at the far horizon. Granted, that contribution may be infinitesimal in itself, but that mass will play a very significant role on a trip through the center of the Earth.

Fig.1: Diffuse source of gravitational force

Moving to the North Pole, we find that the Acme Construction Company (having misread a simple sewer repair contract for Pittsburgh) has just completed digging a hole all the way through the center of the Earth to the South Pole. Heads will roll over this screwup. Standing on the platform next to the hole we are truly in tangential contact with the planet; all of its mass from the horizon on down is beneath our feet.

Fig. 2: Journey to the center of the Earth

Oops! A careless construction worker has just bumped into us, sending us down into the hole. Our initial acceleration is approximately 9.8 meters per second squared. As the textbook points out, due to the increasing density of the APE from the surface to the center, our acceleration will increase slightly for the first few kilometers (1). However, we are no longer in tangential contact with the planet. As we fall, all of the gravity of the mass perpendicular to the hole cancels out to zero; and the gravitational attraction of the mass above us actually works to slow our acceleration. So as we fall there is less and less mass below us while there is more and more mass above us.

The gravitational acceleration decreases until we reach the center of the Earth, where all of the gravitational forces cancel out to zero, and acceleration also hits zero. It is not so much that there is no mass-generated gravity (as would effectively be the case if we were floating around out in deep intergalactic space) as that the vector resultant of existing gravitational mass forces works out to zero. Our momentum speed at the center of the Earth would be high, but the acceleration would be zero. As we continue towards the South Pole, we would actually be decelerated by the increasing mass gravity behind us. Our speed drops to zero as our heads bob out of the hole at the South Pole, then the reverse acceleration holds sway and we head back towards the North Pole with an initial acceleration of 9.8 meters per second squared.

After an approximate ninety-minute trip to the South Pole and back again, we grab the edge of the platform and pull ourselves out of the hole. Just as we get our footing, another clumsy construction worker accidentally bumps into the speed control of the construction site pile driver causing it to go into high gear. The shock of the pile driver is so great (remember, this is an Acme operation we have here) that the entire planet collapses into a black hole.

Section Two: Black Hole Planet Earth (BHPE)

What a bind! Standing on the platform we hold our breaths and watch as Earth shrinks smaller and smaller, taking the atmosphere along with it. Soon it disappears from sight. Strangely enough, we are still standing on the platform (remember, this is an Acme platform) with the same weight as we had before! Since Earth has not lost any mass, the gravitational acceleration of BHPE at this distance (6,400,000 meters) is still about 9.8 meters/s².

Where is Earth? Using the radius formula for a black hole (2GM/c²) we find that Earth has collapsed down to a ball about 19mm in diameter (2). Yes, that's about the size of a penny, illustrating that most of the volume of the APE is empty space. For all practical purposes, Earth's entire mass is now a geometric point orbiting around the Sun in the open vacuum of space.

Fig. 3: Where did Earth go?

The gravitational characteristics between the APE and BHPE are now radically different. On the APE, the mass source of gravitation was spread from horizon to horizon. Tidal forces on the human body were negligible at the surface of Earth, and would actually decrease as you fell towards the center of the planet. Consider also that although the vector line through the center of the APE gave a false impression of horizontal constriction, the diffuse source of gravity and decreasing acceleration towards the center of the planet made such constriction meaningless.

All of that changes with the BHPE as we shall now see, because having nothing better to do with our time (and getting tired of holding our breath) we decide to jump off the platform and visit BHPE. For ease of computation, I am assuming that one of us is a 2 meter tall basketball player with a shoulder span of 0.5 meter (500mm), and the masses of the feet and head each only 1 kg (obviously an Acme basketball player).

Stepping off the platform we experience the weightlessness of free fall starting at 1g of acceleration. However, this is a very special free fall. Since there is no atmosphere there will be no terminal velocity due to air drag. Also, since Earth is now a gravitational point source, our acceleration will increase by the inverse square of the decreasing distance as we get closer to BHPE.

Actually, the trip is kind of boring. With no sense of speed or motion it appears that nothing at all is happening. This, however, is a deadly illusion. Consider the following table:

Table 1: Half-distance points figures.

For about the first fifteen minutes of the trip you would hardly notice a thing except maybe a vague tightening sensation. However, once you get within 100km (60 miles) of BHPE the end is very near. For about seven tenths of a second you will have a definite stretching and compressive feeling. For the next twenty-five milliseconds your discomfort turns into a brief burst of agony as the tidal forces of BHPE begin to pull your body apart and constrict it down to the millimeter scale. The next nine milliseconds turns your body into a long stream of molecules less than half a millimeter wide. The final five-hundred microseconds of your existence in the knowable universe sees you as a tortured stream of atoms and plasma more than a kilometer in length and only a tenth of a millimeter wide. At this point the first mass of your body hits the Event Horizon and is accelerated at the speed of light.

It's been nice traveling with you. Unfortunately this is a one-way trip for there is no escape from BHPE, except perhaps ages and ages in the future as quantum radiation when BHPE slowly evaporates to nothing (3).

FINI. (Roll the credits)

ENDNOTES

1. Conceptual Physics, 9^th Ed., Paul G. Hewitt, p.166 footnote.
2. Macmillan Encyclopedia of Physics, 1996, pp. 115-6.
3. A Brief History of Time, Stephen W. Hawking, pp. 105-8.

APPENDIX

Note on Computations

The values in Table 1 are not intended to be rigorous. They are presented for illustrative purposes only, and are based on the easy approximate values of 6,400 kilometers for the radius of planet Earth, 6 x 10 to the 24 power kilograms for Earth's mass, and a rounded-off value for GM of 4 x 10 to the 14 power. Other values were also rounded off.

The gravitational acceleration and tidal force values were obtained assuming 1kg masses, using the F=GM/d² formula. For ease of calculation all of the tidal force figures were simply calculated for a difference in distance of 2 meters, ignoring stretching effects close to BHPE.

Since the luckless participants in this experiment jumped off the platform at the North Pole there were no significant rotational momentum or orbital factors to consider; they fell straight down towards BHPE. Also, no relativistic factors were considered.

The ‘time of travel’ and values in Table 1 were manually calculated using a crude brute force method. Taking each ‘half distance’ length and dividing it into ten equal sub-distances I simply assumed a constant acceleration from one point to the next and used the d=(Vo·t)+(0.5·at²) and V=(Vo+at) formulas.

Table of Contents

The Book of Mormon

Solid Rock or Sinking Sand?

by Brian Bloedel

The Book of Mormon (BoM) is the foundational scriptural document of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as established by Joseph Smith in the 1830s. Its truthfulness and historical accuracy are absolutely essential to that religion, for if the BoM is found to be false then the entire edifice of Mormonism collapses. Indeed, the official LDS Church INTRODUCTION to the 1981 edition of the BoM directly challenges readers thusly: “We invite all men everywhere to read the Book of Mormon, to ponder in their hearts the message it contains, and then to ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ if the book is true.” The following is a brief non-theological examination of the BoM. A good place to start is a quick overview of the purported history chronicled in the BoM:

Around 600 B.C. (before the fall of Jerusalem to Babylon) God led the Jewish patriarch Lehi and his family and friends east into the wilderness to escape the coming destruction. They took with them the Hebrew Scriptures written in “reformed Egyptian” on brass plates (1). Along the way, Lehi found a brass ball with a pointer that Divinely guided them through the wilderness (2). After at least eight years of wandering eastward through the wilderness they came to a coastal area where God gave them divine instruction on how to build an oceangoing sail ship (3). They boarded the ship and after a journey of “many days” they came to the “land of promise”—America (4). Soon after arriving they split into two mutually hostile tribes, and warfare erupted. The tribes grew into two warring kingdoms. This strife and bloodshed continued for centuries. All the while they continued the record keeping—again written in Egyptian on brass plates (5).

Around 121 B.C. one of the kings sent out a scouting party. They stumbled onto the ruins of a vast and ancient civilization and found records written on gold plates in a totally unknown language. The scouting party returned with the plates which were divinely translated by a seer, and then re-translated into Egyptian and re-recorded on brass plates (6). The ancient civilization was the descendants of those people God brought to America just after the Tower of Babel. They grew to several millions in population, but in a degenerate fit of rage and mutual hatred they all gathered near the hill Cumorah in New York State where every last man woman and child of them engaged in a terrible slaughter to total extinction (7).

Meanwhile, God had been sending prophets to the descendants of Lehi. These prophets were extremely (I might say suspiciously) specific in details of the coming of Christ—even to the extent of naming Jesus and his mother Mary! (8) These prophets foretold that right before the arrival of Jesus in America there would be total darkness and natural disasters upon the land (9). Supposedly in 34 A.D. this took place and Jesus appeared in America. He preached and taught for an unspecified (though obvious from the text) short period of time and then ascended into heaven. (Read 3 Nephi for details)

About 300 years of peace followed, but again division and warfare erupted. This climaxed in 421 A.D. with one kingdom virtually annihilating the other in a final battle—again near the hill Cumorah in New York! Mormon and his son Moroni were among the few survivors on the losing side. Mormon, as the last senior official record keeper, passed all of the brass plates (which had to have weighed several hundred pounds by this point) to his son Moroni who finished the last of the records and then buried all of the plates in a stone vault on the west side of the hill Cumorah, where they would rest for the next fourteen hundred years (10).

In 1823 the resurrected, glorified Moroni (generally mischaracterized as an “angel”) appeared to Joseph Smith and showed him the location of the vault. In 1827 Joseph Smith opened the vault and took possession of the plates (showing them to a few select “witnesses”, all personal friends or direct family members of Joseph Smith) and began the translation of them from Egyptian into seventeenth century archaic KJV-style English through Divine inspiration. In 1830 Moroni took all of the brass plates up into Heaven; Joseph Smith went to press with the BoM; and the rest, as they say, is history (11).

Well, this is quite an epic story even in condensed form. Indeed, this story makes up about 95% of the bulk of the BoM. Only about 5% of the BoM deals with Jesus' appearance and teachings in the New World after His death and resurrection in Jerusalem, Judea. I would like to say that I wish the Book of Mormon was genuine and true; that the archeological evidence, verified history and in-hand brass plates supported it; that Christopher Columbus had been met by Christianized Indians having clear linguistic and genetic linkage to the Semitic Middle East. All of this would be a tremendous boost to modern orthodox Christianity. But there are no plates—nor even copies of them. Joseph Smith offers only the doubtful written testimony of “witnesses”, now long dead. And everything else works against the BoM.

I start my critique with the most serious flaw of the BoM: its reason for existence as explained in 1 Nephi 13:26-29 (supposedly written around 592 B.C.):

“And after they go forth by the hand of the twelve apostles of the Lamb, from the Jews unto the Gentiles, thou seest the formation of that great and abominable church, which is most abominable above all other churches; for behold, they have taken away from the gospel of the Lamb many parts which are plain and most precious; and also many covenants of the Lord have they taken away. And all this have they done that they might pervert the right ways of the Lord, that they might blind the eyes and harden the hearts of the children of men. Wherefore, thou seest that after the book hath gone forth through the hands of the great and abominable church, that there are many plain and precious things taken away from the book, which is the book of the Lamb of God. And after these plain and precious things were taken away it goeth forth unto all the nations of the Gentiles; and after it goeth forth unto all the nations of the Gentiles, yea, even across the many waters which thou hast seen with the Gentiles which have gone forth out of captivity, thou seest—because of the many plain and precious things which have been taken out of the book, which were plain unto the understanding of the children of men, according to the plainness which is in the Lamb of God—because of these things which are taken away out of the gospel of the Lamb, an exceedingly great many do stumble, yea, insomuch that Satan hath great power over them.”

These four verses clearly indicate that orthodox Christianity is to be regarded as utterly corrupt, and that the Christian New Testament is totally unreliable. The above charges against orthodox Christianity and the New Testament Scriptures are very serious. Christianity would be severely weakened or destroyed if the charges proved to be true. Joseph Smith held out the hope of an alternate Scripture; pure and untainted.

But the picture today is very much different from that of the 1830s. The past one hundred and fifty years have seen tremendous improvements in New Testament manuscripts, archeology, historical research, and critical textual scholarship. At this point even if the BoM was true it simply wouldn't be needed! Though none of the original New Testament manuscripts are known to exist, the critical analysis of existing manuscripts is such that our best modern translations of the New Testament can be accepted for all practical and theological purposes as completely faithful to the original manuscripts. It is the BoM that must pass similar scrutiny.

Which brings me to the second problem area: translation. The BoM does not explicitly tell the language that Lehi and his descendents used for ordinary everyday speech, but 1 Nephi 1:2 says that the records were started “…in the language of my father…”—Lehi; presumably the common Hebrew of 600 B.C. when all of this supposedly began. Mosiah 1:4 made clear that Lehi, “…having been taught in the language of the Egyptians…”, therefore the brass plates were written in “reformed Egyptian”—whatever that is (12). Supposedly Moroni took all of the brass plates up into Heaven and Joseph Smith made no copies. This means that Smith's work must be accepted entirely on faith since it can't be tested or double checked by qualified Egyptologists. Compounding the problem is that Joseph Smith made no claim to knowledge of any Egyptian language. Recall that the Rosetta Stone had been deciphered only as recently as 1822. The work by Smith in the late 1820s was done entirely by Divine inspiration. This means that it really didn't matter in what language the plates were written—even childish scribble—for Joseph Smith didn't know what he was looking at. In fact, with total Divine inspiration he didn't even need the plates at all!

More subtle problems emerge when we remember that Lehi and his clan supposedly left the Middle East around the year 600 B.C., thereby freezing their language and knowledge in that timeframe. I don't think that Greek was a well known or common language in Judea at that time. Indeed, the word ‘Greek’ is not used in the BoM. But the BoM uses many Greek-derived words such as Jesus, Christ, church, apostle (13), Christians (14), Bible (15), etc., etc. Would these Hebrew Jews have been able to find Egyptian characters that would translate directly into Greek-derived KJV English equivalents? This is a particular problem in Ether 3:14, because the explicit name “Jesus Christ” is used in text that was supposedly translated from the totally unknown ancient language on the golden plates from the time of the Tower of Babel into Egyptian, and then retranslated by Joseph Smith from Egyptian into the Greek-derived KJV-style English used in the BoM. In Jacob 7:27 Joseph Smith even used the French word “adieu”! Now, what Egyptian symbol gives that word? 3 Nephi 12:22 quotes Jesus as saying the Aramaic word “Raca”. Would these people have known and remembered Aramaic after 600 years of isolation in America? Is there an Egyptian character specifically for “Raca”? I doubt it.

I close this particular problem with the observation that there was absolutely no reason why a nineteenth century translation of an ‘Egyptian’ text would have been Divinely ‘inspired’ by God into archaic—not to mention extremely stilted—seventeenth century KJV-style English. By the time of Joseph Smith in the 1820s, no one in America was talking like that except as an affectation. My conclusion is that Joseph Smith ‘revealed’ the BoM in King James Version-style English solely for the purpose of trying to tap into the credability, reputation, and the general acceptance of the KJV Bible. If the BoM was a genuine work, then it would have been rendered by God through Divine inspiration into the commonly used and understood nineteenth century American-style English of that time.

The third problem is simple geography. The BoM is wonderfully vague on many subjects, but none more so than leaving you in the dark as to where you're at. Once the story leaves Jerusalem, you're lost! Where did Lehi & Co. set sail from after eight years of wandering east through the wilderness: the Arab Sea; Bay of Bengal; The South China Sea? The BoM gives no clue! Did they sail west across the Indian/Atlantic Oceans or east across the Pacific? Again, who knows? It doesn't say. And where did they land in the “land of promise”? Once again, it doesn't say; at least not explicitly. But it does give clues. The area where almost everything was supposed to have happened was a land rich in timber, gold, silver, iron (including carbon and any other alloy metals to make “steel”), copper, zinc, and the ability to make silk fabric centuries before the art arrived in the Middle East (17). Also, it must have been possible to walk from the coast of the “sea east” to the coast of the “sea west” in anywhere from one and a half days to three weeks (18).

Looking at my National Geographic world map, the only area in the whole Western Hemisphere that could reasonably satisfy all of these requirements is the southern half of Mexico and Central America. But this means that in the end several hundred thousand men, women and children would have had to abandon all of their long-established cities, and then battle each other across more than two thousand miles of rugged mountains, deserts, plains and woods (not to mention several major rivers) in order to fight the final slaughter at the hill Cumorah in New York State!

To close, if ever there was a historical book that should be confirmed by overwhelming evidence and the endorsement of relevant experts, it is the Book of Mormon. If ever there was a historical book utterly lacking evidence and expert endorsement, it is the Book of Mormon. This article has focused on three major points. While I could go on and on with many other details, the above points are more than sufficient to lead me to the inescapable conclusion that the Book of Mormon is utterly false; that Joseph Smith fabricated the plates himself (if, indeed, any plates ever existed at all) and wrote the whole BoM out of his own imagination—with liberal plagiarism from the KJV Bible. Rather than stand on the solid rock of actual truth, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sinks into the shifting sands of falsehood and intentional fraud.

Questions? Comments?
e-mail the author!
bloedel@verizon.net

Endnotes:

(Referenced to the 1981 edition of the Book of Mormon: The BoM)

1. 1 Nephi 3:3, 12 & 24, and the rest of the first fifteen chapters. Morman 9:32. Also, plates made of unspecified “ore”, as in 1 Nephi 19:1.
2. 1 Nephi 16:10
3. 1 Nephi 17
4. 1 Nephi 18
5. This story is told in all of the books from 1 Nephi 19 through the book of Helaman.
6. Mosiah 8; Mosiah 28:11 & 17-20.
7. Story told in the Book of Ether.
8. 2 Nephi 25:19 and Mosiah 3:8
9. Helaman 14
10. Read the Books of 4 Nephi, Mormon, and Moroni.
11. From the TESTIMONY OF THE PROPHET JOSEPH SMITH printed in the front of the BoM.
12. Mormon 9:32-36. Also 1 Nephi 1:2, Mosiah 1:3 & 16.
13. 1 Nephi 11:34-36
14. Alma 46:13-17
15. 2 Nephi 29:3-10
16. 1 Nephi 2:5,8 & 9 and 4:2 & 17:26-27; Mosiah 7:19; Alma 36:28; and Helaman 8:11.
17. 1 Nephi 18:25; 2 Nephi 5:15; Jarom 1:8; Alma 1:29; Helaman 6:10-11; Ether 10:23-24
18. Alma 22:27-34 & 50:11-13 and verse 34.

Suggested additional reading:

The Mormonizing of America
by Stephen Mansfield
Worthy Publishing (2012)

The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?
F. F. Bruce
Intervarsity Press (2003)
ISBN: 0-87784-691-X

The Origin of the Bible
Philip Wesley Comfort (ed.)
Tyndale House Publishers (1992)
ISBN: 0-8423-4735-6

Table of Contents

One Nation, Under ?

An examination of the Constitutional Convention era as relates to modern day Christianity.

Introduction:

“America is a Christian nation founded by Christian men, with a Christian Constitution based on Christian principles that launched a Christian government.” Perhaps you've heard words to this effect spoken by Christian leaders such as Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, or Dr. James Dobson. Or maybe you come from a strong Christian background and this sentiment is a given; ingrained from childhood.

I had taken this as an assumed given for most of my life. Not until I began an in-depth study of the Second Amendment/gun control issue in recent years did my assumption begin to crumble. While wading through literally hundreds of pages worth of speeches, debates, convention journals, letters, diary entries and newspaper articles from the Revolutionary War and Constitutional Convention period I noticed something missing: meaningful mention of Jesus, Christianity, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, or the Bible.

The following is a very disturbing look at the work of the men who forged our national Constitution and founded our federal Republic.

Section One: A Deafening Silence

To the devout Christian the words ‘God’ and ‘Creator’ have fairly specific meanings. That is, the God of Genesis 1; of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; the father of Jesus; the inspiring Author of the Bible. However, modern day Christians really need to exercise great care and discernment when reading material from the last quarter of the eighteenth century, for the words ‘God’, ‘Creator’ and ‘divine providence’ had a much broader range of meanings when used by the men of that time period.

Deism and Freemasonry were major philosophical and religious forces during the timeframe in question. Deism recognized that there was a Creator/God, but this deity was not the ‘up close and personal’ God of the New Testament, nor was Jesus the unique Son of this God. The God of deism interacted with humanity only in a general fashion, leaving mankind free to work out its own destiny on its journey to achieve ultimate perfection.

Freemasonry was a fraternal/religious expression of the deistic philosophy. The ‘Great Architect of the Universe’ and ‘All-Seeing Eye’ of the Masonic Lodge guided the Freemason towards perfection. Of the leading luminaries of that period, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were clearly deists, and George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison and James Monroe (at the very least) are known to have been Freemasons.

With the above in mind, consider for a moment all of the references to deity in the July 4, 1776 Declaration of Independence: “Laws of Nature and Nature's God”, “endowed by their Creator”, “Appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World”, and “firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence”. Although at first glance these references may seem Christian in nature, they are actually deistic. This should come as no surprise, since the Declaration of Independence was written by the deist Thomas Jefferson with alterations made by another deist: Benjamin Franklin. (See Appendix)

The main point I want to make here is that I know of no serious objections to the lack of direct and explicit Christian terminology or imagery in the crafting of the Declaration of Independence. With the exception of a few other non-relevant alterations (see Appendix) the Declaration was accepted and signed as presented.

Moving on to the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention of 1787 we find an utterly secularist, humanist enterprise. I have read the written records related to the Constitutional Convention collected by the scholar Max Farrand early in the twentieth century. Those records include not only the official minutes kept by the Convention's secretary William Jackson (which are surprisingly sparse), but also the private records surreptitiously made on a daily basis by Convention delegates such as New York's Robert Yates, Virginia's James Madison, and Pennsylvania's Benjamin Franklin along with relevant material such as letters and diary entries written by the other Delegates. From a Christian standpoint the Convention must be viewed as a dismal affair, so lacking in spiritual or religious outlook and activity that on June 28 (almost five weeks into the Session) Mr. Madison (along with a shorter account from Mr. Yates) recorded Benjamin Franklin making the following speech and formal Motion:

“Mr. President [i.e. the convention chairman George Washington], the small progress we have made after 4 or five weeks close attendance & continual reasonings with each other-our different sentiments on almost every question, several of the last producing as many noes as ays, is methinks a melancholy proof of the imperfection of the Human Understanding. We indeed seem to feel our own want of political wisdom, since we have been running about in search of it. We have gone back to ancient history for models of Government, and examined the different forms of those Republics which having been formed with the seeds of their own dissolution now no longer exist. And we have viewed Modern States all round Europe, but find none of their Constitutions suitable to our circumstances.

“In this situation of this Assembly, groping as it were in the dark to find political truth, and scarce able to distinguish it when presented to us, how has it happened, Sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of lights to illuminate our understandings? In the beginning of the Contest with G. Britain, when we were sensible of danger we had daily prayer in this room for the divine protection.-Our prayers, Sir, were heard, & they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a superintending providence in our favor. To that kind providence we owe this happy opportunity of consulting in peace on the means of establishing our future national felicity. And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? Or do we imagine that we no longer need his assistance? I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth-that God Governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings, that “except the Lord build the House they labour in vain that build it.” I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better, than the Builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and bye word down to future ages. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing Governments by Human wisdom and leave it to chance, war and conquest.

“I therefore beg leave to move-that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberation, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the Clergy of this City be requested to officiate in that Service-.”

Although Mr. Sherman (Connecticut) formally seconded the motion, and three or four voices in favor were heard, opposition to Franklin's formal motion was so vocal and intense that George Washington unilaterally closed the day's business at that time without taking a vote—perhaps to spare his good friend Dr. Franklin the embarrassment of a formally recorded rejection. Indeed, the official Minutes made no mention of this matter at all, and the subjects of God and prayer never came up again during the rest of the Convention. Franklin speech, pgs 450-452

The proposed Constitution formed by the Convention was utterly secular in nature. The Preamble was a humanist manifesto: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Compare that with the statement of purpose found in the Mayflower Compact of Anno Domini 1620: “In the Name of God, Amen…Having undertaken, for the Glory of God and advancement of the Christian Faith…do by these presents solemnly and mutually in the presence of God and one of another, Covenant and Combine ourselves together into a Civil Body Politic, for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid…”

God, Jesus, Christianity and the Bible were nowhere mentioned in the Constitution, and the sole reference to religion was in the negative: “The Senators and Representative before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” (Art. VI, par. 3) This prohibition was included with barely a murmur of discussion by the Convention.

The only glimmer of something Christian appears in the certifying postscript to the Constitution: “Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth in Witness whereof We have hereunto subscribed our Names,” (followed by the signatures). However, the term ‘Year of our Lord’ was merely a formal politeness rather than a religious policy statement. Furthermore, since the postscript was clearly and unambiguously placed after and outside of the final Article (by white space and different margin size), it is not a part of the main body of the actual Constitution itself and therefore carries little weight and has no force.

Section Two: Misc. Musings

I would encourage the reader to make a pilgrimage to our nation's Capital, which has been described as the most Masonic city in the world. Bring a good pair of walking shoes, and be prepared to spend at least one full day making the circuit around the Mall. At a minimum your circuit should include the Lincoln Memorial, the Smithsonian, the Washington Monument, the Jefferson Memorial, the Capitol Building, the Library of Congress, the Supreme Court, the National Archives and the White House. As you make your tour notice the style, architecture, art and impressions you encounter. Keep a mental tab on all things relating to Biblical themes and Christianity. Be sure to visit the gift shop at the top of the Washington Monument because the last time I was there the shelves had several books relating to Freemasonry—none on Christianity.

When you finish your tour, tally up all those things relating to the Bible and Christianity, and compare them with all those things you saw relating to paganism, humanism, Freemasonry, Rome, Greece and Egypt. I am confident that you will find the former utterly overwhelmed by the latter. Should time and opportunity permit, travel the Beltway south into Alexandria to visit Mount Vernon and the George Washington Masonic Memorial. The Masonic Memorial is an impossible-to-miss edifice right off the Beltway and is well worth the trip. You will find more than enough to validate my earlier assertions regarding several of the Fathers of our federal Republic and Framers of our Constitution.

As a further exercise, take out a one dollar bill and look at the back. You will see both sides of the Great Seal of the United States, officially adopted in 1782. I challenge you to find the slightest shred of Christian symbolism or sentiment in those two sides. To the right we find a Roman ‘spread eagle’ of worldly power whose banner proclaims, “Out of many: One”. To the left we find the All-Seeing Eye and ANNUIT COEPTIS (signifying “God/Providence favors our undertakings”) hovering over an unfinished thirteen-stepped pagan Egyptian pyramid guiding the way to a “New Secular Order”—NOVUS ORDO SECLORUM.

It is relevant (and fair) to note that the original design proposal for the Great Seal submitted by Jefferson and Franklin did contain Biblical (though non-Christian) symbolism. My point here is that the men responsible for designing and approving the Great Seal had more than enough opportunity to incorporate explicit Christian symbolism and expressions, yet they deliberately chose pagan/Masonic/humanist imagery and terminology.

An examination of the debates during the U.S. Constitution's State Ratification Conventions sheds additional light on this subject. After finishing this article, go to the Library of Congress website (at ‘www.loc.gov’) and enter a search for “elliot's debates”. Go to Vol. II, and the bottom of page 117 of the Massachusetts debates and read through page 120. Then read pages 148-149. Go to Vol. IV and read the North Carolina debates from the bottom of page 191 through page 200. These, I feel, represent the most significant comments on religion.

The sentiments expressed there speak for themselves. The main problem as I see it is that the Christians who raised the objections during the ratification conventions assumed that everyone understood what they meant by ‘religion’. When those Christians used the word ‘religion’ I've no doubt they meant the sincere adoption of faith in Jesus Christ, and the good character and morals that should result from such faith. On the other hand, it seems quite clear to me that those who answered the objections understood ‘religion’ in a more technical and structured sense to be related to sects, denominations, organizations and dogmas. A religious ‘test’ desired by the former would have examined the Christian character and maturity of a nominee for public office. The religious tests feared by the latter would have tested for establishment membership, credentials and public displays of orthodoxy. What we have here is a classic case of ‘failure to communicate’. The Christians simply could not clearly articulate their position, therefore the religious liberals carried the day.

Before ending this section I want to firmly drive home the dearth of reference to all things biblical during the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention of 1787. Go back to the Library of Congress website and search “farrand's records”. This is the most authoritative reference to the internal workings of the Philadelphia Convention. I could easily find reference to Aristotle, Cicero, Charlemagne, Blackstone, Hume, Locke, Montesquieu, Rome, Sparta, and Carthage but could find no mention of Jesus, Moses, Christianity, Bible, Jerusalem, or Israel. The only mention that I could find of ‘God’ was Franklin's motion as quoted above, and of course his reference to “the Father of lights” and “superintending providence” showed this ‘God’ to be the impersonal god of Deism.

I have also carefully examined the Federalist Papers written by Hamilton, Jay, and Madison. As above, I could easily find reference to Plato, Socrates, Hume, Blackstone, Montesquieu, Rome, Athens, Sparta, and Carthage but could find no reference to Jesus, Moses, Jewish, Bible, Jerusalem or Israel. There was one general reference to Christianity in Federalist #3: “In the early ages of Christianity, Germany was occupied…”; three items on God, one being ‘demi-god’, one referring to pagan gods, and this in Federalist #43: “…transcendent law of nature and of nature's God,…”; and seven references to religion, the most important being in Federalist #2: “…a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government,…”.

Conclusion

It is difficult to document the absence of something. I am begging the reader's trust that my research has been reasonably thorough and that references to ‘God’, ‘Jesus’, ‘Christianity’ and ‘Bible’ are actually as rare as I claim them to be in the above-cited material. If I have your trust and confidence, then by now it should be crystal clear that the Framers of our Constitution and Founders of our federal Republic had no intention whatsoever of making any attempt at crafting a Christian constitution or establishing a Christian government.

However, what if that had actually been the intent? Surely the delegates to the Philadelphia Convention would have been formally charged by their States with such a result. Every morning of the Session would have seen prayers and devotionals. The officially recorded Minutes of the Constitutional Convention debates and Motions, Federalist Papers, newspaper articles and State Ratification Conventions debates would have been peppered with references to God, Jesus, Christianity and the Bible. The Constitution's Preamble would have explicitly stated our Christian character and objectives. The powers of Congress would have frowned upon—if not outright forbidden—the declaration of war or the use of offensive military power or the issuing of letters of marque and reprisal (remember, we're supposed to love our enemies and turn the other cheek). The oath of public office would have been written so as to include the phrase, “…so help me God.” The prohibition of religious tests would have been turned into a requirement of examining the Christian morals and maturity of all those considered for public office. Finally, the postscript to the Constitution would have said, “…in the Year of our Lord Jesus Christ…”

Such was not the case. The ratification of our secular Constitution launched a secular government. The First Amendment to our Constitution further clarified the distance desired between Church and State: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;…” and herein may be found the great bulk of today's strife and contention.

It is almost a national tragedy that the two Supreme Court decisions of the early 1960s regarding prayer in public schools have been so badly misunderstood by Christians, and misinterpreted and misapplied by media pundits, government officials and school administrators. At the heart of the problem is a deep misunderstanding of what the First Amendment is actually saying regarding government and religion. The High Court quoted extensively from Constitutional Law in these two decisions, and in the portion of that work dealing with religious freedom they quoted from §936:

“The clauses of the First Amendment which prohibit laws respecting an establishment of religion and the free exercise thereof, although overlapping in certain instances, forbid two quite different kinds of governmental encroachment upon religious freedom: the establishment clause, unlike the free exercise clause, does not depend upon any showing of direct governmental compulsion and is violated by the enactment of laws which establish an official religion, whether or not those laws operate directly to coerce nonobserving individuals.

“The First Amendment prohibition of laws respecting an establishment of religion rests on the belief that a union of government and religion tends to destroy government and to degrade religion, and upon an awareness of the historical fact that governmentally established religions and religious persecution go hand in hand.

“The test in determining whether a legislative enactment violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment, which withdraws all legislative power respecting religious belief or the expression thereof, is the purpose and primary effect of the enactment. If either is the advancement or inhibition of religion, then the enactment exceeds the scope of legislative power as circumscribed by the First Amendment; to withstand the strictures of the ‘establishment’ clause there must be a secular legislative purpose and a primary effect that neither advances nor inhibits religion.

“The purpose of the ‘free exercise’ clause of the First Amendment, which withdraws from legislative power, state and federal, the exertion of any restraint on the free exercise of religion, is to secure religious liberty in the individual by prohibiting any invasions thereof by civil authority; hence it is necessary in a free exercise case for one to show the coercive effect of a legislative enactment as it operates against him in the practice of his religion.

“The distinction between the ‘free exercise’ and the ‘establishment’ clauses of the First Amendment is that a violation of the former clause is predicated on coercion, while a violation of the latter clause need not be so attended.”

Having read Engle v Vitale (1962) and School District of Abington Township v Schempp & Murray (1963) in their entireties, I've no doubt that the Justices on the Supreme Court also felt pain over the general misinterpretations of their clearly worded and plainly reasoned Opinions. In Engle v Vitale, Justice Douglas wrote, “…The First Amendment leaves the government in a position not of hostility to religion but of neutrality. The philosophy is that the atheist or agnostic—the nonbeliever—is entitled to go his own way. The philosophy is that if government interferes in matters spiritual, it will be a divisive force. The First Amendment teaches that a government neutral in the field of religion better serves all religious interests.”

These two Supreme Court decisions focused exclusively on the ‘establishment clause’ aspects of public school prayer, and rendered no formal opinions regarding voluntary ‘free exercise’ prayer. Unfortunately this distinction was lost on most public officials, with the general result that all prayer and religious expression (individually voluntary as well as State mandated) has been purged from public schools. This is definitely NOT what the Court had in mind.

In final conclusion, let us heed the words of Jesus. When the religious leaders of his time tried to trap him into saying something sacrilegious or seditious by asking if it was right for Jews to pay taxes to Rome, Jesus asked to see a common coin used for paying the tax. He then asked them whose figure and inscription were on the coin. The leaders answered that they were of Caesar. Whereupon Jesus said, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's.” (Mt 22:15-22, NIV)

The Framers of our Constitution and the Founders of our republic clearly intended the federal government to do only those secular things that should rightly be left to ‘Caesar’. They meant for government to remain entirely out of the business of religion and personal spiritual conscience; and that for the general safety and liberty of all. Modern day Christians would do themselves and the cause of Christ great good if they fully understood and publicly embraced the intent of the framers regarding the proper and respectful separation of Church and State.

Whatever the spiritual and religious orientation of the people of America two hundred and thirty years ago, clearly modern America is a land of religious and philosophical pluralism. The days of calling America a ‘Christian nation’ are over. There is little remaining but a thin veneer of Christianization. Politicians and public officials—especially in urban areas—must be careful in what they say and do so as not to offend or alienate the growing populations of Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Mormons, Buddhists, Scientologists, atheist secular humanists, &c &c; all of whom having just as much right to free religious expression (or freedom from religion) as Christians.

Christianity in modern America is slowly being lost in a swirling sea of religious, philosophical and materialistic pluralism. Today it simply doesn't matter if we could prove that the Founders intended a Christian nation; we aren't one. Insisting that we are a Christian nation only makes us look like fools who are dangerously out of touch with reality.

Indeed, if Christian activists were successful in their attempts to breach the ‘wall of separation’ between Church and State I am sure that we would be mortified by the results. Since government would not be allowed to establish one religion over others, all religions would have to be observed. For example, much has been made in recent years of efforts to post the Ten Commandments in courtrooms and other public buildings. Now, if that is done then there is no excuse for not also posting quotations from the Koran, the Hindu Vedas, Confucius, the Book of Mormon, or the wit and wisdom of L. Ron Hubbard. Witnesses in court, raising their hands and swearing (or ‘affirming’) to tell the truth, would be placed in a queue: the first being forced to swear by the Christian God, the next by Krishna, the next by his/her Ancestors, &c, &c. The actual end result would be a laughable Babel of religion in governmental operations.

Is there hope for Christianity? Is there a way out of the morass? Yes, but the solution will require a level of effort and cooperation that I am not at all sure can be mustered by the deeply divided ‘body of Christ’. The first order of business would be to intensively train Christians in the basics of the Faith. Due to laziness and general apathy, far too many Christians are simply not able to clearly explain what they believe regarding Christianity, let alone explain why they believe it. This inability hobbles Christian outreach, and makes us look like confused idiots.

Secondly, there must be found some point(s) on which all of Christianity can agree; perhaps the traditional Apostle's Creed. All of the main branches of the ‘body of Christ’—Eastern, Roman and protestant—must come together and publicly declare this universal agreement. We must be able to unanimously state, “Whatever our denominational differences, we stand shoulder-to-shoulder in agreement and support of these points.”

Third, all of the main branches of the ‘body of Christ’ must publicly declare that we will evangelize the world in a spirit of love, peace and compassion, but that we now-and-forever renounce the use of coercion, violence, terror or murder in the spreading of the Gospel of Christ. We must clearly separate ourselves not only from the terrorists and extremists of today, but also from the crimes and abuses of our own Church past.

And then we must take the good news of eternal salvation to the ends of the earth. May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

Appendix

The following is the only significant mention of religion during the 1787 Constitutional Convention, recorded in Vol. II of Farrand's Records.

Aug. 30, pg. 461, the official Journal:

It was moved and seconded to add the following clause to the 20 Article. ‘But no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the authority of the United States.’ Which passed unan: in the affirmative.

Aug. 30, pg 468, Madison's account:

Art.XX. taken up.—‘or affirmation’ was added after ‘oath.’ Mr. Pinkney. Moved to add to the art. ‘But no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the authority of the U. States.’
Mr. Sherman thought it unnecessary, the prevailing liberality being a sufficient security agst. Such tests.
Mr. Govr. Morris & Genl. Pinkney approved the motion,
The motion was agreed to nem: con:

The following is a letter by Benjamin Franklin on the subject of religious tests:

To Richard Price. Passy, 9 Oct., 1780
“I am fully of your opinion respecting religious tests; but, though the people of Massachusetts have not in their new constitution kept quite clear of them, yet, if we consider what that people were one hundred years ago, we must allow they have gone great lengths in liberality of sentiment on religious subjects; and we may hope for greater degrees of perfection, when their constitution, some years hence, shall be revised. If Christian preachers had continued to teach as Christ and his Apostles did, without salaries, and as the Quakers now do, I imagine tests would never have existed; for I think they were invented not so much to secure religion itself, as the emoluments of it. When a religion is good, I conceive that it will support itself; and, when it cannot support itself, and God does not take care to support it, so that its professors are obliged to call for the help of the civil power, it is a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one. But I shall be out of my depth, if I wade any deeper in theology,…”

The following are three letters written by Thomas Jefferson:

To Mr. Miles King, September 26, 1814
“I must ever believe that religion substantially good which produces an honest life, and we have been authorized by One whom you and I equally respect, to judge of the tree by its fruit. Our particular principles of religion are a subject of accountability to our God alone. I inquire after no man's and trouble none with mine; nor is it given to us in this life to know whether yours or mine, our friends or our foes, are exactly the right. Nay, we have heard it said that there is not a Quaker or a Baptist, a Presbyterian or an Episcopalian, a Catholic or a Protestant in heaven; that, on entering that gate, we leave those badges of schism behind, and find ourselves united in those principles only in which God has united us all. Let us not be uneasy then about the different roads we may pursue, as believing them the shortest, to that our last abode; but, following the guidance of a good conscience, let us be happy in the hope that by these different paths we shall all meet in the end.”

To John Adams, Jan. 11, 1817
“The result of your fifty or sixty years of religious reading in the four words, ‘Be just and good,’ is that in which all our inquiries must end; as the riddles of all the priesthoods end in four more, ‘ubi panis, ibi deus.’ What all agree in, is probably right. What no two agree in, most probably wrong. One of our fan-coloring biographers, who paints small men as very great, inquired of me lately, with real affection too, whether he might consider as authentic, the change in my religion much spoken of in some circles. Now this supposed that they knew what had been my religion before, taking for it the word of their priests, whom I certainly never made the confidants of my creed. My answer was, ‘say nothing of my religion. It is known to my God and myself alone. Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life; if that has been honest and dutiful to society, the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one.’”

To John Adams, May 5, 1817
“…If by religion we are to understand sectarian dogmas, in which no two of them agree, then your exclamation on that hypothesis is just, ‘That this would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.’ But if the moral precepts, innate in man, and made a part of his physical constitution, as necessary for a social being, if the sublime doctrines of philanthropism and deism taught us by Jesus of Nazareth, in which all agree, constitute true religion, then, without it, this would be, as you again say, ‘something not fit to be named even, indeed, a hell.’”

And this from Jefferson's autobiography relating to the Declaration of Independence:

“On the 15^th of May, 1776, the convention of Virginia instructed their delegates in Congress, to propose to that body to declare the colonies independent of Great Britain. It appearing in the course of debates, that the colonies of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and South Carolina were not yet matured for falling from the parent stem, but that they were fast advancing to that state, it was thought most prudent to wait a while for them, and to postpone the final decision to July 1^st; but, that this might occasion as little delay as possible, a committee was appointed to prepare a Ceclaration of Independence. The committee were John Adams, Dr. Franklin, Roger Sherman, Robert R. Livingston, and myself. Committees were also appointed, at the same time, to prepare a plan of confederation for the colonies, and to state the terms proper to be proposed for foreign alliance. The committee for drawing the Declaration of Independence, desired me to do it. It was accordingly done, and being approved by them, I reported it to the House on Friday, the 29^th of June, when it was read, and ordered to lie on the table. On Monday, the 1^st of July, the House resolved itself into a committee of the whole. The pusillanimous idea that we had friends in England worth keeping terms with, still haunted the minds of many. For this reason, those passages which conveyed censures on the people of England were struck out, lest they should give them offence. The clause too, reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who, on the contrary, still wished to continue it. Our northern brethren also, I believe, felt a little tender under those censure; for though their people had very few slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others. The debates, having taken up the greater parts of the 2d, 3d, and 4^th days of July, were, on the evening of the last, closed; the Declaration was reported by the committee, agreed to by the House, and signed by every member present, except Mr. Dickinson.”

Resourses:

Besides Farrand's Records and Elliot's Debates, accessible through the Library of Congress website, I recommend the following:

The Origins of the American Constitution: A Documentary History
Michael Kammen
Penguin Books

The Origins of the Second Amendment: A Documentary History in Commentaries on Liberty, Free Government, and an Armed Population during the Formation of the Bill of Rights
David Young
Golden Oak Books

The Federalist Papers
Publius (Madison, Hamilton & Jay)
Penguin Classics
(worth the purchase price just for the editor's introduction)

Yale Avalon Project
A very extensive collection of material from the 18^th century. Unfortunately, its word search-engine is very poor.

The Great Seal
For additional information on the Great Seal of the United States.

National Archives
The National Archives website.

Table of Contents

Just Seven Words

(Christian exclusivity)

Perhaps you've heard (or used) this argument against Christianity: “How can belief in Jesus be the only way to eternal salvation? What about all those people who died before Jesus began his ministry or who lived and died outside the reach of Christian missionaries? There had to have been at least a billion of them, including all of the Old Testament Jews! Is God going to throw the whole lot of them into hell for not believing in a man they could not possibly have known about?”

This would seem to be the logical consequence of New Testament verses dealing with the divinity (or Christhood) of Jesus, especially John 14:6 in which Jesus himself clearly stated, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (NIV)” The apparent hardhearted and arbitrary unfairness of the above consequence strikes the nonbeliever's mind as nothing short of monstrous. Many people see this as a very effective refute of Christianity.

But wait! The situation is not as simple or clear-cut as it may seem from either side of the fence. Skeptics and believers both need to dig much deeper into the issue. However, before directly addressing the above question, it would be well to frame the general problem. After all, it is difficult to suggest a solution to a problem that is not clearly understood. Please follow me through a very brief overview of the situation from the Christian perspective.

In the distant past (possibly before the creation of our universe) Lucifer existed as the highest of the created beings in God's transcendent heaven. Though created without fault, he brought sin into being by coveting the throne of God. Lucifer led a rebellion so as to seize the throne and establish himself as God. A third of the angels threw in their lot with Lucifer, and there was war in heaven which rages to the present day. The angelic host loyal to God will ultimately prevail, but the fundamental problems of sin and rebellion remain to be solved (1). It is not clear as to whether God created our universe before the rebellion or in response to it. Be that as it may, our universe and planet Earth are the carefully enclosed and quarantined environments created by God in order to safely work out the eternal solution to the deadly problems of sin, rebellion and suffering.

As the very last act of the Genesis creation week before the seventh day of rest (this article will not address the ‘creation date’ and ‘human origins’ controversies. These are addressed in other articles here on the site.), God brought modern spiritual man into existence. In his current guise as Satan, Lucifer all too easily tempted the first man and woman into willful rebellion against God, thereby introducing sin and death into humanity(2). God immediately began the process of solving the problem of sin by establishing the animal sacrifice system (3). This system would see its highest and clearest form thousands of years later as a result of the prophetic ministry of Moses (4).

The Jewish Torah elaborates in great detail a full-blown animal sacrifice religion designed to atone (i.e. ‘cover’) sin and reconcile man to God. In modern times, ancient Judaism has been condemned as a horrible slaughterhouse religion. But God intended for animal sacrifice to convey in the most primitive, brutal and graphic manner that the penalty for sin is death; death is most obviously evidenced by the shedding of blood; but (and this is the good news) God will allow an acceptable substitute (in this case, an animal) to pay the penalty of death in our place.

This brings us to the most direct and relevant claims of Christianity: that animal sacrifice cannot actually atone the sins of humans; that Jesus is the unique son of God; and that God offered up his own son in sacrifice as the perfect, permanent and final atonement for the sins of all mankind (read the Book of Hebrews, especially chapters 7 through 11, for elaboration). And finally, I must clarify the Christian meaning of ‘salvation’. The object of salvation is to secure adoption into the family of God so that upon death the individual human spirit will find eternal life in the heavenly kingdom of God, as opposed to being condemned to hell. The most sure and direct means of securing this adoption is to publicly confess belief that Jesus is the Son of God, and to sincerely repent of sin by conforming to the teachings of Jesus.

Although the above overview is intentionally brief and sketchy, it is meant to convey the purpose of Christianity and to explain the urgency of the preaching of the Gospel of Christ, thereby bringing the original objection to Christianity into better focus. My answer to the objection is based on three assumptions: first, I assume that God desires the greatest number of souls from the widest geographical extent to inhabit His kingdom (Gen 12:3, 18:18, 22:18, Isa 25:6-8 & Jonah); second, I assume that God is neither capricious nor unfair, so the Way to salvation must be available and accessible to all of mankind throughout human history; and third, I assume that God is not going to commit the absurdity of condemning Able, Abraham, Moses and Elijah (i.e. all of the Old Testament saints) to hell for not explicitly calling upon the name “Jesus of Nazareth”. So when the Judeo/Christian Bible refers to a person as “righteous”, that person is ‘saved’ in the Christian sense of being adopted into the eternal family of God.

I begin my explanation with the Book of Genesis. That Book is extremely concise and economical of phrase, especially in the first few chapters. But it is clear that God communicated directly and freely with man from the beginning, even after Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden. Consider chapter 4. Little is written but much is said. To start with, it is fairly obvious that God told both Abel and Cain exactly what to do regarding the sacrificial offerings. God could not in any fairness have rejected Cain's offering and then said to him, “If you do what is right… (Gen 4:7)” if He had not previously told Cain what to do and how to do it. The point that I am driving at is this: Cain knew the Way! So did Able, and this is where I make use of the assumption in the above paragraph. In Matthew 23:35 Jesus himself referred to Able as “righteous”. If ‘righteous’ means ‘saved’, then the Way was known and available from the very beginning of spiritual humanity.

An obvious question is, “How can you have a ‘Way’ that utilizes Jesus when Jesus of Nazareth is not explicitly known outside of the sphere of post-Advent Christianity?” Clearly, the ‘Way’ must satisfy two conditions: First, it must be acceptable to God. Second, it must be accessible to mankind prior to the Advent of Christ. And both conditions must be capable of being satisfied without mentioning the name “Jesus”! How can this be done? Please consider the following as a plausible model of the Way to eternal salvation that would be acceptable to God and accessible to people everywhere, throughout human history:

1. Having a spiritual recognition of the true God; that is, the transcendent, omnipotent, holy and righteous Creator of the universe.
2. Making the spiritual admission of your personal offence (i.e. sin in thought, word and deed) against the Creator's holy character, which brings a penalty of death.
3. Having the personal realization that you cannot atone, nullify or cancel that penalty of death by your own strength, ability or performance.
4. Throwing yourself on the mercy of God by declaring your faith that God has taken the necessary action to provide for your atonement, redemption and reconciliation (even though you don't know what that ‘action’ might be).
5. Humbly asking God for the free Grace of that ‘action’.
6. Allowing your life to be changed and guided in accordance with the Holy Spirit of God (i.e. repentance).

I believe that the above six steps are a fair representation of the main points necessary for a person to receive eternal Salvation in the Christian sense. The only real sticking point would be step #4. But consider what is actually happening when a person declares belief in Jesus. Is it not step #4? The only difference is that, thanks to the Christian Gospels, we can now know the explicit means of God's grace. But on a basic level what is happening is the same as step #4 whether we know the name “Jesus” or not!

Now, a skeptic might ask, “If the so-called “Way” has been known from the beginning, why isn't it more prominent in religion and philosophy? It should be common!” To answer, return with me to the fourth chapter of Genesis. Cain, I believe, is the answer. Biblically he is the first recorded bald-faced rebel, religionist, liar and murderer. Key to the issue was Cain's reaction to being caught in his crime. His was not to confess to God and man, beg forgiveness and repent. No, his was to simply try and save his own earthly hide. And Cain had a wife. Isn't it likely that she was also a rebel? After all, birds of a feather flock together. Cain fathered children. Were they brought up in the Way of God or in the way of rebellion? Cain founded a city. Was that city the precursor of Jerusalem or of Sodom? Jeremiah put it in a nutshell when he prophesied: The Lord said, “It is because they have forsaken my law, which I set before them; they have not obeyed me or followed my law. Instead, they have followed the stubbornness of their hearts; they have followed the Baals, as their fathers taught them. (Jer 9:13-14)”

Too little attention is paid to the mortal/generational nature of humans. We are born into this world with minds and spirits equivalent to completely blank sheets of paper. We are utterly dependent upon what our elders teach us and what we observe in the world around us. For the most part this becomes our reality and truth. Then, upon sexual maturity it is likely that children will be produced, and they will be as dependent upon us for knowledge as we were upon our own forebears. Eventually, death will overtake us all. Whatever knowledge, ability or condition was attained in life (true or false; right or wrong; good or bad) terminates at the grave.

If the true Way to salvation has been taught and accepted during life, then all is well. But what if it has not? We might dispute the degree to which the Gospel of Christ is exclusive of other religions and philosophies, but far more serious are the tragic consequences of ancestral rebellion on subsequent generations, and the expanding nature of those consequences. An ancestor's rebellion against the Way can breed rebellion, ignorance and/or false knowledge in following generations. A rebel becomes a family in rebellion, which becomes a clan in rebellion, which becomes a nation in rebellion, which becomes a whole people blinded and misled by rebellion ignorance and/or false knowledge. Humans are freewill creatures, and God is going to allow human history and individual lives to play out with minimal interference. So the true horror here is not the exclusive nature of the Christian Gospel but the terrible consequences visited upon descendants by the choices made by forebears acting in a spirit of rebellion against the Way of God; a Way made known from the very beginning of mankind.

So, where is the dividing line between the saved and the lost? And could this dividing line have been known before the Advent of Christ, or been known outside of the expanding sphere of Christianity? Jesus neatly explained this with the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector in Luke 18:9-14. The Pharisee prayed, “God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.” This prayer exemplifies what I call the Four Deadly D's of rebellion: Denial, Delay, Distraction and Defiance.

Denial is to reject the reality of God or the Christhood of Jesus. Either one is a fatal error that leads to condemnation. Delay is a subtype of denial in which a person effectively denies God by putting off the matter of Salvation until later; as if anything is really more important than our eternal fate. Distraction is a subtype of Delay in which the cares of the world drive out consideration of eternally important matters. And finally Defiance, which comes in two flavors: self-sufficiency and open rebellion. The Pharisee felt himself to be sufficiently righteous before God so as to not need a savior, thereby elevating himself up to the level as a compeer of God. In this case Jesus is also Denied as irrelevant. A person in open Defiant rebellion might very well recognize Jesus as the son of God, but would say in effect, “I don't care if God exists or if Jesus is who he says he is; I'm going to live my life my own way and I don't care if I rot in hell because of it.”

Now consider the prayer of the tax collector: “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” The prayer of the tax collector represents those who recognize the existence and holiness of the Creator; the hopelessness of their ability to atone or cancel out their sins; and the faith to reach out to God for his mercy and eternal salvation. They are just seven words, but this simple one sentence prayer satisfies—in spirit and in truth—all six steps outline earlier in the article. This prayer is acceptable to God and (in principle at least) is accessible to all of mankind throughout human history. To that extent, the tax collector's prayer is exclusive of all prayers or spiritual attitudes of pride, arrogance and falsehood, just as the Gospel of Christ stands exclusive of all contrary belief structures based on denial, rebellion or human ability.

Conclusion

The purpose of this article has been to explore how verses like John 14:6 (“I am the way…”) and others like it could be applied to those outside the sphere of Christianity without making God look monstrously cold, arbitrary and unfair. There is a public perception (rightly or wrongly) that Christianity is rigidly and unreasonably exclusive of other belief structures. Skeptics use this perception to attack the Faith and damage the credibility of the explicit Gospel of Christ. Indeed, the vigor and lengths to which the Church has gone to fulfill the Great Commission serve to reinforce this perception. After all, if any old good-hearted kind-souled religion or code of conduct will secure eternal salvation, then why the expansionist fervor and missionary zeal of Christianity down through the centuries? It seems excessive, especially in view of the apparent right-mindedness of many of the world's religions, past and present.

Certainly God intends eternal salvation to be easily accessible to all of mankind from Adam to the end. He intends to cast a wide net for a large catch. But that net is cast against a strong headwind of human rebellion, pride and arrogance, compounded by ignorance, false knowledge and the mortal/generational nature of mankind. Though God desires to heavily populate the New Heaven and the New Earth, He will not allow rebels against Himself or His son Jesus to gain entry into the coming Kingdom. There has already been one war in Heaven, and God is not going to allow another one. If there is a dividing line between the saved and the lost it is exemplified by the prayer of the tax collector. Any person who sincerely gets anywhere close to that prayer will find a loving and merciful God eager to bestow the free gift of eternal life. Any religion or philosophy that truly leads to this prayer is a salvific Way.

Alas! Satan has been busily at work from the Garden of Eden to the present day, and has done his level best to poison every mind and corrupt every social philosophical and religious structure available to man. While other religions and philosophies may have points or doctrines that are actually true in the sight of God, more than likely the end result of those religions and philosophies will be to mislead people into one or more of the Four Deadly D's.

Admittedly, the above begs the question: “If the Gospel of Christ simply overlays the original Way, then why bother with Christianity?” Surely on the morning of the third day after the Crucifixion Jesus could have ascended directly to the right hand of God the Father and left behind nothing but some very frightened and confused disciples. The main objectives of His earthly mission would have been accomplished: the sacrificial atonement; the defeat of death; and His ascension to glory. From a minimalist standpoint God did not need to go any further than that. There is no theological requirement for a Great Commission, or a spiritual Pentecost, or a New Testament or a Church.

Clearly, however, these did in fact occur and they demand some explanation. I offer one possibility based on the earthly ministry of Jesus. During His time on earth Jesus preached and taught the Gospel, and validated Himself through miracles and prophetic fulfillment. Many people believed because of this, yet many also rejected the direct evidence from Christ Himself. The Church with its Bibles, missionaries, theologians, philosophers and social structures will refute those on Judgment Day who plead, “If only I knew! If only I had lived there! I would have believed!” Jesus can say to them, “Many did hear, yet rejected Me. Many did know, yet disbelieved. Many did live within the shadow of my Church, and yet turned from me anyway. You are without defense or excuse.”

To close, the Way to eternal salvation has been fixed and rendered immutable from the beginning of time. The Gospel of Christ does not shift, change or nullify the Way; rather, it highlights the Way and puts it into stark contrast with all other religions and philosophies. The universal prayer of the tax collector exemplifies the demarcation line between the saved and the lost, and the Gospel of Christ makes that ‘line’ clearly explicit. The Gospel therefore tends to polarize people away from the line to the one side or the other. That is, those who hear and accept the Gospel know that they are saved and tend to move away from the line towards Christ-oriented righteousness. On the other hand, those who hear the explicit Gospel and reject it tend to move away from the line towards a position hardened against the true Way. Fewer people are left milling around the ‘line’. If there is any “exclusivity” in Christianity, it is a self-exclusion—the end result of the freewill choice of individual human beings deciding their own eternal fate.

Endnotes:

1. Ez 28:11-19, Is 14:12-15, Rev 12.
2. Genesis chapters 1-3
3. Genesis chapter 4
4. Exodus & Leviticus

Suggested reading:

Divine Revelation, Paul Avis (ed.)

Handbook of Christian Apologetics, Kreeft & Tacelli

The Compact Guide to World Religions, Dean C. Halverson (gen. ed.)

Table of Contents

The Confederate Flag

Reflections on the “Stars and Bars”

The recent controversy over the display of the Confederate Flag did not take me by surprise. Quite the contrary, I was surprised that it had not happened far sooner. Proponents of flying that flag claim that they are simply doing so in remembrance of all that was good, right, and decent in the antebellum South, and to honor those who fought to preserve the heritage from that period.

As I see it, however, the institution of human chattel slavery is so inextricably intertwined with Southern heritage, law, and culture that the two cannot be separated. There is simply no amount of ‘goodness’, ‘decency’ or ‘bravery’ that can possibly counterbalance the evil done during nearly two hundred fifty years of “The Peculiar Institution” of human slavery. As the visible symbol of that culture, the Confederate Flag is hopelessly stained by that evil.

I would no sooner fly the Stars and Bars of the Confederacy than I would fly the swastika flag of the Nazi Third Reich, or the ‘rising sun’ flag of Japanese Imperialism, or the hammer-and-sickle flag of the fallen Soviet Union. All are symbols of tyranny, oppression, terror, war, and mass murder.

The bottom line here is that the Confederate Flag cannot be redeemed from the evils of the past and therefore should never see the light of day again.

Associated with the problem of displaying the Confederate flag is the problem of statues and monuments honoring the leaders of the fallen Confederate nation. As I see it, the actual purpose of these monuments is to continue the ideal of white supremecy and to perpetuate the “Cause” of the Southern rebellion. However, if we are to be honest with ourselves we must acknowledge that this Cause had only one apology: naked greed; its only descriptive title: evil. The actual effect of these memorials is to glorify the Cause of human chattel slavery. Their actual message is continued defiance and intimidation. Their presence in modern America can only be divisive.

If there is to be a memorial to the common soldiers of the Lost Cause of the Southern Confederacy, then let that memorial be in the form of a mausoleum symbolically housing the souls of the tens of thousands of Confederate soldiers who laid down their lives in defense of a rebel nation whose only purpose was to perpetuate, expand, and protect the “Peculiar Institution” of human slavery. Otherwise, all of these monuments should come down and be scrapped.

Table of Contents

The Physics of Cosmic Significance

[NOTE: This article is an expanded version of another of my Physics 101 term papers.]

Introduction

During the course of my life I have several times encountered the following two statements (or words to their effect):

1. Earth is a third-rate planet orbiting a third-rate star in a third-rate galaxy in a run-of-the-mill universe.
2. The universe is so vast and we humans are so small that we cannot possibly have any significance whatsoever.

Only in the last few years have I come across information that tells the truth about our proper place in the universe. Indeed, it has only been in the last twenty five or thirty years that science has developed the theoretical and empirical tools necessary to actually observe, measure and understand the universe from the quantum to the cosmic. Let's see where we really stand.

Section One

Third rate or top drawer?

“Perhaps we have never considered just how remarkable, perhaps unique, our planet is. We exist here today because of an amazing series of geological coincidences, each of which has contributed to the life-supporting conditions we currently find around us. This book is the story of that almost incredible sequence of events that has culminated in the comforts of our Earth. (1)”

The book Historical Geology recounts the most recent accepted version of how Earth developed from primordial stellar accretion debris field to our current ‘blue jewel of life’. Central to that story is the explanation of how our Moon came into being. Approximately four and a half billion years ago the primordial Earth was struck an off-center blow by a Mars-sized planet. This impact changed Earth's geological history from a pathway that would have led to a Venus-like hell to a pathway allowing oceans, continental land masses, a thin oxygen atmosphere, and stable orbital and axial characteristics.

The book Rare Earth takes a very wide-ranging view of the requirements necessary for obtaining a life-supporting planet. The authors of that book (along with the author of Historical Geology) recognized the critical specifications of impact timing, impactor composition, impactor strike angle/speed/direction, etc., etc. for this moon formation event, and how utterly unlikely it was. Had it not been for this highly specific event, Earth almost certainly would have suffered the same fate as Venus.

The book Rare Earth goes on to consider the specifications of an optimal life-supporting star (G-II, yellow dwarf) and planetary distances. The authors comment on the ideal characteristics of luminosity, spectral distribution, and long-term stability of this type of star, and the fortuitous positioning of Earth in a nearly perfect circular orbit in the ‘habitable zone’ of distance from the Sun. They also observe that the outer gas giants are very peculiar in their positioning and stable circular orbits. This was underscored by the March 2000 Discover magazine article Field Guide to New Planets that showed that all of the planets discovered to that date were gas giants orbiting either very close to their parent stars or orbiting in exaggerated elliptical orbits. Such arrangements would have destroyed any possible earthlike planet's chances of ever developing into a life-sustaining habitat. So far, no planetary system has been discovered that could reasonably be expected to have a true Earth-like planet.

Our solar system also seems to be positioned in a conspicuously favorable location in our Milky Way galaxy. Dr. Hugh Ross (PhD, astronomy) points out that only a spiral galaxy can support a life-sustaining planet. The reason for this is that only a spiral galaxy can have regions of space that will simultaneously have a sufficient density of heavy elements, a scarcity of neighboring stars (so as to avoid gravitational disturbances), and low radiation levels. All other types of galaxies fail on one or more of the above points (2).

Further aiding our existence is the fact that our solar system is located between galactic spirals at what is called the ‘galactic co-rotation radius’. This position allows our solar system to track along synchronously with the rotation rate of the galaxy so that we don't drift forward or backwards into one of the galactic spirals, or drift into or away from the galactic core, or drift up or down out of the galactic plane. Any such change(s) in our position would expose us to gravitational disturbances and/or lethal levels of radiation (3).

Astrophysicist Martin Rees elaborated in his book Just Six Numbers how the fundamental constants of our universe (gravity, electromagnetism, cosmic expansion rate, etc.) must fall within very narrow ranges in order for an Earth-like planet to have even the possibility of coming into existence.

To end this section, it turns out that we live on a first-rate idealized planet orbiting around a top-drawer star in a conspicuously well structured stable solar system located in one of the very few habitable locations of a top-flight spiral galaxy in a very quiet, uncrowded corner of a universe that gives every appearance of being fine-tuned for life. Within the limits of the physical laws governing the cosmos, things could not possibly be any better for us than they are right here on good old planet Earth.

Section Two

Is bigger better?

The second question under consideration is whether or not size counts as a valid indicator of cosmic significance. As it turns out, the assertion is bogus on four counts:

1. Astrophysicist Martin Rees devoted chapter six of Just Six Numbers to an explanation of the importance of the cosmic expansion rate. If that rate was only a little higher the universe would be so large and expanding so fast that star and galaxy formation could not properly take place. On the other hand, if the expansion rate were only a little lower, then gravity would have held sway and the universe would have collapsed in a Big Crunch before any star systems could have formed. So in order for us to exist, the universe must be just as big as it is, in all its vast array.
2. Regardless whether Inflationary Hot Big Bang theory or Ekpyrotic Cyclical theory is correct, the space/time manifold is so incredibly large—and ordinary matter/energy so sparse and thinly distributed—that there could not be any possible material object that can be counted as “significant” based solely on its physical size. All of the matter in the entire universe brought together into one big ball would be lost in the vastness of space/time (4).
3. There are basic structural scaling limits as to how big a biological creature can be. We cannot possibly be as big as a galaxy (which isn't all that big compared to the space/time manifold), or even as big as a planet. Blue whales and the largest dinosaurs exist(ed) at the upper limits as to animal size; and they are really not all that much bigger than we are, relative to the size of planet Earth.
4. If physical size alone is to be the criterion of significance, then we must consider the full spread of possible size. We actually stand about midway between quantum smallness and cosmic largeness. A quark is no larger than 1 x 10 to the negative 19 meter in size (5). If string theory turns out to be true, then a quantum string exists at the Planck length of √hG/c³ or about 1.6 x 10 to the negative 35 meter in size (6). The current estimate of the diameter of the observable universe is on the order of 100 billion light years, or 1 x 10 to the 27 meters (7). The typical adult human stands somewhere between 1.5 – 2 x 10° meters in height. So, we're not small at all; we're medium sized!

Conclusion

In the final analysis, we humans are just the right size—neither too big nor too small—in order to be what we are and do what we do in an idealized four dimensional universe having every indication of custom crafting in order to support our existence. I close with the observation that ‘significance’ can only be determine by that which makes or forms something. Since there is nothing behind an atheist universe beyond blind physics, chemistry, geology and hydrology, the word ‘significance’ loses all meaning. I end with this quote of Deuteronomy 10:14-15: “To the Lord your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it. Yet the Lord set his affection on your ancestors and loved them, and he chose you, their descendants, above all the nations—as it is today.” (NIV)

Come, Lord Jesus.

ENDNOTES:

1. Foreword, by Peter D. Moore (PhD), Historical Geology, pg. IX, ©2002, Facts on File, Inc., NY, NY.
2. Hugh Ross (PhD), Creator and the Cosmos (second edition), pg. 132 ©Navpress, Co. Springs, Co.
3. Hugh Ross (PhD) & Guillermo Gonzalez (Ph. D), Facts for Faith Magazine, pp. 36-41 ©2000 Reasons to Believe.
4. Joel L. Swerdlow, Unveiling the Universe, National Geographic Magazine, pg. 25, ©October 1999. Steinhardt & Turok, Endless Universe.
5. Macmillan Encyclopedia of Physics, Quark, pg. 459, ©1996.
6. Ibid, String, pg. 1556.
7. National Geographic Magazine, ibid.

Bibliography

Endless Universe: Beyond the Big Bang, by Paul J. Steinhardt and Neil Turok, ©2007, Doubleday, NY, NY.

Just Six Numbers; The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe, by Marin Rees, ©2000, Basic Books, NY, NY.

Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe, by Peter Ward & Donald Brownlee, ©2000, Copernicus Books, NY, NY.

Table of Contents

Deep Thinking

“Read much, but not too many books.”
Benj. Franklin as ‘Poor Richard Saunders’, 1738

What would a website named Deep Thought 1 be without an article on how to engage in ‘deep thinking’? As I practice it, deep thinking has three requirements:

1. A truly universal (i.e. wide-ranging) education.
2. Sufficient uninterrupted time for careful study, meditation, and reflection on the subject(s) at hand.
3. The personal willingness to follow where the evidence leads and to accept the conclusion demanded by that evidence.

Taking this list one at a time, the first step in deep thinking would be to stay awake and pay attention in school from kindergarten through your senior year. Actual study would help enormously. Though much maligned in recent years, the American education system is, in reality, an excellent start on an universal education. Unless you live in an inner city combat zone or some poverty stricken rural area, you will be well served by an American public school education. Upon graduation, your next stop would be an Associates Degree in General Studies at any decent, accredited community college. Beyond the Associates Degree, the typical course of university study tends to narrow towards a particular profession, so therefore tends to be of little use in deep thinking.

Time is the next requisite ingredient. Rome was not built in a day, so no one should expect to examine any worthwhile or challenging subject quickly. It is unfortunate that modern American society is so hectic and stressed. The typical American is so bogged down with making a living and raising a family that virtually no time is left over for calm, lengthy study and meditation.

I am blessed to work a job that has frequent night shifts that allow extensive periods for uninterrupted investigation and contemplation of whatever subject or issue catches my fancy. In the wee hours of the night when most (normal) people are sound asleep, I am wide awake—and thinking.

The third ingredient in deep thinking is personal honesty and integrity. If you simply start with a predetermined conclusion and then work backwards towards a beginning, then you are either a deceiver or a propagandist. No “Deep Thought” is necessary if you travel that road. The test of true ‘deep thinking’ would be if you thoroughly investigate a subject and the conclusion disturbs or offends you—yet you accept the conclusion anyway.

To pull it all together, get as good a general education as you can as your foundation for deep thinking. As subjects or issues of interest present themselves, seek out the best sources of information related to your subject of interest, then read them carefully. This I believe is what Poor Richard was advising above. Seek out the best; study deeply; then digest the information slowly. This takes time.

I would also advise being sensitive to side issues that may not be obviously relevant to the immediate subject, yet might be very important in arriving at a truly correct conclusion. This is where an universal education comes into play. For example, while researching my article on the Jewish Holocaust, the historian Prof. R.G.L. Waite made the almost offhand remark that the Great Depression was vital to the success of Adolf Hitler. Professor Waite said virtually nothing else about the Great Depression. This led me down the very important rabbit trail of investigating the economic aspects of the Wall Street stock market crash of 1929 and subsequent worldwide Great Depression. The trick here is to be able to follow the rabbit trail of truth without falling down the rabbit hole into the Wonderland of error. A good, wide-ranging, general education will help to guide and protect you.

In the end, you must be willing to follow where the evidence leads regardless of personal preference or prejudice. If your sources are trustworthy and the information is well founded then you must accept the conclusion.

Deep Thought requires it.

Table of Contents

Education

“When I look back on all the crap I learned in high school, it's a wonder I can think at all.”
Paul Simon, from the song Kodachrome

This article is not so much ‘deep thought’ as ‘personal rant’. I am a product of the American public education system, graduating high school in 1971 and going on to a successful career as an electronics technician. I must say up front that I received a good education by the standards of the time; and by the standards of today, my education would probably rank as excellent. Having more than fifty years of adulthood under my belt, I feel that I am in a position to realistically evaluate the practical effect of that education.

I am deeply satisfied with my elementary and middle school (junior high) education. On the other hand, I am deeply dissatisfied with my high school education. With that as preface, I proceed with the rant.

What is the purpose of education? It is to equip young people with the knowledge and skills necessary to succeed and prosper in whatever culture and environment that they will mature into.

South Sea islanders teach their young what they will need to know to succeed in the South Seas. Eskimos teach their young what they will need to know in order to succeed in the Far North. Nepalese teach their children what they will need to know in order to succeed in the Himalayas. But for some strange reason we Americans fail to equip our youth with the knowledge and skills necessary to succeed and prosper in modern post-industrial, hyper-legalized, web-connected, complex-economic America.

What are the foundation stones for success in modern America? They are:

1. Personal finance/investment, and small business operation.
2. Practical civics and politics.
3. Practical law.

As stated above, I am deeply satisfied with my early education. Indeed, everything that I have found of practical value in my adulthood I learned by the end of eighth grade. But as I also stated above, I am deeply dissatisfied with my high school education. With the exception of typing class (which today would be called ‘pc keyboarding’) and drivers education, the last four years of my public school education were a complete and utter waste of time and effort. Either the courses were useless repetitions of material already taught, or the material had no practical relevance to my actual adulthood. And remember, I received a good education by the standards of the time.

Indeed, had I been taught typing and drivers education in middle school I could have been given my public school diploma at the end of eighth grade and been absolutely no worse off in adulthood for having missed the last four years of school.

So why my deep dissatisfaction? With the crystal clear vision of 20/20 hindsight, I can now see that I missed or botched many financial opportunities that passed my way during the first thirty years of my adulthood. I can see how I was not even a minimally functioning citizen during a time when good citizenship was needed. And I made simple legal mistakes that could easily have been avoided had I received even rudimentary training in that vital area.

There is an old saying that “you can't know what you don't know”. But I would go even deeper and say that “you can be so ignorant that you don't even know that you're ignorant”. And that was my condition the morning after I graduated from high school in 1971: so ignorant that I didn't know that I was ignorant. I passed into adulthood utterly unprepared for the realities, responsibilities and opportunities that I would face.

My parents knew nothing about the three areas listed above, so they were no help to me. If other adults in my life knew anything, they didn't share any insights with me. And there were no courses taught in any of these areas, so high school was a total waste. And remember, I received a good education!

In the past fifteen years I have seen five children through high school. It sickens me to see that the public school curriculum is virtually the same as I received over fifty years ago. I did my best to try to educate my children in these areas, but considering that I myself am still clawing my way to some minimal level of proficiency, I can offer little more than advice. I did enroll them in a personal investment course at the local community college; every little bit helps.

So what should be done? I end my rant with this suggestion: treat high school as a true adult-life preparation course. The three vitally important areas listed above should be the required core of curriculum for all students. College prep courses such as literature, chemistry, history, biology, mathematics, etc. should be treated as the extraneous electives that they truly are. By graduation night, every student should have a basic proficiency in personal financial management/investment and simple business operation, be able to evaluate political issues and governmental leaders, and have at least a rudimentary knowledge of law as regards contracts, marriage/divorce, wills and personal liability.

There. I feel much better now. Thank you.

Table of Contents

The Physics of Eternity

Christians tend to bandy the word ‘eternity’ without giving adequate thought as to its practical requirements. God promises us that at the end of the current Age He will create a New Heaven, a New Earth, and bring down a New Jerusalem. We will inhabit that New Earth and New Jerusalem in glorified bodies like unto the angels and fit for existence in eternity. We need to realize, however, that this New Creation must employ physical laws utterly different from the universe as it now exists. From the ‘time zero’ Creation event to the present day, and from the quantum to the cosmic, literally everything (and I do mean everything) about this current universe works towards decay, degeneration, coldness darkness and ever expanding emptiness.

Christian clergy and scholars all too often give people the mistaken impression that the New Creation will require only some relatively minor corrections and modifications of our current universe. They use terms such as “regeneration”, “renewed”, “refurbished” and “cleansed”. Recently I heard one of the famous radio preachers (Dr. David Jeremiah or Chuck Swindoll, I can't remember which) use the word “refreshed” to describe the change from the current creation to the New Creation.

These terms, however, are utterly inadequate and fall infinitely short of the requirements for eternity. As pointed out above, everything about this present universe works towards decay and destruction, so literally everything about the basic laws of the New Creation will have to be either radically changed, replaced with something totally new, or done away with entirely from what they are now. Literally everything! Therefore the New Creation bound for eternity would of necessity be unrecognizable from the present creation bound for decay, darkness and destruction.

To understand the reason for this, we must change our perspective of time from the animal to the eternal. In our normal animal lives (typically less than a hundred years) the destructive nature of the laws of this present universe rarely affects us. Beyond the immediate problems of earthquakes, hurricanes and volcanoes we simply do not live long enough to experience the destructive effects of the natural laws governing this universe. But in the New Creation we will be experiencing cosmic spans of time as ordinary. A million years will be the new ‘second’; a billion years will be the new ‘day’; a trillion years will be the new ‘year’. If the New Creation is just a refurbished, remodeled, “refreshed” version of the current universe, then we will personally experience the devastating effects of decay and degeneration that will result if any of the current laws and characteristics of the present universe are retained. A few examples will illustrate:

1. If atomic radioactivity is allowed to exist, then the New Earth (and possibly the New Jerusalem) will be constantly threatened (as now) by earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonic action and continental drift.
2. If gravity exists as it now does, the New Jerusalem (basically a huge cube) will collapse into a much smaller ball under its own gravitational mass.
3. If the New Jerusalem rests on its “foundation” upon the surface of the New Earth, then it must be centered exactly on one of the polar icecaps or else its mass will cause Earth to have an eccentric wobble. If the New Jerusalem floats in space near the New Earth, then there will be serious orbital/gravitational/tidal force problems between the New Earth, the New Jerusalem and the Moon.
4. Unless solar physics is radically changed, the Sun will first fry the New Earth and the New Jerusalem as it ages through the death gasps of the red giant stage, then freeze both as it finally dies and becomes a white dwarf nebula. Also, the related dangers from meteor impacts, solar flares, cosmic radiation, gamma ray bursts, and nearby supernovae explosions, plus the imminent (i.e. just five “days” from now) collision of Andromeda galaxy with our Milky Way galaxy.
5. Unless God brings the current cosmic expansion rate to a halt, then that exponentially increasing expansion will (in just a very few eternal “weeks”) eventually tear the New Creation apart at the seams.

I could go on and on, but I hope you get the point. Unless the New Creation be completely different (that is, totally NEW) from our current universe, a single “year” in that New Creation would see utter devastation. Of course I trust that God will have everything under control, and that full provision will be made for all of these points. Still, I wish that Christian leaders would give some ‘deep thought’ to these considerations before they lightly tread upon the subjects of the New Creation and eternity.

Table of Contents

A Critique of “The God Delusion” by Prof. Richard Dawkins

Shooting down atheism's best shot

by Brian Bloedel

bloedel@verizon.net

[INTRODUCTORY NOTE: Several years ago I was a participant in an atheist/Christian debate forum (shout-out to Arthwollipot). What follows is a copy of a post I made at that time as a result of a challenge I made with one of the atheists.]

A while back I made an agreement with Politas that if he would read Creation as Science by Dr. Hugh Ross (www.reasons.org) I would read a book of his choice. I've just finished The God Delusion by Prof. Richard Dawkins, and I wanted to get my thoughts online while they're still fresh. Dawkins is probably the leading intellectual luminary and evangelical proponent of the atheist movement. I think that I can take his work as the finest general presentation of the evidence (both physical and philosophical) in favour of the atheist position. I must admit that it is very well written, and I agree with much of what Prof. Dawkins has to say.

My reading in science, religions and philosophies is fairly broad. What now amazes me is that nobody has a ‘knockout punch’ as regards the question of “God”. Not the atheists, not the Christians, not the other religions of the world, nor the secular humanists. Everyone can make a case for their position (of varying quality and persuasiveness), but nobody can cinch their case.

Amazing!

Dawkins makes no bones about the purpose of his book. As he puts it: “If this book works as I intend, religious readers who open it wil be atheists when they put it down. (pg. 5)” Well, I'm a religious reader, and if this book is atheisms best shot, then “Praise God, halleluiah!”, because my faith was actually strengthened by the reading.

I start this report by giving Prof. Dawkins' definition of The God Delusion: “Instead I shall define the God Hypothesis more defensibly: there exists a superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us. This book will advocate an alternative view: any creative intelligence, of sufficient complexity to design anything, comes into existence only as the end product of an extended process of gradual evolution. Creative intelligences, being evolved, necessarily arrive late in the universe and therefore cannot be responsible for designing it. God, in the sense defined, is a delusion; and, as later chapters will show, a pernicious delusion.”

Well, duh! By this definition, of course God is a delusion! Dawkins could have ended the book right there at page 31. This definition presupposes (without conclusive foundations, as he later admits) a purely naturalistic origin of the universe, Earth, and life on Earth. Any religious “god” is rendered superfluous and automatically erroneous.

[ADDITION to the original posting: I would also point out that Prof. Dawkins is pulling a bit of ‘bait-and-switch’ with his God Hypothesis by starting out with a god clearly supernatural and presumably transcendent (like the God of Genesis 1), then switching to a ‘god’ that is merely a creature within the cosmos that obviously cannot be the Cause of the cosmos.]

I now come to a place where I heartly agree with Prof. Dawkins. On page 59 he writes, “The presence or absence of a creative super-intelligence is unequivocally a scientific question, even if it is not in practice—or not yet—a decided one. So also is the truth or falsehood of every one of the miracle stories that religions rely upon to impress multitudes of the faithful. Did Jesus have a human father, or was his mother a virgin at the time of his birth? Whether or not there is enough surviving evidence to decide it, this is still a strictly scientific question with a definite answer in principle: yes or no. …” He goes on to make the additional (and very valid) point that it is improper for religionists to reject or downplay science when it weakens the religious position, but to seize on such evidence when it supports religion.

[ADDITION: Returning to Dawkins' God Hypothesis, we must consider the scientific testability of a super-intelligent, intentional, deliberative, supernatural and transcendent Being. Using the question above regarding the paternity of Jesus, the conclusive determination of a purely human father would—in principle—be easy (“Joseph, you ARE the father!”). But would it be possible (even in priciple) to conclusively establish the paternity of God Almighty as the result of a purely supernatural, miraculous conception? The paternity test would lead to a scientific dead end—as would the Cause of every single one of the other miracles in the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. Divine miracles are, almost by definition, transient transcendent supernatural intrusions into this universe which preclude direct scientific scrutiny. Unless a well-equiped and prepared team of relevant scientists was on the scene at the very moment a supernatural ‘miracle’ occurred, the scientific trail would, again, lead to a dead end.]

I now come to a place where I definitely disagree with Prof. Dawkins and his reasoning. On pages 72 & 73 he presents as virtually certain that there are vastly superior alien life-forms in the universe, and that those life-forms would be recognized by us as gods. As Dawkins puts it, “In what sense, then, would the most advanced SETI aliens not be gods? In what sense would they be superhuman but not super-natural?”

I'm arguing the Christian Biblical position, so the “sense” that these aliens would not be God is that (unless they were trying to pull a fast one on us) they would not be claiming that they were the eternal, transcendent, Almighty Creator of the universe. They might impress the hell out of us with their super-advanced technology, but eventually we would catch on to their game and figure out their technology. We are not going to figure out God. God's supernatural acts will be permanently—and in principle—beyond our reach. I've also argued on different threads here in the Forum that the odds against SETI are overwhelming to the point of being zero. [NOTE: see my SETI article near the end of the site for further elaboration]

Dawkins devotes Chapter 3 to “Arguments for God's Existence”, and I must admit that if these are really the best that theists can muster then our position is on very shaky ground indeed. Before moving to Chapter 4, “Why There Almost Certainly Is No God”, I want to touch on a few points. First is “The Argument From Scripture” (pg. 92). Dawkins is totally unimpressed with the Bible in general and the evidence in favour of Jesus in particular. As regards the ‘lunatic, liar or Lord’ trilemma he states, “But even if that evidence were good, the trilemma on offer would be ludicrously inadequate. A fourth possibility, almost too obvious to need mentioning, is that Jesus was honestly mistaken. Plenty of people are. …” This idea is “ludicrously” ridiculous! How can you be “mistaken” about giving sight to the blind; hearing to the deaf; mobility to the lame; healing to the leper; life to the dead or personal resurrection after public execution? You cannot be “mistaken”. You (and/or your associates) can only be lunatics and/or liars. I accept (with due caution) the evidence from Biblical scripture and the secular historical record, even if these are not overwhelming or ironclad.

As for “Pascal's Wager” (pg. 103) I would say that this is not so much an argument for God's existence as an intellectual tool intended to sway the undecided skeptic in favour of God; to be specific, the God of the Christian Bible.

Dawkins ends the chapter with an oblique nod towards science. On page 109 he says, “There is a much more powerful argument, which does not depend upon subjective judgement, and it is the argument from improbability. It really does transport us dramatically away from 50 per cent agnosticism, far towards the extreme of theism in the view of many theists, far towards the extreme of atheism in my view. …” The rest of the paragraph returns to a question that Dawkins feels is a showstopper in favour of atheism: Who made God? He will not entertain the notion that the question cannot be answered in a way that the human mind could possibly comprehend, nor will he consider the possibility that God really is eternally pre-existent. In Dawkins' view there is an infinite regression here, and that's all there is to it. Case closed. God does not exist.

[ADDITION: I would further point out that the atheist naturalists are in exactly the same boat as theists regarding ‘infinite regression’. For example, it has been speculated that our universe is but a single bubble expanded out of an infinite sea of quantum foam. Well, what made the quantum foam? Then, what made the ‘what’ that made the quantum foam? Then what made the what that made the ‘what’ that made…? I think you get the idea. Dawkins has no refuge in infinite regression. Play that card and all sides go bust.]

Chapter 4 begins with the subject of extreme improbability and uses the familiar Boeing 747 ‘made by random chance from a tornado in a junkyard’ example. Dawkins then gives a brief review of evolution with “Natural Selection as a Consciousness-Raiser” (pg. 114). I really have no problem with ‘natural selection’ as long as the menu of options for selection can be accounted for in the nonliving inorganic universe. This brings us to the next section called “Irreducible Complexity”. Dawkins clarifies his position by saying that he is not pleading that life (and its functions) could occur by chance, but rather by natural selection—climbing the gentle-sloped backside of Mount Improbable in an easy stepwise fashion.

He continues: “Creationists who attempt to deploy the argument from improbability in their favour always assume that biological adaptation is a question of the jackpot or nothing. Another name for the ‘jackpot or nothing’ fallacy is 'irreducible complexity' (IC, pg. 122).” On pages 123 & 124 Dawkins addresses IC with a view to refute and dispense with it. However, it is on these two pages that I must charge Prof. Dawkins with being disingenuous by misrepresenting IC. He says, “‘What is the use of half an eye?’ and ‘What is the use of half a wing?’ are both instances of the argument from ‘irreducible complexity’. A functioning unit is said to be irreducibly complex if the removal of one of its parts causes the whole to cease functioning. This has been assumed to be self-evident for both eyes and wings. But as soon as we give these assumptions a moment's thought, we immediately see the fallacy. A cataract patient with the lens of her eye surgically removed can't see clear images without glasses, but can see enough not to bump into a tree or fall over a cliff. Half a wing is indeed not as good as a whole wing, but it is certainly better than no wing at all. …”

The problem here (and I think that Dawkins knows the problem) is that his examples start from the wrong perspective and then head in the wrong direction. He starts with fully developed and functioning systems, and then works backwards to a degraded but still functioning condition. Certainly, half a vision system is better than none where vision already exists and the degradation stills allows some functionality. Certainly, half a wing is better than none where wings already exist and the degradation still allows some functionality. But that's not the point.

Irreducible complexity (I would prefer to call it “Minimally Functional Systemic Complexity”, but IC is catchier) starts from the perspective of natural history before the capability came into existence, and then considers what would have to happen in order to get a ‘Minimally Functional System’. Dawkins mentions flatworms in this section, so I will use an example that many of you may have encountered during public school science classes in your evolutionary biology textbooks: the light sensitive wart on a worm as the first vision system. Now, understand the setting. This hypothetical example starts in that period of natural history in which no creature had sight, even at a rudimentary level. That is, blindness was absolutely universal.

Enter the worm with a (presumably mutated) light sensitive wart. Does this confer survival advantage? At first blush, yes! But wait a moment; things are not as rosy as they may seem. In order for the light sensitive wart (or ‘eye spot’; same difference) to confer any advantage, there must be a (you guessed it) ‘Minimally Functional System’. That is, there must be a light sensitive wart plus a nerve connecting the light sensitive portion of the wart to the worm's brain plus a region of the worm's brain capable of receiving and correctly processing the impulses from the wart plus the instinctual wits in the worm's brain to know what to do with the processed signal for survival advantage plus the whole system must be fully integrated into the genetic code in the worm's gametes plus the genetic change must not be so extensive such that the worm becomes a new species and therefore cannot mate and successfully reproduce so as to pass the new trait on to future generations and other life-forms.

Whew!

It is at this point that we must consider the IC question of what happens if any part of this very first ‘Minimally Functional System’ is missing or defective such that the system does not work from the very start. Dawkins might suggest (I admit that I am speculating here) that the incomplete system would simply await the missing part and then proceed working from there to a more complex and advanced state. But this is evolutionarily untenable, and I think Dawkins knows it. It would be wildly improbable that the correct missing part would ever appear in a non-intentional, non-engineered, non-designed system. If the system is not minimally complete and functional at the very start, then the incomplete system itself and its constituent parts confer absolutely no survival advantage at all, and indeed are a dead load on the creature, and evolution will work to do away with the parts. After all, these parts are taking up space in the body, taking up nutrients without providing any benefit, and taking up space in the genetic code. At the very least there would be absolutely no reason why evolution would work to protect the systemic parts from destructive mutation or other damage. Over the course of multiple generations the system parts would either be lost or disconnected. ‘Time’ is often invoked as the magic elixir guaranteeing the inevitable success of Darwinian evolution. However, at this primative state of existence time is not evolution's friend; time is evolution's mortal enemy. Time is corrosive; time is abrasive; time works to destroy in a universe whose very fundamental laws work towards decay and degeneration.

These considerations would apply to the origins of all the myriad complex systemic functions (and their undergirding molecular components and nanomachines) found in living organisms, primative to advanced. Since there are few—if any—counterparts to these systemic functions in the non-living inorganic universe, each would have to come into existence ex nihilo and in toto as fully functional (if rudimentary) systems purely by blindest chance. Natural selection plays no part here. Evolution plays no part here. Until an ‘irreducibly complex’ ‘Minimally Functional System’ accidentally comes into being, there is no natural selection, no survival benefit, and no evolution. Dawkins admits the problem at the bottom of page 124 and top of page 125, but then dismisses the problem.

Dawkins takes up the questions of origins-of-life and a life supporting planet in “The Anthropic Principle: Planetary Version”. He starts that section with, “Gap theologians who may have given up on eyes and wings, flagellar motors and immune systems, often pin their remaining hopes on the origin of life. The root of evolution in non-biological chemistry somehow seems to present a bigger gap than any particular transition during subsequent evolution. And in one sense it is a bigger gap. That one sense is quite specific, and it offers no comfort to the religious apologist. The origin of life only had to happen once. We therefore can allow it to have been an extremely improbable event, many orders of magnitude more improbable than most people realize, as I shall show. (pg. 135)” Although Dawkins is hopefully optimistic that science will solve the problem of life's origin, I am doing Dawkins no violence here when I say that he really does concede the extremely improbable nature of the origin of life. But the improbable happened, so that's that!

[ADDITION: Dawkins neglects to mention a major problem here for atheistic evolution. That is, that life appeared on planet Earth absolutely as soon as life could physically exist here. So, the critically important ‘Origin of Life’ question (along with the equally important question of the origin of photosynthesis) presents a dual improbability: The extreme improbability of life occurring at all, and the puzzling improbability of the virtually immediate appearance of life—and photosynthesis—under very hostile conditions on early Earth.]

As I've pointed out several times on this Forum, the origin of life is still a great unanwered question of science which may remain unanswered. As Stewart Kaufman of the Santa Fe Institute put it, “Anyone who tells you that he or she knows how life started on the earth some 3.45 billion years ago is a fool or a knave. Nobody knows. Indeed, we may never recover the actual historical sequence of molecular events that led to the first self reproducing, evolving molecular systems to flower forth more than 3 million millennia ago. But if the historical pathway should forever remain hidden, we can still develop bodies of theory and experiment to show how life might relistically have crystallized, rooted, then covered the globe. Yet the caveat: nobody knows. (At Home in the Universe, pg. 31)”

Prof. Dawkins is way out of his element on the astrophysical and geological questions of the origin and development of Earth as a home for advanced complex life. Check out my posts and references in The Shermer Letters subject area of the Forum for a more in-depth consideration of these issues. The huge number of Earth-like planets Dawkins counts on to prove his case disappear by the many small numbers that must honestly be applied to the Drake Equation due to the most recent advances of information in virtually every branch of science. Earth, as it exists, is a wildly improbable reality. [NOTE: again, see my SETI article near the end of the site for further elaboration]

But the main point Dawkins drives home is that the Anthropic Principle is the naturalistic alternative to Theistic Creationism. We are here, so it had to happen. This is also the main theme of the section “The Anthropic Priciple: Cosmological Version”. The proper alignment of the basic constants, laws, and ratios of the universe is inexplicable and extremely improbable, but again we are here, so therefore the improbable happened.

Let's stop a moment for a quick tally. The alignment of cosmic constants to allow life to exist was extremely improbable. The formation and development of Earth to support advanced complex life was extremely improbable. The origin of life itself was extremely improbable. The myriad complex functions of life (genetics, photosynthesis, metabolism, digestion, sight, hearing, etc.) have few if any inorganic counterparts in order to enable natural selection and evolution, therefore each and every one of which is wildly improbable. But it all happened by itself! Ok, let's keep going.

I really cannot do justice here to Chapter 5 “The Roots of Religion” and Chapter 6 “The Roots of Morality: Why Are We Good?”. They must be read to form an opinion. Dawkins says that religion is a misfire of capabilities formed by natural selection for other reasons. Christians say that we have spirituality built into us by the Creator. The “Roots of Morality” turns on the question of animal conduct vs. spiritual connection to the Creator. Animals can conduct themselves well, just as humans can. That's all Dawkins is interested in. But the animals have no spiritual connection to God, nor life after physical death. That's where Biblical Christians stand.

Dawkins has a good long go at the Bible in Chapter 7 “The ‘Good’ Book and the Changing Moral Zeitgeist”. Basically he just doesn't like God as pictured there, and he doesn't like Jesus either. A rebuttal would be lengthy and I may do one in the Religion section of the Forum. As for the “Changing Moral Zeitgeist”, Dawkins dares to judge the past—and the transcendent—“By the standards of modern morality…(pg. 242).” He does so without giving any credit to the relative safe harbour of Western Christianity which—unlike other cultures—gave birth to our modern science, technology and society. Were it not for that safe harbour, our present day world could very well be locked in pre-scientific ignorance and superstition, pagan/heathen religions, and a chaotic swirl of backwards, oppressive or barbarous social structures.

Prof. Dawkins naïvely assumes modern science and technology as automatic givens, and that rational secular humanism was inevitable at this time. Consider for yourselves where we would be today if Christianity had never occurred. You're fooling yourself if you think the world would be religion free, with all peoples marching arm-in-arm into a peaceful, happy, scientifically rational future while singing rousing choruses of John Lennon's “Imagine”. Quite likely the world would be just as bad off—if not worse—with no hope in sight.

Chapter 8 is “What's Wrong with Religion? Why Be so Hostile?”. Since I am arguing in defence of the Christian position, other religions are going to have to defend themselves against Prof. Dawkins' assaults. But I am also defending the Old Earth Creationism (OEC) position, so the section “Fundamentalism and the Subversion of Science” is truly distressing to me. I know that Young Earth Creationists sincerely believe that they are defending the Faith by taking their stand, but they are actually allowing critics of Christianity to refute the Bible on Scientific grounds, thereby bringing discredit on the Faith. All of this changes with OEC. Christianity—alone among the world's religions, past and present—can put up a real fight in favour of its God by showing how the hard evidence from science is actually in support and confirmation of the Bible. Dawkins finishes the chapter with discussions of other subjects that would need to be addressed in the Religion section of the Forum. [NOTE: please read my Young Earth Creationism article at the end of this site.]

I'll get to Chapter 9 in a moment, but want to dispense with Chapter 10 first. Here Dawkins shows that we can gain all the purported blessings of religion (comfort, solace, inspiration, fellowship, etc.) by relying on our own strength and modern science. Certainly God will allow you to live your life as you choose. God has done that throughout human existence with only minimal exceptions and intrusions. How you play Pascal's Wager is your business—right up to the moment you die.

Chapter 9, “Childhood, Abuse and Religion”, is as close to an ‘action plan’ as Prof. Dawkins presents in this book. Now, you'd expect that the world's leading atheism apologist would have a non-theistic equivalent of the Biblical ‘Great Commission’: “Go and make disciples of all nations…”. That is, some plan for doing away with religion and implementing whatever it is that Dawkins feels the world should be.

Dawkins may present such a plan in his other books, but wisely refrains from articulating it in this one. The reason is simple. If you take Dawkins seriously in the statements he makes throughout the book, his Atheist Great Commission would require two main points:

1. Ruthlessly stamp out religion with lethal force. Leave no religionist alive to further infect humanity with the disease of religion.
2. Take all children and raise them in centralized facilities to ensure a socially consistent, psychologically engineered upbringing devoid of anything spiritual, religious or supernatural. Cull all children who exhibit any tendency toward spirituality.

The grand objective would be to use eugenics and selective breeding in order to utterly eliminate in humanity the capability of even framing such a thought as “God”. That is, to form a new species (Homo Sapeins Atheistansis?) utterly physicalist, secularist and humanist in its thought processes.

Am I going too far in my assertions? Not in the slightest! If The God Delusion is to be anything other than mental masturbation, it must have an ultimate goal (an atheist world) and a plan to get there. Since hundreds of millions of Muslims and a similar number of Christians, Jews, Hindus, Mormons, etc., etc., would stand in the way of this Brave New World, nothing short of a twenty-first century global holocaust would attain the goal. Once the field is cleared of all religionists, the children of the world (and I do mean all of them) will have to be reared under the strictest of conditioning and monitoring in order to ensure that only those devoid of “a god centre (pg. 169)” survive to reproduce.

Could such a program succeed? Perhaps, but not necessarily. Blame whomever you will, but this world is a royal mess. There is simply no way of knowing who would rise to the pinnacle of power in the New World Order after the holocaust. A latter day Stalin? Mao? Pol Pot? I can pretty well guarantee that it will not be a Dawkins or a Shermer or a Saks. They're too nice. Besides, they can think. They'd be purged out early in the new Regime.

So I end where I began: The God Delusion is a good book, but it does not deliver a knockout punch.

Not even close.

[ADDITIONAL CONCLUSION: I end this article with an additional final observation on the atheist position. If the atheists are correct—there is no deity of any kind, and therefore no afterlife—then humanity is presented profound sociatal and policy implications. If atheism is correct, then modern humans are nothing more than Darwinian animals—mere ‘naked apes’. If we are nothing more than animals, then we are really nothing more than chemicals; with a little neuroelectrical activity thrown in. Here's where things get tricky. You can do anything you like with chemicals—within EPA rules and regulations. There's no such thing as ‘chemical abuse’. There's no such thing as ‘the rights of chemicals’. You can't commit ‘crimes against chemicals’. This means that you can do whatever you want with humanity. The practical outcome of this reality could be anything from a Golden Age of secularist, humanist liberality down to a horror show of mass exterminations and oppressions.

So, in final closing, let us not fool ourselves into thinking that the atheists hold the key to A Better Tomorrow. That key could just as easily reopen the gates of Auschwitz—and hell on Earth.]

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

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Gun Control

The issue of gun control is really the issue of handgun control, because long guns are used in only a small fraction of the firearms crimes in the United States. In order to get a firm grip on this issue we must clearly understand three things about handguns:

1. The technology and methods for making modern handguns (both revolvers and semiautomatics) and their basic ammunitions were perfected over a hundred years ago, and cannot be uninvented. Indeed, any decently equipped high school machine shop, making copies from a sample .38 Special and 9mm semi-auto, could crank out handguns by the thousands; bullets by the hundreds of thousands. Such an operation would be limited only by time, equipment, manpower and matèriel.
2. The violent criminals who would use handguns make up a minority of the overall criminal population which itself is a small minority of the overall U.S. population. Therefore, supplying this sub-minority with handguns and ammunition would be relatively easy. Even if handguns were totally banned, a single international arms smuggling ring or domestic illegal gun/ammunition manufacturing operation, moving its utterly untracable wares through the already established underground drug trafficking networks, could supply the criminal demand for handguns and ammunition in the entire western hemisphere.
3. Unlike illegal drugs which are quickly consumed and must be replaced, decently made handguns and ammunition are extremely durable items. Bullets have a shelf life measured in years—if not decades. Assuming decent care, handguns have an indefinite service life. There are handguns made over a century ago that are, today, in perfect firing condition. From a public policy and law enforcement standpoint, handguns—like diamonds—are forever.

The upshot of all this is that there is no level of hardware ‘gun control’ that could possibly disarm the lone street thugs, organized gangbangers, drug dealers, and deranged lone killers who already operate completely outside the bounds of law, order and decency, and who commit the vast majority of handgun crimes in America. This is why law abiding gun owners are so disturbed by the cries for “reasonble and sensible” gun control involving registration and license schemes. Gun owners have seen far too many cases—both domestic and overseas—where such schemes were ultimately used to disarm the general population while having little or no impact on violent criminals. Also bear in mind that criminals cannot be required to register or obtain licenses because these would be violations of their 5th Amendment protection against self incrimination. Only the law abiding can be required to submit to these schemes

I am deeply disturbed by the persistence and intensity of the call for gun owner licensing and firearm registration. This can only be for the ideological goal of general civil disarmament so as to render the People of America physically powerless—as is the case with the people of Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. This would end any claim of citizen sovereignty over Government, thereby leaving the federal government as the sole sovereign power in America, with the several States and municipalities acting as mere administrative subunits.

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Hell

Perhaps no other aspect of Christianity is as shocking and repellant to the common mind as the subject of hell. Even a significant percentage of Christians are uneasy about Judgment Day and eternal perdition because they seem to refute our claim of a loving God. However, hell actually makes a lot of sense—even becomes a necessity—once you consider a few basic assumptions of the Faith.

The first assumption is that the human spirit—once it is brought into existence—is eternal and will never cease to exist. This eternal spirit will ultimately be clothed in a new and perfected body that will be fit for an existence in eternity.

The second assumption is that Jesus really is the Son of God who will reign as the sovereign Lord of the New Heaven and the New Earth for the rest of eternity. That is, that Jesus will never retire, never come up for election, and never be deposed or otherwise replaced. Furthermore, the light of God and the glory of Jesus will illuminate the New Creation such that there will be neither darkness nor night (Rev 21:22-25 & Rev 22:5). In short, it will be Jesus: 24/7/eternity.

Another assumption ties in with the first. That is, that hell will be made by God in order to deal with the rebel Lucifer and his fallen angels. This is borne out by the words of Jesus in Matthew 25:41, “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” (NIV) The reason for this is that God created the angels to be indestructible eternal creatures endowed with transcendent powers and capabilities far beyond that of mortal man. God—exercising His sovereign authority—has decided that these angels are not to be annihilated; that is, their ultimate fate is not to be unconscious oblivion. Since God is going to replace the old heaven and earth with a New Heaven, a New Earth and a New Jerusalem, and cannot allow these demons to have any access to the New Heaven and the New Earth (read Revelation 20 – 22), a totally separate realm must be created in order to contain these dread creatures. That containment realm is called ‘hell’.

So why hell for humans? It really comes down to the question of who God can allow into the New Heaven and the New Earth. Since Jesus is going to be the eternal Lord of the New Heaven and New Earth, God can only allow access to those humans and angels who willingly submit to the Lordship of Jesus. If God allowed access to those who reject or oppose the Lordship of Jesus, it would only be a matter of time before there would be rebellion and open warfare in the New Creation. There has already been one war in Heaven (which rages to the present day), so God cannot allow enemies of Jesus into the New Creation so as to start a new war.

I would also point out that the reality of the Lordship of Jesus would largely neutralize any dispute over the nature and character of Jesus. If Jesus is going to be the Lord of the New Creation, then it really doesn't matter if Jesus is the ‘Third Person of the Trinity’ (per orthodox Christianity), or was only a virgin born prophet (per the Koran), or merely a regular human who was a very good teacher and guru (per New Age humanist philosophy). In fact, it wouldn't matter if Jesus was a homeless Skid Row bum. If God appoints or elevates Jesus to the position of Lord of the New Creation (for whatever reason or by any criterion), then we must bow to that lordship or be rejected to hell. How you respond to that lordship will determine your eternal destination.

While hell may seem sadistically cruel and needlessly harsh, it is actually reasonable and necessary given the transcendent and eternal nature of the human spirit, our new and perfected bodies, and the New Creation. This leads to a final assumption regarding hell. That is, that the restraining power of the Holy Spirit of God will either be absent from hell or utterly inactive in the realm of hell. If that is the case, then the ‘lake of fire’ will serve to distract, neutralize and isolate dread creatures that otherwise would be unbounded and unrestrained in their evil, viciousness and malice one towards the other—and us. In that sense, the isolation chamber of hell will be the final parting mercy from God to those who have chosen to separate themselves from the love of God and His freely given offer of eternal salvation through Jesus the Christ in the New Heaven, the New Earth, and the New Jerusalem.

Choose carefully.

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The Horror of War

Over the years I've heard and read many people expound upon and decry “the horror of war”. Here in Deep Thought 1 I am going to tell you the real horror of war. No, it is not the destruction, suffering and death normally associated with war. The true horror of war is the ordinary commonness of war throughout the animal kingdom. From humans down to bees and ants war is, in a word: NORMAL. War can simply not be got rid of. It is built into us at the most fundamental level of our nature.

What is abnormal—downright unnatural—is the swift planetary reach and incredible destructive power of modern ICBM-delivered thermonuclear weaponry. I'll even throw in biological and chemical weapons for good measure. 21st Century mankind has the power to annihilate itself—or at least to blast itself back into the Stone Age.

Given our weaponry, our penchant for warfare and the barely concealled instabilities in the world today I hold out little hope for the long term survival of our species. And that's assuming Global Warming doesn't ‘do us in’ first.

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Human Spirit

There is no question more important to the human condition than the question of what happens to us after we die. Common experience tells us everything we need to know about our very short trip from ‘cradle to grave’. Science tells us everything we need to know about the termination of the electrical activity in the brain and the decay of the physical human body as it returns to the dust. So, is there anything else? Is there substance to the claim that there is a human ‘spirit’ that survives death?

It would seem that if the human spirit exits, then it must be a completely supernatural phenomenon. The instrumentation and techniques of science have progressed to the point that if there was even the slightest residuum of ‘spirit’ left on this side of the grave then it would have been detected and analyzed years ago. That being the case, the breath of spiritual life God breathed into Adam was a supernatural connection from God to man. The supernatural spiritual connection is established by God, maintained by God, and ultimately broken by God at His discretion—and on His side of the grave.

However, this would put the ‘spirit’ completely inside the realm of metaphysics and totally out of the reach of human science. If this is true in fact, then the spirit will forever be beyond test or verification. Claims can be made, but they will be purely religious in nature regardless the truth or falsehood of the claims. I'm afraid that this is one subject that will have to be accepted or rejected entirely on faith. The only way to test it is to die.

Any volunteers?

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January 6th Insurrection

Chaos on The Hill

Trump's failure of leadership and the Revolution that wasn't.

America lucked out big time during the counting of the Electoral College votes on January 6, 2021. Many times in the past four years I have heard and read people call President Donald Trump a modern Adolf Hitler. No, let's not give ‘The Donald’ that compliment and honor. In the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923 Hitler had formal organization, goals, objectives, an iron will, and the steely resolve to lead his followers directly into the guns of government forces. On January 6, Donald Trump had none of these.

But what Trump had that Hitler didn't have was actual formal constitutional Office, Power and Authority. If in the aftermath of his failed bid for reelection in November 2020 Donald Trump had effected even minimal organization, structure and specific objectives with his rogue militias, Oath Keepers, and Proud/Boogaloo Boyz supporters, the outcome of January 6 could have been an absolute nightmare. Surreptitiously communicating the objective of taking hostage the entirety of the Congress, twenty-five or thirty Boyz, armed to the teeth, could have entered the Capitol Building under cover of the general riot, cut down the few Capitol Police guards on duty, and swiftly taken both Houses of Congress along with the physical Electoral College ballots.

Trump getting on the cell phone to the leaders of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boyz, and ordering them to execute the traitor VP Mike Pence and the she-devil House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, along with the Left Wing liberal enemy Senator Chuck Schumer for good measure, would have broken the chain of government succession thereby leaving Trump as the sole surviving Constitutional Officer. Burning the Electoral College ballots would have thrown the 2020 election into a Constitutional quandary. Picking up the phone, Trump could have called Joe Biden and given him the ultimatum of either getting on national television to admit stealing the election and then formally concede the presidency to Trump, or else Trump would have taken the one minute walk to the White House press room to go on national television and ordered the execution of every last Democrat and Republican opponent in Congress and then declared the start of the Second American Revolution. A direct order by Trump to his millions of “Stand Back and Stand By” armed supporters and rogue militias to rise up in active revolt would have overwhelmed law enforcement nationwide and unleashed hell on this country.

Trump's popularity rating after the abortive insurrection dropped to 34%. Although the lowest of his presidency, this translated into tens of millions of supporters. If Biden had refused to concede, America would have been plunged into a death struggle like unto the horror of the Spanish Civil War. The demarcation line of this war would not be the North/South Mason-Dixon Line of the 1860s, but the demarcation line of those supporting Constitutional Republicanism versus those supporting racist fascist Authoritarian Rule. The enemies of America would have been circling like vultures, ready to either feast on the carcass of a dead nation or deal favorably with the first Dictator of America.

Yes, we lucked out on January 6. We lucked out big time.

To conclude the subject of this article I propose a ‘Conspiracy Theory’ for Trump supporters. The only way that I can account for Donald Trump's blundering ineffectiveness during his entire presidency, and especially during its final four months, is that Trump was actually a ‘deep cover’ Democratic Party operative whose mission was to crash the Republican Party, disgrace the cause of Principled Conservatism, end the governmental concept of Federalism, and render the militia movement a domestic terror movement thereby crippling the Second Amendment so as to begin the panicked override of the Bill of Rights and the disarming of America thereby paving the way to establish the government in Washington D. C. as an actual National government with the several States as mere administrative subunits. True, this would require that Donald Trump be willing to suffer formal Impeachment (twice), public condemnation, economic injury and the threat of litigation and prosecution for criminal and civil wrongdoing. However, as the old saying goes, “The opera ain't over 'till the fat lady sings”, and she hasn't taken the stage yet. Trump may consider himself rich enough, popular enough, and tough enough to take the blows and still come out on top.

So, Trumpers, chew on this Theory for a while. Time will tell how things shake out in the end. There's plenty of time until the elections of 2024.

I continue with a January 6 counterfactual history; a history in which Trump actually had the steely-eyed determination and iron-willed resolve of an Adolf Hitler. In any such reality Trump would have begun his planning and organization for the takeover of America long before the 2020 elections, but for ease of presentation this history will play out during the critical last four months of Trump's first (and only) term in office.

Realizing the actual prospect of an election defeat, Trump would have used his children and closest loyalists to secretly meet with the leaders of the various rogue militias to get them to plan independent attacks on key infrastructure targets such as electric power distribution stations/power lines, bridges, tunnels, railroad lines, etc., in the critical northeastern corridor from Washington D.C./Baltimore up through Boston along with similar targets in Middle America and on the West Coast. These militias would also have been told to quietly put out the word to armed Trump supports nationwide to actually “Stand back and stand by” for the open order by Trump to unlease hell on America by killing police officers, ambushing National Guard members as they mustered and ransacking the armories for weapons, and murdering known Biden supporters while also hitting soft targets such as banks, Walmarts, grocery stores, hospitals, etc., so as to cause maximum panic, chaos and confusion throughout America; a chaos that could only be stopped by Trump at his command.

Trump had the right general idea of wanting to put a loyalist in charge of the Pentagon, but that person would have had to have been squarely in Trump's hip pocket, and would have needed nerves of steel to fulfill the objective of neutralizing the Department of Defense during the actual uprising. Similar hardcore loyalists would have been needed for Justice and Treasury; Bill Barr just didn't have the nerve and commitment for revolution. A key move through the DoD would have been the assignment of Trump loyalist Army officers in those Virginia and Maryland National Guard units most likely to be called up for Capitol security purposes. They would figure critically on January 6th. Also in preparation for that day, the loyalist Secretary of Defense would have ordered the dispersal of the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; perhaps through trips to overseas bases thereby leaving the Trump loyalist as the sole head of the Pentagon.

Trump has lost the election, which brings us to January 6, 2021 itself. The events of that day could have unfolded just as they did right up to the point where the general riot started at the Capitol Building. Then, as outlined above, the Oath Keepers and Proud/Boogaloo Boyz would have charged to the front, taken out the Capitol Police and security guards, and then captured the entirety of the Congress. Trump could then have had the loyalist Secretary of Defense federalize those Guard units around Washington, then with simple cellphone calls ordered the loyalist Army officers in charge of those units to move them away from D.C. while ignoring any counter orders from the governors of Virginia and Maryland.

With Pence, Pelosi and Schumer (at the very least) lying dead on the Capitol floor and the Electoral College ballots a pile of ashes, Trump could then have made that ultimatum call to Joe Biden. I don't know Joe personally, but I think that I have the measure of the man to know that he would have told Trump to go straight to hell, and then hung up. Trump would then have immediately gone on national television and the internet to inform the country of the start of the Second American Revolution, leading off with the code words “Boogaloo, boogaloo, boogaloo”, thereby unleashing the rogue militias and millions of armed Trump loyalists to plunge the major left-wing urban centers into utter darkness, chaos, and the deadly freezing cold of early January.

My crystal ball now goes dark. There is no way to predict how things would have unfolded in the ensueing panic, confusion, and general violence. America's version of the Spanish Civil War would have been horrific; its final outcome totally unknowable. I leave this counterfactual history headed into that darkness.

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The Hammer and the Anvil

World War 2, the Jewish Holocaust, and Modern Israel

by Brian Bloedel

bloedel@verizon.net

Introduction

World War 2 and the Holocaust of European Jews by the Nazi Germans were horrific events. So horrific that people tend to be stunned and revulsed by the enormity of the crimes and carnage involved. This is a particular problem for Christians, who must also deal with the dual problems of overt anti-Semitism by the historic Church and somehow reconcile the historic events of World War 2 with the Christian claim of a loving God.

Other works on World War 2 and the Jewish Holocaust tend to focus on a single subject area such as military strategy, religious persecution, social disruption or legal issues. This article, on the other hand, draws upon a much wider range of subjects such as general history (religious, military, social and scientific), geology, geography, climatology, and economics. By stripping away the underbrush and debris that obstruct our view, the reader will clearly see the hand of God at work in both natural and human history as they relate to Christian end-times prophecy.

A proper understanding of World War 2, the Jewish Holocaust and the formation of modern Israel will strengthen the faith of Christians and constructively challenge the worldview of skeptics.

Thesis statement

World War 2 (WW2) was the most important historical event during the Twentieth Century of the Christian ‘Common Era’ (C.E.). The course of modern human history had come to a major crossroads and the fate of European Jewry hung by a thread. But how are we to regard this titanic event? Was it just historical happenstance; a horrible convergence of basically random unguided factors? Or can more be reasonably read into the event than what simply appears in the history books?

The object of the following work is to try to determine, from a Christian end-times prophetic perspective, whether or not there is deeper purpose in WW2, the Jewish Holocaust and the subsequent formation of the modern nation of Israel.

Prelude to Holocaust

1

“Before examining these important issues, consider this observation about forecasts: There are few inevitabilities in the course of human conduct. Decisions taken—or not taken—at various points along the road can and do shape history. In hindsight, events may appear to be inevitable. But they rarely are.”
(Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. at The Center for Security Policy(1))

“History is full of explanations. Indeed, knowing what the future had in store, one can search the past and find so many explanations and write so confidently and persuasively about them that it is quite easy to convince oneself that Hitler was bound to happen. …Hitler was neither a historical necessity, the inevitable and logical result of the past, nor an accident, totally estranged from past German experience.”
(Prof. Robert G. L. Waite, from The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler (2))

To understand the true meaning and purpose of World War 2, the Jewish Holocaust and the formation of the modern nation of Israel we must clearly recognize that from the human perspective there is little in history that was actually inevitable. A long chain of events, some very specific in their nature, connected the destruction of Herod's Temple and Great Diaspora of the Jews in the First Century C.E. with the rise of the blood-racist Adolf Hitler and the genocidal Nazi Third Reich in the Twentieth Century C.E. This chain could have been broken in any of a thousand and one different places, resulting in a significantly different history for the Twentieth Century.

The Hebrew Jews have suffered much in the last two thousand years, and Christian anti-Semitism was a shameful reality contributing to that suffering during the intervening centuries. It can hardly be denied that this anti-Semitism was a major enabling factor to the Jewish Holocaust. But did it make the Holocaust inevitable? Most of the rest of this section deals with the question of inevitability during that period of history from the Crucifixion of Jesus to the assumption of dictatorial power in Germany by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. However, to set the stage for history as it actually happened it will be helpful for us to consider the history of Europe had Christianity never existed. This is a fair question because human history can in no way be said to require someone like Jesus at any time in history, let alone a specific person doing specific things at a specific time and place. So it is quite proper and relevant to consider the effects of His absence from the world stage. For simple convenience the C.E. dating system will be retained.

Tremendous social, political, economic, military and religious forces were at work in Judea during the one hundred and fifty years prior to the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth in 30 C.E. So intense and disruptive were these forces that by the time of the Crucifixion at least half of all the Jews were already living in diaspora outside of Judea. But these forces were also totally independent of Christianity. Because the Jewish Zealot revolt that resulted in the destruction of Herod's Temple by the Romans in 70 C.E. and Great Diaspora would almost certainly have occurred with or without Christianity, this part of history would be little affected (3).

Also mostly independent of Christianity and therefore virtually certain was the decline and eventual fall of the Roman Empire. The fifty-year period after the destruction of the Jewish Temple saw the Roman Empire at the peak of its power and geographic extent. The next three to four centuries, however, were a long slide into social, economic and military decay, along with the adoption of elaborate Greco-oriental mysticism and full-blown Caesar worship. Pagan Germans had been migrating south into the Empire for many centuries. During the period in question, that migration turned into a flood. These Germans were, however, deeply and favorably impressed by what they encountered and quite willingly assimilated into the Empire. It is highly likely that a stable but utterly pagan Roman/German hybrid culture would have emerged (4). The Hebrew Jews would simply have continued in Diaspora, local conditions prevailing.

However, from about the Fourth Century C.E. onward things get very murky. It is unknowable how this pagan Roman/German hybrid culture would have fared during successive waves of migratory invasions by hordes of barbaric Huns, Avars, Mongols, pagan Arabs, marauding Vikings, and whoever else may have come rolling through Europe and the Mediterranean. And bear in mind that these invasions were totally independent of Christianity and would have occurred anyway.

A brief comment on the Arabs is in order at this point. Because Mohammed of Mecca was as singular a historical character as Jesus of Nazareth there was no fundamental historical requirement for him to even exist. Yet without Mohammed and his religion-forming prophetic ministry Islam would never have been. Islam seems to have had a moderating and unifying effect on what would otherwise have been multitribal/multireligion Arabs. But the Arab migratory expansion would almost certainly have occurred with or without Mohammed and Islam (5). The only points in doubt would have been the character, geographic extent, duration, and long-term impact of the Arab expansion.

In the absence of Christianity, any alternate histories would be radically—unrecognizably—different from what actually unfolded. The present day spiritual state of European society could very easily be that of Islam, paganism or outright barbarism. Also, the science, mathematics and technology of the past five hundred years were by no means inevitable and might never have occurred. The high-water mark of American civilization today might be the Aztecs, with little or no communication between the two hemispheres. How Diaspora Jews would have fared in these alternate histories is also unknowable. Their fate could have been anything from influential most-favored minority to humble obscurity down to despised vermin hunted to extinction. There's just no way to know what would have happened to them, though several of the books in the Jewish Old Testament (e.g. Exodus, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, Lamentations, etc.) describe Hebrew encounters with pre-Christian pagan societies. Such encounters were often threatening or violent. The absence of Christianity would not necessarily have been a panacea for Jewish problems during the past two thousand years.

Christianity, of course, is a historical reality and has been a major factor in European history. That anti-Semitism was taught and practiced is beyond doubt or dispute. But how did this come about? Jesus of Nazareth (a Semitic Jew) was preaching the kingdom of God. Even a cursory reading of the Christian New Testament will show that Jesus was not seeking to establish an earthly government through earthly methods. Jesus admonished his followers to seek first the kingdom of God; to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and render unto God what is God's. He did not instruct them to seek empire and to become Caesar. Yet that is exactly what was to happen with Christianity as it grew and prospered.

Christianity began among the Jews in Judea shortly after the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth in 30 C.E. From there it spread to already established diaspora Jewish communities and then to the Gentiles. First Century Christianity was practiced by small groups of people who were for the most part disadvantaged, persecuted, weak and scattered. Anti-Semitism would have been ineffectual at this point even if it was desired. But three or four centuries down the road things would be much different. For various reasons Christianity was growing in numbers, geographic extent and influence. This rise in the fortunes of what was becoming a formal Institution coincided with the decline of the Roman Empire. Institutional Christianity was perfectly positioned to catch the power, authority, wealth and territory that were falling into its hands (6).

The Church did not drop the ball; and herein rests the problem. During much of the past sixteen hundred years of European history, Institutional Christianity was either itself the government or had significant influence over prevailing secular governments. When the Church became a governmental power, the top-level leaders of the Church became Caesar. Their opinions, preferences, prejudices and errors had effect far out of proportion to their numbers just as the President of the United States has effect greatly out of proportion to that of the ordinary citizen. This mixing of Church and State would adversely impact not only Jews but also pagans, barbarians, Muslims and anyone else who would not submit to the authority of the Church.

Now, some straightforward reasonableness is in order here. Institutional Christianity was, to a significant extent, a human construct; a flawed compromise between the oft-times counterintuitive teachings of Jesus and the harsh demands of running a large organization in the real—and fallen—world. The historic Christian Church was not implemented directly by God from a pillar of flame and thunder nor was the non-Christian reprogrammed like a computer by deleting out the non-Christian mind and downloading in the new Christian mind upon conversion. People came into the Church as they were and developed (for good or bad) from there like children.

The term ‘Institutional Christianity’ as used above is somewhat of a misnomer, for the Institutional Church was actually made up of several different and mostly independent organizations both large and small, cooperative and hostile, covering vast stretches of territory. From its start to the present day, Institutional Christianity has been neither monolithic nor uniform, which greatly complicates historical considerations. Also, “Christians” within the Institutional Church fell into at least three broad categories:

1. “True believers”. Bear in mind that what they ‘truly believed’ may have varied wildly, with unpredictable results.
2. “Pew warmers”. These were people who found themselves within the borders of the Institutional Church and simply adopted a ‘go along to get along’ philosophy. They might not have cared one whit about religion and would have adopted the outer trappings of whatever religion was held by the dominant culture.
3. “Religious opportunists”. Whatever their true spiritual orientation, they joined the Church primarily to seek personal profit or advantage. Such people were particularly hazardous when they infiltrated into top-level leadership positions. Hitler recognized this group in his book Mein Kampf: “But worse than all are the devastations which are brought about by the abuse of religious convictions for political purposes. One can really not proceed too sharply against those wretched profiteers who like to see in religion an instrument which may render them political, or rather commercial, services. These impudent liars, however, shout their creed into the world with a stentorian voice so that the other sinners can surely hear it, but not in order to die for it, if necessary, but in order to live better (7).” Although Hitler was insane, he was often very insightful.

From here things got downright messy—and dangerous. All three groups brought with them into the multifaceted Institutional Church a welter of previously held beliefs, cultures, knowledge, traditions, prejudices, fears, personal agendas, apathy, disinterest, malicious objectives, hate, greed, etc., etc., which corrupted that which was true, good and proper in Christianity. The above explains (but does not excuse) how Christianity went from the “whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also” and “love your enemies” (Matt 5:39-44 KJV) of Jesus' original teachings in the First Century C.E., to the overt anti-Semitism and persecution several centuries later of those who refused to join the Church. Formal institutions—especially governmental institutions—tend to react harshly towards those who will not submit to the authority of the institution, and Institutional Christianity has been no different. Jews (and many others) have run afoul of this tendency. Throughout much of its history Institutional Christianity either acted as or behaved like a worldly government.

Before proceeding, let us consider a few speculative counterfactual scenarios for Christianity in order to see how history might have played out differently. At the one extreme, suppose that the leaders of early and medieval Christianity had been directed by God to scrupulously avoid any and all large-scale structure and organization. That is, that Christianity as a whole remained to the present day as it was in the First Century C.E.: individuals, families and disconnected communities practicing the teachings of Jesus, much like the Jews practiced Talmudic Judaism during the Great Diaspora. This would probably have had the same historical effect as if Christianity had never occurred. With no Institutional Church as an obstacle, the barbarian/pagan migratory invasions would have been the dominating events shaping European history to the present day—with all the aforementioned uncertainties. Anti-Semitism within Christianity would have had minimal impact on history.

Moving away from that extreme, another possibility (which might be considered a “best case” scenario) would have been an Institutional Church of a very tolerant and benign character. While providing enough cohesion and structure to weather the various migratory invasions, its policy on evangelism would have been to simply preach the Gospel of Jesus in a non-coercive manner. Its reaction to those who rejected the Gospel would have been to say, “Go in peace.” This scenario would have minimized anti-Semitism and Aryan racism within Christianity, thereby undercutting those tendencies in Germany and reducing the likelihood of holocaust at any point in history. But this scenario would also have virtually guaranteed open religious pluralism throughout Europe and the Mediterranean. Competing religions might very well have overwhelmed the Institutional Church by sheer numbers. Again, the final impact on history would be unknowable.

Moving towards the other extreme we encounter the tough, complex, resilient Institutional Church of actual history, with all the faults noted above. Near the opposite extreme would have been an openly anti-Semitic Institutional Church. That is, a brand of Christianity utterly divorced from and deeply hostile towards its Jewish origins. The far extreme worst case would have been the above anti-Semitic Church turned lethal; justified in its own mind by an alternate history in which the Jews themselves had killed Jesus (8), especially if the gentile Romans had tried to prevent the killing. European and Mediterranean Jewry would quite likely have been exterminated centuries before the birth of Adolf Hitler.

2

Although the teachings and policies of the early and medieval Church cleared the field for later events, Adolf Hitler and the genocidal Nazi Third Reich were still far from inevitable. The four hundred year period of the Sixteenth through Nineteenth Centuries, however, bridged the gap from the First Reich (Holy Roman Empire) to the Second Reich (Bismarck's reign) and paved the way for the Third Reich in the Twentieth Century. The cumulative effects of the Protestant Reformation, the German Peasant Revolt of 1525, Martin Luther's anti-Semitic teachings and his siding with the ruling princes during the Peasant Revolt, the waging of the Thirty Years War (9), the fragmentation and social isolation of Germany into petty principalities, the rise of militarist Junker Prussia and its most famous son Otto von Bismarck (10) left the field of historical possibilities well plowed and fertilized for future disaster.

Before proceeding, a little extra expansion on Luther and Bismarck would be beneficial. The teachings, policies and actions of these two men did much to shape the mind and character of the German People to that of anti-Semitism and subservient unquestioning obedience to governmental authority. Luther was quite direct about this in his Treatise on Good Works: “The princes of this world are gods, the common people are Satan, through whom God sometimes does what at other times he does directly through Satan, that is makes rebellion as a punishment for the people's sins. I would rather suffer a prince doing wrong than a people doing right (11).” William L. Shirer also observed in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich that, “The great founder of Protestantism was both a passionate anti-Semite and a ferocious believer in absolute obedience to political authority. He wanted Germany rid of the Jews and when they were sent away he advised that they be deprived of “all their cash and jewels and silver and gold” and furthermore, “that their synagogues or schools be set on fire, that their houses be broken up and destroyed and that they be put under a roof or stable, like the gypsies in misery and captivity as they incessantly lament and complain to God about us (12).””

Regarding the ‘Iron Chancellor’, German historian Theodor Mommsen said that Bismarck had “broken the political backbone of the nation (13).” And German sociologist Max Weber wrote that, “He taught us to distrust our own political intelligence (14).” As William L. Shirer put it, “It is true that he [i.e. Hitler] found in the German people, as a mysterious Providence and centuries of experience had molded them up to the time, a natural instrument which he was able to shape to his own sinister ends (15).”

But even with all of this the rise of the genocidal Nazi Third Reich was by no means a certainty. Different decisions and different actions during this period could easily have yielded a vastly different history for the Twentieth Century. To underscore this point, consider that Kaiser Wilhelm's Germany of WW1 had all of the intense anti-Semitic and Aryan supremacist sentiments accumulated to that point, an arrogant and autocratic (if only mildly anti-Semitic) leader, plus the technological and industrial capabilities to commit full-scale genocide against the Jews. Yet no such thing occurred during that time. The people of Germany were not quite ready for racist madness. But things would soon change.

3

As we approach the 1930s it becomes easier to see that even a small twist of fate could have had a significant impact on final outcomes. Consider a few major points from which myriad smaller points may be derived:

• the paternity of Adolf Hitler's father (16);
• Adolf's early life and his military service (17) [Note: the same holds true for Winston Churchill. Read Martin Gilbert's book “Churchill: A Life”—and prepare to be amazed];
• the conduct of WW1 (18);
• the terms of the Versailles Treaty and its enforcement (19);
• the weakness of the new democratic government in Germany after WW1 (20);
• the postwar blockade of Germany and its resulting starvation (21);
• the French takeover of the Ruhr Industrial Valley which caused the hyperinflation and collapse of the German currency (22);
• Hitler's arrest and conviction after the Beer Hall Putsch, ban on the Nazi party, and his relatively short stay in prison (23);
• the Wall Street stock market crash of 1929 and worldwide Great Depression;
• the dissolving of the German Parliament and the subsequent elections of 1930 (24);
• and Hitler's final rise to power.

Any decent history text will give details of what actually happened with each of the preceding points. But let us consider the effects on history had they occurred differently—or didn't occur at all.

Adolf's father Alois was born in Austria in 1837 the illegitimate son of an unknown father (rumored by some to be Jewish). His mother married five years later, but the marriage did not last long and the husband did not adopt Alois or claim the boy as his son. Alois kept his mother's name of Shickelgruber until he was thirty-nine years old. Then, for reasons he never explained, he prevailed upon the aged brother of his long lost stepfather to swear an affidavit before the parish priest that the stepfather (named Johann Hiedler) was Alois' actual biological father. The priest cooperated, but when writing the name in the original birth register he misspelled “Hiedler” as “Hitler”.

The implication here should be fairly obvious. Historians have found no reason that would have truly compelled Alois to bother changing his name; he could have left it as it was. Had he done so the as-yet unconceived Adolf would have had the dual political liabilities of a bastard (and possibly Jewish) father and a last name that sounds as silly to Germans as it does to Americans (shout “Heil Shickelgruber!!” a few times and try to keep a straight face). But the simple act by Alois of changing his last name not only gave Adolf a legitimized Christian paternity, the completely fortuitous misspelling of “Hiedler” gave Adolf a short, crisp, martial sounding name that would serve him well in the political arena. The above is a good example of how history could have turned on small points.

Now consider Adolf Hitler's troubled youth. It is known without doubt that Alois was a strict disciplinarian who was frequently away from his family for long periods of time while performing his duties as a customs official. There are, however, darker stories of Alois as a drunken brute who physically abused both his wife and Adolf. At any rate, young Adolf was deeply disturbed by what happened in secret behind the closed doors of his home during his childhood. We may reasonably ask what the outcome might have been had Alois been a more gentle, tolerant and attentive parent and husband. It can never be proved, but the difference in Adolf's childhood would likely have deprived the Twentieth Century of its most infamous player and greatly changed the course of history these past ninety years.

The same can be said of Adolf's military service in WW1. Whatever his future crimes, Hitler was not a battlefield coward. The recipient of two Iron Crosses for valor, he very intentionally put himself in harms way as a frontline soldier (as did Churchill), suffering a leg wound in 1916 and temporary blindness in a poison gas attack in 1918. Now, either of these injuries could easily have been crippling or fatal. Again, the impact on history would have been extreme. As William L. Shirer stated, “But without Adolf Hitler, who was possessed of a demonic personality, a granite will, uncanny instincts, a cold ruthlessness, a remarkable intellect, a soaring imagination and—until toward the end, when, drunk with power and success, he overreached himself—an amazing capacity to size up people and situations, there almost certainly would never have been a Third Reich (25).”

No Adolf Hitler, no Third Reich. No Third Reich, no Holocaust. All it would have taken was one better-aimed bullet, a lucky artillery round or a slightly greater dose of poison gas. How easily history could have turned onto a totally different road.

Expanding outward, we can see that WW1 itself was rich in plausible alternate histories. Consider the Providential timing in German chemist Fritz Haber and chemical giant BASF developing commercial mass-scale nitrogen production just before the start of the War, thereby liberating German farmers and munitions makers from dependence on Chilean nitrate imports. Otherwise Kaiser Wilhelm II would hardly have dared to enter a major war with England on the enemy side for fear that the British Navy would blockade the agricultural and munitions-essential nitrate imports, eventually leaving his farms with stunted crops and his army with empty guns (26). So assuming that it even happened at all, virtually everything about WW1 could have been different. Its alliances, political maneuverings, threats, intimidations, timing, start, battles and final outcome could have varied from what actually happened, with significantly different impacts on history to the present day.

But assuming a German defeat in WW1, the victorious Allies could have made a better peace. The terms of the Versailles Treaty did not have to be so harsh. President Woodrow Wilson was not required by history to be a poor negotiator with an obnoxious personality, nor were the other Big Four leaders from Great Britain, France and Italy required by history to be vindictive towards Germany. The postwar Allies did not have to starve the people of Germany into submission to the Versailles Treaty with a food blockade, thereby traumatizing a young generation that would grow up to man the Nazi war machine. The French did not have to take the Ruhr Industrial Valley away from Germany, further traumatizing the nation with monetary hyperinflation and currency collapse. These things simply did not have to happen. They were not required by history nor were they inevitable. For the most part they represented deliberate choices made and deliberate actions taken by specific people. All with terrible consequences.

We now come to another turning point. After the failed Beer Hall Putsch in 1923 Hitler was arrested, tried, convicted of treason, sent to prison, and the Nazi Party was banned. It was entirely within the authority of the government of Germany to have made the ban permanent, kept Hitler in prison for five or ten years and then to have banished him back to Austria. The Nazi Third Reich would have died aborning and history would have taken a totally different road.

The previous five hundred years had left the German people poorly prepared by history to attempt democracy at the end of WW1, but the attempt was made anyway. The new government was weakened from the start by public misperceptions that its leaders were the ones responsible for Germany's defeat in WW1 and for willing acceptance of the despised Versailles Treaty. This government was never to gain a firm footing due to civil and political unrest, severe economic difficulties and downright poor leadership. This poor leadership was probably best demonstrated in the fateful decision by Chancellor Bruening in 1930 to dissolve the German parliament and hold new elections. Economic and social conditions being what they were at the time, Hitler and the Nazi Party achieved major gains in that election over their very poor showing in 1928. The leaders of the other political parties in Germany were also weak and vacillating, which allowed Hitler to eventually maneuver his way to absolute power and control in Germany. Once again, there was nothing inevitable about any of this. The occurrences, decisions, actions, inactions, and final outcomes could have been different. Very different.

4

“In the autumn of 1929 the New York Stock Exchange, under roughly its present constitution, was 112 years old. During this lifetime it had seen some difficult days. …A common feature of all these earlier troubles was that having happened they were over. The worst was reasonably recognized as such. The singular feature of the great crash of 1929 was that the worst continued to worsen. What looked one day to be the end proved on the next day to have been only the beginning. Nothing could have been more ingeniously designed to maximize the suffering, and also to insure that as few as possible escaped the common misfortune. …The Coolidge bull market was a remarkable phenomenon. The ruthlessness of its liquidation was, in its own way, equally remarkable.”
(Prof. John Kenneth Galbraith (28))

To conclude the first section of this article let us consider a factor that was of vital importance to the subject at hand yet was totally out of the sphere of European control: the New York Wall Street stock market crash of 1929 and subsequent Great Depression. Prof. John Kenneth Galbraith examined this subject in his book The Great Crash: 1929, and three main points emerge from that work:

1. There was no fundamental historical requirement that a speculative stock market bubble had to occur at that time, or anywhere near that time. Or even to have occurred at all!
2. The conspicuously unusual length (three to four years!) and deep severity of the Crash itself.
3. There was no requirement for an economic depression in the 1930s even with a sharp market drop, let alone the disaster that actually occurred.

As Prof. Galbraith remarked, “After the Great Crash came the Great Depression which lasted, with varying severity, for ten years. …On the whole, the great stock market crash can be much more readily explained than the depression that followed it. …We do not know why a great speculative orgy occurred in 1928 and 1929. The long accepted explanation that credit was easy and so people were impelled to borrow money to buy common stocks on margin is obviously nonsense. On numerous occasions before and since credit has been easy, and there has been no speculation whatever. …As noted, it is easier to account for the boom and crash in the market than to explain their bearing on the depression which followed. The causes of the Great Depression are still far from certain (29).”

But a speculative stock market bubble did occur in the mid to late 1920s, and with that bubble came good times in Germany. Investment capital flowed into the country, factories reopened, production increased, employment was up and the future looked bright. However, good times for Germany meant bad times for Hitler and the Nazi Party. Membership and financial support were dropping during this period, and they were losing political ground (30). It was just a matter of time before the Nazi Party would have faded to political insignificance and historical obscurity. A lesser man would have thrown in the towel and quit. But Hitler was a man of Destiny. And Destiny was soon to deliver.

The New York Stock Market Crash of 1929 brought the good times in Germany to a screeching halt, and the Great Depression gave Hitler what he so badly needed: poverty, fear, despair, and rage. Although Hitler was a masterful orator and the Nazi Party had a strong organization and inner core, there was no way that they could compete with or succeed against prosperity. Prof. Waite concluded that, “The Depression was of absolutely basic importance to Hitler's success. Without it, it is unlikely that any amount of demagoguery, however clever or compelling, could have brought him to power (31).”

The rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party to dictatorial control over Germany represented a pinpoint focus of a wide array of historical forces and specific events. Hitler slipped through a razor thin crack in the doorway of history. Many things could have happened differently so as to have rendered the historical field infertile to Hitler, to have eliminated him outright, or frustrated his political efforts. The history of the Twentieth Century could easily have been different. Radically different.

Section Postscript

Prelude to Holocaust not only examined history as it actually happened but also examined history as it might have been. Many people (especially professional historians) are leery of ‘counterfactual’ histories. After all, actual history can be difficult and murky enough without tossing “What if?” into the pot. But to get a firm handle on what actually happened in history we absolutely must consider reasonable and likely alternatives.

The various human interactions that produce history are extremely complex. Compounding and confusing this complexity is that most situations in life do not present just one single option or course of action nor are humans uniform or consistent in their response to real life situations. In most instances an individual or group is presented an array of options. Each option will have a consequence and lead to another (or ‘secondary’) array of options. The consequences of different options may be very similar or widely divergent and the resulting secondary arrays may or may not be connected. For example, take the simple act of greeting the boss in the morning. The array of options could include phoning in sick (thereby avoiding the issue); burying your head in paperwork and ignoring him as he passes by; giving a cheerful “Good morning, sir.”; or throwing your resignation in his face and shouting, “Take this job and shove it!”

Depending on the boss involved, the consequences of burying your head in paperwork and the polite greeting would probably be much the same and lead to connected secondary arrays of options. On the other hand, the consequences of a polite “Good morning, sir” and “Take this job and shove it” would probably be exactly opposite, and the secondary arrays would most likely be totally disconnected thereby leading to radically different courses of future events. Now, the above example had only two people in a trivial situation with a simple (if wide) array of options. But imagine the possibilities in an entire office of complex people; or a whole company; or a whole nation; or the interaction of nations. And this is assuming only the normal flow of events with nothing in particular out of the ordinary.

Human history is like the ripples on the surface of a pond sprayed with a random mix of sand, pebbles and gravel. Even the most powerful supercomputer could not accurately predict even briefly the occurrence and interactions of all of the ripples. But many of the events in history are monumental in their effect and utterly out of the ordinary. You simply cannot predict a Jesus, or a Black Plague, or a political assassination nor can you pre-gauge their effect on history. They are like armed hand grenades tossed into the pond at random intervals. They utterly overwhelm the ordinary; and the ordinary is already difficult enough.

Counterfactuals will be encountered throughout this work. Although the author has done his utmost to ensure that all such posits are plausible, reasonable and relevant, this work is not intended as an academic tome and no attempt has been made to achieve rigorous detail or exhaustive completeness.

War and Holocaust

From the human perspective there was absolutely nothing inevitable about the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party to total power in Germany. But once they achieved that power, war and Holocaust did become all but inevitable. This section will briefly examine three questions:

1. How did Hitler manage to lose the war in Europe?
2. What were the implications for the Jews had Hitler won the war or significantly prolonged the war before defeat?
3. Continuing number two, what were the implications for European Christianity of a Nazi victory?

The first question deserves attention because in retrospect it seems amazing (even miraculous) that Hitler lost WW2. The Nazi Germans were brutally aggressive and effective in their early offensives while the rest of Europe was psychologically, politically, and militarily unprepared for war. High-ranking Nazi leader Albert Speer shed light on this question by describing the warped and limited thought processes that tended to blind and mislead Adolf Hitler:

“His illusions and wish-dreams were a direct outgrowth of his unrealistic mode of working and thinking. Hitler actually knew nothing about his enemies and even refused to use the information that was available to him. Instead, he trusted his inspirations, no matter how inherently contradictory they might be, and these inspirations were governed by extreme contempt for and underestimation of the others. In keeping with his classic phrase that there were always two possibilities, he wanted to have the war at this supposedly most favorable moment, while at the same time he failed to adequately prepare for it. He regarded England, as he once stressed, as “our enemy Number One,” while at the same time hoping to come to an arrangement with that enemy (32).”

Reading Chapter 25 of Speer's Inside the Third Reich and Chapter 5 of Prof. Waite's Psychopathic God we can fully comprehend this very important distinction: the Allies did not win the war in Europe; Hitler lost it. Through a series of suicidally bad decisions, actions and inactions, Hitler brought disaster down upon his own head. He repeatedly snatched defeat from the gaping jaws of victory. The following six points were crucial to the fall of Hitler's Third Reich:

1. Failure to fully mobilize the people and industry of Germany in support of the war effort. Too many resources were left devoted to civil and commercial purposes (33).
2. Failure to provide for a U-boat mass production program before the war started. This was a fatal oversight. (Appendix A — WW2 U-boats)
3. The fateful decision to switch from military/industrial targets to civilian targets during the Battle of Britain. (Appendix B — Battle of Britain)
4. The folly of attacking Russia without first defeating Great Britain, and failure to coordinate the operation with Japan. That six week diversion into Yugoslavia before the start of Operation Barbarossa was a fatal blunder committed directly by Hitler. (34)
5. The decision to declare war on the U.S.A. in support of Japan after Pearl Harbor, even though Hitler was under no compelling treaty obligation to do so. (35)
6. Failure to mass produce and deploy the fully developed and operational jet fighters and anti-bomber guided missile systems. (Appendix C — Jets and Missiles)

These points are particularly important because all of them represent decisions made by, or options known to, Hitler; the resources and capabilities were ‘in hand’; and none of them fell under the heading of the ‘Fortunes of War’. Had Hitler chosen correctly on just one of the above points the course of the war would have been changed, either winning him victory in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, or greatly prolonging the war and the progress of the Final Solution of the Jewish Question.

The implications for European and Mediterranean Jews of a Nazi victory are painfully obvious: utter extinction and the closure of Palestine to the rest of world Jewry. But assuming an eventual protracted defeat for the Nazis, the outcomes of plausible alternate histories are just as bleak from the Jewish perspective for most of them would have resulted in Final Solutions even closer to total completion than what actually occurred. The extermination could have proceeded to the point that there simply would not have been enough Jewish survivors to mount a meaningfully significant Exodus back to Palestine. The modern nation of Israel quite likely would not have formed.

It is proper to point out that the Nazis were general purpose racists and that several million non-Jews were also murdered in Hitler's death camps for political, sexual, religious or racial reasons. Ironically (or fittingly) a Nazi victory would have meant that European Christianity would soon have followed European Judaism into the concentration camps for extermination. Hitler was obsessed with Aryan racial supremacy and grand Wagnerian paganism. Although Hitler retained nominal membership in the Catholic Church (and ordered his top leaders to maintain their respective church memberships) he was at best merely a Pew Warmer, and in his heart-of-hearts was fundamentally a pagan Aryan blood-purity racist who had little respect for Christianity, regarding it as meek and flabby (36). Had the Nazis prevailed in WW2 or prolonged the war before defeat, the number of non-Jewish victims of the overall Nazi Holocaust would ultimately have far exceeded that of the newly extinct European Jewish race.

In 1934, after consolidating his control over Germany, Hitler required all military personnel to swear the following binding oath of obedience and loyalty not to Germany or even to the German Constitution, but to Hitler himself: “I swear by God this sacred oath, that I will render unconditional obedience to Adolf Hitler, the Fuehrer of the German Reich and people, Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, and will be ready as a brave soldier to risk my life at any time for this oath (37).” In the spring of 1938 Christian clergy were required to swear a similar personal oath to Hitler.

The period of 1934-1937 saw the arrests of hundreds of Protestant pastors. The Nazi Party made the fate of Biblical Christianity crystal clear on 13 February 1937 when Minister of Church Affairs Hans Kerrl told a group of shocked Lutheran churchmen that, “The Party stands on the basis of Positive Christianity, and Positive Christianity is National Socialism. …National Socialism is the doing of God's will. …God's will reveals itself in German blood. …Dr. Zoellner and Count Galan, Bishop of Muenster, in similar words have tried to make clear to me that Christianity consists in faith in Christ as the Son of God. That makes me laugh. No, the main thing is deeds. Christianity is not dependent upon the Apostle's Creed. …True Christianity is represented by the Party, and the German Volk are now called by the Party and especially by the Fuehrer to a real Christianity. …The church has not been able to generate the faith that moves mountains. But the Fuehrer has! The Fuehrer is the herald of a new revelation (38).”

A Nazi victory in WW2 would have resulted not only in the extinction of European and Mediterranean Judaism but also the total suppression of true New Testament Christianity. Weak Christians would have been intimidated into silent submission to the Party while strong Christians would have followed the Jews into the gas chambers. European Institutional Christianity would have been absorbed into the Nazi Party; the parent devoured by its own mutant child (39).

Section Postscript

This section closes with an interesting counterfactual speculation. Most people are under the vague impression that nuclear fission was discovered at the end of the Nineteenth Century or early in the Twentieth Century. In fact, nuclear fission was discovered quite by accident in late 1938 by the nuclear chemists Drs. Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman working at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Nazi Germany. While trying to form heavier isotopes of Uranium by neutron bombardment of pure uranium targets, they were dumbfounded when their test targets showed traces of elements about half the atomic weight of uranium (27).

Unable to account for the strange results, they conferred with a Jewish colleague, Lise Meitner, who had fled to Sweden to escape Nazi persecution. Meitner and her physicist nephew Otto Frisch figured out what was happening and published their results in the scientific journal Nature in January of 1939, thereby broadcasting the news throughout the scientific world. The race for the A-bomb was on.

However, it really wasn't much of a ‘race’ because the Nazis had effectively decapitated their own scientific community by driving out their most able scientists—the Jews! Considering that the Manhattan Project cost the United States a cool two billion 1940's dollars and several years of extremely difficult research and development, it was highly unlikely that Hitler's wartime Germany could have developed the Bomb at all.

To close, let us realize that the timing of the discovery of nuclear fission (like the timing of the discovery of nitrogen mass production mentioned earlier) was entirely Providential. Had the state of nuclear physics been retarded by just a few years (or had Hahn and Strassman kept their work secret within the Nazi scientific community) the start and successful conclusion of the Manhattan Project might also have been retarded. If Hitler had played just one or two of his cards correctly (as suggested above), the Allies might very well have desperately needed the A-bomb as soon as humanly possible in order to force an entrenched Third Reich to its knees before the ultimate completion of the Final Solution of the Jewish Question.

What if? We'll never know. Fission History

Aftermath of Holocaust

1

“Brichah [the European ground-transit portion of the postwar Exodus] was also partly motivated by anti-Semitism; but when all is said and done, there is a world of difference between even the worst kind of postwar anti-Semitism and the war of extermination waged against the Jews by the Germans. The motivations of Brichah were based on the question of how to live, because the overwhelming will to live was there. We shall try to show the way in which the Jews in the postwar world tried to escape not from death to life, but from unsatisfactory or even dangerous conditions to what was hoped would be a better future.” [Explanation and emphasis added]
(Yehuda Bauer (40))

One of the most important and relevant outcomes of WW2 and the Jewish Holocaust is the modern nation of Israel. There seems to be differing opinions as to the significance (or even desirability) of modern Israel as a physical Jewish homeland, and the reader is referred to Feuerlicht's book The Fate of the Jews for a deeper treatment of the issue. The remainder of this work, however, assumes modern Israel to be of great importance.

One question that must be seriously considered is whether an Israel-like nation would have come into being if WW2 and the Jewish Holocaust had not occurred. Virtually any alternate history lacking the genocidal Nazi Third Reich would have left European Diaspora Judaism intact and Jewish communities in place to this day. By the start of WW2 the Zionist Movement had encouraged several hundred thousand Diaspora Jews to return to Palestine. But it is probably unknowable as to whether the Zionist Movement by itself would have sufficed to bring about a full-fledged nation.

As history actually played out, the Jewish Holocaust utterly uprooted and decimated European Jewry, leaving a remnant inclined toward Exodus back to a Palestine that already had a sizable Jewish population. Also, WW2 left an international alignment sufficiently conducive to favoring (even supporting) such an Exodus and the formation of modern Israel as an independent recognized nation. Again, it is probably unknowable whether such an alignment would have existed in the absence of WW2 and the Jewish Holocaust. But bear in mind, as Feuerlicht points out, that the Exodus and formation of modern Israel did not have to happen; they were not historically inevitable. Were it not for the social, political and economic fears fostered by residual anti-Semitic sentiments (which in the case of many “liberated” areas had turned downright murderous), the approximately half million Jewish Holocaust survivors could simply have returned to their former countries to rebuild their communities, or been absorbed into the populations of the Allied nations. Had this occurred, the Exodus back to Palestine most likely would not have happened; modern Israel would not have formed; and what we call the “Middle East Crisis” would today be nothing more than intra-Arab feuds of little concern to the rest of the world (41).

2

“Because geography is taught in grade schools along with spelling and arithmetic, most of us are likely to think of it as something very simple and rudimentary, something like “What is the Capital of Afghanistan?” or “Bound Iowa.” Few of us realize that it is the prince of disciplines, combining the fruits of geology, meteorology, anthropology, sociology, economics, and dozens of other specialties. The good geographer is a philosopher. The medieval Arabs, who wrote some of the finest geographical treatises ever penned, knew this. They knew that the culture of a people bears an intimate relationship to the landscape on which they live. They knew that the geography of a region shapes the way of life of its inhabitants, as the bones and muscles of a healthy man shape his skin. …If one is to understand the civilization of a people, one must start with the geography of the land they inhabit.”
(Prof. Carlton S. Coon (42))

We must now broaden our horizon to include geology, climatology, and world geography (43). There is no fundamental requirement that petroleum oil exist on planet Earth, and certainly no reason why commercially recoverable oil deposits must exist in any specific area. Yet without the vast reserves of easily recoverable oil in the Arab/Persian Middle East there would today be no particular international interest in that region, even with the presence of Israel. And recall from earlier in this work that the science, mathematics and technology of the past five hundred years were by no means inevitable. But without the petroleum dependent inventions of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (e.g. internal combustion engines, oil fired furnaces and electric generators, jet aircraft engines, etc., etc.) there would be no demand for Middle East oil, nor a “Middle East Crisis” worth worrying about.

Now consider the very real possibility that the above named inventions could have been fueled by alcohol or liquefied coal. If the North American oil fields had not formed or had been geologically inaccessible to drillers at the turn of the Twentieth Century, what we now regard as “alternative” fuels could very well have gained the same type of strangling monopolistic ‘lock’ on design, distribution, political protection, marketing and governmental regulation enjoyed today by the producers of petroleum fuels. At the very least this would have taken the United States out of the equation as far as the significance of the Middle East was concerned. Having no dependence on Arab oil, we in the U.S. could afford to wash our hands of the whole area. And the more countries that adopted petroleum alternatives, the less important the Middle East would be in international affairs (44).

Also, the geography and climate of the whole Mediterranean area could have been different. There was no fundamental planetary or geological requirement that the Pangaea landmass of the Permian Period two hundred million years ago had to break apart in any particular way or form. Had they even come into existence, Africa was not required to collide with Eurasia, nor was the Indian subcontinent required to form the climate-shaping Himalaya Mountains by colliding with the Asian landmass (45). Both could have remained as offshore continents to this very day.

Or assuming that the continental collision between Africa and Eurasia occurred, Morocco could have slammed against Spain so as to have permanently sealed off Gibraltar. This would have left the Mediterranean Basin as a desert canyon. On the other hand, the land that formed the Mediterranean could have been thrust upwards by geological forces instead of being pushed down, thereby leaving the whole area above sea level. Either way, there could be dry landmass from the Baltic Sea down to Cape Algulhas. The differences in geography and climate would have changed the course of European and Middle Eastern history, and had a significant impact on WW2, the Nazi Third Reich, the Jewish Holocaust and the postwar Exodus. (See Appendix D — World War 2 Geology )

3

When Abraham left Ur in the land of Chaldea the whole world was before him. In his long life he could have gone in any direction and settled on any location from Asia to Europe, Arabia to Africa. Providentially, the hand of God was upon him and eventually led him to the southeast corner of the Mediterranean coast. When Moses led the Children of Israel out of Egypt he also had the world before him. But the hand of God was guiding him and he led his people back to the land given to Abraham.

This would be of critical importance thirty-four hundred years later at the end of the Nazi Third Reich and WW2. The Mediterranean coastal location of Palestine would allow relatively easy passage of Jewish Holocaust survivors and Zionists back to their ancestral homeland. Although the voyage was certainly not a pleasure cruise thanks to the British naval blockade, once the Jews reached the Palestinian coastline they had but to step off the boats and they were there! (46) If the Mediterranean Sea did not exist the resulting land would either have been a deep dry hole or hundreds of miles of harsh extension of the Sahara Desert leaving Palestine utterly landlocked. Or if Abraham and Moses had been led by God to an already landlocked location, the postwar Exodus to the original Jewish homeland might have been just as difficult. Either way, the new nation of Israel could have been surrounded by enemies and cut off from aid and support.

There is a major difference between being surrounded and being cornered. An animal that is surrounded must contend with enemies attacking from every direction. All aid to the animal could be cut off by the attackers, and escape might not be possible. An animal (or nation) caught in this position would be in a desperate state. On the other hand, an animal pressed into a corner is in a much different situation. The animal knows that the ‘corner’ itself is not hostile and presents no direct danger. And since the attackers most likely can't get through the corner, the animal can use the corner as a shield to protect its back. The corner also forces the attackers to approach from a limited number of directions. The animal (or nation) can focus its defensive force in those specific directions thereby maximizing the effect of its own force. This is why a cornered animal is so dangerous and difficult to attack.

Israel has been cornered with its ‘back’ to the Mediterranean Sea from the very start. Many times the Arabs have attacked Israel, threatening to drive the Jews into the sea. However, since the Arabs have never had much in the line of a navy or amphibious assault capability, they have not been able to ‘surround’ Israel. Not only has this constrained the Arabs to attacking from the north, east, or south thereby allowing Israel to focus its own forces, but the internationally protected shipping lanes and aircraft corridors in the Mediterranean Sea have allowed aid, supplies and reinforcements to flow into Israel even during the height of war. The ‘corner’ has actually been a lifeline.

The above observations also apply to the World War 2 situation at Dunkirk. Had the Germans taken solid possession of the entire French coastline early-on and prevented any breakthrough to the beaches, they could have enveloped the British Army inland. The outcome of the battle may have been much worse than it was.

4

A wide-ranging examination of geology, climatology, geography, history, and technological developments allows the conclusion that modern Israel is in the one location on Earth where it could simultaneously come into existence, survive, and have maximum impact on world events and human affairs. Had modern Israel been formed outside of the Arab Middle East or if there was no commercial demand for Arab oil then Israel would be no more significant on the world stage than Ghana, Mongolia, Borneo or Ecuador. Change the timing, technology, geography, or move Israel anywhere else on planet Earth and it would fail on one or more of the above points.

Conclusion: From Here to Eternity

NOTE: at this point I abandon all pretense of academic objectivity and editorial style “we” and “us”. What follows is strictly my own opinion.

1

If my examination of the evidence had indicated that Christian anti-Semitism would cause a wide range of plausible (i.e. equally likely to happen) counterfactual histories leading easily and naturally to a Nazi Third Reich, WW2, Jewish Holocaust, and a modern Israel, then the preceding work would be without any merit. But what I find most striking in all this is the utter improbability of something like a genocidal Nazi Third Reich, even with a history of Christian anti-Semitism. Or to put it another way, history should have taken the Jews anywhere but to the Nazi Third Reich and its monstrous death camps. However, once war began there was the amazing fact that Adolf Hitler managed to lose the war thereby allowing a Jewish remnant to survive for Exodus. And finally the rise—against all odds—of modern Israel.

Christians may hang their heads in shame for the violations of the teachings and commands of Jesus and the instituting of anti-Semitism by the historic Church. This was certainly and undeniably a major and inexcusable factor contributing to the Jewish portion of the Nazi extermination campaign. But this anti-Semitism was by no means the sole cause of the Jewish Holocaust. There were other very significant and independent historical forces at work over the centuries.

2

Now I must answer the question I posed at the beginning of the article: can more be read into WW2, the Nazi Third Reich and the Jewish Holocaust than what simply appears in the history books? My answer is an unequivocal “Yes!” For I have come to firmly conclude that God is real and is not a passive observer of human affairs. Quite the contrary, God is actively involved in shaping both natural and human history along a particular path. To truly come to grips with WW2 and the Jewish Holocaust the reader must face up to two harsh realities:

1. Human history is messy. Bloody messy.
2. God is not squeamish.

Nor is God a respecter of men. From the Egyptians to the Babylonians; from the Romans to the Nazis; from the heights of the reigns of Kings David and Solomon to the Great Diaspora to the depths of the Jewish Holocaust the Almighty will raise up nations, empires and peoples, use them to His ends, and then bring them down to the dust. They are all instruments in God's hands. And the shaping of those instruments is entirely at the discretion of the Sovereign Creator. Adolf Hitler was finely crafted—carefully sculpted—to be what he was and to do what he did, as were the German people of his time.

Now, the Christian concept of a loving Father God may seem hopelessly at odds with the horrors of WW2 and the Jewish Holocaust. I will leave it to professional philosophers and theologians to try to reconcile human free will, divine predestination, and the righteous yet loving character of God. But one of the main purposes of this present physical creation is to allow a loving God to work out the difficult solution to the spiritual problems of rebellion, evil and suffering in a safely quarantined environment. There has already been one war in Heaven (which continues in some form or other to the present day) and God is not going to allow sinful unregenerated humanity to break loose so as to start another one. We will be confined here on Earth until all of God's purposes are achieved, no matter how hard the road we must travel. However, once that road has been traveled, those who have found salvation through Jesus Christ will regard the price of temporary suffering in this world to be trivial compared with the reward of eternal life in the coming perfected Kingdom of God (47).

In the meantime, we are inflicting on one another great violence, suffering and injustice. God's chosen people the Hebrew Jews have frequently found themselves caught in the crossfire of historical forces almost always beyond their direct control. It's likely that if the issue were put to a vote that most Jews today would choose to live their lives and practice their religion in peaceful harmonious obscurity. But with modern Israel as it is, where it is, obscurity is simply not an option. Whether they like it or not, the Israeli Jews are ‘center-front’ on the world stage. Now, what are we all to make of this? Is modern Israel just random happenstance; a historically curious but insignificant phenomenon?

My conclusion is that modern Israel is the anvil on which God Almighty will hammer the final fate of mankind. It is of prime importance because Christian New Testament ‘end times’ prophecy cannot even begin without it. Consider the close occurrence of the following five points relating to Christian New Testament ‘end times’ prophecy:

• The development of Armageddon (i.e. extinction) grade weaponry—nuclear, biological, and chemical (48).
• The rise of modern Israel after 1,878 years of Diaspora. A pivotal point (49).
• A major nuclear military power “out of the north parts” (i.e. Russia) capable of striking down into the Middle East. Note that Moscow is only three degrees off due north from Jerusalem (50).
• Asian nations capable of raising an army of 200 million soldiers and moving them into the Middle East (51).
• The technological ability to fully implement a unified ‘one world’ government and economic system along with virtually instantaneous global high speed audio/visual/data communications (52).

I am well aware of the numerous Second Coming false alarms that have occurred down through the centuries. However, the world has never before seen such a conjunction of events and capabilities as now exists. Just as history should have taken Diaspora Jews anywhere but to the Nazi Third Reich, the sixteen to eighteen hundred year period from the writing of the last canonical Christian prophetic work to the present day should have take all of us far away from the above five points. If Christian New Testament prophecy were not from God and if God has not been actively shaping human history, most prophetic predictions would never see even the possibility of fulfillment and the few that did occur would have been scattered randomly and meaninglessly across the centuries. After almost two thousand years of unguided history, modern Christianity should be holding an empty bag.

Before World War 2 many Christians had resigned themselves to viewing New Testament ‘end times’ prophecy as mere allegory, mystic symbolism or extraneous nonsense. However, from 1945 to the present (a very short period of time), the fulfillment or ready possibility of fulfillment of the above five major points has allowed Christians to take all of Biblical prophecy literally and at face value with the hope of ultimate fulfillment: the physical return of Jesus as Messiah and the establishment of God's Millennial Kingdom in preparation of the New Heaven and the New Earth. In Matthew 24 Jesus described several signs of his return and told the parable of the fig tree. That is, when you see the fig tree with tender branches and leaves (i.e. prophetic fulfillment) then summer (Christ's return) is near. The fig tree is now in full bloom. I feel that Christians today have ample good reason for excitement and confidence. As the Apostle John concluded the Book of Revelation, “Surely I come quickly: Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”

3

In final conclusion, I realize that people can differ in their perceptions and interpretations of human history. The passage of time may very well show that there really isn't anything special about the present conjunction of events and capabilities. Modern Israel may just be historical happenstance; peace could break out in the Middle East; the Russians might disarm and join the European Union; Communist Red China might shut down its military and become a leading force for democracy and humanitarianism; and technology may be used only for good and peaceful purposes. That is to say, the present conjunction might pass away with nary a hint of the return of Jesus or the Millennial Kingdom. However, if sense is to be made of what has happened since the turn of the Twentieth Century, the reader must answer (at the very least) these three questions:

1. If God actually exists, is God an active shaper of human history, or just a passive observer?
2. Is modern Israel an instrument of God or just historical happenstance?
3. Would modern Israel have come into existence without WW2 and the Jewish Holocaust?

Epilogue

If this work has succeeded in its purpose, the Christian reader will have realized that rather than being subjects of confusion, doubt or intimidation, World War 2 and the Jewish Holocaust can actually open opportunities for outreach, apologetics, and a strengthened faith. But it is to the skeptic—the nonbeliever—that this Epilogue in intended.

Life is short, and then you die. And you are going to be dead an awful lot longer than you will ever be alive. There is no subject of inquiry more important than determining what happens to the individual human spirit upon death. That is, what will become of you when you die? I hope that by now you will at least consider the possibility that the God of the Judeo-Christian Bible is real and actively at work in this world. The promise and hope of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is adoption into the family of God and eternal life in the coming perfected New Heaven and New Earth. The cost of adoption into this new family is for you to humbly admit to God that you have sinned against His holy character; that you cannot possible pay the penalty of eternal death for your sin; and that you believe that Jesus is God's uniquely born Son who paid the penalty of death in your place, rose from the grave victorious over death, and ascended to the throne of glory power and grace at the right hand of God until the time of His return to Earth.

There is no way that this short work can cover all aspects of the Christian faith and its foundation. I have barely scratched the surface of one aspect of it. But if you are still unsure—if you still need more information or evidence—it is worth every last waking moment of the rest of your life to seek out the truth. Your eternity depends on it. Trust in this promise of Jesus: “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” (Matt. 7:7 KJV)

The best place to start your search is the Word of God: the Holy Bible. If you are not comfortable with the Middle English of the King James Version, I recommend the New International Version. Begin with the Gospel according to John, then the book of Romans. After that, start with the Gospel according to Matthew and then read straight through to the end.

For those with science related or general questions, the following website has an excellent bookstore, links list, and a phone line for personal calls: Reasons to Believe . I recommend the following three books: Creation as Science; A Matter of Days; and Beyond the Cosmos.

I hope to see all of you at the banquet feast of Jesus.

Questions? Comments?
e-mail the author!
bloedel@verizon.net

Table of Contents

Appendix A

U-boats and Torpedo Problems

“A far graver danger was added to these problems. The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril. …I was even more anxious about this battle than I had been about the glorious air fight called the Battle of Britain.”
(Winston Churchill, from his wartime memoir Their Finest Hour (53))

“There are only two types of ships: Submarines and targets.”
(Bumper sticker)

When Adolf Hitler consolidated his control over Germany in 1933 and 1934 he had first and foremost in his mind the establishment of a grand Thousand Year Reich. He knew that his plans would eventually lead to war, but Hitler was hoping that war would come at his convenience. Hitler was shocked when Britain and France declared war on Nazi Germany in September 1939 after the German invasion of Poland, for this was years ahead of his (and Mussolini's) timetable.

Hitler and his Nazi Naval High Command were in the process of building a fully formed navy, complete with aircraft carriers. But they knew that this goal would not be reached until well into the 1940s (54). Competing for resources and funding with the shipbuilding program was the civil construction program. A Thousand Year Reich deserved magnificent monuments and edifices worthy of the Master Race, and Hitler had embarked on a truly breathtaking plan to rebuild the major cities of Germany, especially Berlin (55).

Perhaps it was the headiness of the times or maybe the emphasis on manly capital ships. Whatever the reasons, Hitler and his Naval High Command let slip through their fingers the six and a half year free period of peace during which the most important weapon in the entire Nazi arsenal—the submarine—was left neglected. Complicating the situation was the prejudice of the admirals in the Naval High Command against submarines. They simply didn't understand them. In their thinking a submarine was primarily a gunboat intended to ‘slug it out’ with enemy surface ships and then escape by disappearing below the waves in order to pop up at a different location to shoot some more. However, the primary purpose and utility of a submarine was to sneak up on an enemy target and launch a torpedo at close range, and then escape totally undetected. If the U-boat (Unterseeboot) achieved success, the enemy would be taken completely by surprise.

Although Nazi Germany was nominally respecting the terms of the 1935 Anglo-German Naval Agreement that severely limited German naval tonnage (Note: the German Naval High Command did not even utilize all the tonnage allowed for U-boats under the Agreement), there was much that could have been legally and properly done during that period to put the submarine service on an excellent footing for war in 1939. At the very least, the entire U-boat fleet could have been replaced with brand new North Atlantic-grade submarines, taking advantage of every last ton allowed under the Agreement.

Most important would have been to redesign submarines to take advantage of modern modular fabrication and assembly line construction techniques, and then established the business contracts and industrial base for the mass production of submarine modules. When needed, the industrial base could have been activated and the resulting modular sections could quickly have been sent to shipyards for rapid assembly. At the same time, a major program for crew training could have been implemented. This would not have violated the Naval Agreement. As new submarines slid out of the shipyards, pre-trained crews could have stepped aboard and quickly brought the new submarines to battle readiness.

The techniques for doing all this were readily available in the mid to late 1930s, and Hitler was well aware of these techniques (56). Indeed, Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz and Minister of Arms and Munitions Albert Speer set such a program into motion in 1943. Had this program not been frustrated by the Allied bombing campaign, forty brand new U-boats would have entered Nazi service per month. It takes little imagination to envision the devastating effect this would have had if such production levels had been achieved soon after war began in September 1939. Doenitz could have had a fleet of three hundred fully operational U-boats at his disposal before the end of 1940. All it would have taken was the firm recommendation of the Naval High Command and authorization by Der Fuehrer.

But the opportunity passed them by. When war started in 1939 there was no U-boat mass production program, no large-scale crew training program, and just 56 submarines available to the whole German Navy—only 46 of which were operational and only 22 which were suitable for North Atlantic duty. However, lurking in the background was a subtle but extremely serious problem for the existing Nazi submarine service: defective torpedoes.

A submarine is only as effective as the torpedoes that it fires. The torpedoes used by the Germans in WW1 were very dependable and effective, though they did tend to leave a visible bubble trail leading back to the submarine. During the twenty-year period between the wars the German Naval Torpedo Inspectorate corrected the bubble problem, but then effected other changes in design that actually degraded the torpedoes available in 1939. The two most serious defects were in the areas of torpedo depth control and warhead detonators.

Most of us recognize a torpedo as a long metal tube with propulsion and control systems at one end and an explosive charge at the other end. The object here is for the torpedo to zip straight through the water, strike the side of an enemy vessel, then explode so as to blast a hole in the target and cause it to sink.

Two things are critical at this juncture. First, the torpedo depth control must be accurate so as to allow the torpedo to actually strike the target. However, due to defective changes in design and insufficient testing and quality control by the Torpedo Inspectorate, a significantly large percentage of the torpedoes supplied to the Nazi U-boat fleet ran much deeper than their depth-setting indicated, so as to totally under-run the target. This defect was known by the Inspectorate well before war broke out but was not corrected until long after the start of the war. Many a torpedo was wasted and many an Allied ship spared due to this totally inexcusable defect. Several officers and officials in the Torpedo Inspectorate were punished by court martial for their dereliction in this matter.

Secondly, the detonators must dependably explode the warheads. In 1939 the Torpedo Inspectorate was supplying two types of detonators: contact and magnetic. As its name implies, a contact detonator is triggered when it physically strikes the target. Aside from the quality control problem of outright defective and useless detonators was the problem of strike-angle sensitivity. In an ideal attack, a torpedo would strike its target at a perfect 90-degree angle. In an actual attack, however, the torpedo might strike the target at a much shallower angle due to the relative positions of U-boat and target, or the contours of the target's hull. The redesigned contact detonators supplied in 1939 required an angle of impact much closer to a perfect 90 degrees than the detonators used in WW1. Again, the change in design was for the worse, not the better.

The concept of the magnetic detonator is a little more complex. The Germans found in WW1 (and statistically verified in WW2) that modern compartmentalized steel ships were difficult to sink with hull-striking torpedoes. German submarines were routinely expending two, three, even four torpedoes in order to cripple or sink each enemy target. Since the German submarines of 1939 only carried twelve to fourteen torpedoes, anything that could improve the killing effectiveness of torpedoes would literally multiply the combat utility of the submarine—hence the magnetic detonator.

The idea here was for the torpedo depth control to be set so that the torpedo would run directly underneath the target. The magnetic detonator would detect the magnetized iron in the hull of the target and set off the warhead. The force of the blast would break the back of the ship, and the resulting bubble cavity from the explosion would cause the target's already damaged hull to collapse into the bubble void, either crippling or sinking even a capital ship with a single blow.

What a brilliant concept! Unfortunately for the Nazis, this concept was defeated by defective design and faulty manufacture, and by lack of adequate testing and quality control by the Torpedo Inspectorate. Now, the lack of U-boat mass production and crew training programs might be chalked up as ‘The Fortunes of War’. From the Allied perspective, however, the defects introduced into previously good German torpedo design could only be called Providential. Had the German Torpedo Inspectorate simply done nothing from 1919 until 1939 beyond correcting the ‘bubble trail’ problem, the combat effectiveness of the Nazi U-boat fleet during the critical first two years of the war would have been greatly increased. Consider these examples:

On September 17, 1939 the German submarine U-39 attacked the British aircraft carrier Ark Royal (whose planes would figure prominently in the sinking of the German battleship Bismarck). Three torpedoes armed with magnetic detonators were fired and ran true towards the target. But all three of the torpedoes detonated prematurely. Not only did a critically important capital target escape destruction due to faulty detonators, the carrier's escort hunted down and sank the U-boat.

On October 30, 1939 the U-56 penetrated a thick destroyer escort to attack the capital ships HMS Hood, Nelson and Rodney. Three torpedoes were fired and ran true to their marks. But due to faulty contact detonators the U-boat crew heard only the sound of their torpedoes breaking harmlessly against the sides of their intended targets. The commander of the U-56 was so unnerved by this incident that he was relieved of his command and reassigned to a desk job.

In April 1940 the Germans invaded Norway. The British immediately recognized the deadly danger of Nazi naval and air bases operating out of Norway, so they launched a sea-mounted counter-invasion force in order to drive out the Nazis. The Germans detected the invasion fleet and sent every available U-boat to attack it. Targets were sighted in periscope crosshairs, torpedoes were launched (often at ships lined up at anchor!) yet only a few torpedoes actually found their mark and detonated. The British suffered only trivial U-boat related casualties. An invasion fleet that should have been annihilated was allowed to almost completely escape due to the defective torpedoes launched by the mere handful of U-boats available to the German Navy.

Although counterfactual speculation, this author feels that the outcome of the battleship Bismarck fiasco in May 1941 might have been much different had the Germans been able to screen the breakout of the Bismarck and its escort cruiser Prinz Eugen with dozens of U-boats armed with fully functional and potent torpedoes. The British warships sent to sink the Bismarck (minus the previously sunk Ark Royal and the damaged or sunk Hood and Rodney!) could easily have been set upon by wolfpack after wolfpack of German submarines. The Bismarck, acting as bait, could have been the cause of the destruction or neutralization of the whole British North Atlantic Fleet and gone on to become the absolute terror of the vitally important North Atlantic supply convoys. England could have been brought to its knees by a single ship! But it was not to be.

In the immediate aftermath of the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 and formal declarations of war between Japan and the USA, Adolf Hitler decided to declare war on the USA in support of his Tripartite partner. The German Navy soon assaulted the east coast of the United States with an armada of (drumroll, please!) six U-boats. That's all they could spare that were fit to make the voyage (68).

The combination of shortsightedness by Hitler and his Naval High Command regarding U-boats and the hidden incompetence and dereliction of the German Naval Torpedo Inspectorate set the stage for the triple defeats in Norway, the strategically critical Battle of Britain, and the overall Battle of the North Atlantic. As relates to the subject of this work, had Hitler and the German Naval High Command placed a proper (not extraordinary; just proper) emphasis on the U-boat fleet, and if the Torpedo Inspectorate had supplied truly improved and perfected torpedoes, the Nazis could very well have sealed off the Atlantic long enough to bring England to its knees in the Battle of Britain, achieved victory in Western Europe, and allowed for the total completion of the Final Solution of the Jewish Question. There would have been no European Jews left alive for Exodus, and no Palestinian Jews to greet them. They all would have been sent up the smokestacks at the death camps. Modern Israel would never have been.

Nazi U-boats

Battleship Bismarck

Return to War and Holocaust

Appendix B

The Battle of Britain

“We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and the oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on beaches, landing grounds, in fields, in streets, and on the hills. We shall never surrender.”
(Prime Minister Winston Churchill, June 4, 1940)

When you hear the term “Battle of Britain”, chances are that earth geology is not the first thing that springs to your mind. But the geology that shaped the geography of Europe largely determined not only the waging of the Battle of Britain but the outcome of World War 2 in Europe. The very existence of the British Isles and their location are entirely Providential. They are not required to exist by any law of science or principle of geology. There could be wide-open ocean from the Low Countries and the north coast of France all the way to Newfoundland. On the other hand, had Britain formed only a few miles to the east it (like Denmark) would be part of the continental landmass and open to invasion by ground forces.

Great Britain has figured prominently in European history these past thousand years. But assume for a moment that the British Isles never existed. This, of course, would send shock waves through any alternate histories imaginable. Further assume, however, that history unfolded (to the extent possible) just as it did so that France declared war on Germany in September 1939. Once Hitler defeated the continental armies he would, in effect, have won World War 2 in western Europe! North Africa and the Middle East would soon have fallen to the Axis. Any American military response would have been years in the making and would have been a most arduous and dangerous undertaking across U-boat and battleship infested waters against what would have been by then a thoroughly entrenched Nazi Third Reich. The Final Solution of the Jewish Problem in Europe and the Middle East could have been brought to total completion at Hitler's leisure.

Returning to actual reality we find that the British Isles are located close to the European Continent. Tantalizingly close. Maddeningly close. Hitler was not the first conqueror to find that seeing Britain is one thing but taking it is something else entirely. However, the British Islands are rather small and they are poor in the natural resources needed to support the large industrial economy developed by the British. This brings us to the twin weaknesses of Great Britain: its utter dependence on overseas shipping for supplies, and the fact that virtually the entire nation was within range of Nazi fighter planes and bombers.

Hitler had two options for taking Great Britain: physical invasion and siege. Hitler's battle plan for invasion was code named “Operation Sea Lion (57)”. Central to the success of that plan was a navy with enough transports and high-speed barges to quickly get his army across the English Channel. But because Britain and France declared war before the Nazis were ready, Hitler's navy didn't have nearly enough of the necessary ships. An attempted invasion of Britain in 1940 would almost certainly have been a disastrous failure. Of course that leaves siege, and Hitler's best bet for starving the British into submission was a strong U-boat fleet (as outlined in Appendix A above) in order to cut off all imports and reinforcements.

But as affects the immediate subject, Hitler also had an air force, and the alternate method of starving the British would have been to destroy their military/industrial assets quicker than they could be repaired or replaced. This indeed was what Hitler and his top military commanders set out to accomplish in mid-1940 and the ensuing conflict was named “The Battle of Britain”. However, midway through the battle Hitler became irritated that the British showed no signs of surrendering to him. In fact, the British were putting up a hell of a fight. They were aided by their island geography insomuch that their defences were maximized, the length of their supply lines was minimized, the English Channel and North Sea held Wehrmacht ground forces at arms length, and British fighter pilots who survived being shot down could quickly get into another plane in order to fight again. All of this worked against the Nazis.

Reich Marshall Hermann Goering, committing a serious blunder, eased up his Luftwaffe attacks on the RAF while Hitler, in a fit of anger over British retaliatory nighttime bomber air raids against Berlin, decided that he was going to bludgeon the people of Great Britain into submission through a campaign of aerial terror by destroying purely civilian targets. So they diverted the Luftwaffe away from the essential, strategic military/industrial targets in order to destroy homes, shops, schools, hospitals and churches. The people of Britain showed why they were called “Great” by taking the drubbing and never, Never, NEVER giving in to the Nazis.

Had Hitler and his top commanders remained true to their original battle plan of unrelenting U-boat attacks on British shipping and aerial bombardments of strategic British military and industrial targets, there was a very good chance that they could have defanged the British by grounding the RAF and then starved England into surrender. For all intents and purposes this would have ended World War 2 in Hitler's favour and sealed the fate of European and Middle Eastern Jewry. But after suffering severe losses in the skies over jolly olde England, Hitler called off the air offensive thereby letting go his chance for victory. The later sinkings of the battleships Bismarck and Tirpitz (which effectively ended the danger of the German surface navy) and the defeat of the German U-boat fleet in the Battle of the North Atlantic allowed the Allies to use the British Isles as a staging area for Continental invasion and as a stationary aircraft carrier for bombing missions against the Nazi Third Reich. Hitler was ‘done in’ not only by the limitations of his psychopathic mind but also by geological forces operating across millions of years by the hand of God.

“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few”
(Winston Churchill, lauding RAF fighter pilots)

Return to War and Holocaust

Appendix C

The Stainless Steel Roof

“When Hitler was forced to the conclusion that his offensive was broken, and he must go on the defensive, he started boasting that he had converted Europe into an impregnable fortress. But he neglected to provide that fortress with a roof. He also left various other vulnerable spots in the wall of the so-called fortress—which we shall point out to him in due time.”
(Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt (58))

The above quote was from a message sent by President Roosevelt to the U.S. Congress in September 1943. FDR's dry humor downplayed the fact that Allied bomber groups had been suffering terrible losses due to a very vigorous Nazi anti-aircraft defense network of cannons and fighter planes. Allied per mission bomber losses at that time were upwards of 9 percent, with more than forty percent of the planes sustaining serious damage (59). And remember, those losses were per mission. Still, most of the bombers were getting through to their targets and doing severe damage to the manufacturing facilities vital to the supply and support of the Nazi war machine. It was not until early 1944 that the Allies began fielding long range fighter escorts for the bomber groups which would help fight off the Luftwaffe and bring down the casualty rates. ( P-51 Mustang )

Although Adolf Hitler certainly had a roof over his Fortress Europe, it was just as certain that it was a very leaky roof. The purpose of this appendix is to show that Hitler had in his arsenal two weapons that could have rendered the ‘roof’ all but impenetrable.

The first weapon was the Messerschmitt Me-262 jet fighter. The advantages of turbojet propulsion over that of piston engines and propeller drives are considerable: greater thrust per pound of engine weight; greater efficiency as speed and altitude increases; and better aerodynamics (60). Both the Germans and the British were developing jet engine technology, but the Germans were the first to develop a fully functional weapon using this new and vastly superior type of engine.

The Me-262 first flew on July 18, 1942. It was an agile, twin-engine aircraft that could attain level flight speeds in excess of 500 mph—far faster than the propeller planes the Allies had in their arsenals. But what really set the Me-262 apart from other fighter aircraft was its absolutely awesome firepower: a battery of four 30mm machine cannons easily capable of quickly blasting Allied bombers to pieces (61). ( Me-262 )

So, what happened here? Why weren't the Allies swept from the skies by this new wonder weapon? The simple answer was that although Adolf Hitler was fully aware of the capabilities of this new aircraft, he refused to allow its mass production. Hitler was afraid that the additional physical stresses put on pilots by the extra speed of jet planes would be excessive, so he limited the few planes produced to use mainly as high altitude light bombers, thereby wasting a weapon that might have turned the tide of the war (62).

The second potentially ‘tide turning’ weapon was the Waterfall anti-bomber guided missile system developed by the German rocket scientists at Peenemunde in 1942. This twenty-five foot long radio-guided missile could carry a six hundred and sixty pound warhead and accurately hit targets up to fifty thousand feet of altitude. No Allied bomber could escape this weapon that operated day or night in virtually any weather. Minister of Arms and Munitions Albert Speer was confident that several thousand of these anti-bomber missiles could have been produced per month.

So, what happened? Why weren't Allied bombers dropping out of the sky like Raid-soaked flies? Once again, Hitler's warped thought processes misled him into believing that the best way to deter the Allied bombing campaign was to inflict hurt onto Britain's civilian population. Therefore he ordered that top priority be given to the production of the big V-2 ballistic missiles instead of the anti-bomber missiles. By Hitler's twisted arithmetic it made sense to expend the tremendous time, effort and resources required by the V-2 program in order to hit the British with twenty or thirty tons of poorly aimed missile-launched explosives per day (see V-2 strike locations V-2 strikes) even as the Allies were raining down two or three thousand tons of carefully aimed bombs per day on German targets (63).

The mass production and deployment of the Me-262 as an actual anti-bomber jet fighter along with the Waterfall guided missile system (in addition to all of the existing fighter aircraft and A-A cannon) would simply have shut down the Allied air war against Germany. These two weapons would have turned the already hazardous Allied bombing campaign into outright suicide. This stainless steel roof over industrial Germany would have given Grand Admiral Doenitz and Minister of Armaments Albert Speer the cover they needed to mass produce the new and improved U-boats and torpedoes on their drawing boards, with serious consequences in the Atlantic. At the very least, Hitler could have won a temporary stalemate thereby delaying defeat long enough to have completed the Final Solution to the problem of European Jewry. There would have been none left to make the Exodus back to Palestine. Modern Israel would almost certainly never have come into existence.

Return to War and Holocaust

Appendix D

Into the Abyss

1

An exodus is a gathering together and going forth of a large number of people from one location to another. However, it helps if it is physically practical to get from the starting point to the final destination. Had the Children of Israel found favor in the sight of God at the start of the Biblical Exodus, Moses could simply have led them along the Mediterranean coastal road and arrived at the Promised Land after about two weeks of easy travel. Their disobedience and unworthiness cost them a forty-year detour through a nasty desert.

The post-WW2 Exodus of Jewish Holocaust survivors from Europe to Palestine did not take forty years, but the distances and difficulties involved were much greater. After an arduous journey out of the European interior through the clandestine Brichah underground, most of the survivors traveled to Palestine by boat, departing either from Italy or France. The coastal location of Palestine allowed for a direct passage (64).

The Mediterranean Sea is such a fixture on our maps that few people stop to think about how human history might have played out in its absence. This is not empty speculation, for the existence and characteristics of the Mediterranean Sea are entirely Providential. That “Providence” could have served up dry land. Indeed, natural history showed the world a period during which the Mediterranean Basin was drastically different from today. Scientists have named that period the Messinian Salinity Crisis, and it bears directly on the subject at hand (65).

Around twenty million years ago the African Continent began colliding with Eurasia. This slow-motion collision began with a deep abyssal sea between the two continents that was filled with Atlantic and Indian Ocean seawater. Around six million years ago this continental collision had permanently closed off the connection with the Indian Ocean at Suez while the northwest part of Africa butted up against Spain forming an earth dam at Gibraltar that cut off the Mediterranean Basin's only remaining connection to the world's oceans. Atmospheric aridity caused the enclosed sea to deeply evaporate, leaving a pair of abyssal basins (one descending 15,000 feet below sea level to the east of Italy and one dropping 10,000 feet to the west) bottomed with either sterile ‘dead sea’ lakes or salt strewn deserts (66).

As natural history actually unfolded, a little over five million years ago the Atlantic sea-level rose to a point where it overflowed and broke down the earth dam at Gibraltar, forming a razor thin strait that eventually re-flooded the two basins (67). This, however, was by no means an inevitable outcome. The geology of that period could easily have formed a permanent and impenetrable barrier at Gibraltar just as it did at Suez. The perpetual draw-down or outright desiccation of the Mediterranean Basin would have had a profound effect on human history to the present day.

On the plus side, a low-water or waterless Mediterranean would have exposed open land connecting Turkey with Greece, Italy with North Africa, and of course Gibraltar would have united Morocco with Spain. On the negative side, an arid Mediterranean canyon would have provided no food; the hot, salt encrusted abyssal depths of the eastern and western basins would have discouraged travel through the basins to all but the most determined or desperate; the Black Sea would have been cut off from Atlantic sea water, rendering it a much smaller fresh water lake; with no significant standing water to contribute to the weather of the region through evaporation, the Basin would have been a dead sink for any precipitation coming in from the Atlantic; weather patterns throughout the region would have been disrupted from their present norms (69), especially the winter rains that fed the headwaters of the Tigris & Euphrates Rivers, with serious implications for Mesopotamian civilizations (70); most of the islands of the Mediterranean would have been difficult to inhabit pinnacles rising from the poisoned desert canyon floor; and all of the rivers flowing into the Basin (especially the Nile) would have cut deep gorges into the landscape, seriously impeding travel around the Mediterranean Basin and rendering Egypt useless as a seat of civilization.

This last point needs a little further explanation. Rivers prefer to travel a straight line from beginning to end, although obstacles generally force a serpentine course. But rivers also try to cut as direct a decline through the earth from the elevation at their headwaters to the elevation of wherever they finally end. The force and effect of this erosive cutting action depends on the length of the river and the difference between the starting and ending elevations. For example, consider the Mississippi River. Its headwaters are 1,475 feet above sea level at Lake Itasca in Minnesota. It reaches sea level at the Gulf of Mexico about 1,300 miles away after a meandering journey of about 2,300 miles ( Mississippi River ). This works out to a very shallow decline of a little over one foot per mile, which is just enough to keep the Mississippi River from turning into a long lake, but leaves little opportunity to cut gorges and canyons.

On the other hand, the Jordan River drops from about 1,000 feet above sea level at its headwaters in Lebanon to 1,300 feet below sea level at its end in the Dead Sea 104 miles away after snaking about 200 miles from start to finish. This works out to a 22 foot decline per mile ( Jordan River ). There are sections of the Jordan River that pass through deep gorges and qualify for white water rafting trips.

Now consider what would happen to the Nile if the Mediterranean went dry. Going just 100 miles northwest of the present mouth of the Nile out into the Basin, the land descends over 5,000 feet below sea level. The Nile River would do its very best to cut a direct decline of at least 50 feet per mile. The situation would actually be much more severe because the Blue Nile tributary would try to cut as straight a decline as possible from the high elevation of its headwaters at Lake Tana in Ethiopia at about 6,000 feet above sea level down into the abyssal depths of the eastern Mediterranean Canyon ( Lake Tana ). The Nile River would be a raging torrent flowing through Egypt in a gorge cut hundreds—if not thousands—of feet deep into the landscape. The baby Moses would have had a truly wild ride in his little reed boat, and come to a very bad end in the poisoned depths of the Mediterranean Canyon.

2

During ice ages, a large portion of both atmospheric and oceanic waters become bound up in polar icecaps and glaciers. This makes for cool but arid atmospheric conditions and lowered sea levels. Geologists William Ryan and Walter Pitman went into considerable depth in their book Noah's Flood: The New Scientific Discoveries About the Event That Changed History explaining the importance of the Black Sea to the history of civilization. Around twelve thousand years ago the most recent significant ice age resulted in lowered worldwide sea levels that exposed land bridges allowing human migration to the Americas and caused an earth dam to form at the Bosporus thereby cutting off saltwater inflow from the Mediterranean Sea (and by extension, the Atlantic Ocean) to the Black Sea. Atmospheric aridity then caused the Black Sea to evaporate to a level hundreds of feet below that of the Mediterranean, and significantly reduced its surface area. Runoff from the European glacial icecap turned the Black Sea Basin into a fertile and inviting freshwater oasis. Meanwhile, the atmospheric aridity and lowered levels of the Tigris & Euphrates Rivers of that period almost totally depopulated the Middle East as the refugees flocked to the Black Sea for relief from the drought. But the earth dam at the Bosporus was a disaster waiting to happen.

After the end of the last ice age, warmer global temperatures melted most of the icecaps and glaciers, returning tremendous amounts of water to the oceans and atmosphere, and closing off the land bridges. Around seventy-six hundred years ago rising sea levels in the Atlantic caused the Mediterranean Sea to break the Bosporus earth dam and catastrophically re-flood the Black Sea Basin with salt water, scattering the survivors to the four winds, especially back to the Mesopotamian and Nile River valleys.

The rest, as they say, is history. Or at least history as it actually played out. Human history, however, hinged on Gibraltar. Had that ancient earth dam been just a little higher, a little thicker, and a little stronger it would have held fast, and history would have changed dramatically. The Mediterranean would have been a dry hole for the past several million years, and the Black Sea would have been a smaller freshwater lake to the present day. Those who sought refuge by its shores in that prehistoric period of drought would have had little reason to ever return to their original homes.

Those who did return to the Mesopotamian River Valley might possibly have established civilizations much as they actually happened, but the Nile River Gorge would have emptied into a totally inhospitable desert canyon. There would have been no Pyramids or Pharaohs in this version of history. Also, that strip of land we call Palestine would have been indistinguishable from the rest of the desert on the downhill slide into the Mediterranean Abyss.

Returning to the subject at hand, it is difficult to imagine human history without the Mediterranean Sea. But assuming such a history delivered up WW2, the post-war Jewish Holocaust survivors would have had a much more difficult journey ahead of them for their Exodus back to Palestine. All of their choices would have been hard and long: cross the Italian land bridge and go around North Africa; cross the mountains of Greece and skirt the lip of the eastern Basin around Turkey; or go around the Black Sea, cross the Taurus/Zagros Mountains, then approach Palestine from the northeast. And having done all this, their ‘backs’ would not have been towards an internationally protected life-giving body of water but to a yawning hellhole deathtrap of a desert canyon with no help or resources for hundreds of miles. If modern Israel even came into existence, it would have been in dire straits from the very start to the present day.

3

As conclusion to this Appendix, I would like to briefly comment on the book Noah's Flood. Ryan and Pitman present an absolutely fascinating account of the Black Sea flooding event and make a very persuasive case that this was the basis of the many flood myths from antiquity, including the Genesis Flood in the Hebrew Torah. However, since this whole work is written from a Christian position, this author is inclined towards regarding Torah as more than just a myth or badly garbled history. The Genesis account makes three basic points regarding Noah's Flood:

1. It occurred very early in human history.
2. The human population at that time was small and concentrated in a limited geographic area (presumably Mesopotamia).
3. The Flood itself was preceded (if not caused) by a totally unexpected and overwhelming period of torrential downpour.

Paleoanthropologists and geneticist have bracketed the appearance of modern man somewhere between 30,000 and 200,000 years ago; that is, in the very recent past. If the Genesis account is accurate, then the actual Genesis Flood would have occurred many thousands or even tens of thousands of years before the Black Sea flooding event. Regarding point 2, God commanded early Man to be “fruitful and multiply and to replenish [i.e. fill] the Earth” (Gen. 1:28 KJV). Archaeological evidence clearly shows that this had already occurred by the time of the Black Sea flooding event. Indeed, humans had made their way to everywhere on Earth but the Antarctic Continent. But it is clear from the Genesis account that mankind in Noah's time had disobeyed both parts of the command from God thereby exposing the small and clustered human population to a localized extinction event (71). The sudden, utterly unexpected, severe and prolonged rainfall of point three (which would not necessarily have been a feature of the Black Sea flooding event) was critical for two reasons: first, it would have pinned down both the human and animal populations, preventing flight; and secondly, it would have totally obscured the actual flooding event until it was too late for anyone but Noah and his family to do anything about it

I am neither qualified nor inclined to speculate as to how this event could have actually occurred so as to have suddenly wiped out humanity in the Mesopotamian River Valley, floated Noah's Ark for a year, and then to have left the Ark on (or near) the Mountains of Ararat. But considering that the titanic events of the Messinian Salinity Crisis and Black Sea flooding event have only been brought to light by science in the past forty years, your humble author is confident that God has geological and archaeological surprises in store for the future.

Return to Aftermath of Holocaust

End Notes:

Direct quotes are from copyrighted works. These quotes are made under the “Fair use” provisions of the U.S. Copyright Law. This article qualifies favorably on all points as a nonprofit scholarly work.

1. American Legion Magazine, March 2000; “Are the United States and China on a Collision Course?”
2. Waite, The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler, p. 284.
3. Feuerlicht, The Fate of the Jews, first three chapters. Also, Shahak, Jewish History, Jewish Religion.
4. Thompson/Johnson, An Introduction to Medieval Europe, p. 84. Read chapters 1-6. There will be a pop quiz at the end of the class.
5. Ibid, p. 166. Read Chapter 7. A book report will be due on Monday;-)
6. Encyclopaedia Britannica: Christianity and Early Christianity; Shelley, Church History in Plain Language; Stark, The Rise of Christianity.
7. Hitler, Mein Kampf, p 367.
8. Christian New Testament, Book of Acts, chapters 6-7.
9. See Britannica on these points; Waite, pp. 247-266; Shirer, Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, pp. 90-92.
10. Waite, pp. 266-287; Shirer, pp. 92-97; Britannica: Bismarck.
11. Luther, Luther's Works, Jaraslav Pelikan (ed.), 1955-1975.
12. Shirer, p. 236; Waite, p. 250.
13. Waite, p. 269.
14. Ibid.
15. Shirer, pp. 5-6.
16. Waite, pp. 124-131.
17. Shirer, pp. 9-11 & 29-30; Waite, Chapter 3; Britannica: Adolf Hitler.
18. Britannica: World Wars; Ferguson, Virtual History, pp. 228-280.
19. Versailles Treaty website; Shirer, pp. 52-59; Waite, pp. 308-311.
20. Shirer, pp. 31-32 & 59-60; Waite, pp. 306-308.
21. Waite, pp. 336-337.
22. Britannica: World Wars; Shirer, pp. 61-62.
23. Shirer, pp. 68-90.
24. Shirer, pp. 137-138; Waite, pp. 344-347.
25. Shirer, pp. 5-6.
26. Discover Magazine, April 2001, The Nitrogen Bomb, pp. 53-54; Gilbert, Churchill: A Life, p. 395; Morton, Eating the Sun, pp. 352-353.
27. Morton, pp. 30 & 109.
28. Galbraith, The Great Crash: 1929, pp. 108-109.
29. Ibid, pp. 168-171 (read Chapter IX in its entirety).
30. Shirer, pp. 117-118.
31. Waite, p. 327; also Shirer, pp. 135-138.
32. Speer, Inside the Third Reich, p. 165.
33. Speer, pp. 213-217 & 222; Waite, pp. 396-397.
34. Waite, pp. 399-403.
35. Ibid, pp. 403-411.
36. Speer, p. 96.
37. Shirer, pp. 226-227.
38. Herman, It's Your Souls We Want, pp. 157-158.
39. Shirer, pp. 234-240; Herman, Chapters VII-X.
40. Bauer, Flight and Rescue: Brichah, p. viii.
41. Feuerlicht, pp. 140-141.
42. Coon, Caravan, p. 10.
43. Ibid, read Chapter 2; Britannica: Geology, Petroleum and Petrology.
44. Sperling, New Transportation Fuels, Chapters 1-3, 6-7 & Conclusion.
45. Nature (London) Vol. 411, Issue #6833, 3 May 2001, pp. 62-66, Evolution of Asian monsoons and phased uplift of the Himalaya-Tibetan plateau since Late Miocene times.
46. Jewish Displaced Persons Project; Bauer, pp. 380-381.
47. Dr. Ross, Beyond the Cosmos.
48. Matt 24:15-25, Zech 14:12, Rev 8:7.
49. Matt 24:12 & 15 (Note: Jesus first foretold the destruction of Jerusalem which implied the Great Diaspora, then put the Jews right back in Judea and the Temple back in operation for the “abomination of desolation” which implied the Exodus and reformation of Israel), Dan 12:11.
50. Ezek 38 & 39, Dan 11:40-45.
51. Rev 9:14-16 & 16:12.
52. Rev 13:7, 16-18.
53. Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War: Their Finest Hour, p. 598. Additional Churchill resources at Churchill website.
54. Doenitz, Memoirs, first seven chapters.
55. Speer, pp. 50-83.
56. Speer, pp. 272-274; Doenitz, pp. 350-357.
57. Shirer, pp. 758-793; Britannica: World Wars.
58. Presidential Papers of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Sept, 17 1943, Item 106 Message to Congress. Quote courtesy of FDR Library.
59. Britannica: World Wars.
60. Ibid, Aircraft Propulsion.
61. Encyclopedia of Combat Aircraft, p. 150.
62. Speer, pp. 362-364.
63. Ibid, pp. 364-366.
64. Bauer, Flight and Rescue: Brichah.
65. Hsu, The Mediterranean Was a Desert, (in particular, read the Epilogue); Nature (London) Vol. 267, Issue #5610, 2 June 1977, pp. 399-403, History of the Messinian salinity crisis; Ryan/Pitman, Noah's Flood, Chapter 8.
66. Nature (London) Vol.400, Issue #6745, 12 Aug. 1999, pp. 652-655, Chronology, causes and progression of Messinian salinity crisis.
67. McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology, 1977: Mediterranean Sea; Nature (London) Vol. 400, Issue #6745, 12 Aug. 1999, pp. 613-614, From desert to deluge in the Mediterranean.
68. Shirer, p. 902.
69. Hsu, pp. 175-176.
70. North Atlantic Oscillation and the article North Atlantic Influence on Tigris-Euphrates Streamflow (published in the International Journal of Climatology, Vol. 20, Issue 8, 30 June 2000).
71. Dr. Ross, The Genesis Question.

Source Reference Bibliography

Caravan: The Story of the Middle East
Prof. Carleton S. Coon
Henry Holt & Co., ©1951

Churchill: A Life
Martin Gilbert
Owl Books (Henry Holt & Co.), ©1991

Church History in Plain Language
Bruce L. Shelley
Thomas Nelson Publishers, © 1982

Creation and Time;
Creator and the Cosmos;
Beyond the Cosmos;
The Genesis Question.
Dr. Hugh Ross
Navpress

Eating the Sun (How Plants Power the Planet)
Oliver Morton
Harper Collins Publishers, © 2008

Encyclopaedia Britannica, ©1973

Encyclopedia of Combat Aircraft
Bill Gunston
Chartwell Books, Inc., ©1976

The Fate of the Jews
Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht
Times Books, ©1983

Flight and Rescue: Bricha
Yehuda Bauer
Random House, ©1970

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., President
The Center for Security Policy
CSP website

The Great Crash: 1929
Prof. John Kenneth Galbraith
Mariner Books, ©1954

Inside the Third Reich
Albert Speer
Touchstone, ©1970

An Introduction to Medieval Europe, 300-1500
Thompson/Johnson
W. W. Norton & Co., ©1937

It's Your Souls We Want
Stewart W. Herman, Jr.
AMS Press Inc., ©1943

Jewish History, Jewish Religion
Israel Shahak
Pluto Press, ©1994

The Mediterranean Was a Desert: A Voyage of the Glomar Challenger
Kenneth Jinghwa Hsu
Princeton University Press, ©1983

Mein Kampf
Adolf Hitler
Reynal & Hitchcock, ©1939

Memoirs: Ten Years and Twenty Days
Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz
Da Capo Press, ©1959

New Transportation Fuels
Daniel Sperling
U. of California Press, ©1988

Noah's Flood: The New Scientific Discoveries About the Event That Changed History
William Ryan and Walter Pitman
Simon and Schuster, ©1998

The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler
Prof. Robert G. L. Waite
Da Capo Press, ©1977

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
William L. Shirer
Touchstone, ©1960

The Rise of Christianity
Rodney Stark
HarperCollins, ©1997

The Second World War: Their Finest Hour (second volume of six book set)
Winston S. Churchill
Houghton Mifflin Co., ©1949

Virtual History
Niall Ferguson
Basic Books, ©1997

Table of Contents

The enduring victory of Jim Crow racism in America

Unlike several of the other articles here on Deep Thought 1, this article is not a deeply researched work. It is a sketch of my personal impressions of the effects of Jim Crow racism from the end of the Civil War in 1865 to the present day in America. Please read my Slavery and Civil War article for an actual ‘scholarly’ treatment of those subjects.

The de facto defeat of the Confederate States of America with Lee's surrender at Appomatox Court House on April 9, 1865 did not end the fundamental problem of the status of the millions of Black Africans living in America. Nor did the passage of the 13th, 14th, or 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution do anything to change the realities of deep-seated race hatred in the newly defeated Southern States. These merely drove the Southern States into a campaign of social, political, and economic guerrilla warfare in order to protect the interests of the White population by suppressing or destroying all opportunities by the newly freed Black Africans—who were now officially citizens, not only of the United States of America as a whole, but also citizens of the States in which they resided.

Almost as soon as the Southern States were readmitted to the Union and State governments were reestablish, there was a deliberate effort to enact laws and policies that would inhibit or stop all efforts to integrate the newly freed Black Africans into American society. Most important to the subject of this article were the laws, policies, and unofficial social actions to suppress or destroy the creation of independent wealth that would be afforded by starting African American business, enterprise and industry. Most of the other obstacles to African Americans could be addressed and eventually solved through normal political and judicial means. Obstacles such as voting restrictions and general civil rights violations could be solved through changes in the law, and through social activism. The creation of wealth through business, enterprise and industry, on the other hand, requires unfettered access to the full range of the social and economic landscape of America. And that free access and operation must be in effect over spans of time measured in generations turning into more than a century.

White Americans are so used to unfettered access and operation in American society that they simply don't think about it. Their freedom of action is as natural and ordinary as the air they breath. African Americans, on the other hand, have had every obstacle imaginable thrown in their paths. From official governmental and regulatory obstacles, to economic obstacles at financial institutions, to outright violence against African American bussinesses and their owners, every possible barrier has been erected to prevent or destroy Black owned bussines, enterprise and industry.

The upshot of all of this is that from 1865 to the present day, Black owned business, enterprise and industry in the Southern States has been very effectively suppressed or destroyed. Conditions in the Northern States were better, but not by much. Although not codified into official law and governmental policy, deep-seated racism in the North also had its very effective chilling effect on the start and growth of Black owned business, enterprise and industry. I have not researched this, but how many of the Dow Jones Industrials were founded, owned and operated by Black African Americans since 1865? Precious few, I'll wager. Of the Fortune 500 companies, how many were founded, owned and operated by Black Americans in that same time frame? Again I'd wager: precious few. And of professional sports teams, how many were founded, owned and operated by Black Americans? Of those that might have been created, how many survive to the present day? You do the research. I'll wager that you'll need no more than the fingers of one hand——if that.

There has been some talk in recent years of providing ‘reparations’ to African Americans as compensation for these inequities. As generally understood, however, reparations are usually extracted from the loser in war to compensate the winning government for its cost of waging the war. If reparations were to be extracted from the slave States of antibellum America, those reparations needed to be extracted back in the 1860s, not the twenty-first century. Those men who committed the crimes of the antebellum slave South are now long dead—their wealth sunk in the cost of War; the Black Africans deserving reparations from those slave owners are also now long dead. So, can anything be done in modern America to make amends for the crimes and injustices of the distant past?

I flatter myself by calling this website “Deep Thought 1”. On this particular subject, however, I freely admit that my ‘deep thought’ founders in the abyssal sea of race hatred. The success of Jim Crow racism in suppressing or destroying Black business, enterprise and industry in America is a victory resonating to the present day. Whereas civil rights injustices can be corrected with relative swiftness through law and policy, the creation of wealth requires time, risk and great effort—with no guarantee of success for Whites or Blacks. The ideals of private property ownership are so ingrained into the very fabric of America from the Constitutional level down to the individual citizen that there is no quick or easy solution to the inequity of business ownership and its resulting wealth and power in America. It's not like we can simply confiscate 23% of American business and industry, and then redistribute it to the African American population. The inequity of that would, I think, offend even most African Americans. It would stike to the very heart of the meaning of America itself, and would threaten the very concept of personal wealth and advancement.

As I see it, most—if not all—of the race related problems in modern America can be traced directly to the stark imbalance of wealth and social standing caused by the victory of Jim Crow racism through the destruction of Black owned businesses, while protecting and nurturing White owned businesses. This is most graphically demonstrated in the imbalance and abuse of our entire criminal justice system, which is structured to discriminate against African Americans. The poverty and disadvantage caused by the imbalance of business wealth drives up crime and violence in African American communities. This crime and violence justifies racial profiling, overly zealous police actions—which, as we have seen, has all too often turned lethal—and harsh sentencing practices by a justice system largly owned and controlled by Whites—and run to protect White interests.

If there is a way out, it will require African Americans to start business, enterprise and industry; work in and patronize those new businesses in order to nurture them to full maturity; and allow the time—possibly spaning several generations—in order for Black Americans to gain an economic and social footing in modern America fully equal to that of White Americans. Granted, this is asking Black Americans to climb a hill that they should not have to climb. But this creation of wealth—and resulting social and political power—in the African American community would be necessary in order to effect an actual defeat of Jim Crow racism in modern America.

Anything else would just be a “Band-Aid” solution to the problem.

Table of Contents

Justice

“An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.”
the Mahatma Gandhi

Few ideas from the Bible are as misunderstood and abused as the concept of justice as exemplified by the command of “an eye for an eye”. Here is what the Bible has to say:

“Appoint judges and officials for each of your tribes in every town the Lord your God is giving you, and they shall judge the people fairly. Do not pervert justice or show partiality. Do not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and twists the words of the righteous. Follow justice and justice alone, so that you may live and possess the land the Lord your God is giving you.” (Deut 16:18-20)

and

“Anyone who takes the life of a human being is to be put to death. Anyone who takes the life of someone's animal must make restitution—life for life. Anyone who injures their neighbor is to be injured in the same manner: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. The one who has inflicted the injury must suffer the same injury. Whoever kills an animal must make restitution, but whoever kills a human being is to be put to death. You are to have the same law for the foreigner and the native-born. I am the LORD your God.” (Lev 24:17-22 NIV)

and

“One witness is not enough to convict anyone accused of any crime or offense they may have committed. A matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.

“If a malicious witness takes the stand to accuse someone of a crime, the two people involved in the dispute must stand in the presence of the LORD before the priests and the judges who are in office at the time. The judges must make a thorough investigation, and if the witness proves to be a liar, giving false testimony against a fellow Israelite, then do to the false witness as that witness intended to do to the other party. You must purge the evil from among you. The rest of the people will hear of this and be afraid, and never again will such an evil thing be done among you. Show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.” (Deut 19:15-21 NIV)

At first blush this may seem to be the prescription for vicious retribution and personal vengeance. In reality it is the basis for measured, proportioned justice administered by duly appointed officials. Whereas pagan or heathen justice might allow a head for an eye, a jaw for a tooth, or a whole family killed in retribution for a single wrongdoing, Biblical justice is limited to only a one-for-one correspondence.

An excellent example of disproportioned pagan justice is to be found in the Book of Daniel, chapter 6. For those not familiar with the story, Daniel was a prophet of the one true God during the Jewish exile in Babylon. In the reign of King Darius the Mede, Daniel had risen to one of the highest ranks in government. His fellow administrators in the King's government were jealous of Daniel, so they set him up to be killed. Knowing that Daniel prayed three times daily to God, they persuaded King Darius to issue a binding decree that during a thirty day period no one was to pray to any god or man but to the King alone.

Of course Daniel continued to pray to God, so King Darius was forced by his own law to execute Daniel by having him thrown into a den of lions. King Darius prayed that Daniel's God would save him even as Daniel was being lowered into the lion's den—and certain death. The next morning Daniel was pulled out of the lion's den with barely a scratch, having been protected by an angel of the Lord.

Now we get to the justice portion of the program. In his anger over being tricked by the administrators into having Daniel executed, King Darius ordered that all of the administrators be thrown into the lion's den to be killed. Not only all of the administrators, but also their wives and children too!

But remember, Daniel came out of the lion's den alive and well. And he was only one man, not dozens. While the trickery and false testimony of the administrators may have justified their execution, the wives and children had nothing to do with the attempt on the life of Daniel. Having them killed was simply an act of retribution and kingly terror.

Disproportioned, emotional, vengeful retribution passing as justice.

I close by arguing that modern American justice has swung too far to the other side of the social pendulum. That is, today we practice a justice that is too lax and too lenient. Instead of the Biblical prescription, we now practice a Due Process system of ‘a fine for an eye, community service for a tooth, and a limited jail sentence for a life’. While this might please our sense of liberality, it does make crime attractive and affordable in modern America.

Table of Contents

THERE IS ONLY ONE GOD

The Koran, The Torah and The Gospel

A Brief Examination of the Koran as relates to Islam, Judaism and Christianity

by Brian Bloedel

bloedel@verizon.net

First major revision: 14 August, 2003
Second major revision: 29 December 2004
Third major revision: 12 June, 2010

NOTE: All Koranic quotations are from AL-QUR'AN: A Contemporary Translation by Prof. Ahmed Ali, copyright 1984, published by Princeton University Press, ISBN 0-691-02046-9. Quotations from the Koran will be referenced by Surah number and verse number(s) separated by a colon (e.g., 28:15-19 is Surah number 28, verses 15 through 19). Links to Qur'an search engines utilizing other translations are provided at the end of the article.

Foreword

Allahu Akbar. God is the greatest!

Theists should certainly agree with that sentiment. God is also all-powerful and sovereign in authority. That being the case there is no fundamental reason why God could not present a final Great Revelation to mankind through the medium of an unschooled merchant from the sand-swept peninsula of seventh century pagan Arabia. Muhammad of Mecca was also of the seed of Abraham through his ancestor Ishmael and therefore could be rightly called upon to service in the name of the one true God. The only question of relevance regarding the Koran (Qur'an) is whether Muhammad's call to service was fraudulent, delusional, from Satan, or truly from God Almighty. The rest of this article seeks to answer that question.

Introduction

This examination of the Koran was begun long before the terrorist attacks of 9-11-2001. I come from a Christian background and wanted to know the scriptural foundation of Islam. Going to the religion section of a well-stocked bookstore I simply read jacket endorsements and selected Prof. Ali's work as the best of the four versions of the Koran available on the shelf. I read it once to get the general feel of the Koran, and then read it a second time with an eye towards preparing this article.

Being familiar with the Judeo-Christian Bible (the KJV and NIV in particular), I am used to the general structure and flow of the Bible. That is, the Bible is arranged from our cosmic origins in Genesis Chapter 1, and then on through the Torah, histories, praise and teachings, prophets, Gospels, acts, epistles and finally the apocalyptic end of this worldly age and beginning of the New Heaven & New Earth in the Book of Revelation.

I was a little disconcerted to find no structure or flow in the Koran. Each ‘Surah’ is a totally independent and separate entity. After a seven verse introductory Prologue Surah, the remaining one hundred and thirteen revelatory Surahs in the Koran are, by tradition, arranged roughly from longest Surahs, through medium length Surahs, and ending with the shortest Surahs. However, the Surahs in the Koran could be arranged in any random order (or in original chronological order, for that matter) with no theological or literary impact whatsoever.

Before getting down to specifics I will relate my general impressions of the Koran. Having read it twice, three main characteristics stand out:

1. The Koran was revealed to Muhammad in florid Arabic prose and poetry. The sheer majesty of the work stood as proof-positive to the pagan Arabs of Muhammad's day (and to present day Muslim apologists) as to the Divine nature and origin of the Koran. Unfortunately the grace and beauty of the original Arabic does not translate well into English, coming off as stilted and bland. More important to modern English readers, however, the almost overwhelming verbosity of the Koran tends to obscure the claimed truth-statements sprinkled amid the wordiness.
2. There are several highly stylized and modified borrowings from the Bible presented as Divinely inspired corrections to the Judeo-Christian scriptures.
3. There is a noticeable amount of repetition throughout the Koran.

All of this gives the Koran a false sense of heft. It really is not as big or extensive as its physical size would seem to indicate. In the end there is surprisingly little in the Koran that is substantial, original, and unique. But enough of impressions; it is now time to get down to specific points of concern. Please join me as I evaluate the Koran according to its own claims and promises as they relate to Islam, the Jewish Torah and the Christian Gospel.

However, before I proceed I need to address a serious objection leveled against me over the years by Muslim scholars and apologists. They charge that I am unqualified to evaluate the Koran because I have no formal credential relating to the task. My answer is that the task is so easy and straightforward no credential is needed. All that is required is a general knowledge of the Jewish and Christian religions (their histories, basic theologies and scriptures) and an honest translation of the Qur'an. I have also endeavored to provide adequate citation throughout so as to allow the reader to check my work.

And now, without further ado…

Section One

Details, details, details.

Since the Koran has no structure and simply rambles from subject to subject in its Surahs, I am going to approach the following topics in alphabetical order.

1

Abraham

Abraham was the Koran's ideal of nearly perfect faith and religious performance. In 2:130 Allah says, “Who will turn away from the creed of Abraham but one dull of soul? We [i.e. Allah] made him the chosen one here in the world, and one of the best in the world to come…” And in 3:67-68, “Neither was Abraham a Jew nor a Christian, but upright and obedient, and not an idolater. Of all men the nearest to Abraham are those who follow him, and then this Prophet [i.e. Muhammad] and the faithful; …”

2

Abrogation and “Best of histories”

Webster's New World Dictionary (Third College Edition) defines ‘abrogate’ as: “to cancel or repeal by authority; annul”. God is sovereign, all-knowing and all-wise. God has full authority to modify, repeal or replace His commands and instructions at will. However, for the purposes of this article I make a distinction between ‘abrogate’ and ‘contradict’. A proper abrogation will state the previous rule or law, give at least a brief explanation of why a change is taking place, and then make the change. A contradiction simply states a different, and conflicting, rule or law without making any comment account or explanation of the original rule or law.

An example of a proper abrogation is found in Leviticus chapter 16. Prior to the improper ceremonial acts committed by Aaron's sons (Lev 10:1-2), the High Priest could enter the Most Holy Place in the Tabernacle whenever he chose to do so. Because of that disobedience God abrogated the previous condition, stated why the abrogation was taking place, and gave the new instructions for the proper ceremonial procedure for entering the Most Holy Place just once a year on the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur).

In the following subsections I will be pointing out several instances where the Koran makes changes or additions contradictory to the Torah without making proper abrogation of the original rule or law. This is a very serious problem because the Koran repeatedly “confirms” (i.e. ‘attests’, ‘corroborates’, or ‘validates’) the Torah. If the Torah and Koran are true Divine Revelations from the same Diety, then contradictory changes from one to the other make God look ignorant, forgetful or foolish. Indeed, I came to the conclusion in the original version of this article that these contradictory changes were the result of simple ignorance of the Torah. Since God cannot be ignorant, this led me to the reasonable (but erroneous) opinion that Muhammad wrote the Koran and invented the new religion of Islam entirely out of his own imagination and limited knowledge. Subsequent investigation of Islamic apologetics material forced me to acknowledge the supernatural origin of the Koran—which only aggravates the problem of contradiction. That is, how to account for these serious flaws in a revelatory work that should be absolutely flawless!

On a related concern, although the primary purpose of the Koran is to confirm and reaffirm the absolute monotheistic ONE-ness of God Almighty, the Koran obviously deals with a wide range of subjects. Closely associated with the above considerations of abrogation are the promises Allah made regarding the Koran. These promises are extremely relevant in evaluating the claim of Divine origin of the Koran. Allah explicitly promised mankind: “the best of histories of which you were unaware before” and “a verification of earlier Books” and “a clear exposition of everything” and “A clear discourse which expounds all things without obliquity (Surahs 12:3 & 111, and 39:27-28)”. Webster's 3rd New International Dictionary defines ‘obliquity’ as: “(1a) deviation from moral rectitude or sound thinking. (3a) indirectness or deliberate obscurity of speech or conduct. (3b) an obscure or confusing statement.”

Certainly no one should be so petty as to expect the Koran to give “best histories” of irrelevant events or “clear discourses” on trivial subjects. However, at the risk of offending Muslim readers I must say that the following subsections will illustrate several instances of very serious obliquity in the Koran. Be that as it may, since Allah-the-Creator freely made the promises and claims about the Koran related above, it is entirely reasonable for man-the-creature to take Allah at his word. There is nothing tricky, deceitful or blasphemous in this. Indeed, the Koran should address all relevant issues, answer all important questions, and solve all pertinent problems.

I regard three historical/theological areas as being vitally important in anything to do with God and a final post-Biblical Revelation to mankind. First, a “clear discourse” on the Mosaic Covenant in the Jewish Torah (as relates to the priesthood, Tabernacle, and animal sacrifice blood atonement system) as revealed by God to the prophet Moses. This highly detailed and extensive Covenant was at the very heart of Jewish spiritual life for fifteen hundred years and formed the theological foundation of Apostles' Creed Christianity. Second, the Koran must give a detailed “exposition” of the mission, ministry, Gospel message, and final fate of Jesus. Third, the Koran must present a “best history” on the prophetic ministry of John the Baptist, a full account of the ministry and letters of the Apostle Paul (who is not mentioned at all in the Koran), the rise of Apostles' Creed Trinitarian Christianity, and the origin of the Christian Bible (which is also not mentioned at all in the Koran). The following subsections will expand upon these concerns.

3

America

Although America is certainly not mentioned in the Koran, I thought the following quote of 60:7-9 to be appropriate in the aftermath of the 9-11-01 Jihadist attacks: “It may be that God will create love between you and your enemies. God is all-powerful, and God is forgiving, ever-merciful. God does not forbid you from being kind and acting justly towards those who did not fight over faith with you, nor expelled you from your homes. God indeed loves those who are just. He only forbids you from making friends with those who fought over faith with you and banished you from your homes, and aided in your exile.”

America has been kind and acted justly to people of all faiths. Our Constitution guarantees equal protection under the law; one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Many Islamic nations cannot say the same.

4

Christianity

If Allah and Muslims expect to win Christians to Islam (by means other than simple brute coercion) it is vitally important for the Koran to provide a “best history” regarding the original ministry and final fate of Jesus, the origin of the Christian Bible (the Bible is not mentioned by name in the Koran), and the rise of orthodox Trinitarian Christianity as they existed in the time of Muhammad. In preparation of the second major revision of this article I did something that I really should have done in the very beginning: brought together in one uninterrupted series all noteworthy references in the Koran to Jesus, Christianity and the Gospel. These references are:

Surahs 2:87, 105-146 & 253 & 266; 3:1-4 & 19-20 & 31-75 & 84 & 98-100 & 110-118 & 187; 4:156-163 & 171-172; 5:12-19 & 43-49 & 66-78 & 82-84 & 109-120; 6:83-92; 7:157-158; 9:30-34 & 111; 17:56-57 & 104; 18:102; 19:2-37 & 88; 21:26 & 89-93; 23:50; 33:7-8; 42:13; 43:57-65; 48:29; 57:26-28; Surah #61; and 66:12.

Upon reading these references as a continuous whole, three things become immediately obvious. First, there is really not very much there. All of this material strung end to end (including repetitions) would amount to only four or five chapters in the Christian Testament. Therefore it is nowhere close to being a “best history”. It simply doesn't give a clear or complete discourse of everything that needs to be revealed about Jesus, the Bible and the rise of Trinitarian Christianity.

Second, it is clear that the main purpose of the ministry of Jesus was to confirm the Torah to the Jews. However, this claim presents a couple of very serious problems for Allah, the Koran, and Islam. If Jesus was confirming some pristine original, uncorrupted Islamic version of the Torah to the Jews of His time, then this begs the question, “Where did Jesus get this original Islamic Torah, for none are known to exist? What was His source?” But having this Islamic Torah in-hand and then trying to confirm it publicly, the Jewish priests and religious leaders would have reacted against Him with exactly the same animosity as with the Christian claim that Jesus was the Son of God. Both claims would have brought down on Jesus the penalty of death by stoning for blasphemy, heresy, and false prophecy. Either Jesus would have been killed by stoning at the direct hands of an outraged Jewish Sanhedrin, or the Sanhedrin would have set Him up for execution by the pagan Romans; exactly as related in the Christian Gospel. Either way, Jesus would have been killed at that time, not “raised up” alive into heaven as related in the Koran.

If, however, Jesus was confirming the present day Torah to the Jews of His time, then this ministry is downright puzzling. As an exercise in ‘hauling coals to Newcastle’, this was a mission that was not needed at that time. The Jews already recognized the Torah as Revelation from God and were practicing the Law of Moses completely and faithfully. Would Allah need to raise up a Divinely conceived prophet in Mecca today to confirm the Koran to Muslims? No! They already recognize it. Would such a ministry be needed to convince Muslims to practice the Pillars of Islam? Again, no! They already practice it with zeal. Such was the case with the Mosaic Jews two thousand years ago. So the prophetic ministry of Jesus was unneeded and accomplished nothing, especially since Allah was soon to cancel, contradict or ignore virtually everything about the Torah and Mosaic Judaism—the very things being confirmed in the Koran! If the Biblical Torah in the time of Muhammad was not the same as the Torah originally revealed by Allah through the prophet Moses, then all the more reason to explicitly state this vitally important fact in the Koran and make all due corrections. It is obliquity for the Koran to have Jesus confirming some now-extinct and unobtainable pristine original Islamic Torah (or “Taurat”) when the only thing known to exist at that time was the Biblical Torah.

This problem is compounded in Surah 3:93 which says, “All food was lawful to the Children of Israel, except what Israel made unlawful for himself before the Taurat (Torah) was revealed. Say (O Muhammad): “Bring here the Taurat (Torah) and recite it, if you are truthful.”” (Mohsin Khan) The only “Torah” that could have been brought before Muhammad would have been the the physically existing Torah in both the Jewish and Christian Bibles. There is no other Torah!

Third, the Koran confirms that Jesus revealed a Gospel (or “Injil”) from Allah. The problem here is that the only ‘Gospel’ available today for examination are the Christian Biblical Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Even the so-called “lost gospels” do not help the cause of Islam. I challenge Muslims to produce a manuscript of the original Islamic “Gospel” of Jesus that can be authenticated and dated to before the birth of Muhammad (especially one that mentions “Ahmad” as the coming Great Prophet). I have never heard of such a Gospel and doubt that one exists. As an exercise I read through the Gospel according to Mark (the shortest and easiest of the four Gospels), to see if it could be changed to conform to the material cited above as presented in the Koran. I don't see any way to do this without totally rewriting the whole book to such an extent that it would be unrecognizable to what's in the Bible. The situation with Matthew and Luke is much more difficult, and the Gospel according to St. John would have to be disposed of altogether as utterly beyond repair. It is deep and serious obliquity for Allah to repeatedly confirm a “Gospel” that cannot be produced for examination and verification.

To understand the full significance of all this, please consider that by the time Allah started to reveal the Koran to Muhammad in the year 610 C.E., Apostles' Creed Christianity was already an old religion having been in existence for several centuries; millions of people had been confirmed as Christians; the Church had a large and formal structure; Christian theology (I'll touch on the Trinity shortly) was deep and complex; and the canon of the Bible (especially the four Gospels) had long since been finalized.

The point that I am making here is that Allah surely must have known that the truth-statements he was about to make in the Koran would utterly destroy Christianity. There is no way that Muhammad and the followers of Islam could say to Christians: “Jesus is not the Son of God, he did not die on the cross, he was not resurrected from the dead on the morning of the third day, and there is no need for blood atonement. Your scriptures are a total lie!” and expect Christians to roll over and meekly say: “Our religion that we have practiced for almost six hundred years is false. We bow in submission to a new, unverified and unsubstantiated revelation.” If Allah expects Christians to abandon our faith then Allah must keep his promise to provide a “best history” about the ministry and final fate of Jesus, along with the fullest exposition of the correct and original Islamic Gospel of Jesus, and a complete discourse on the rise of the false religion of Trinitarian Christianity.

This is as good a place as any to address the extremely difficult problem of the Trinity. The Koran misrepresents or misstates the Christian doctrine of the Trinity every single time that it is mentioned. For example, Orthodox Christians are not saying that the Trinity is God + Jesus + Mary (5:116), or any other combination of God plus two other humans, angels, deities, demigods, jinni or demons. Jesus never suggested such a thing in the Christian Gospel, and I can find no indication that this particular idea was ever taught within Christianity even as a heresy. Therefore this misrepresentation stands as a flat-out error which indicates deep and profound ignorance on the part of whoever (or whatever) revealed the Koran to Muhammad.

Nor are we saying that three independent deities/angels/humans got together to form a partnership and become “the one true God”. Christians believe and teach that God is transcendently ONE throughout all eternity (Mark 12:29-32). However, early Church philosophers and theologians—looking back across the great sweep of Jewish and Christian history and scripture—were able to clearly discern that the ONE true God was interacting and ministering to mankind in three very distinctly different modes, or ‘Persons’. The first mode is that of God revealing Himself to us as the ‘Father’, which Jews might recognize as Elohim and Muslims as Allah. The second distinct mode (which should not particularly offend Jew or Muslim) is that of God ministering to us as the invisible ‘Holy Spirit’ providing comfort, guidance, inspiration, counsel and instruction.

The third (and extremely controversial) mode is that of the ONE true God enfleshing Himself into this world through the Divinely conceived, fully human “Jesus of Nazareth”. At this point I must address another couple of misrepresentations (that border on the obscene) about the Christian Gospel made by the Koran and Islamic apologists. When the Christian Biblical Gospel says that Jesus is “the Son of God” or “the only begotten Son” it is not implying the pagan idea that God the Father materialized Himself as a physical man who intimidated or seduced a poor Jewish virgin girl into having sex, got her pregnant with his God-sperm, then dumped her (As the Koran repeatedly insinuates. Please read the quote from H. L. Mencken in the links section for his distorted take on this subject.). Nor did God as the Holy Spirit masturbate Himself to get Mary pregnant by “coming” all over her (Luke 1:35), and then abandoning her to an uncertain fate as some Islamic apologists pornographically assert. Surely God is too holy and immaculate to do such things.

The logic and reasoning of the Christian Gospels are very simple and direct: whoever gets a woman pregnant—by whatever means, natural or supernatural—is the father of the resulting child. If the resulting child is male, then that child is the son of the father—whoever the father is. If this father produces only one child, then this child would be the ‘only begotten’ of the father.

The direct Christian claim is that God Almighty, through supernatural and Divine power involving absolutely NO physical contact, caused His willing and righteous servant Mary to miraculously conceive with child. The resulting child was a male named Jesus who was therefore the “Son of God”. God Almighty produced only one such child, therefore Jesus is “the only begotten” of God.

The Gospel according to Dr. Luke, Chapter 1, verses 26-38 clearly shows that Mary conceived child by the will and power of the immaterial Spirit of God Almighty. “God said: “BE”, and it was (19:35)!” The Biblical Gospel and the Koran are actually in agreement on this point.

It seems to me that there is a psychological revulsion in the minds of many people (especially Jews and Muslims) against the idea of a literal, physical Immanuel—“God with us” (Matthew 1:18-25). There is little or no controversy in the idea that God would interact with mankind from His high and heavenly position of power and glory as the Father (as He did with Moses during the Exodus), or for God to minister to us through the invisible mode of the Holy Spirit. But the idea of God entering physically into this world through the mode of a woman-born human baby Jesus seems messy, dirty and undignified; too messy for a holy and immaculate God.

There are, however, important theological and practical reasons for this:

• The Divine conception of Jesus broke any chain of inheritance of the sin nature (regardless whether that ‘nature’ is physical, legal or purely symbolic) that could possibly have passed to Jesus through a biologically human father from the original sin of Adam in the Garden of Eden.
• The claim that Jesus was 100% God through Divine conception and 100% human through his mother Mary would make sense; that is, that God Almighty was fully human in this world.
• The Koran confirms that Jesus was Divinely conceived even though this was not necessary in order for Jesus to accomplish a Koranic mission of confirming the Torah to the Jews and revealing a new “Gospel” from Allah. After all, Muhammad was not Divinely conceived, nor was Moses or any other Biblical character. The Divine confirmation of Jesus as merely a human Muslim prophet, apostle and Messiah could have been done just as well by the miracles, signs and wonders recorded in both the Gospel and the Koran. I would also point out that neither Jesus, his Companions nor the Jewish religious leaders ever made any mention of the Divine conception of Jesus during His earthly ministry as recorded in both the Christian Gospel and the Koran. This singularly spectacular claim simply never came up. It appears that Mary truly “treasured all these things in her heart (Luke 2:51)” and did not reveal them until after the death of her son Jesus.
• The Koran repeatedly confirms the Torah, but does not give proper abrogation or cancellation of the Mosaic Covenant (detailed in a later subsection) that demanded animal blood sacrifice for atonement (or ‘covering’) of sin by DEATH. Therefore the Mosaic Covenant still stands: blood atonement of sin must still be made.
• Under the Mosaic Covenant the covering of sin on the Day of Atonement (and the casting away of the memory of those atoned sins through the ‘scapegoat’) must be by blood sacrifice from acceptable animals that have no blemish or defect; and the Passover blood sacrifice made in memory of the night God's Angel of DEATH ‘passed over’ the righteous Hebrews in Egypt was to be a lamb without fault, defect or blemish. A lamb was used because it is the best symbolic representation of innocence, submission, purity and sinlessness.
• Although God commanded that Judaism was not to be a human sacrifice religion like the pagans, I feel that the Christian Testament is correct in claiming that animal blood sacrifice cannot actually atone human sin in the sight of God; only the blood of a human can cover the sins of humans.
• The sacrificial substitute must have no blame or sin, or else the substitute must pay for his own sin and cannot pay for any other person's sin. No mere human (including Moses and Muhammad) can live an innocent, pure and sinless life from birth until death. Only God can do this.

The Biblical claims of the Divine conception of Jesus make sense and serve purpose in the Christian theological paradigm whether or not anybody knew about the claims at the time, but make no sense and serve no purpose at all in the Muslim paradigm. That is, from a Qur'anic standpoint there was no practical or religious advantage or benefit in Jesus being Divinely conceived if he was, in fact, merely a human prophet and not the unique incarnation of God Almighty; especially if nobody knew about the claims at the time of his physical ministry on Earth.

In fairness I must admit that the claims of Christianity are so difficult because it is difficult to understand how the transcendent, infinite, eternal God Almighty could come into this world through the Divinely conceived Jesus, yet Jesus be an actual human being who could suffer and die. That is, assuming the Christian claims to be true, how can we know that Jesus was not just an illusion or God masquerading as a human?

However, if God is to satisfy the demands of His own holy character and make good the demands of blood atonement revealed in His own Torah then the penalty of DEATH must be paid; either by the sinner himself or by an acceptable substitute. Since the acceptable substitute must himself be fully human and without sin, then God must find a way to raise up a genuine sinless man.

God did this through the Divine conception of Jesus (confirmed in the Koran), the intimate presence of God's Holy Spirit in Jesus throughout his life (also confirmed in the Koran), along with a submissive obedience to the will of God the Father so perfect and complete that it can be said without error or blasphemy that Jesus was Immanuel: “God with us”. But this was exactly what was needed to satisfy the Law of God as revealed in the Torah. Judaism does not take its own theology far enough to cover these points, and Islam ignores them entirely. Once a clear and proper understanding of the correct doctrine of the Trinity is made, Christians and Muslims are actually in agreement. God is not torn into three separate pieces, nor are there three gods or associates or compeers who came together to form God. God is ONE. God is supreme. There is no god but GOD.

Of course, if the Koran's take on the Christian Scriptures is correct, then orthodox Apostles' Creed Christianity is a monumental hoax and criminal fraud against humanity. Surah 2:75-79 puts the matter bluntly: “How do you expect them to put their faith in you, when you know that some among them heard the word of God and, having understood, perverted it knowingly?… Do they not know that God is aware of what they hide and what they disclose? Among them are heathens who know nothing of the Book but only what they wish to believe, and are only lost in fantasies. But woe to them who fake the Scriptures and say: “This is from God,” so that they might earn some profit thereby: and woe to them for what they fake, and woe to them for what they earn from it!”

Consider the following verses, 4:157-158: “And for saying: “We [i.e. the Jews] killed the Christ, Jesus, son of Mary, who was an apostle of God;” but they neither killed nor crucified him, though it so appeared to them. Those who disagree in the matter are only lost in doubt. They have no knowledge about it other than conjecture, for surely they did not kill him, but God raised him up in position and closer to Himself; and God is all-mighty and all-wise.” And 19:33-34: “ “There was peace on me [i.e. Jesus speaking here] the day I was born, and will be the day I die, and on the day I will be raised from the dead.” This was Jesus, son of Mary; A true account they contend about.”

These four verses constitute absolutely everything the Koran has to relate about the final fate of Jesus. Aside from the obvious contradiction of Jesus dying (19:33-34) yet not dying (4:157-158), the Koran's obliquitous lack of detail, clarity and precision makes these verses very difficult to interpret. If these verses are simply saying that technically the Jews did not kill Jesus, then this was common knowledge even in Muhammad's time; the gentile Romans did the actual dirty work as clearly recorded in the Christian Scriptures. Or perhaps the Koran was addressing the rumor that the Jews themselves stoned Jesus to death. Although the Christian symbol of the Cross would be invalidated, there would be no real impact on Christian theology as long as Jesus was actually killed at that time.

If, however, these verses are saying that Jesus did not die at all (or died much later of other causes, or was raised up into heaven and is currently awaiting a physical return to Earth), then orthodox Christianity utterly collapses. If Jesus did not die on the cross at the hands of the Romans (thereby spreading the blame on Jew and Gentile alike) or die by stoning at the hands of the Jews, then he cannot be the blood atonement for the sins of mankind. After all, the sacrificial offering cannot avoid or survive the sacrifice. If Allah is to keep his promises to provide “best of histories” and “a clear exposition of everything”, then the Koran must provide enough information to allow the reader to easily answer these five simple but highly relevant questions:

1. When did Jesus die (or was raised up into heaven)?
2. Where did Jesus die (or was raised up into heaven)?
3. How did Jesus die (or was taken up into heaven)?
4. Why did Jesus die (or was taken up into heaven)?
5. Where is Jesus now?

Using the information in the Biblical Gospels, Christians can assign these specific answers:

1. Jesus died in the ninth hour of Passover Friday in the year 30 C.E. (plus or minus one year)
2. Jesus died on the executioners hill Golgotha outside the city wall of Jerusalem, Judea, Roman Empire.
3. After torture by beatings and scourging, Jesus suffered death by crucifixion at the hands of professional Roman executioners.
4. God sacrificed His own Son (effectively sacrificing Himself) to be the final blood atonement for the sins of all mankind so as to pay the penalty of DEATH on our behalf.
5. On the morning of the third day after death, Jesus was bodily resurrected in eternal glorified form; was witnessed by hundreds of people over a period of forty days; and was then taken up into heaven to be with God the Father.

Even if the Biblical Gospel is a 100% fake, specific answers can be made. Even if the answers are false, at least they are answers! The Koran, however, is so lacking in basic information that none of these questions can be adequately answered. Let's give it a try:

1. When did this happen? The Koran gives not a single clue.
2. Where did this happen? Again, not a clue.
3. How did this happen? Ditto.
4. Why did this happen? The Koran (along with Muslim scholars) gives a vague answer that Jesus was taken up into heaven to protect him from his critics and enemies. But this is ridiculous and insulting. To use a sports analogy, would a coach pull his star player out of the action midway through the final championship game just because the defensive players were bearing down hard and getting rough? Of course not! That's when you put your star player in the game and keep him there until the end. Moses faced stiff opposition but was not taken up into heaven. Muhammad faced stiff opposition but was not taken up into heaven. A host of Biblical prophets faced stiff opposition (some even being tortured or killed) and they were not taken up into heaven. So why was Jesus taken up into heaven before his mission was complete? It makes absolutely no sense.
5. Where is Jesus now? From the vague verses quoted above, it appears that Jesus is cooling his heels in heaven awaiting Allah's permission to physically return to earth so that he can die and await the general resurrection and judgment along with everyone else. Again, this is ridiculous and makes no sense.

Perhaps I am being unreasonable. Perhaps these questions are too obscure, petty and nitpicky to trouble Allah the all-knowing and all-seeing. So, how about one single, simple, easy-to-answer question: When did Jesus live?

Christians might venture the answer that Jesus was born in the year 4 B.C.E. and died in the year 30 C.E. (plus or minus a year or two). I challenge any Muslim scholar to answer this question at all. The Koran is so lacking in basic relevant information that the best one can say about the life of Jesus is that he was born sometime after Moses, and died (or was raised up) sometime before Muhammad. You cannot be any more precise than that. But that's almost two thousand years! Christians can put Jesus in a specific timeframe. Muslims cannot put Jesus in any specific century.

In addition to that, the Koran repeatedly stated that Jesus was not the Son of God (1). In 4:171 the Koran clearly said, “The Messiah who is Jesus, son of Mary, was only an apostle of God, …and do not call Him ‘Trinity’ …for God is only one God, and far from His glory is it to beget a son.” This however puts Muhammad and Islam in a real bind. The Koran clearly recognized Jesus as a Divinely conceived prophet/apostle/Messiah (2) who had a forerunner/herald (see John the Baptist in subsection 7), worked many signs wonders and miracles (3), and revealed an important Gospel message from Allah (4). His ministry was destroyed by enemies and the Gospel message was corrupted (5), so the Koran had to set everything straight.

The problem here is that the Koran revealed only disconnected bits and pieces about that important gospel message. Surely God did not have to raise up a Divinely conceived, wonder working, Gospel-preaching prophet/apostle/Messiah to reveal a Gospel that amounted to little more than nothing. If there was anything else of substance in Jesus' important Gospel message, none of it was recorded in the Koran. That is, there is no way to reconstruct the original Islamic “Injil” of Jesus from the information in the Koran.

Indeed, any way you look at the situation, Jesus is a major problem for Islam. On the one hand, if Jesus was “raised up” near the time Christians claim that he was crucified, then Allah himself inexplicably put an early end to the ministry of a critically important Muslim prophet thereby lending credence to the false rumor of death and bodily resurrection that would form the basis of the heretical false religion of Christianity. On the other hand, if Jesus lived a long full life before being “raised up”, the question is begged as to why he didn't simply present himself publicly as alive and well, thereby ending Christianity before it could begin, while completing his mission as a Muslim prophet/apostle/Messiah with a faithfully recorded Muslim “Gospel” preserved for modern day examination.

The Koranic claim that Jesus was ‘Messiah’ is also problematic. The Jews of that time expected a Messiah (or Anointed One) who would throw off the yoke of foreign tyranny, restore the glory days of Israel, and establish universal peace, prosperity and justice. Christians claimed that Jesus Messiah was the Son of God come to atone for the sins of mankind and offer eternal life. Muslims claimed that the Messiah (if that word had any real meaning in a pagan Arab context) would confirm the Torah, perform many miracles, reveal a ‘Gospel’, and act as the forerunner and herald of the final Great Prophet.

Therefore if the Koran's version of the Gospel is correct then Jesus must be counted as an embarrassing ‘three strike’ failure. He failed as a Jewish Messiah, failed as a Christian Messiah, and failed miserably as a Muslim Messiah. Indeed, the ministry of Jesus as recorded in the Koran would have to be recognized as being worse than worthless because the heretical/blasphemous false religion of Christianity was founded upon the ruins of a failed Muslim Messiah. This would be a pitiful commentary on the weakness, impotence and incompetence of Allah the all-powerful all-wise and all-knowing.

Apparently, whoever (or whatever) revealed the Koran to Muhammad simply was not familiar with Mosaic Judaism or Apostles' Creed Christianity. The Koran gives the impression that everything was just a big misunderstanding, and that with the fresh, uncorrupted, corrected revelation of the Koran everyone could come together in harmony under the big-top tent of Islam. 3:64 states, “O people of the Book, let us come to an agreement on that which is common between us, that we worship no one but God, and make none His compeer [i.e. Jesus as a mere human prophet, Mary, pagan/heathen gods, etc.], and that none of us take any others for lord apart from God.”

I'm sure Muhammad sincerely felt that this was very reasonable and was probably miffed when Jews and Christians failed to come around to his way of thinking. But the entire passage of 3:64-71 is a poison pill for Christianity. Again, if the Koran was correct then all of Mosaic Judaism and orthodox Christianity was wrong, making both of them utterly false religions and corruptors of original Revelation and history.

5

Gabriel and the Holy Spirit

This subsection is new to the Third Revision as a result of recent research utilizing alternate translations of the Koran in support of my correspondence with Muslim apologists. My reference translation by Prof. Ahmed Ali does not use the term “Holy Spirit”, and I assumed that this was a term that would not be used by any other Koranic translators due to its close association with Trinitarian Christianity. Simple clarity and good common sense would seem to dictate its strict avoidance.

While using the University of Southern California's Koran search engine [NOTE: That site shut down after I finalized this article. Other sites with same translators linked at end.] I came upon Surah 2:87 in which all three translators used the term “holy spirit”. My reference translation renders this verse as: “…and to Jesus, son of Mary, We [i.e. Allah] gave clear evidence of the truth, reinforcing him with divine grace. …” The translators on the USC site (Yusufali, Pickthal & Shakir) all used the term ‘holy spirit’ instead of ‘divine grace’, as does Dr. Rashad Khalifa in his translation (linked below). The IslamiCity engine (also linked below) has translator M. Asad rendering the term as “holy inspiration”. The SearchTruth engine (also linked at end) has Mohsin Khan's translation. He does not try to translate the term, but rather transliterates it as “Ruh ul-Qudus” and then references that term directly as being the angel Gabriel!

Remember, Allah promises clear discourse without obliquity in his Qur'an, so my curiosity was seriously piqued by an Arabic term that could be so variably translated and understood. It turns out that the term ‘Ruh ul-Qudus’ is very slippery and difficult even for native speakers of Arabic. The confusion is compounded just ten verses later at 2:97 when the explicit name of the angel Gabriel (Jibreel) is used without the term ‘Ruh ul-Qudus’. I went online to three Islamic scholarly sites to inquire about this situation.

My first inquiry went to islamweb.net (question #2264869) as “Is Arabic word for holy Spirit in 2.87 same as Arabic word for Gabriel in 2.97? If yes, why different translations for same word? If no, why different words for same thing?” [NOTE: I had only a few seconds to submit my question to the website before being automatically logged out, hence the brevity and stilted wording of my question]

The scholarly reply (or “Fatwa”) was:

“We thank you for your message and ask Allaah (Subhaanahu Wa T'aala) to guide you and us to His Right Path and help us all follow His Religion and Law. As for your question, the Arabic word used in 2.87 is “Ruh al Qudus” which literally means Holy Spirit (i.e. Gabriel), but the Arabic word used in 2.97 is explicitly Jibreel (i.e. Gabriel)? [sic] Hence, there are no different translations for same word, simply because they are two different words although the final meaning is the same. Regards.”

My second inquiry was like unto the first and went to the scholars at islamqa.com. Their reply referred me to a previously submitted question related to the same subject. That Fatwa really didn't answer my direct questions, but here it is for your edification: islamqa Fatwa.

My third inquiry went to the scholars at jamiat.org and the Fatwa from Mufti Suhail Tarmahomed was quite intriguing:

“Respected Brother/Sister in Islam [NOTE: I neglected to mention in my question that I am a Christian, but no deceit or trickery was intended and the Mufti's answer is honestly presented verbatim and in whole] Assalamu Alaikum Wa Rahmatullahi Wa Barakaatuh

“The translation differs due to the Arabic words differing in the holy Qur'an. In verse 87 of Surah al-Baqarah, the name “Rouhul Qudus” (holy spirit) is used and in verse 97, the name “Jibreel” is used.

“The reason why Jibreel is addressed as Rouhul Qudus in verse 87 is due to this verse being directed to the Jews who know Jibreel as the Holy Spirit or Rouhul Qudus as established by a narration in Tafsir Ibn Kathir.

“In answer to the question about the pagan Arabs understanding that this refers to Jibreel [NOTE: I asked if pre-Koranic pagan Arabs would have associated Ruh al-Qudus to the angel Gabriel from the Jewish religion], it may be said that the Arabs knew who Rouhul Qudus refers to since they lived amongst jews[sic] and interacted with them as this verse was revealed after Hijrah (Surah Baqarah is Madani). Supposing that they did not know whom this refers to, they could have always queried it with Nabi [i.e. Muhammad] (Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam)

“And Allah Knows Best. Wassalaam. Fatwa Dept.”

So, would the Jews in Muhammad's day have understood the term ‘holy spirit’ (Ruh ul-Qudus) to be the angel Gabriel? Time to “Ask the Rabbi”! I went online and asked three rabbis this question:

“I am a Christian in correspondence with a Muslim about a question in the Qur'an that relates to Judaism in the time of Muhammad. Surah 2 verse 87 has a word that transliterates as “Ruh al-Qudus”. This term seems to be very vague and difficult even for Muslim scholars, but many translators give it an English rendering of “Holy Spirit”, but then go on to say that the Holy Spirit was understood by Arab Jews of that time as being the angel Gabriel. Is this correct?”

The response from Rabbi Reuven Lauffer at AskTheRabbi.org was:

“According to Jewish Tradition the “Holy Spirit” is a dimension of God Himself (called Ruch Hakodesh in Hebrew) and not an angel. However, angels are “merely” [sic] extensions of God's Will and Power in this world subsequently, even though it may not be completely accurate, I do not think that it is not incorrect to describe the angel Gabriel in such a way. Best Regards”

From Rabbi Yehuda Shurpin at Chabad.org (Ref. No. 1571427):

“I am no expert on the Muslim religion so I cannot answer for them. But as far as Judaism is concerned it was never translated as the Angel Gabriel. (is there any translations that ever translated it that way? I have no idea, but in general that is not how it was ever translated). All the Best”

And this from Rabbi Seinfeld at JewishAnswers.org (No. answ70866):

“No.

The Koran and Moslem belief contain several inaccuracies about Judaism. However, from a Moslem perspective, the Koran's “perfection” is non-negotiable; therefore any contradiction with reality means that reality is wrong.”

Fearing that I did not clearly express myself in the original question, I submitted a more detailed follow-up question that Rabbi Seinfeld answered thusly:

“Yes your question is clear but my answer is the same. The Hebrew term is similar to the Arabic: Ruahk ha-kodesh. There is no Jewish connection that I am aware of specifically to Gabriel. Moslems believe that Gabriel was the agent who brought God's word to Mohammed. The Torah does mention angels (of various stripes) bringing God's word to people, but we have many instances of prophecy or Ruach hakodesh without any specific angel.

Thus a Jewish person may experience ruach hakodesh via Gabriel, Michael, Uriel, or directly from God without any angel. In fact, that distinction may (and this is a theory) be why Jews reject Mohammed's prophecy. Since he only claimed to have angelic “Ruach hakodesh” and not complete prophecy (directly from God without an angel), he never claimed to be a full prophet according to Jewish belief. Therefore there would be no imperative to listen to him at all.

(Note even if he had claimed full prophecy, he would have to have undergone a specific test before gaining credibility with Jews, and there is no indication that he ever underwent, let alone passed, such a test. Furthermore, had he passed such a test then told Jews that God wanted them to cease and desist from practicing even one precept in the Torah, he would then have the status of a “false prophet” and would be liable to a death penalty. See Deut. 13.) Hope that's helpful.”

Yes, Rabbi Seinfeld, most helpful. Thank you.

Meanwhile, back at the Koran we find serious obliquity and lack of clarity. I think it safe to say that the Jews in the time of Muhammad would not have made the connection between “Ruh ul-Qudus” (Ruahk ha-kodesh) and the angel Gabriel unless there was compelling contextual reason to do so within the scriptural passage. Allah breaks his promise when he uses the term Ruh ul-Qudus by itself with no contextual connection to Gabriel. This happens four times in the Koran at 2:87 & 253, 5:110 and 16:102. The explicit name of Gabriel (Jibreel) appears three times in the Koran at 2:97 & 98 and 66:4. The two terms are never used together in the Koran.

My (admittedly limited) reading on this subject indicates that the Arabic term ‘Ruh ul-Qudus’ can be properly and correctly rendered as Ruh (spirit) ul-Qudus (of holiness). All confusion and obliquity could have been easily avoided had Allah simply kept his promise and revealed 2:86 (and the other related passages) as “…and to Jesus, son of Mary, we gave clear evidence of the truth, reinforcing him with Jibreel (Gabriel) Ruh ul-Qudus (the spirit of holiness). …”

There now, was that so hard? Allah the all-knowing and all-seeing should have ‘seen’ that I was going to write this subsection and ‘known’ to have revealed his Koran in a manner that was just a little bit more clear and understandable.

NOTE: See the top of the Postscript for a similar problem in 7:157 regarding the great prophet foretold in Deut. 18:15-19.

Now, let's take a short break and spend some time in…

6

Heaven, Hell and Paradise

Christians are generally taught that when we die we will go to Heaven to be with Jesus in the direct and loving presence of God Almighty. In the Koran, heaven is exclusively the abode of Allah and his angels. On the day of resurrection and judgment those who have found favor in Allah's eye will go to the eternal paradise of earthly delights, while those who have offended Allah and remained unrepentant will go to hell where they will roast forever. Virtually nothing of substance is said in the Koran to describe Allah's heaven. However, much is said about paradise and hell.

Hell is described as, well——HELL (6)! Paradise is described as a luxurious Eden-like pleasure realm of earthly delights: gardens with cool streams of running water and lasting bliss, mansions, jewelry, silk clothing, abundant food and drink, lots of women for every guy, and young boys to attend to every need, etc., etc (7). Throw in power tools and a bowling alley and paradise would be perfect! Of course all of this is a naked appeal to male carnality.

However, the Koran's vision of heaven and paradise pales before the description of God's Heaven, and the New Heaven, New Earth and New Jerusalem that is presented in the Judeo-Christian Bible (8). Indeed, the subject of paradise highlights the great difference between the intimately personal God of the Bible and the rather aloof Allah of the Koran. The paradise of Islam is just like what we have right now here on Earth, only bigger and better—an Eden-like garden of delights. This can be easily comprehended by the natural carnal mind of man. However, Islamic paradise will not be in the presence of Allah. Paradise will be in a realm separate from Allah's heaven. On the other hand, the New Heaven, New Earth and New Jerusalem of the Bible are infinitely beyond the carnal pleasure realm depicted in the Koran—and similarly beyond full human comprehension. Our present Earth and universe are burdened under the physical laws of decay and degeneration. If our bodies in the paradise of Islam are merely bigger, improved versions of what we have right now, then we will still be under the same laws of decay, waste and degeneration as we are today—unless Allah continuously props things up supernaturally.

God has promised in the Bible that He will purify this present Earth by fire and will bring this corrupted creation to a close. God will then bring about an entirely renewed Heaven and Earth with physical laws that will prevent decay and degeneration, and God will give every believer an entirely new and perfected body that will be fit for the new eternal existence (9). That's what Jesus was referring to in Mark 12:18-27. Jesus was not saying that we would be ghosts or disembodied spirits, but that we would be like the angels with perfected eternal bodies having the vastly expanded capabilities of the angels in Heaven. What the Bible promises is infinitely more than what the Koran promises. All of this is just what we need to escape from the present burden of decay and physical destruction, and to be in the direct, personal and loving presence of God Almighty.

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

7

John the Baptist

This subsection is new in the Third Revision, and is the result of ongoing correspondence with Muslim apologists. John the Baptist is an extremely serious problem for Allah, the Qur'an and Islam. The reason is simply that Allah recognized John and confirmed him in the Qur'an as a genuine prophet but gave absolutely no record as to his adult prophetic ministry (10). That means that the only record we have of the ministry of John the Baptist is that found in the Christian Bible! The Christian Gospel has John acting as the forerunner and herald of Jesus, and confirming him as the Son of God (11). Since the Qur'an does not mention the actual ministry of John the Baptist there is no cancellation, proper abrogation or correction of the Biblical account.

John is also problematical from a practical standpoint. Prophets don't require forerunners and heralds. Moses had no forerunner and herald, nor did Muhammad. So why one for Jesus? The Qur'an repeatedly stated that Jesus was only a prophet and apostle (so do no call him “Son of God”!). But if that's really the case, why bother with virgin birth and a forerunner/herald? Especially when the ministry of Jesus was going to collapse into a miserable failure.

None of this makes any sense. Remember, Allah promised that the Qur'an would present the best of histories, clear discourse and full disquisition on all subjects without obliquity. Unfortunately Allah does not deliver. From a Qur'anic perspective, John the Baptist is a troublesome enigma.

8

Koran

“Any Israelite or any alien living among them who eats any blood—I [i.e. God] will set my face against that person who eats blood and will cut him off from his people. For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; It is the blood that makes atonement for one's life.” (Leviticus 17:10-11 NIV)

The one hundred and fourteen Surahs of the Koran were supernaturally revealed to Muhammad over a period of 23 years starting in the year 610 C.E. Surah 12 verses 3 and 111 tell the primary purposes of the Koran: “Through the revelation of this Qur'an We [i.e. Allah] narrate the best of histories of which you were unaware before. …This is not a fictitious tale, but a verification of earlier Books, and a clear exposition of everything, and a guidance and grace for those who believe.” Surah 39 verses 27-28 continues: “We have given examples of every kind for men in the Qur'an so that they may contemplate: A clear discourse which expounds all things without any obliquity…(12)”

The problem here is that Allah fails to deliver on any of the above claims and promises about the Koran. The histories are mostly irrelevant (if not bogus), the expositions are vague or insubstantial, and the discourses are mainly space wasting poetic verbiage. Indeed, just about everything of true substance in the Koran is contained in Surah 23. With a little extra detail this single Surah could be the entire Koran!

But I want to get down to basic fundamentals. Everything focuses to this one simple question: What was the actual and original atonement (covering, annulment, cancellation or payment) of sin so as to allow the reconciliation of God and man so that we may have eternal life? On this single critically important point I find a serious discrepancy between the Koran and the Torah. The Torah as revealed by God to the prophet Moses clearly demanded substitutionary DEATH and the shedding of blood as the atonement for sin. The Koran just as clearly ignored substitutionary death, but instead demanded repentance, good works and religious devotional observance (i.e. the Pillars of Islam) as the atonement for sin.

To pull it all together, consider the following points:

1. The Jewish Torah, with its current form and content (including the priesthood, Tabernacle and animal sacrifice system), was available in the time of Muhammad, and was religiously recognized and accepted by the Jews and Christians of that time as valid Scripture from God.
2. The present day Koran is complete and correct. That is, there are no missing Surahs and no corrupting changes.
3. The Koran clearly and repeatedly recognized Moses as a genuine prophet of God and recognized the Torah as a genuine and authoritative Revelation from God which was further verified by Allah's prophet Jesus.
4. The Koran presented corrections to the Torah, none of which pertained to the Mosaic Covenant of the priesthood, Tabernacle and animal sacrifice system for the blood atonement of sin.
5. The corrections to the Torah are complete and correct because the Koran is complete and correct!
6. The Mosaic Covenant in the Torah demanded blood atonement of sin by substitutionary DEATH. That is, a priesthood overseeing an animal sacrifice system performed in the Tabernacle (read Exodus chapters 25 through Leviticus chapter 10, and Leviticus chapters 16-17, 21-22, and Numbers chapters 15, 18 & 28-29. That's a whopping thirty-four chapters devoted exclusively to the Mosaic Covenant. This is the equivalent of one-sixth of the entire Koran!).
7. The Koran changed this (with no comment or explanation, mind you) to atonement by repentance, good works and religious devotional observance (i.e. the Pillars if Islam) while utterly ignoring the historical reality of Mosaic Judaism.

The above points are absolutely fatal to the Koran. Islamic apologists frequently point to the scientific and historical aspects of the Koran that validate it as supernatural revelation. However, there is an important aspect of science ignored by the apologists. Science insists upon the “Correspondence Principle”. That is, any new theory of science must account for and incorporate all of the properly verified and validated parts of previous related theories.

This same principle also operates in theology. There is only ONE God, and He is not about to contradict or ignore Himself. New revelation from God must flow smoothly and accountably from previous revelation by the same God. Even if it is completely bogus, the Christian New Testament at least recognizes the Mosaic Covenant and attempts to explain the shift from the Law of Moses in the Torah to its purported fulfillment in the work of Jesus on the Cross as recorded in the Christian Gospel. However, the shift from the Torah to the Koran is about as abrupt as you can get. The Koran makes no attempt at all to explain the change from blood atonement by DEATH to atonement by good works. In fact, the Koran doesn't even mention Mosaic Judaism at all!

This is totally unacceptable. Islamic scholars and apologists are going to have to present compelling extra-Koranic evidence proving that Moses actually and originally established a system of Islam, not a system involving a tabernacle/temple, a formal priesthood, and animal sacrifice for the blood atonement of sin. Otherwise, they are going to have to admit that the Torah as presented in the modern day Bible is correct and that the penalty for sin is DEATH, not good works.

Similar problems beset the Koran as regards Christian scripture, theology and history. Allah the all-knowing and all-seeing had to have known that Christianity would be Islam's greatest rival during the ensuing fourteen hundred years since the time of Muhammad. Easing the conversion to Islam by Christians should have been a top priority in the revelation of the Koran. Therefore all of the purported errors and corruptions in the Christian Testament should have been addressed and full corrections/explanations/annulments provided. Instead, Allah revealed only bits and pieces of the ministry and “Injil” of Jesus, provided only four maddeningly vague verses to explain the final fate of Jesus, and said literally nothing about the ministry of Paul and virtually nothing about the rise of Apostles' Creed Trinitarian Christianity.

By the seventh century of the Christian era, Allah had to have been fully aware of the utmost necessity of explaining how Paul and his followers were successful in totally destroying the original Islamic ministry of Jesus, utterly wiping out the original Islamic “Torah” (Taurat) and “Gospel” (Injil) while replacing them with a heretical false Torah and false gospels (i.e. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John), and starting a bizarre new religion that would succeed in a spectacular way and eventually become the largest religion in the history of the whole world.

Allah is all-knowing and all-wise. Surely he could have simply looked around and plainly seen these difficulties and problems. Indeed, these difficulties and problems were fully formed by the time of Muhammad. Yet the Koran gives not a single word of attention or explanation about the apostle Paul, and gives little more than nothing about the rise of Apostles' Creed Christianity and the origin of the Bible (which is also not mentioned by name) as it comes to us today.

These are not trivial points because they require explanation of why the followers of Jesus (or Jesus himself!) did not come forward to put down this new and terrible heresy. Biblical Christianity was formed within the lifetimes of the Companions of Jesus (Peter, John, Thomas, etc.). All that these men had to do—and it would only have taken one of them—was to publicly step forward and proclaim that Paul was teaching heresy and blasphemy. If the Koran is correct, the original ministry of Jesus was in complete support of the Torah as revealed by Allah, therefore the Jewish priests and religious leaders would have given the followers of Jesus full cooperation in putting down the false religion of Christianity. It would have been in everyone's best interests (including the pagan Romans) to quickly and quietly silence Paul and his followers. There are only two possibilities explaining the spectacular success of Paul: (a) the Bible is accurate therefore Paul was preaching the true Gospel of Jesus with the full permission and encouragement of the original Apostles of Christ; (b) Jesus, his followers, and the Jewish religious leaders—for some insane reason—took no effective action to stop Paul and his false gospel.

To put this into perspective, consider what would have happened in Arabia after the death of Muhammad if someone tried to start a new religion by presenting a false version of the Koran and saying that true Islam required worshipping Muhammad as a Divine compeer of God. Would the Companions of Muhammad have taken no action against such a man? Would they have remained silent while this man gained followers and destroyed the original Koran and perverted Islam? Hardly! The Companions of Muhammad would have hunted this man down and chopped off his head. Would the followers of Jesus been any less vigilant?

Now, what would it have taken to make the Koran ‘bullet proof’ (to use an Americanism)? That is, what could Allah have done to render the Koran impervious to criticism and refute? I see two possibilities. The first and easiest thing to have been done was to simply condemn and dismiss the Jewish and Christian religions (and their scriptures) as fakes and frauds that were hopelessly beyond correction or repair. Then go on to establish the new and uncorrupted religion of Islam while making no further mention of Judaism and Christianity. The ‘cherry on top’ would have been for Allah the all-powerful to have preserved at least one copy of the original Torah and the Injil of Jesus for proper dating and verification by modern day scholars. The internal evidence of the Koran would have verified it as being from a supernatural source, and the external evidence would have placed the Koran beyond the reach of skeptics and scoffers. Islam would have triumphed worldwide centuries ago.

The second thing that could have been done would have been for Allah the all-knowing and all-seeing to have simply kept his promises to provide the best of histories, clear discourses and full disquisitions on all subjects without any obliquity in his Koran. That is, to have addressed all issues, answered all questions, and solved all problems. This would have been much harder and taken more space in the Koran, but the failure to make good on these claims and promises allows refutes such as this. On the other hand, keeping those promises would also have placed the Koran beyond the reach of skeptics and scoffers. Again, Islam would have triumphed worldwide centuries ago and I would, today, be a devout Muslim.

I now take up the question of the history of the three scriptures at issue: the Torah, the Christian Gospels, and the Koran. The Jewish people, religion, and Torah come to us today across a very long, absolutely tortured, and extremely dangerous history. That the Jewish people still exist with their religion reasonably intact is little short of a miracle. They, along with the Torah, could very well have been totally wiped out and lost to history over a thousand years ago. Likewise, the Christian religion and scriptures started out under very hostile and dangerous conditions. All could have been wiped out, with the remains of a failed religion and its founding documents left as little more than footnotes in ancient history texts.

Honest Jews and Christians recognize that there are transmission errors in the scriptures of both religions. This is to be entirely expected given their dangerous histories. God, however, is all-powerful and therefore has brought the Jewish and Christian scriptures to us with enough surviving manuscripts in order for scholars to produce versions of the Torah and Gospels that may be accepted as faithful to the originals.

The Koran, however, came into existence under much different conditions. Muhammad revealed the Koran in oral form. It was originally intended to be committed to memory and transmitted in oral form, though some people were making their own written records. After the death of Muhammad it became increasingly clear that people's recollections and written records of the Koran were at variance. During the rule of the third caliph, all of the leading experts in Islam gathered to use their collective memory and the best of the known written records in order to commit to paper the very best version of an officially accepted Koran. This was accomplished around the year 650 CE, with the Koran transmitted to the present day via certified copies of that original document written in the living language of Arabic.

Bear in mind that all of this happened within the protective shell of a victorious Islam. The Koran, from the very start, was never in any danger whatsoever. This means that the Koran can be accepted as being completely free of any corrupting changes across the centuries. However, this is a two-edged sword. The Koran is absolutely uncorrupted in its transmission to the present day, but this means that any chargeable flaws in the Koran are just as absolutely uncorrectable. Please read the relevant article linked at end.

To close this subsection I want to drive home the devastating impact of the Koran ignoring the Mosaic Covenant revealed in the Torah and practiced for over a thousand years by the Jews. Those thirty-four chapters detailing the Mosaic Covenant represent a HUGE chunk of scriptural real estate. That's longer than any of the books in the Christian New Testament, longer than Leviticus, and almost as long as Numbers or Deuteronomy. The Mosaic Covenant represents one of the largest single-subject items in the entire Judeo-Christian Bible. God was dead serious about the blood atonement of sin and the reconciliation of mankind to Himself. Yet in the Koran Allah utterly ignored everything about the Mosaic Covenant; treating it as if it had never appeared in the Torah and had no historical practice or physical reality.

Since Christian theology is founded upon the Mosaic Covenant (Jesus took pains to abide by the Law of Moses), any refute of Christianity must bring the Mosaic Covenant fully into view. As Allah stated 5:46: “We [i.e. Allah] sent Jesus, son of Mary, confirming the Torah which had been before him, and gave him the Gospel containing guidance and light, which corroborated the earlier Torah.” Yet this makes no sense if Allah utterly ignores his own revelation in the Torah and then contradicts it in the Koran. Even if we assume Christian doctrine and theology to be utterly wrong, there is no way to refute it via the Koran. The Koran lacks the most basic materials for even addressing Christian theology. All that the Koran can do is contradict the Christian New Testament, and then try to override it by brute force through Islamic Jihadism.

These are just some of the severe deficiencies of the Koran. That the complete, uncorrupted, final Great Revelation to mankind by Allah should be so fundamentally flawed is inexcusable and unacceptable.

9

Lead Astray

This will be real short. Just consider these two verses: 35:8 “…God leads whosoever He please astray and guides whosoever He will.” And 75:31 “That is how God leads whosoever He will astray, and guides whosoever He will.” These may simply be quirks of Prof. Ali's translation, but I am rather doubtful of the idea that God actually leads people astray. It would be mean-spirited and wicked if God were to take someone who intended to do good but then intentionally led that person astray to do evil!

10

Marriage and Divorce

These two subjects provide further illustration of the conflict and contradiction between Allah's Koran and the Biblical Torah-Gospel. The Koran is rather cavalier on the issues of marriage and divorce. Surah 2:227-230 allows a man to marry and divorce the same woman four times, the only real stipulation being that after the third divorce the woman must marry and divorce a second man before remarrying the first. And 33:37 allows a man to marry his adopted sons wives “…when they are through with them.”

According to the Torah (Dt 24:1-4), a man couldn't remarry a woman if she subsequently became the wife of any other man and was divorced by him. Also, Jesus clearly stated his opposition to divorce except in the case of adultery (Mt 5:32, Mk 10:5-9, & Lk 16:18). So who's correct here: Muhammad, or Moses and Jesus? This appears to be a naked contradiction between the Koran and the Torah-Gospel; a contradiction aggravated by 2:231 which states in part: “…Do not mock the decrees of God, and remember the favours God has bestowed on you, and revealed to you the Book and the Law to warn you of the consequences of doing wrong.”

11

Muhammad and Islam

“Muhammad is only a messenger; and many a messenger has gone before him.” So states 3:144. Give Muhammad credit for honesty on this point for he never claimed in the Koran to be anything more than a mere mortal man.

But let's come straight to the main point. Muhammad claimed that the angel Gabriel appeared to him over a period of twenty-three years and inspired the revelation of the Koran. In all honesty I must confess that I don't know how I would have responded to such an angelic appearance if put in Muhammad's place. However, this begs the question: “Was Muhammad a liar, lunatic, prophet of God—or dupe of Satan?” As I will formally concede at the end of the article, the internal evidence of the Koran clearly indicates it to be a genuine work of supernatural revelation. Muhammad had neither the knowledge nor the talent to produce the Koran. So did this revelation come from God Almighty, Creator of the universe? Or did it come from Satan?

Moses performed his miracles and received his Revelation directly from God Almighty (see 4:164) in an environment virtually overwhelmed by the visible supernatural power and presence of the Almighty as witnessed by literally hundreds of thousands of people over a forty-year ministry. Muhammad, on the other hand, received his revelation in private through an angelic intermediary of unverifiable identity, and presented the Koran to the people of Arabia without any demonstration of Divine or supernatural power (at least none recorded in the Koran). Also, as I pointed out earlier, the Koran fails to satisfy the “Correspondence Principle”; that is, it fatally conflicts with the Torah.

As for the Koran coming from Satan, it appears that Muslims have an underdeveloped and naïve view of the devil. They seem to regard him merely as a weak annoying and mischievous jinni, thereby credulously assuming that supernatural revelation equals Divine Revelation. The Judeo-Christian Bible, however, identifies Satan as Lucifer, the greatest of God's angelic beings, who led a prideful rebellion with a third of the angels of heaven against God in an attempt to seize the very throne of Heaven and establish himself as God Almighty.

Satan (or one of his demonic lieutenants) would have had ready access to the scientific and historical information presented in the Koran; could easily have posed as the angel Gabriel so as to dupe an unschooled Arab merchant; could have concocted the excellent prose and poetry that so powerfully impressed the pagan Arabs of Muhammad's day; created the amazing internal structural features of the Koran; and seen to the fulfillment of the short-range prophetic predictions realized during and immediately following Muhammad's ministry. However, the Koran conspicuously lacks the major long-range “End Times” prophecy contained in the Bible. That sort of thing is reserved for true prophecy from God Almighty.

Now, why would Satan want to fake a revelation so as to start a religion that preaches and practices peace, justice, brotherhood, morality and goodwill? To answer, we have to go back to the fundamental nature and character of God Almighty, and the penalty of sin as revealed by God in the Torah. God is absolutely and perfectly pure, holy and righteous. Because of this pure holiness God cannot tolerate sin of any kind or degree. Therefore the penalty of sin is DEATH. It doesn't matter if the sin is big or small; intentional or unintentional; known or unknown. It doesn't even matter if you commit only one tiny, unknown, unintentional sin in your entire life! The bad news from the Biblical Torah is that the penalty for sin is DEATH as evidenced by the shedding of blood.

The good news from the Biblical Torah is that God will allow an acceptable substitute to pay the penalty of death in our place. Now, this is where Satan has an opportunity to deceive and mislead. Although Satan might prefer to provoke strife wickedness and discord, he can also use peace, morality and brotherhood as long as he can convince people that the penalty of sin is not DEATH, but rather good works and religious devotional observance such as the Pillars of Islam. That is, that people can achieve their own eternal salvation by their own good works and merit. If Satan can get people to deny the penalty of death and sell them on a do-it-yourself salvation (e.g. Islam, Scientology, Freemasonry, Unitarian/Universalism, etc.), then the penalty of death and judgment will fall on their own heads and Satan will win them for the kingdom of hell; even if their lives are otherwise reasonably good, moral and upright. It all comes down to the truth or falsehood of the Mosaic Covenant as recorded in the Biblical Torah.

This brings us to the most disturbing question in this entire issue: why would a loving God allow Satan to pull off such a monumentally spectacular deception? Make no mistake about it, either Islam is false or else Torah-based Mosaic Judaism and its bastard child Christianity are false. Either way, at least a billion people are going to rot in hell for embracing a masterfully executed lie. Is human free will such a deeply embedded part of God's plan for mankind that the Almighty would permit such an awful thing to happen?

Apparently so!

One more point of interest is that the Koran referred to Muhammad in 7:157 as “…the gentile Prophet, described in the Torah and the Gospel.” I don't recall reading anything in the Torah and Gospel about a non-Jew like Muhammad. Certainly not as someone to be anticipated or looked for as an additional future authority figure.

As for the Islamic path to paradise, the simple formula of belief in Allah and his final prophet Muhammad, performing religious devotional obligations, paying the zakat (charitable alms), and doing good deeds was repeated over and over again (13). 5:9-10 says, “God has made a promise of forgiveness and the highest reward to those who believe and perform good deeds. But those who disbelieve and deny Our [i.e. Allah's] revelations are the people of Hell.” 2:277 says, “Those who believe and do good deeds, and fulfill their devotional obligations and pay the zakat, have their reward with their Lord, and will have neither fear nor regret.” 11:114 clearly states, “…Remember that good deeds nullify the bad.”

These quotes are really at the heart of Islamic salvation. Koranic Islam is very much a deeds-based religion. God is keeping score: good deeds on one side of the ledger, and bad deeds on the other side. On the day of resurrection and judgment, each person's ledger will be balanced. Assuming that all of the other basic qualifications were met during life (i.e. performing the Pillars of Islam), if the person's good outweighs the bad: paradise. If the bad outweighs the good: hell. It's just that simple. No substitutionary atonement of sin, no unmerited grace, no justification by faith, no sweet moment of eternal salvation. Just a straightforward post-mortem accounting of personal performance, with a pass/fail grading system. As pointed out earlier, this flatly contradicts the Torah.

12

Oaths

Muhammad and Jesus were definitely on opposite sides of the fence in regards to swearing by God. In 5:106-7 the Koran commanded, “Detain them after the service of prayer, and if you doubt their word make them swear by God that: “We shall not take a bribe even though it be offered by a near relative, nor hide the testimony of God, for then we shall surely be sinful.” If it transpires they have concealed the truth, two of those who are immediately concerned should take their place and swear by God: “Our testimony…”” And 24:6-8, “Those who accuse their wives and do not have any witnesses except themselves, should swear four times in the name of God… …the woman's punishment can be averted if she swears four times by God as testimony…”

Jesus, on the other hand, had this to say about oaths: “Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord.’ But I tell you, Do not swear at all; either by heaven, for it is God's throne; or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. Simply let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one (Mt 5:33-7, NIV).” The Koran confirmed Jesus and the Gospel, so is this a case of abrogation or contradiction?

13

Paul

I think few Christians would seriously dispute my assertion that as regards the formation, history, doctrine and theology of Christianity, the Apostle Paul ranks second in importance only behind the Lord Jesus Christ. At the very least, the rise of Christianity would have been greatly retarded by the absence of Paul's epistles (letters) and his missionary work among the gentiles and diaspora Jews in the eastern and northeastern parts of the Roman Empire.

The Qur'an, however, not only does not mention Paul by name, it does not even hint at his existence or anything that he did. This is absolutely amazing! The Qur'an promises the “best of histories”, but even a ‘worst of history’ would at least mention Paul. Allah promises “clear discourse” in his Qur'an, but even a muddied discourse on Christianity would devote at least a single sentence to Paul. Ignoring the Apostle Paul is the very heart of “obliquity”. This would be like someone writting a detailed history of Islam but making absolutely no mention of Muhammad's immediate successor Abu Bakr. Such a ‘history’ would be immediately rejected as fatally flawed and deficient.

Technically, the only contemporary of Jesus mentioned by name in the Qur'an is John the Baptist. None of the other companions of Jesus are specifically named. Where mentioned at all, the followers of Jesus are simply and collectively called “disciples” or “witnesses”. Since Paul did not become a figure related to Jesus until at least three years after the Crucifixion (or “taking up”) of Jesus, Paul (in this context, more properly named Saul of Tarsus) would not be a part of the “disciples” mentioned in the Qur'an.

Ignoring the Apostle Paul is a fatal flaw in the Qur'an. It simply doesn't matter if Paul was a genuine disciple of Jesus Christ or a Jewish Pharisee gone mad or a completely fictitious character. Christians cannot take the Qur'an seriously when it fails to mention a person so central to its theology, scripture and history. Once again, the total absence of Paul in the Qur'an clearly indicates profound ignorance on the part of whoever (or whatever) revealed the Qur'an to Muhammad. After all, it's not like Paul was a secret agent or operating incognito. Paul was a famously well known person; prominent in Christian history and scripture.

Can Allah the all-knowing be ignorant?

14

Plurals

For a ‘Divine Revelation’ that praises itself on clear understandable writing, and harps endlessly that God is “One” (so let there be no compeers or co-equals of God!), Allah has the very annoying and confusing habit of referring to himself in the plural throughout the Koran (14). For example (one of very many possible) consider 2:34-35, “Remember, when We asked the angels to bow in homage to Adam they all bowed but Iblis [i.e. Lucifer], who disdained and turned insolent, and so became a disbeliever. And We said to Adam:…”

Or how about bouncing back and forth from singular to plural to singular in 6:98-99, “It is He who produced you from a single cell, and appointed a place of sojourning, and a place of depositing. How clear have We made Our signs for those who understand. It is He who sends down water from the skies…”

At first I thought that the ‘plurals’ might be referring to Allah plus the angels and/or Muhammad. But verses like 7:10-11, “We settled you on the earth, and provided means of livelihood for you in it; but little are the thanks you give. Verily We created you and gave you form and shape, and ordered the angels to bow before Adam in homage;…” occur many times in the Koran where the angels are clearly excluded from the plural, and where Muhammad would not be present (unless he is actually a compeer of God!).

To make sure that this was not just another quirk in Prof. Ali's translation, I went back to the same bookstore where I bought my reference translation and checked this verse (and a few others) against the other three translations. Though there were slight differences in word choice between them, the curious anomaly of plurals held true across all four books. So who constitutes the plural? Prof. Ali makes no mention of this either in his introduction or in the footnotes.

To close this subject, I am well aware of the literary use of the Royal “We”. The problem here, however, is that one of the main purposes of the Koran was to confirm and reinforce the strict absolute monotheistic ONE-ness of Allah so as to nullify the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. That being the case, the use of plurals for Allah in the Koran should have been minimized or avoided altogether. The use of the Royal “We” should have been clear, consistent, and unambiguous——if it was to be used at all. As end noted above, there are simply too many places where Allah is clearly operating in the singular (that is, without angels or man) yet Allah refers to himself in the plural. Remember, Allah promised “clear discourse without any obliquity” in his Koran. The misuse and gross overuse of the Royal “We” (Our, Us, etc.) is confusing, distracting, and shows Allah to be unsure of his own goals and objectives in the revelation of the Koran—a revelation that should have been absolutely flawless.

15

Punishment

Islam is world famous (infamous?) for the harshness of its punishments. We all know what the penalty for theft is, don't we? You get your hands cut off. But is this really what the Koran commanded? Let's be fair and accurate here. 5:38-9 says, “As for the thief, whether man or woman, cut his hand as punishment from God for what he had done; and God is all mighty and all wise. But those who repent after a crime and reform, shall be forgiven by God, for God is forgiving and kind.” I think that assuming “cut” to mean ‘amputate’ goes way too far. I agree with Prof. Ali's footnote on page 113 that the “cut” was intended to correct, not cripple.

But when it comes to whippings, the Koran once again clashes with the Jewish Torah. Dt. 25:1-3 says, “When men have a dispute, they are to take it to court and the judges will decide the case, acquitting the innocent and condemning the guilty. If the guilty man deserves to be beaten, the judge shall make him lie down and have him flogged in his presence with the number of lashes his crime deserves, but he must not give him more than forty lashes. If he is flogged more than that, your brother will be degraded in your eyes (NIV).” While in 24:2 & 4 the Koran commanded, “The adulteress and adulterer should be flogged a hundred lashes each, and no pity for them should deter you from the law of God, …” and “Those who defame chaste women and do not bring four witnesses should be punished with eighty lashes, …”

Once again this is not a true abrogation. Rather, it is a totally improper contradiction for there is no notice or transition from the Law in the Torah as it existed in the time of Muhammad and its change in the Koran.

16

…raised him up…

This subsection is being added in the year 2019 because of continued problems resulting from confusion over the final fate of Jesus. I will be addressing several scenarios showing the great difficulties necessitated by the Koranic claim that Jesus was not crucified but simply ‘raised up’ alive into heaven.

The first scenario has Jesus seized by the Jewish religious leaders for the heresy and blashamy of preaching a false Torah, and held in their direct presence. If Jesus simply vanished or rose directly into the air, then this would have been witnessed by all, therefore there could be no possibility of a rumor of crucifixion or resurrection. Christianity could not have started.

The second scenario has Jesus seized by the Jewish religious leaders and thrown into their jail pending a final ruling as to his fate. Jesus is then ‘taken up’ into heaven. The empty cell would be puzzling, but like above there could be no rumor of crucifixion or resurrection. Again, Christianity could not have started.

The third scenario has Jesus with his Companions, but out of their direct sight. Jesus is ‘taken up’ up into heaven. While this would leave some very confused Companions, they would simply have continued the general ministry of Jesus by advancing his Injil from Allah. Again, there would be no possible rumor of crucifixion or resurrection, therefore no Christianity.

The fourth scenario is the only one that can plausibly explain the rise of Apostle's Creed Christianity and the New Testament Bible as they actually exist in history. Jesus, being with his Companions but out of eyeshot, is ‘raised up’ into heaven. The Companions of Jesus are completely confused scattered and silenced by this disappearance, and effectively drop out of the story entirely. Meanwhile, passersby at Golgotha notice someone being crucified that resembled Jesus. The rumor starts that Jesus was crucified and layed to rest. His disappearance further fuels the rumor that Jesus was resurrected from the dead after crucifixion and then ‘raised up’ into heaven. Much later, a Jewish Pharisee named Saul of Tarsus goes completely mad, picks up on the false rumors regarding Jesus, and invents a whole new religion based on these false rumors. Of course, this raises the question mentioned above as to why the Jewish religious leaders and the original Companions of Jesus did not step forward to put a quick stop to this new heresy.

I can think of no other scenario consistant with the Koran that can possibly result in what actually happened in historical reality. This, of course, means that Allah, the all-seeing and all-powerful, was completely helpless in preventing Paul—a mere human—from starting a false religion, totally silencing the original Companions of Jesus and cowing the Jewish Sanhedrin, killing the original Injil of Jesus, faking ‘Gospels’ from phony desciples of Jesus, corrupting the original Torah from Allah, and ultimately defeating not only the Jewish religious leaders but the Roman Empire itself!

Oy vey. What a mess.

17

Sin and Sacrifice

This subsection is also new to the Third Revision. It is needed because of ongoing misunderstanding by Jews and Muslims as to my repeated assertions in this article that the penalty for sin against God is DEATH requiring sacrifice and blood atonement.

More specifically, I assert that the penalty for sin against God is DEATH in every case without exception or moderation. Much of the confusion and misunderstanding comes about because it appears in the overall Mosaic Covenant in the Torah and the Pillars of Islam in the Qur'an that there are degrees of sin, and degrees of penalty, and levels of atonement. These apparent ‘degrees’ and ‘levels’ are the result of God's mercy upon us due to our waywardness and imperfection. If God immediately struck down all of us for every sin we committed then there would be none of us left alive!

As regards this article I am viewing the situation from God's perspective of absolute perfection, purity, holiness and righteousness. From God's perspective there are no levels or degrees of sin, and therefore no levels or degrees of penalty. All sin is mortal. All sin demands the penalty of DEATH.

To illustrate from the Jewish Testament, take these five examples of trivial sin incurring the penalty of DEATH:

• In Genesis 3, Adam and Eve ate fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This brought down on their heads the penalty of DEATH. Now think about this. What did they actually do that was so terrible? They ate fruit from a tree. This is the theological equivalent of jaywalking across a deserted side street. But God is so pure and holy that even this trivial offence brought down the penalty of DEATH, not only on Adam and Eve but upon all of humanity from that day forward.
• In Leviticus 10 Aaron's sons offered up unauthorized fire before the Lord. God killed them on the spot for this minor procedural infraction.
• In Numbers 15:32-36 a man was caught picking up firewood on the Sabbath day. God demanded the penalty of DEATH, so he was killed by stoning.
• In 1 Samuel 6:19 seventy men were struck down by God for merely looking inside the Ark of the Covenant.
• In 2 Samuel 6:6-7 Uzzah reached out his hand to steady the Ark when the oxen stumbled. God struck him dead on the spot.

A thorough examination of the Jewish Testament will show many, many more examples of the DEATH penalty being incurred for seemingly trivial offence against God. Why is this? Because God is so perfect, so pure, so holy, and so righteous that God cannot tolerate sin in any form, or in any way, or in any degree. From the human perspective the above cases are examples of gross disproportion bordering on sadistic insanity. From God's perspective they are absolutely required. So what to do? What can a loving but holy God do about the intentional and unintentional sinfulness rebellion and imperfection of humanity?

God can pay the penalty of DEATH Himself, on our behalf.

I write this from the Christian perspective, so Jews will travel only a few steps down the following path before stopping. I ask Muslims to follow this path all the way to the end. Then decide for yourselves.

In the Mosaic Covenant detailed in those thirty-four chapters in the Torah and practiced for over a thousand years by the Jews, God highlighted the problem of sin and illustrated the solution for the DEATH penalty of sin. The solution was illustrated by the ceremonial sacrifice (killing) of animals standing in as acceptable substitutes for humanity. The blood of those animals was sprinkled on the Alter so as to ceremonially atone (or ‘cover’) the sins of the people—individually and collectively.

This system has been condemned by many people as vicious slaughterhouse religion. And they are absolutely right. Animal sacrifice for blood atonement of sin is primitive, brutal, ugly, and graphic—and intentionally so. This system drives home the message that the penalty of sin is DEATH, but that our sin can be covered by the blood of an acceptable substitute. God chose this method of illustration because it can be understood by anyone, anywhere on Earth, at any time in human history; from naked headhunting cannibals in New Guinea to black-robed Oxford dons in England.

Jews hold that this system was God's actual solution to the problems of sin and atonement. Christians, however, hold that the Mosaic sacrificial system was illustrative; that the death and blood of animals cannot actually atone the sins of humans. Only the death and blood of a human can do that. Therefore God enfleshed Himself into this world through the virgin birth and righteous life of Jesus of Nazareth, offered Himself up in sacrifice on the cross, and let His own blood cover our sins thereby paying the penalty of DEATH for us.

Koranic Islam rejects and ignores the concept of a death penalty for sin and the need for blood atonement. In Islam, sin is atoned by good deeds and by working the Pillars of Islam. Animal sacrifice is allowed by Muslims, but merely as a ceremonial gift to Allah. If this is actually true, then Allah needed to either formally and explicitly condemn the Mosaic Covenant in the Biblical Torah as a fraud or else make full, specific and proper abrogation of the Mosaic Covenant as regards the priesthood, Tabernacle/Temple and animal sacrifice system for the blood atonement of sin and its replacement by the Pillars of Islam. This system was central to the practice of Judaism for over a thousand years, and is absolutely foundational to the claims of Apostles' Creed Christianity. Indeed, Biblical Christianity can make no sense whatsoever apart from that system. Yet the Koran totally ignores the whole thing.

18

Torah and Scriptural Corruption

Everything really boils down to this one question: was the Torah corrupted as to the establishment of the priesthood and animal blood sacrifice system practiced in the Tabernacle/Temple for over a thousand years under ‘Mosaic’ Judaism? That is, did Moses—acting under the divine authority of Allah—actually and originally establish a system of atonement and reconciliation based on good works and religious devotional observance (i.e. the Pillars of Islam), but the Hebrew Jews later perverted the prophetic message into a false “Mosaic” Covenant? The same type of question applies to the orthodox Christian Testament since all of its books are founded on the theo-logic of the Biblical Torah.

Suppose the answer is, “Yes! The scriptures were corrupted.” This begs the question, “Is Allah so weak, careless and incompetent that he cannot protect the integrity of his own divine revelatory messages?” That is, was Moses a Muslim prophet whose ministry was effectively destroyed and whose prophetic message was utterly twisted and perverted into the hideous grotesque of Mosaic Judaism by bloodthirsty barbaric religious opportunists? Was Allah unable to do anything about this disastrous state of affairs for almost fifteen hundred years of Mosaic Judaism, and another nineteen hundred years of damnable Talmudic Judaism?

Did Allah raise up an astounding virgin-born, miracle working prophet/apostle/Messiah messenger of Islam only to have the ministry of Jesus wrecked and his “Gospel” almost immediately twisted and perverted by religious charlatans? Was Allah powerless to prevent the spiritual damnation of nineteen hundred years worth of misguided souls pulled down into the fires of HELL by the black-hearted heresy of Apostles' Creed Christianity? Was the value and integrity of a host of lesser Muslim prophets (Elijah, Isaiah, Daniel, John the Baptist, etc.) similarly destroyed by these perversions?

And considering Koranic history, were it not for the honesty, devotion and integrity of Muhammad's Companions in faithfully recording and disseminating the Koran immediately after the death of Muhammad, it is almost certain that his ministry would have suffered the exact same fate as the failed Islamic ministries of Moses and Jesus! Is praise due to Allah for preserving the Koran? No! All praise and honor are due the Companions for preventing yet another disastrous failure—a failure that would have been compounded by the fact that Muhammad was to be Allah's final prophet. Allah would have been out of prophetic options at that point.

Such are the clear-cut implications of Islamic history and Koranic theology. What a sad and sorry commentary on the ineffectiveness and weakness of Allah the “all-seeing” and “all-powerful”

Of course the above assumes the Koran to be genuine Divine Revelation and accurate history. However, if the Torah as recorded in the Bible is true and correct, then the Koran is immediately invalidated and must be rejected. As pointed out above, the Torah that exists in the present day Bible is the same as the Torah in the time of Muhammad and Jesus. There is no other Torah!

There are, however, serious and legitimate objections to the contents of the Judeo-Christian Bible raised by Islamic apologists and religious skeptics alike. The Koran is a series of messages supernaturally revealed to a single prophet. Thanks to the speedy work of Muhammad's Companions in setting the revealed word down on paper immediately after the death of Muhammad and then protecting its integrity down through the centuries with certified copies, the present day Koran enjoys the enviable reputation of being without significant corrupting error from the original spoken revelation.

The Judeo-Christian Bible, on the other hand (and I shall focus on the Protestant Bible, though my comments should reasonably apply to all versions), is a collection of sixty-six Jewish and Christian works written in several different ancient languages at several different geographical locations by at least forty different men over a period of at least fifteen hundred years. These works cover a wide range of styles, sources, subjects, objectives, purposes and intended audiences. There are works of outright Divine Revelation, official and unofficial histories, poetry, personal testimony, sage advice, analysis, admonition, instruction, etc., etc.

The Bible (especially the Jewish scriptures) comes to us across an absolutely tortured history. The fact that any of it survives at all is little short of a miracle. The main problem here is that Christian Fundamentalist Church leaders have put the stamp of inerrant, infallible, perfect Divine Revelation on every last word of the entire collection! This may have been necessary in the past in order to maintain Church discipline and to put down heresies, but it places modern day Christians in a bit of a bind because the Bible really and truly does have dozens of obvious minor difficulties and trivial discrepancies in its details (e.g. compare Matthew 27:3-10 with Acts 1:18-19. Also, read Truth Revealed by Rahmatullah Kairanvi, linked at end, for a painfully exhaustive review).

Now, before you burn me at the stake as a heretic I have to pose this pertinent question: do these apparent difficulties and discrepancies invalidate (or even weaken) the core doctrinal truth-claims of the Bible as relates to Mosaic Judaism and Apostles' Creed Christianity? The answer is: NO!! The discrepancies are aggravating, annoying and distracting, but they are not at all fatal to the core truths and practical validity of the Bible.

The difference between the Bible and the Koran is like the difference between a battleship and a munitions ship. A battleship is designed and constructed to go into the most savage combat, take the cruelest of hits—and survive! On the other hand, a munitions ship is a floating firecracker; one solid hit and it explodes in a giant fireball and sinks to the bottom. Critics could fire an editorial broadside into the Bible and blast it to pieces, but as long as a significant portion of the Mosaic Covenant and one of the Christian Gospels survives, then Judaism and Christianity can stay afloat. But if the Koran takes even one solid theological or historical hit (in particular the glaring discrepancy between the Mosaic animal blood sacrifice system and the Pillars of Islam) then the Koran explodes in a giant fireball and disappears—taking all of Islam with it.

Personally I'm sorry that Fundamentalist Church leaders have saddled Christianity with the absolutely inflexible (and, I might add, easily refuted) claim of perfect inerrant infallibility for every word of the Bible. Christians should be very careful about using the words “perfect” “inerrant” and “infallible” because skeptics and enemies of the Faith are free to define and apply those words in a manner as picky, arbitrary, unfair and unreasonable as they please. At the very least these enemies can muddy the waters and cloud the debate thereby distracting and misleading the unsaved.

The great challenge of modern Christianity is not so much internal Church discipline but outreach to non-Christians——especially strong adherents of other religious/philosophical positions such as Islam, Hinduism, New Age-ism and atheism. In my opinion Christianity should openly and honestly acknowledge the existence of these rather trivial problems and develop comprehensive explanations for the apparent discrepancies. This would eliminate (or at least greatly lessen) the easy ‘cheap shots’ against the Bible and allow Christian clergy, apologists and theologians to focus on core issues where the evidence is strongest. There is no disgrace in admitting uncertainty on minor or nonessential details. However, we invite the world to heap refute, ridicule and abuse on our heads with the unsustainable claim of total word-for-word Divine perfection.

To conclude the subject of the Torah, I want to point out two final major problems for Muslims and Islam. First, the Koran obliquely confirms the historical existence, truth and validity of the Mosaic Covenant in the present day Torah. Surah 5:44 confirms the existence of Jewish rabbis and priests. Surah 17:1-7 confirms the existence of the Jewish Temple. Now, the purpose of priests is to perform commanded rites and rituals within a temple. The rites and rituals performed by the priests in the Jewish Temple at Jerusalem were those commanded by God Almighty in the correct and original Torah for the blood atonement of sin. Priests, temples and blood sacrifice are not commanded by Allah in the Koran, and have no part in the practice of Islam. These Torah commands, however, were in no way abrogated, condemned, or cancelled in the Koran. Indeed, Mosaic Covenant Judaism, as such, is not even mentioned in the Koran!

Secondly, if you take all of the purported corrections to the Torah presented in the Koran and incorporate them into the Biblical Torah (which are really trivial, and would have no significant theological, religious, historical or literary impact on the Torah), Muslims end up with a Book that is every bit as complete, correct, uncorrupted and authoritative as they claim the Koran to be.

Indeed, Muslims are under double Law and double Scripture because the Qur'an never abrogated or annulled the Mosaic Covenant in the Torah! Not only must Muslims satisfy the pillars of Islam, they must also abide by the Law commanded by God in the ‘corrected’ Torah. That being the case, Muslims should be fanatical Israel supporters. They need the priesthood, the Temple and the animal sacrifice system for the blood atonement of sin just as much as the Jews. Muslims ought to move Heaven and Earth to immediately tear down or relocate the Dome of the Rock, effect the rebuilding of Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem, reconstitute the Jewish priesthood, and restart the animal sacrifice system for the blood atonement of human sin.

It would appear that Allah the all-seeing did not “see” this one coming ;-)

19

War, Coercion, and Martyrdom

Here are some of the verses relating to what the Koran has to say about the above subjects:

2:190-4 & 217-8; 3:157 & 169 & 195; 8:41 & 64 & 67; 9:1 & 12-15 & 29 & 81 & 111; 47:4 & 20 & 31; 59:2-8.

The above verses accurately and honestly relate some of what the Koran has to say about war and physical struggle. Although the Hebrew Testament Jews subdued the Promised Land at sword point, Moses and the other Jewish leaders did not make it a command to increase Judaism through military conquest; certainly not to make it a global religion. Any such increase was, for the most part, incidental rather than intentional. Regarding the Christian Testament, the teachings of Jesus and His apostles really don't lend themselves to military violence or coercion. The teachings and commands of Jesus must be stretched to the breaking point to obtain support for violent conversion of non-Christians, or to justify going to war to spread the Gospel. Our armor is righteousness; our sword the word of God; our battlefield the spiritual realm of the soul.

Muslims, on the other hand, can easily justify physical violence coercion and war to advance Islam. They're built right into the Koranic scriptures and the historical exemplification of the prophet Muhammad and his successors.

To underscore the above, let's compare the immediate results of the ministries of Muhammad and Jesus. Muhammad was not just the prophetic founder of a new religion, he was also a military commander. He led armies; fought battles; killed people; conquered territory; took captives and claimed the booty of war. Jesus never led a single soldier into a single battle, conquered no territory nor took any spoils. Muhammad died a rich, famous and powerful man. Jesus died naked, penniless and virtually friendless.

If the Koran is correct about the original ministry of Jesus, then this begs the question of why anyone would start with the winners religion of Islam as revealed by Allah through the Injil of his prophet/apostle/messiah Jesus, and then corrupt it into the losers religion of Apostle's Creed Christianity? Who would be so insane as to start with a religion that holds out the promise of victory, power, territory and booty (both kinds) and corrupt that into the “love your enemies/bless those who spitefully abuse you/turn the other cheek/and blah blah blah” of Biblical Christianity? Just as puzzling, who would buy into such a crazy religion? The Koran promises “best of histories” but tells virtually nothing in answer.

I close this Section with the problem of Islamic martyrdom and suicide bombers. In the Koranic scheme of things a Muslim is martyred if he dies upon the field of honor in manly combat against the infidel. The Koran promises that such a soldier of Islam will bypass Judgment Day and go directly to Paradise. So, what about a Muslim who straps an explosive charge to his chest, walks into a crowded civilian marketplace or bus and detonates the bomb? Is that person a martyr—or just a murderer (including self-murderer)?

I am convinced from my reading of the Qur'an that Muhammad would be shocked and outraged by the acts of modern suicide bombers and would condemn them to eternal damnation and hell. Explosives did not exist in Muhammad's day, but I am sure he would have condemned a Muslim who committed the functionally equivalent acts of walking into a crowded civilian marketplace and indiscriminately hacking defenseless women, children and old men to death with a sword and then killing himself. Where would be the honor in that? How would that advance the cause of Allah and Islam? Such an act would disgrace the entire religion!

So it goes with suicide bombers.

A Muslim on the battlefield knows that all who oppose him are infidel enemies. If he prevails: victory and spoils! If he is killed: martyrdom and Paradise. But to slaughter in a civilian marketplace or bus means that the Jihadist really has no idea who he's killing! He cannot distinguish between friend and neutral and foe. In a modern suicide attack on civilian targets, how can the Islamic Jihadist know if he is killing Muslim or infidel? How many unbelievers might have been converted to Islam had they been allowed to live? How many new believers in Islam might go to hell because they were murdered before working the Pillars of Islam so as to tip the scales in their favor?

In the end, suicide bombers are playing God by making decisions and taking action utterly beyond human knowledge and wisdom. They are, in effect, making themselves compeers and coequals of God. And that is a terrible sin indeed.

Section Two

Muhammad and prophetic authority

In order to be completely accurate and fair, I must admit that Islamic scholars and apologists (especially Dr. Gary Miller and Dr. Rashad Khalifa, linked below) have made an excellent case that the Koran is a genuine product of supernatural revelation. The Koran contains amazing internal structural features along with verifiable scientific and historical information utterly beyond anyone's ability or knowledge fourteen centuries ago. Also, the prose and poetry of the Koran was too majestic and spiritually moving to be the product of an unschooled person such as Muhammad.

However, truth claims should be thoroughly tested and substantiated before being accepted. This is especially the case when the claims involve Divine Revelation and prophetic authority. The Koran claimed Muhammad to be a “messenger” from God; a prophet and apostle (15). For example, in 9:33 the Koran stated, “It is He [i.e. Allah] who sent His Messenger [i.e. Muhammad] with guidance and the true faith in order to make it superior to other systems of belief, even though the idolaters may not like it.” The problem here is that the Koran presented absolutely nothing to substantiate the claim of Muhammad being a true prophet of God other than its own authority. This is aggravated by the fact that the Koran repeatedly referred to the substantiating signs, wonders and miracles of Moses and Jesus (16), and harped on the “clear proofs” presented by earlier prophets and apostles (17). Yet the Koran presented no ‘clear proofs’ to validate these claims about Muhammad. If there exists substantiating evidence, it is not presented in the Koran (consider 17:90-93).

Indeed 6:19 states, “Ask: ‘of all things what is most vital as evidence?’ Say: ‘God is witness between you and me that this Qur'an has been revealed to me [i.e. Muhammad] that I may warn you on its strength, and those whom it reaches.’” That's all there is! Muhammad simply laid down “the Book” as revealed to him, and on the basis of its testimony declared himself to be a prophet of God and demanded that everyone submit to the authority of the Koran. This is a clear case of circular reasoning.

Now, from a minimalist standpoint Muhammad's claim is valid. Technically if a prophet's prophecy proves true then no other proof is needed. However, the ministries of Moses, Jesus and other Biblical figures recognized and accepted by the Koran give ample precedent that God demonstrates supernatural power in order to validate and authenticate the most important prophetic ministries; especially if there would be reason for people to doubt or challenge the claims. Muhammad received no such extraordinary supernatural validation.

Section Three

Sorry, we're all “Booked” up

The Koran purports to establish the one true and final religion of Islam. However, the Koran also clearly and repeatedly confirmed the Torah and Gospel as God-breathed, valid and authoritative Revelation (18). As Muhammad put it in 3:3-4, “He [i.e. Allah] has verily revealed to you this Book [i.e. the Koran], in truth and confirmation of the Books revealed before, as indeed He had revealed the Torah and the Gospel before this as guidance for men, and has sent the criterion of falsehood and truth.”

The Koran repeatedly makes the general admonition that people should “…fulfill their devotional obligations…”(2:277), but aside from some advice on acceptable foods, conduct while traveling far from home, punishments, marriage, divorce, and a few other rather trivial points, the Koran really leaves it to the Jewish and Christian scriptures to ‘fill in the blanks’ as to the details of exactly what God commanded.

But there are a couple of problems here. First, modern Bible scholarship has given the world versions of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures with high levels of confidence as to faithfulness to the original manuscripts. The Bible as we have it today (including all purported errors and corruptions) was known and available in the Seventh Century of the Christian Era; that is, available in the time of Muhammad and fully accepted by the Jews and Christians of that time.

That brings us to the second problem. If the Bible is at all accurate and valid, then Koranic Islam collides head-on with Judaism and Christianity in terms of historical accounts, logic and theology as elaborated in previous sections. In brief, the basic theological distinctives of the three religions are as follows:

• Mosaic Judaism claimed that God is absolutely pure, holy and righteous. Human sin caused offence against the holy character of God, resulting in a penalty of DEATH. The Mosaic Covenant in the Torah established a priesthood overseeing an animal sacrifice system to provide a blood atonement (or ‘covering’) of human sins against God, and a moral/legal system to minimize sin and establish justice.
• The distinctive claims of Apostles' Creed Christianity are that the death and blood of animals cannot atone for human sins, therefore God enfleshed Himself into this world through His virgin-born son Jesus who offered Himself on the cross as the final blood sacrifice on behalf of mankind; was resurrected from death in glorified form; and ascended to the right hand of God the Father so that all who believe in Him will have eternal life in the perfected New Heaven and New Earth. (Read the Gospel according to John, the Letter to the Hebrews, and the Book of Revelation in the Christian Testament)
• The central claims of the Koran are that if you recognize and submit to Allah as the one true God and his great and final prophet Muhammad, repent of your sinful ways, perform your religious devotional obligations, pay the zakat (i.e. charitable alms and service), make Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca), and ensure that your good deeds outweigh your bad deeds (all of which constitute the ‘Pillars of Islam’), then Allah will simply cancel your debt, forget about your sins, and admit you on the day of resurrection and judgment into the eternal paradise of earthly carnal delights.

Jews may hotly dispute and reject the Christian claim that the logic and theology of the Christian Testament flow smoothly and naturally from the Hebrew Jewish Testament. Muslims, however, are in a real pickle because Koranic theology clashes with both of those Testaments. It could hardly have been denied by any informed person of Muhammad's time that Mosaic Jews really and truly did set up a priesthood, built the Tabernacle/Temple, and operated an animal sacrifice system for the blood atonement of sins against God. That massive and elaborate system was in operation from the time of Moses all the way through the ministry of Jesus until the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and forced Diaspora of the Jews by the pagan Romans during the years 68 through 72 C.E.

I don't think that Muhammad or the revelator of the Koran really grasped the full significance of the Mosaic system, for absolutely none of it survives in the Koran. If the Koran is actually correct in its theology and history, then the Mosaic sacrificial system was a gargantuan waste of time effort and animals; and the error would seriously undermine the credibility of both the Torah as genuine Revelation and of Moses as a true prophet of God.

As mentioned in the Introduction to this article, the Koran has a substantial amount of borrowings from the Bible, especially the Jewish Testament. An excellent example of this is Surah 12 entitled “Joseph”, which is presented as a supposedly corrected version of the story of Joseph in Egypt from the Book of Genesis. The problem with all of the corrected ‘history’ in the Koran is that it doesn't actually accomplish anything. Even if the Koran's versions are true they would have almost no theological impact on the Jewish Testament, as they don't address the Mosaic system of priesthood and blood atonement of sin by substitutionary sacrificial DEATH.

Indeed, Surah 12 highlights yet another serious problem for the Koran and Islam. Surah “Joseph” is a very abbreviated version of the story found in Genesis chapters 37-50. But if you lay the Koranic version side-by-side and point-by-point with the Torah version there is no significant difference. This can be viewed in two different ways. First, if the worst of the scriptural corruption in the Torah is to be found in the story of Joseph, then the simple changes can be made so as to render the Torah completely corrected—and therefore coequal with the Koran. The second view is that if the Biblical Torah is correct and trustworthy on the story of Joseph, then the Biblical Torah as a whole can be accepted on all points not specifically and properly abrogated by the Koran—once again rendering the present day Torah coequal with the Koran.

The problems become acute when the Koran refers to the Christian Testament. There is simply no “best of history” regarding the collapse of the Islamic ministry of Jesus and the rise of the false religion of Biblical Christianity. Also, its accounts of the mission, ministry and final fate of Jesus are almost completely at odds with the best available Christian Testament manuscripts.

There are two complete copies of the Bible in existence (one in the Vatican at Rome, the other in the British Museum at London) that date to at least two centuries before Muhammad. If the Christian Testament and Jewish Torah are corrupted, then those corruptions were formalized and finalized long before the birth of Muhammad, therefore Allah the All-Knowing and All-Seeing had plenty of time to prepare “best of histories, clear discourse and full disquisition without any obliquity” for corrections in his Qur'an. These, however, never materialized.

Conclusion

Islam is the excellent practice of excellent religion. But that's really beside the point. Such excellence is something of a ‘red herring’. Genesis chapter 4 relates the story of Cain and Able. Cain was, I feel, practicing excellent religion when he offered up in sacrifice to the Lord his first fruits of the soil. I have no doubt that he offered up the very best of his produce, offered it in generous abundance and with the best religious form. I also have no doubt that Cain honestly thought that God would not only accept the offering but would also praise him for it. Cain was probably shocked, confused and angered by God's rejection of his offering, and jealous that Abel's bloody-carcass sacrifice was accepted by God.

However, Cain should not have been surprised by what happened. God had informed both men as to the proper method of sacrificial offering. Cain knew that as well as Able. Cain's offering was rejected not because of inferior religious form or poor quality fruit or stingy portions, but because it was not what God had specified; was not what God wanted; and was not what God would accept. The story of Cain and Able should be a cautionary tale for all practitioners of religion. You may think that you have it just right, when in reality you have it dead wrong.

Islam is the formalization of the mistake of Cain. Excellent——but wrong.

Be that as it may, if the Koran is (as Muslims claim) actually the complete, uncorrupted, final Great Revelation come to us via certified copies in the living language of Arabic directly from God Almighty five hundred years after the Christian writings (and many more hundreds of years after the Jewish writings), then it should be a sparkling gem of absolute perfection. All relevant issues should be addressed, all reasonable questions answered, all important problems solved. The Koran should be unassailable by even the most hostile critic, no matter how well qualified or credentialed. I should have exhausted myself in this article trying to find any significant flaws, errors or deficiencies in the Koran—and failed miserably in the attempt. At this point I should be condemning the Bible, repudiating my Christian faith, confirming the Koran as Divine Revelation from God Almighty, and humbly going to my knees in Islam by sincerely reciting the Shahada: “Ilaha illa Allah. Muhammad rasul Allah.”—There is no god but Allah. Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.

Having said that, if you have made it this far into the article it should come as no surprise that I am totally underwhelmed by the Koran. Although it is certainly of supernatural origin (or at least supernatural assistance), once you boil away the poetic verbiage, plagiarisms, questionable histories and repetitions, the Koran virtually disappears! But most seriously, the residual substance of the Koran fails to satisfy the “Correspondence Principle”. Where the Christian Testament at least tries to flow smoothly from the Jewish Torah and account for its precepts, Allah in his Koran totally ignored the Mosaic Covenant and departed from the Torah on many points without account, explanation, or proper abrogation.

Now, the refutation of the Koran and fall of Islam would not automatically prove Christianity to be true. That's a totally separate issue. As has been the case for the past nineteen centuries, Christianity is going to have to prove its truth claims; standing or falling on its own merits.

In the end I must conclude this article by saying that Muhammad was a sane and honest man who was badly deceived by Satan; the Koran is a Satanic false revelation; and Islam is all too easily twisted by extremist fundamentalist fanatics into a deadly dangerous, oppressive rogue religion bent on world domination.

Questions? Comments?
e-mail the author!
bloedel@verizon.net

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments:

Special thanks to Islamic apologist Demijan Omeragic for insisting that I delve much deeper into the history of the Koran and the evidence in its favor. This additional investigation resulted in the first revision of my original article.

Very special thanks to Mr. Osama Abdallah, webmaster of the Answering Christianity website, for his lengthy rebuttal of the first revision of this article (linked below), and to Islamic apologist Kurt Smith for his penetrating critique; both of which spurred the second major revision.

Also my sincere thanks to Naveed Khan and Adnan Mirza for their honest and direct questions, which brought about this third major revision.

Endnotes:

1. 4:171; 5:17 & 72-75 & 116; 6:101; 9:30-32; 10:66-69; 17:111; 18:4; 19:35 & 88-92; 22:31; 23:90-91; 25:2; 37:152 & 159; 43:57-59; 72:3-4.
2. 3:42-47 & 59; 19:20-21; 21:91.
3. 3:49; 5:110-115.
4. 3:48-58; 5:82 & 109-120; 20:30-34; 57:27; 61:6 & 14.
5. 4:116; 5:13 & 41 & 48; 15:89-91; 41:45; 42:14-15 & 52; 43:63-65.
6. 3:116; 32:13 & 20; 36:63-64; 37:62-68; 38:55-64; 43:74-77; 52:13-16; 55:41-45; 56:41-56 & 93-94; 88:1-7.
7. 3:133 & 136; 4:122; 9:21-22; 11:108; 25:15-16; 36:55-57; 37:40-49; 38:50-54; 43:70-73; 47:15; 52:17-28; 55:46-78; 61:12; 76:12-22; 88:8-16.
8. Isaiah 6:1-4 & 14:12-15 & 65:17-25; Ezekiel 1 & 28:12-15; Mark 12:24-27; 1 Corinthians 15:12-58; 1 Thessalonians 4:12-18; Book of Revelation.
9. Isaiah 65:17-19; 1 Corinthians 15:35-54; 2 Peter 3:7 & 10-13; Revelation 21:1-4.
10. 3:38-41; 6:85; 19:2-15; 21:89-90.
11. Mt. 3 & 11 & 14; Mk. 1 & 6; Lk. 1 & 3 & 7; Jn. 1 & 3.
12. 4:82; 16:44; 17:9; 18:1; 19:97; 25:30-33; 26:192-199; 27:75-77; 32:2; 37:117; 41:3; 43:2-3; 56:77-78.
13. 2:82-83 & 271 & 277; 3:57; 4:173; 5:9-10 & 48 & 69; 6:155; 9:18; 11:114; 24:56; 31:3-5; 45:28; 47:2; 48:5; 74:42-27.
14. 2:34-35; 6:6-9 & 91-94 & 98-99 & 105-106 & 111-114 & 122-124; 7:10-11 & 57-58; 10:21; 11:36-40 & 69; 15:8-10 & 23-29; 16:54-55; 17:1-6 & 61 & 92; 18:28 & 48-53 & 100-101; 20:116; 21:108; 22:44-45 & 48; 23:115-116; 32:13.
15. 2:285; 3:132 & 144; 4:69 & 115 & 136; 5:19; 7:157; 9:33; 18:110; 33:38-52; 38:65; 62:2.
16. 2:60 & 87; 3:84; 4:153; 6:154; 7:103-162; 11:96; 14:5; 17:101-103; 20:9-98; 23:45; 26:10-67; 27:7-10; 28:29-43; 29:39; 40:23; 43:46-48; 51:38.
17. 2:87 & 253; 5:32; 6:57; 7:73 & 203; 20:133; 27:13; 29:46-51; 30:47; 40:23; 57:25; 64:6; and Surah #98.
18. 3:65; 4:136; 5:44-47 & 66-68.

Suggested reading

The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?
F. F. Bruce
Intervarsity Press
ISBN: 0-87784-691-X

The Origin of the Bible
Philip Wesley Comfort (ed.)
Tyndale House Publishers
ISBN: 0-8423-4735-6

The Rise of Christianity
Rodney Stark
HarperCollins
ISBN 0-06-067701-5

Divine Revelation
Paul Avis (ed.)
William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co.
ISBN 0-8028-4219-4

The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus
Lee Strobel
Zondervan
ISBN: 0-3102-0930-7

Links

Here is a good Bible web-tool: biblegateway.com

A good site for questions about Christianity and the Bible: GotQuestions.org

Christian sites dealing with Islam:
answering-islam.org
MuslimHope.com

Here are some good Islamic sites:
islamonline.net
jamiat.org
ask-imam
askimam.org

The Amazing Qur'an by Dr. Gary Miller: islam101.com

The Mathematical Miracle of the Qur'an by Dr. Rashad Khalifa: submission.org

An article detailing when the Koran was put in written form: When Koran was written

Koran word search engines:
islamicity.com
searchtruth.com
submission.org

An Islamic rebuttal of the First Major Revision of this article: answering-christianity.com
[NOTE: For those reading the rebuttal, please keep two things in mind. First, Mr. Abdallah was evaluating the first major revision of this article. I did my best to address his concerns and objections in the second major revision. Also, Mr. Abdallah includes a tremendous amount of material showing that the Koran was supernaturally inspired. Apparently he did not realize that I repeatedly conceded that point in my article. So do yourself a favor and just skip over that mountain of needless reference.]

Truth Revealed by Rahmatullah Kairanvi (1864): bibleislam.com (To Christian Fundamentalists: buckle your seatbelts, strap on your crash helmets and get ready for a really rough ride.)

Check out this brief quote from one of H. L. Mencken's books. It shows his understanding of the story of Jesus. As you read the quote, keep firmly in mind that Mencken was born and raised in “Christian” America:
Mencken on Jesus Scroll down to item number 198.

Table of Contents

Postscript

As mentioned in the subsection ‘Gabriel and the Holy Spirit’, a similar problem crops up in 7:157 regarding the great prophet foretold in Deut. 18:15-19. It seems that the Arabic word ‘al-ummi’ is as slippery and vague as the Arabic term ‘ruh ul-qudus’. I noticed this when using alternate translations of the Qur'an, for some translated the word as meaning ‘unlettered’ (i.e. illiterate) while Dr. Khalifa and Prof. Ali chose the word ‘gentile’. Since the English meanings of these two words is very different, I went online for clarification.

My inquiry to Dr. Khalifa at submission.org brought this response from the staff: “Peace be upon you. Would like to let you know that Dr. Rashad Khalifa has been in Heaven with God since 1990. As for your concern, Prophet Muhammad wrote down the verses of the Quran as they were released into his memory, and he is the one who delivered them to the people gradually. This is spelled out in the following verses:

[25:5] They also said, “Tales from the past that he wrote down; they were dictated to him day and night.”

[24:32] Those who disbelieved said, “Why did not the Quran come through him all at once?” We have released it to you gradually, in order to fix it in your memory. We have recited it in a specific sequence.

“During Muhammad's time people did not have numbers as we have them today. Back then they used letters as numerical values known as the gematrical values. For example the letter “alif” or A in Arabic had a gematrical value of 1, the letter “Ba” or B had a gematrical value of 2 and so on. So, the prophet dealt with letters everyday, he was not illiterate.

“Please note that the Quran confirms that Muhammad was a literate man because chapter 96 was the first revelation that come to him and the very first verse commanded him to “READ”. You cannot command an illiterate man to read.

“Also, there is this misconception that the word “ummy” used in the Quran is limited to illiteracy. Although in some cases “ummy” means illiterate, the Quran confirms that this word has a general meaning implying the lack of knowledge and not necessarily implying reading and writing. This is the meaning stated in most decent and respected Arabic dictionaries, and again confirmed by the Quran. In other words, every illiterate is a gentile in respect of writing and reading but not every gentile is necessarily an illiterate. Gentile is a more appropriate English word to describe how prophet Muhammad did not have any knowledge of the previous scriptures or of faith in general. The following verses clearly conform with the correct and general definition of the word “Ummi” or gentile (lacking the knowledge of certain aspects):

[2:78] Among them are [UMMY] gentiles who do not know the scripture, except through hearsay, then assume that they know it.

[62:2] He is the One who sent to the gentiles a messenger from among them, to recite to them His revelations, purify them, and teach them the scripture and wisdom. Before this, they had gone far astray.

“I hope this clarifies you[sic] concern, God willing.”

Well, not really. With names like “Khalifa” and “Ali” it is fairly obvious that English was their second language. Still, these two men displayed an excellent command of the English language; so much so that I am surprised that they could have made such a serious translational blunder. “Gentile” is so commonly understood in the West as meaning “non-Jew” that giving it any other meaning in the Qur'an just muddies the waters and confuses the situation.

But things are not much better as regards the other translators. My inquiry to islamqa.com did not produce a direct answer. As before, they referred me to a previous Fatwa which is linked for your edification: Fatwa

My inquiry to the Jamiat resulted in this terse reply from Mufti Suhail Tarmahomed: “The correct translation is “unlettered”. Gentile is the incorrect translation. We advise that you use authentic translations of the Qur'an. An authentic translation that we suggest is “The Noble Qur'an” by Mufti Taqi Uthmani. And Allah Knows Best. Wassalaam. Fatwa Dept.”

I think that I can reject the word “gentile” as the correct meaning for the Arabic word ‘al-ummi’. A more correct understanding of this word in the Qur'anic sense would be “unschooled” or “untrained in scripture and theology”. However, such a change would in no way improve the situation for the Qur'an and Islam. Deuteronomy simply gave no such characteristic as a qualifier or identifier of the great prophet. Therefore such reference is irrelevant as regards Muhammad of Mecca and further demonstrates profound ignorance of the Torah.

Also, in researching the first major revision of this article I sent several inquiries to Islamic scholars trying to get their views on the main points presented above. Unfortunately, to date only two have responded, and those scholars seem to have an almost total lack of familiarity with the Jewish Torah. Their responses clearly trivialized the Mosaic Covenant to such a degree that it was obvious they didn't realize how extensive and detailed the Mosaic Covenant really is.

The following is a reply to questions I submitted to the “Ask the Scholar” section of Islam-Online. It is from Mufti Dr. Muhammad M. Abu Laylah, a professor at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt:

“In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful,

“Dear Questioner, first of all, I would like to thank you very much for your interest to ask about something that you feel you need an answer for it. It is a good sign to seek other religion in quest for reality and truth.

“I will answer you [sic] question very briefly as it includes many points that need to be covered, and if you want more elaboration regarding a certain point, write us back and we are always ready to answer you queries.

“We will deal with this lengthy question point by point in brief. Concerning your first point on whether the Bible was available to Muhammad in the seventh century of the Christian era, we'd like to draw you attention to some facts about which no one can easily argue. 1- Muhammad was born and brought up in Makkah (Mecca) and lived there up to forty years of his age when the revelation come to him. There were no Jewish community in Makkah. 2- Makkans never allowed any other religion to penetrate their society. 3- We have no report whatsoever to tell that Muhammad used to read or learn before he received the Qur'an. There is nothing to tell that he learned Jewish or Christian Book in his birth place and bear in mind that he was unlettered. 4- He received the Qur'an verses after verses not in a complete written book. 5- The Qur'an in its order, style and above all knowledge is different from the Bible. 6- There is no evidence whatsoever to tell that neither the Torah nor the Bible in general were translated to Arabic in that time. So, to have access to these books, Muhammad should know how to speak Syriac or Hebrew, something for which we have no proof at all to say it. 7- The Torah and the Bible in general were not available to every Jew, let alone the non-Jewish people. We are here bound by the Christian tradition, i.e. the Torah was kept under the custody of the Aaronic priest and he kept it with him and he used to take it out just occasionally to read and then fold it and restore it to its place. Having stated this, how could Muhammad get access to this Torah. The Muslims believe that the Qur'an is the absolute word of Allah without any human intervention. Muhammad was just a conveyer to this word.

“Thank you very much for your comment that the Qur'an is a complete and correct Book. This is absolutely true. It is true also that the Qur'an in many places and in many Surahs talked about Moses and the Torah and also about some preceding prophets and Scriptures. But you should bear in mind that the Qur'an is not a historical book and you should not take it in the same skill as the Torah and the Old Testament writings in which there are many unnecessarily details. These details mentioned in the Torah and other Books contained in the Old Testament are proved to be contradictory. If you read deeply, you will find many differences which the modern biblical scholars established that these Books are written by different hands in different times and in different places. The Qur'an is free from all this. The Qur'an refers to the most essential teachings of the previous holy Books which are in accordance with its teachings We believe that the Torah is a heavenly Book that was sent to Moses by God and contains guidance like the Qur'an but later on it was subject to corruption and alteration for reasons we talked about in such brief answer. We, Muslims, still believe in the divine origin of the Torah that is in the Jewish and Christian's hand. We also believe that there are many parts of existing Torah that bear the divine stand but not all things stated are of divine origin.

“About tabernacle and slaughtering animal and the Mosaic code of priesthood, we say briefly that Islam does not accept priesthood and the concept of tabernacle and animal sacrifice in the tabernacle sense because this presents burdens to people and are not of practical nature and if we review the Jewish history, we will find that the Jews hardly could have chance to offer animal sacrifice in the tabernacle sense. The relationship between man and Allah should be direct. Scholars of religion should not exercise any special authority over people or claim any special rank at the expense of their religion or take religion as a trademark. We, Muslims, offer animal sacrifice to Allah after Pilgrimage in the feast and in memory of Abraham and Ishmael. This sacrificial animal is distributed among the poor and needy people in the society.

“About the point concerning the corrections to the Torah in the Qur'an, we'd like to state that it is Allah the Almighty Who told us about the alteration that the Torah suffered and He gave us the right thing of these Books and we should bear in mind that Islam is the true religion that was delivered by all prophets since Adam to Muhammad, apart from what we call, Judaism, Christianity, Islam. So, what is written in the Qur'an about these aspects is just to give the right form that was really delivered by Prophet Moses, or Noah or Solomon and other Prophets.

[NOTE: The questions I posed were the seven points listed in the subsection “Koran” in Section One. This part of my question was about blood atonement and animal sacrifice, not pagan human sacrifice] “As for the sixth point, Islam honored human life and totally forbid the killing of man. What was prescribed in the time of Moses to people to kill themselves as a sign of repentance was circumstantial and as a matter of fact it was done by the people themselves not by the order of Allah or otherwise it was a kind of punishment. The command of Allah to them to kill themselves was a sort of temporary punishment as our Qur'an interpreters explained. But in the Qur'an Allah forbids this and releases the Israelites from the bondage of killing. Almighty Allah says: “He will enjoin on them that which is right and forbid them that which is wrong. He will make lawful for them all good things and prohibit for them only the foul; and he will relieve them of their burden and the fetters that they used to wear.” (Al A'raf: 157)

“As you rightly observed, the Qur'an gives the right substitute without unnecessarily argument. You may refer here to Almighty Allah's saying “so turn in penitence to your Creator, and kill (the guilty) yourselves. That will be best for you with your Creator and He will relent toward you. Lo! He is the Relenting, the Merciful.” (Al-Bawarah:54) Your observation here is right that the Qur'an gives the right substitute without taking argument or referring to Judaism because it is beyond the Qur'anic technique, if we allow ourselves to say, to give reason for everything Allah says. Allah is the legislator and revealer of the Qur'an and all other divine Books. So, sometimes the Qur'an gives a definite statement especially in matters that do not acquire anything beyond the text. Islam takes the good deeds as the best means to repent from the sin and to cover the guilt. This gives man the chance to correct himself by himself and to turn into a better behavior and to be more constructive and realistic. Offering sacrifice alone cannot make man better. That is why Islam put it this way.

“I hope we covered your points to the best of our ability as time allows. If you want a detailed answer regarding a certain point, write back specifying this point and we will deal with it in detail as much as we can.

“Allah Almighty knows best.”

And this from Mufti Dr. Marawan Shahin, also of Al-Azhar University, in reply to questions put to him by a Pakistani man with whom I had been in correspondence:

“All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger.

“I would like to direct your attention to the fact that it was far better for you to mention the source from which your friend got the idea that “God told Moses that the penalty of sin is DEATH and sacrifice must be made to pay for sin.” Such concept of sacrifice is totally rejected in Islam. In no way was death penalty is a form of sacrifice. Thus authenticating such information, from your friend's side is very important.

“Having stated the above, I can't deny that there is a reference to the fact that death is an atonement and is a form of repentance. Referring to this, Allah Almighty says, “And when Moses said unto his people: O my people! Ye have wronged yourselves by your choosing of the calf (for worship) so turn in penitence to your Creator, and kill (the guilty) yourselves. That will be best for you with your Creator and He will relent toward you. Lo! He is the Relenting, the Merciful.” (Al-Baqarah:54)

“Even if there is a direct indication in the above verse to the fact that death is a form of sacrifice and an atonement for the sin, the case can't be generalized for all sins in all ages.

“Having said so, I should conform that prayer, Zahah (Zakat), and other righteous deeds are means of gaining Allah's Mercy, and they are not sacrifices for sin although they are forms of sacrifice that the Muslim resort to so as to gain Allah's Mercy in the Hereafter.

“Allah Almighty knows best.”

Had I known that Muslim scholars are so shockingly unfamiliar with the Jewish Torah, I would have framed my questions with much greater care and detail. Since the Qur'an recognizes Moses as a validated prophet and the Torah (with corrections) as a validated revelation from Allah, Muslims in general should be every bit as expertly familiar with the Torah as they are with the Qur'an. There is simply no excuse for this level of ignorance; especially from university professors.

The following is a copy of an email exchange with someone identified only as “joni-congress” and joni's Islamic scholar Mr. Shabir. This exchanged occurred during April and May of the year 2012. I present everything from Joni and Mr. Shabir verbatum and without correction of spelling or grammatical errors. This is not to cause embarrassment but to ensure that I do not introduce additional error with my ‘corrections’.

[From Joni] “i have gone through your article over and over again and cannot find any substantive arguments valid to us muslims as in contrast to what perhaps you wre trying to archieve. i do not believe you are even a qualified quranic student. this is why even the translations you used are wrong. i believe you just woke up one day, had an idea, picked up a translation of the quran and started reading the english version. for you to understand quran you have to study its language and grammar and that is not a four year study.”

[my reply] “Dear Joni, while my primary translation was by Prof. Ali, I have over the years backed that up with other translations available online (and linked at the end of the article). I really don't think that the problems and objections I was dealing with were translation problems. If the Qu'ran is actually the great and final revelation from the one true God, then the truth of that revelation would shine through even in a poor translation.

But think about this question very carefully: Can a correct English translation of the Qu'ran be made? The implication of your second paragraph is that there is no Arabic speaker who could become expert enough in English to do the translation, and no English speaking person who could become expert enough in Arabic to do the translation. I believe the (sic) there are enough true scholarly experts in both languages to do a competent translation of the Qu'ran so as to allow all of my questions to be answered, all of my objections to be refuted, and all important problems to be solved.

I leave you and your Qu'ranic scholars with this question: Why was Jesus virgin born if nobody knew about it at that time?”

[reply from Qu'ranic scholar Mr. Shabir] “BIAMILLAHI RAHMANIR RAHEEM ASALAMUN ALEYKUN Dear Brother Brian

May ALLAH grant you knowledge and the will to understand His message

you made a very good point about ALLAH's light should shine through even if the translation is not perfect. YES INDDED. today the HOLY QURAN has become the encyclopedia for scientists, atrologists, anatomists, physicists, biologists, archelogists, historians and many many more. Experts have translated the Quran but if you ISOLATE ONE VERSE OF THE QURAN TO MAKE AN APPLICATION, YOU MUST SUBSTANTIATE ITS RELEVANCE AND NOT JUST THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION as each verse in the quran relates to one another in unity. but not all verses translated nowadays are accepted because people translate verses to suit their desires because of the appliation of that verse in relevance to their book or article. in order words, they do not study evidence and develop articles from it, INSTEAD THEY WRITE THEIR ARTICLE FIRST AND THEN BEGIN SEARCHING FOR EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT THE SUPERSITION OR CONTAMINATING DISEASE WHICH THE WISH TO SELL. in real fact, your disease only affcts you own people and does not harm one moumin in the world. you only corrupt the minds of your christains. thats is the only success you will receive.

however so you mentioned jesus and a virgin birth and asked why there was no mention of it. the QURAN did not claim mary was a virgin when she gave birth to jesus. neither does it claim mary was a virgin at the time she was inspired with the gregnancy of jesus. the quran states that she was married to joseph and that when mary was informed of the news of pregnancy, she questioned angel Gabriel ‘how can i get pregnant when no man has TOUCHED me’ meaning..i have NOT HAD SEXUAL INTERCOUSE WITH A MAN FOR CONTRACEPTION TO HAVE TAKEN PLACE. SO HOW CAN I GET PREGNANT. then the ANGEL in return assured her that ‘THAT IS EASY FOR ALLAH. even later on, other angels who came to congratulate her for this assured her of the same fate. THE QURAN NEVER CLAIMED SHE WAS A VIRGIN, BUT CHASTE. meaning she was pure and only for her husband. she never had any immoral thoughts in her mind or engaged in foolish talks with men, or any other illicit activities that would have rendered her personality otherwise. SHE WAS CHAST MEANS SHE WAS PURE NOT A ‘VIRGIN’..UNTOUCHED BY OTHER MEN and at the time of receiving the message ebing delivered to her by ANGEL GABRIEL, she had not slept with Joseph (perhaps after her immediate mensturation cycle of which joseph may not have been aware...emphasis are mine).

many confused christian appologist who have challenged their own very book and have condemned it several times due to its authenticity and various numerous mistakes contained in their bible continues, stirving hard to find errors in the QURAN and intend/wish in many order, find a way to couurpt or find corruptions in the QURAN but have so far failed to do so. INSTEAD THEY BASE ALL THEIR SO-CALLED CORRUPTION ON ENGLISH-TRANSLATION. but the very english professors can tell you english isnot the best language to translate any ancient language into. even when you travel to other countries of which you have mastered their language, you find it hard to find words or sentences in english to explain the humour of that language in a way that the humour is not affected. eg. if a greek man explains a funny story in greek, the gravity of its humour cannot be befitted using english as you will realise english runs out of words and nouns to explain things. ENGLISH IS NOT PERFECT BECAUSE IT WAS INVENTED. same for all invented languages out there which are either extinct, or limited.

ALLAH sets His signs and prophesies to be fullfiled by term and peroids for every generation that comes to exist until the end. NOT ALL PROPHESIES HAVE BEEN FULFILED AND MANY GETS FULFILLED NOW AND THEN THIS IS WHY ALLAH INVITES ALL TO LOOK AGAIN, AND THEN LOOK AGAIN IF THEY CAN FIND ANY FLAWS.

some translators have been used by publishers to try to answer that all prophesies have been fulfilled and they try so hard to convince people that the prophesies did take place at times during the lifehood of the PROPHET MUHAMMAD. many of christian appologists hav been embarassed by islamic scholars, when yuor folks try to point out contradiction only as ALLAH SAYS it will return back to you fill you with amazement cause you find in it no errors or descipancies. with regards to your article, i can assure you that your translations are wrong and your application of the verse is perverse as no reasonable learned scholar would apply it in the manner you have unless they themselves have a corrupt agenda and then seeks to find something to nail it their point..but the nail only ends up in you head. now look again from what i have written and find me descripancies if you are truthful. i am only human. and you are nowhere firm in knowledge of qulified to even give a lecture aout GOD because you mind is already corrupt.

[my response] Dear Mr. Raheem, thank you very much for your reply. I greatly appreciate it. I am well aware of the problems of translation, for Jewish and Christian scholars struggle with the problems of bringing the ancient Hebrew and Greek into modern English. Also, individual Jews and Christians have personal and professional preferences regarding the many translation of the Judeo-Christian scriptures. Indeed, many Christians will only accept the King James Version of the Bible and reject all others.

As regards the major religious questions in both Judaism and Christianity, I have found little difference betweent the many different translations of the Bible which I have read. As I said below, I have double checked my work with different translations of the Qu'ran and do not feel that the differences have any effect on my conclusions. I am confident that if I read the translation that you might recommend, that all of the problems I point out in my article would still remain.

I assure you in all honesty and sincerity that I read the Qur'an with a clear and open mind. Even if Professor Ahmed Ali's translation were poor (and it seems to be excellent), I would have recognized the truth of the Qur'an and gone to my knees in submission to Allah. You must realize that it is asking much of a Jew or Christian to abandon our faith. The evidence in the Qur'an must be very convincing and good. As I said in the Conclusion of my article, the Qur'an should be a sparkling gem of absolute perfection beyond any criticism or refute. Yet my questions remain unanswered after eleven years of correspondence with Muslim scholars and apologists.

If I may comment on your second paragraph, do I correctly understand that you are saying that Mary was NOT a virgin when God caused her to concieve by the power of His word? Who was she having sex with? If she was married to Joseph, are you suggesting that he was not having sex with his young bride? Even ignoring the pleasure of sex, it would be the duty expected by his family and Jewish religion for him to get Mary pregnant by regular sex. It is unreasonable to suggest that Joseph was celebate in marriage. Also, is Joseph the husband of Mary mentioned in the Qur'an? I cannot find him.

But even assuming that Mary was not a virgin, the Qur'an still states that Jesus was concieved by the word and power of God—not by sex. So my question still stands: Why was Jesus concieved by God when no one else was—not even Mohammad? What religious purpose did it serve? What theological advantage or benefit did it give, when nobody knew about it at that time? Remember, it is clear in both the Christian Bible Gospel AND the Qur'an that neither Jesus nor his companions ever mentioned that Jesus was concieved by the power of God. It was only reported in Gospel and Qur'an AFTER Jesus was taken up into heaven.

Once again I thank you for the honor of your reply, and look forward to a scholarly answer. I have many more questions for you.

[response for joni] brian how are you? i spoke to brother shabir and he studied your publication and my response. he actually recomend that you read the response from joni-congress thoroughly as the answers and light are carried in joni's response to your article. he said you may have only browsed through rather than to read it clearly.

i looked through myself, an inded, the answers are clear and enlightenend in joni's response to you. i recomend you read joni's response again.

[my response] Dear ?????, there now seems to be at least three people involved with this e-mail exchange: you (whoever you are), Mr Shabir (whoever he is), and whoever (or whatever) joni-congress is. The original e-mail from joni-congress is at the bottom of this e-mail, and is only one paragraph long I have easily answered all of her vague and non-specific objection.

If scholar shabir has truly studied my publication then he can respond with specific refutes to every part of my article. As an honest scholar I will make all due corretions to my article, even admitting that I am wron as regars Islam. However, I have asked a specific question to the teahers and scholars of joni-congress which can be given a specific Islamic answer. I will give scholar shabir another couple of weeks to provide an answer. If he does not respond or cannot give a specific answer then I will have to note in my article that an Islamic scholar was not able to answer this simple an diret question:

“Why was Jesus conceived by the direct power and word of Allah when no one else was—not even Muhammad? From an Islamic/Qur'anic perspective, what religious purpose did it serve? What theological or practical advantage did it give Jesus, when nobody knew about it at that time? Remember, it is clear in both the Christian Bible Gospel AND the Qur?an that neither Jesus nor his companions ever mentioned that Jesus was concieved by the power of God. It was only reported in Gospel and Qur?an AFTER Jesus was taken up into heaven.”

If you or Mr Shabir cannot answer this simple question, the YOU need to consider the scholarly and theological ground you stand upon.

[There was no response to my last email. The following was sent by me one month later.] Dear Joni, I have given your teachers and scholars a full month to answer my simple question about Jesus. As a Muslim you should be VERY disturbed by their unwillingness or inability to answer this question. If you have any questions about Christianity I will be more than happy to discuss them with you. In the mean time I will be adding this to my article as a further example of the inability of Muslim scholars to answer simple and direct questions.

I invite Muslims to respond to this article with explanations. I will post all substantial responses.

Table of Contents

Letter to the editor

NOTE: Over the years I've had many letters printed in my local paper, the Eastern Shore (of Virginia) News. For some reason, this letter did not pass muster with the editor and was not published. It appears here for your consideration. The “Mr. Martin Freed of Quinby, Virginia” mentioned towards the end is a local ultra-left wing liberal who positively froths at the pen over the Fox News Network. Enjoy!

Sunday, June 15, 2014

To the editor,

I was inclined to respond to several pieces in recent issues of the ES News, starting with the reprint of editorial cartoons from the Vietnam War era, but I just couldn't pull my thoughts together for a reasoned reply. However, this past Thursday (June 12) I accompanied my son to Washington D.C. on his school field trip. We saw the Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam and Korean War memorials, the MLK Memorial and the WW2 Memorial. During the walking tour I kept seeing the same message over and over again on billboards, posters, bumper stickers and tee-shirts: Freedom isn't free.

In the past hundred years America has been confronted with four great absolutist, lethally intolerant, and globalist social movements: German Nazism, Japanese Imperialism, Marxist Communism and Islamic Jihadism. They were absolutist in that each regarded itself as the ultimate and final order for mankind; lethally intolerant in that each was willing to ruthlessly and mercilessly impose itself on mankind; and globalist in that each would subject every last person on the planet to its will.

In America we hold these truths to be self evident: that all are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of personal happiness. Absolutists, on the other hand, reject these “rights” as ridiculous and hold as self evident that the Master Race or common Collective or final Great Revelation is the ultimate truth. And each was willing to kill—by the millions if need be—to achieve their respective goals. Americans are broadminded and tolerant enough that we have a very difficult time understanding the psyche of the single-minded, focused and dedicated ideological fanatic.

The Allied nations, Britain and the U.S. in particular, brought the Nazi and Japanese Empires down to ruins in the 1940's, and ended their particular threats to mankind. To my mind the most frightening thing about WW2 is that if Adolf Hitler and Gen. Tojo had done just two or three things differently and correctly they could have won the war, either defeating us outright or forcing an unfavorable peace that would have left us a vassal state. We won that war at the great expense of blood and treasure.

Freedom isn't free.

At the end of WW2 America was threatened by the tentacles of international Marxist Communism. The leaders of that movement, from Stalin to Mao to Ho Chi Minh to Fidel Castro, were unwavering in their determination to bring the entire world under the collective of Marxism Communism. Had the leaders of the free world, from Truman and Churchill to Reagan and Thatcher, been less resolute in the defense of freedom we might very well have lost the Cold War against Communism. Bear in mind that though the old Soviet Union has met its demise, Communist China is taking a different tack by waging economic and industrial war against us while using the profits from its trade to amass a huge and growing military. Communism is by no means dead. It is alive and kicking. The wars in Korea and Vietnam (more properly called their respective Theatres of Operation in the overall Cold War) to halt the spread of International Communism were concluded with great expense of blood and treasure.

Freedom isn't free.

The war against Islamic Jihadism has been ongoing literally for centuries. The Koran commands that all peoples worldwide be brought to their knees in submission through the religion of Islam. Those who refuse to submit are to be killed as infidels. Muhammad was not just a religious prophet. He was also a military commander. He led armies. He and his companions fought battles, killed people, conquered territory, took prisoners and claimed the spoils of war. The Koranic commands, along with the historical exemplification of Muhammad and the early leaders of Islam, have inspired the faithful to physical action for over a thousand years.

Today there are more than a billion people worldwide who claim to be Muslims. If only one percent of them take the Koran seriously, that leaves a dedicated support base of ten million people. If only one percent of those people take up their swords in Jihad, that leaves a fanatical shock army of at least a hundred thousand soldiers of Islam ready and willing to attack the infidel—that's you and me. But as frightening as this army may be, I feel that the true threat of absolutist, intolerant, globalist Islam is not the Jihadist but the immigrant and native born Muslim. As their numbers grow in Western nations they may one day succeed in democratically taking over a major industrialized nation. They could then present the same level of danger posed by the Nazis, Imperialists, and the Soviets.

Only time could tell if the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam were fruitful. Honest people to the present day disagree on the answer. Only time will tell if the actions in Iraq and Afghanistan—the overall War Against Terrorism—taken by President George W. Bush and continued by President Barack Obama will be fruitful. Again, honest people differ in opinion. But what should not be in doubt is the threat to individual freedom and liberty posed by a longstanding religious movement that is absolutist in its claims, lethally intolerant in its conduct, and global in its outlook; not to mention backed up with over a billion adherents. The defense of liberty will come with the expense of blood and treasure. Once again…

Freedom isn't free.

I now move from the global to the local. More specifically I intend to ‘crawl out of my hole’ and respond to Mr. Freed's letter in the Wednesday June 11 issue of the News. The attack on our embassy in Benghazi, Libya was part and parcel with Islam's war of global subjugation. Attacks have been made before and will be made again. But our ability and willingness to respond to such attacks is a very serious concern. American weakness, be it real or perceived, is to the Jihadist as blood in the water is to a circling shark. Therefore it is very important to determine the truth about Benghazi in order to correct errors and shore up weak spots.

Mr. Freed says that Republican stinginess deprived Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of the resource to defend the embassy. If so, no amount of smoke from the Republican camp could possibly conceal this fact. Republicans would move heaven and earth to prevent any type of investigation of this incident. For them to initiate such an investigation in an election year would be political suicide. On the other hand, Fox News has been claiming that resource was available but not used in Benghazi. Personally I do not expect the Secretary of State or the President, of either political party, to be familiar with the details of embassy security. That is handled by lower level executives and functionaries. If resource was available but not utilized by those executives, then Secretary of State Clinton should have been mad as the proverbial wet hen and initiated her own investigation of the matter. In short, heads should have rolled at State, with dismissals, resignations, demotions and letters of reprimand. Such swift and decisive action by Secretary Clinton would have greatly and favorably impressed Americans—even a hole-crawler such as myself. So, Mr. Freed, did Secretary Clinton conduct such an investigation? Perhaps Fox News overlooked it.

I conclude this letter with comments on Fox News. Mr. Freed seems quite incensed with this news outlet. He attributes great, and downright evil, influence to it. However, the idea that Fox News (and I'll throw Rush Limbaugh into the pot) on one side of the scale can outweigh the combined effect of ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, Public Television/Radio, Time, Newsweek, The NY Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and Martin Freed of Quinby would by funny if false, tragic if true. My personal view on the American mass media is summed up with this quote from the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: “I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.”

I have been lied to, misinformed, misdirected and propagandized by the mass media so often that I rarely bother with it. I also regard most of the misinformation to be presented for ideological and political purposes. While I occasionally tune in to Fox News, I’m just as likely to tune in to CNN Headline News—when I tune in at all. In my “cynicism” I heed the advice of that wicked Republican, Ronald Reagan: “Trust, but verify.”

I now crawl back into my hole.

Table of Contents

DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH

The Unlikely Journey from Samuel L. Clemens to Mark Twain

Thesis Statement:

[NOTE: This article is a slightly modified version of my 200-level American Literature college term paper.]

Was the emergence of Mark Twain from the mind of Samuel Langhorne Clemens a literary inevitability? This article will show that there were special, unpredictable historical events related to Clemens' life that produced the literary icon known as Mark Twain—and could just as easily have snuffed him out.

Introduction:

“Because geography is taught in grade schools along with spelling and arithmetic, most of us are likely to think of it as something very simple and rudimentary, something like “What is the Capital of Afghanistan?” or “Bound Iowa.” Few of us realize that it is the prince of disciplines, combining the fruits of geology, meteorology, anthropology, sociology, economics, and dozens of other specialties. The good geographer is a philosopher. The medieval Arabs, who wrote some of the finest geographical treatises ever penned, knew this. They knew that the culture of a people bears an intimate relationship to the landscape on which they live. They knew that the geography of a region shapes the way of life of its inhabitants, as the bones and muscles of a healthy man shape his skin. …If one is to understand the civilization of a people, one must start with the geography of the land they inhabit (Coon, 10).”

A raw diamond is a rather nondescript looking rock that might pass unnoticed by the untrained eye. It is not until it has been carefully cut and polished by the jeweler that it can sparkle as a finished gemstone. Unlike an inanimate diamond, a human being is cut and polished by family, culture and geography. However, the processes of life are often careless and accidental. As this article progresses, the reader will come to see that the cut and polish of Samuel L. Clemens depended heavily upon the haphazard fortunes and decisions of his father John Marshal Clemens. How John M. Clemens fared quite literally determined the existence of the man the world would come to know as Mark Twain.

Section One

Mountain Cats and River Rats

John Marshall Clemens, named for the future Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, was born in Virginia in the year 1798 (Fishkin, 29). John's father Samuel took his family to Kentucky in the early 1800's in search of cheaper land (Hoffman, 2). Samuel Clemens died during a house building accident when John was a child. His mother remarried, but the stepfather was inattentive to the boy, and John left home as soon as he was old enough to be on his own. He returned to his native Virginia to apprentice (occupation not determined) with a relative named Langhorne. However, his apprenticeship was not a success, and he returned to Kentucky to start anew by studying the law (Bloom, 8).

He was admitted to the Kentucky bar in the year 1822. All of the references consulted for this article that describe the personality of John Clemens use terms such as ‘dour’, ‘serious’, ‘somber’, even ‘cadaverous’. Mark Twain referred to his father as “stern, unsmiling (Ward, 3).” Apparently an unhappy childhood gave rise to a very sober adult.

As we shall soon see, behind the sober mask of John's face was a man of ambition, drive, determination, and deep dedication to family. In the year after he entered the Kentucky bar, John represented two brothers named Lampton in a bankruptcy case. He lost the case, but married Ben Lampton's daughter Jane. The newlywed couple was a study on contrasts, the overly serious John paired with the outgoing, fun loving, humorous Jane (Bloom, 6-7). John and Jane Clemens spent the first two years of their married life in Jane's hometown of Columbia, Kentucky (Hoffman, 3).

John was not satisfied with his prospects in Kentucky, so in the year 1825 he moved south to the Tennessee town of Gainesboro where his eldest son Orion (per mother Jane, accent on the first syllable) was born. Still not satisfied with life, in 1826 he moved his small family forty miles east to the Fentress County seat of Jamestown where his eldest daughter Pamela (accent on the second syllable) was born in 1827, with short-lived son Pleasant born in 1828. Daughter Margaret joined the family in 1830. John moved his family yet again in 1831 nine miles north to the Wolf River valley town of Pall Mall where his third son Benjamin was born in 1832 (Hoffman, 3). They remained in the Jamestown/Pall Mall area until they left Tennessee in May of 1835 (Hogue, 1).

It was the decade from 1826 to 1835 that is of central importance to this article, for this was the decade that the John Clemens clan spent on the Cumberland “knob” (i.e. plateau) of Fentress County, Tennessee. It was here that John Clemens could have achieved satisfactory success. It was here that John Clemens could have stayed for the rest of his life. It was here that Samuel L. Clemens could have been born and raised to full adulthood—if he survived infancy.

Local historian Albert R. Hogue described his home county as “a great county in many respects. Few countries furnish grander scenery. Many countries of wide fame have less attraction and less merit than our own county. One will travel far to find more balmy, invigorating breezes than bless this land (Hogue, 28).” Even allowing for hometown bias, this description was probably not too much of an exaggeration. The land was rich in coal, timber and pine products such as tar, resin, and turpentine, along with livestock such as hogs and cattle. More than one of my references claimed that the land in Fentress County was only good for growing potatoes (Hoffman, 3), but the reality was that the land could have easily supported profitable farming in beans, tobacco, and broccoli (Hogue, 16).

In short, Fentress County, Tennessee was a land of real potential and held promise of actual success; if not for John himself, then for his children. By all appearances, John Clemens was well on his way to achieving social and financial success. By all accounts, he was a respected and well-liked leader; a mover and shaker in the community. He was a shopkeeper, land trader, county commissioner, and court clerk (Bloom, 6-7; Fishkin, 29-30). He helped draw up the specifications and plans for the county Court House (sic) and the county jail, practiced law, served as Attorney General pro-tem (Hogue, 1), bought two black slaves in 1833 (Hogue, 49), and owned the properties directly to the east and west of the Court House square (Hogue, 4).

The crowning achievement by John Clemens during this period was to secure a Tennessee State land grant for 75,000 acres of Fentress County land. That represented almost one quarter of the 486 square miles of the county (Hogue, 1 & 28). Samuel Clemens related this story in fictional form in his book The Gilded Age:

“Nancy, do you see these papers? Well, they are evidence that I have taken up Seventy-five Thousand Acres of Land in the county—think what an enormous fortune it will be some day! I haven't whispered to a soul—not a word—have had my countenance under lock and key, for fear it might drop something that would tell even these animals here how to discern the gold-mine that's glaring under their noses. Now, all that is necessary to hold this land and keep it in the family is to pay the trifling taxes on it yearly—five or ten dollars—the whole tract would not sell for over a third of a cent an acre now, but some day people will be glad to get if for twenty dollars, fifty dollars, a hundred dollars an acre! (Clemens, 7)”

It is unclear in my sources as to whether John Clemens had to pay any money for this land grant. Assuming that the grant wasn't free, if we take Sam Clemens' figure of a third of a cent per acre as an indicator, one fourth of Fentress County would have cost his father John Clemens two hundred and fifty dollars, with yearly taxes to secure ownership ranging from five to ten dollars per year. Though certainly not a trivial amount in the 1830's, this price should not have put John Clemens into financial straits.

This leaves as a mystery why John M. Clemens did not actually achieve the level of success he so deeply desired for himself and his family. My sources simply do not explain the financial difficulties that Clemens seemed to have gotten himself into by the year 1835. John seemed to be constantly in debt, but there is no detail as to the nature of those debts, their amounts, or to whom they were owed. However, this lack of success was not a foregone inevitability. John Clemens could have achieved success and stayed in Tennessee. Other people seemed to be making a satisfactory go of it in Fentress County. That is, the county was not depopulated by mass bankruptcy or abandonment.

At any rate, by early 1835 John Clemens was ready to start over again and was looking for opportunities on the Western Frontier across the Mississippi River. Word came to the Clemens family from Jane's sister Martha that there was budding opportunity on the wind-swept plains of Missouri. Martha had married one John Quarles, storekeeper and farmer in the hamlet of Florida, Missouri on the banks of the Salt River about thirty miles southwest of Hannibal. Their father had also moved to Florida, adding to the attraction.

The town was brand new, having been laid out in 1831 at the fork of the north and south branches of the Salt River. A grain mill constructed in 1835 processed the produce brought in from the surrounding farms. The milled grain was transported by flat-bottom boat down the eighty serpentine river-miles of the Salt River to the Mississippi port town of Louisiana, Missouri for transport to market (Hoffman, 2). John Clemens was impressed by this report, and moved his family to Florida, Missouri in May of 1835. His fourth son—born two months premature, weak and sickly—arrived in November under the ghostly light of Halley's Comet.

Jane Clemens had claimed the honor of naming all of her previous children. However, the newborn was so unlikely to live that she relinquished the job to her husband John. He chose the names of his own father Samuel—a man he barely remembered—and that of the man Langhorne he apprenticed with in Virginia. Perhaps this was John's way of letting go of sad memories, by sending them to an infant's grave (Hoffman, 2). Little did he suspect that he was actually immortalizing both names.

The concerted efforts of mother Jane and aunt Martha helped pull Samuel Langhorne Clemens through a very difficult infancy. Young Sam managed to survive into a childhood quite different from his older brothers and sisters. The extended family of aunt Martha and grandfather Ben, along with the rest of the outgoing, gregarious Quarles family and their dozen or so slaves, gave Sam a warm, rich, nurturing environment in his earliest formative years. His mother Jane was delighted to be back amongst close relatives (Hoffman, 4-5).

John Clemens arrived in Florida with high hopes and grand ambitions. He quickly established himself as a lawyer, and worked in the Quarles's store. He used his experience in county building to lobby hard for having Florida named as the new county seat. He also set in motion a plan to dredge and straighten the Salt River to improve transport and commerce. In 1837 he became a judge in the Monroe County Court (Hoffman, 4-5). Once again, John Clemens looked to be headed towards success. However, unbeknownst to anyone in Florida, a runaway freight train of disaster was speeding across America and was about to run right over John Clemens' grand plans. That freight train was named The Financial Panic of 1837.

The Bank of the United States was the brainchild of Alexander Hamilton, and was brought into existence through the bank bill passed by Congress in 1791. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson vigorously opposed the creation of the Bank of the United States as being both unconstitutional and a dangerous concentration of power. Always controversial, the Bank was a private enterprise funded partly by federal money deposits.

Andrew Jackson was opposed to the Bank when he entered the White House in 1829. Nicholas Biddle, the Bank's president since 1823, was afraid that the Bank's charter would not be renewed in 1836, so he persuaded his friend Senator Henry Clay to secure renewal of the Bank's charter in early 1832—a presidential election year. Senator Clay ran for president that year against Andrew Jackson. However, Jackson made the renewal of the Bank's charter a major campaign issue, and handily defeated Clay both at the polls and in the Electoral College—219 votes to Clay's 49.

Jackson took his victory as a popular mandate to end the Bank of the United States. He attacked the Bank by suspending deposits to the Bank and by withdrawing monies that were then deposited in select State banks. Biddle retaliated in 1833 by calling in all federal loans and contracting credit to the federal government. This brought on a serious economic recession that resulted in anti-Jacksonian sentiments and the formation of the Whig party.

In 1836, another election year, President Jackson responded to the demands of Congress to put surplus federal money in deposit banks while loosening federal control of those banks. This resulted in monetary inflation, wild land speculation and the increased printing of paper money. Reacting to these unexpected results, Jackson issued an executive order in July of 1836 that only gold or silver would be accepted for payment of public lands. This sudden action curbed the inflation and speculation, but at the cost of precipitating The Financial Panic of 1837 (Hoffman, 6-7; Divine, 226-228).

All of John Clemens' plans went up in smoke, as did the similar plans made by one Abraham Lincoln in Illinois. Florida was not selected as the county seat, funding for the river project dried up, the economy in Monroe County went into depression in spite of population growth in Missouri as a whole, and the Quarles family moved to a farm outside Florida (Hoffman, 6-7). John struggled on for a couple more years, but in late 1839 he threw in the towel and left Florida in order to start over yet again—this time in the Mississippi River port town of Hannibal, Missouri. Sam Clemens lost the comfort and support of his extended family, but gained the rich, mind-shaping experiences of his life on the Mississippi (Bloom, 9).

Samuel L. Clemens was born in 1835, but Mark Twain was not born until 1839.

Section Two

Sturm und drang

““The South is a land that has known sorrow; it is a land that has broken the ashen crust and moistened it with tears; a land scarred and riven by the plowshare of war and billowed with the graves of her dead.”—E. W. Carmack. This statement is particularly applicable to Fentress County, Tennessee (Hogue, 55).”

This section returns to the question of the possible consequences had John Clemens achieved reasonable success in Fentress County, and stayed in Tennessee. Such an outcome would have surrounded the Clemens family in some of the worst action of the American Civil War. During the first two and a half years of the War, major army movements swirled through central Kentucky and Tennessee. Armies led by John Morgan, Burnside and Wheeler passed through Fentress County (Hogue, 46), and Bragg's army passed close by (Randall, 203). Major battles in Tennessee occurred at Ft. Donelson, Nashville, Murfreesboro, and Chattanooga (Divine, 340 & 347; Randall, 203).

Possibly more serious for the residents of Fentress County were the homegrown bands of raiders that sprang up during the war and terrorized the entire region. Supporting the Union cause were groups led by Dowdy, Tinker, Beaty, and the Wolf Gang. Donning the Rebel Gray were groups led by John Hughes, Scott Bledsoe, and Champ Ferguson. Union raiders murdered and pillaged any and all that they suspected of supporting the Confederacy. The Rebel groups returned the favor by murdering and looting those they suspected of supporting the North (Hogue, 46). After the war, a Union Military Court tried and convicted Champ Ferguson of murdering fifty-three people, many of them from Fentress County. He was hanged on 30 October, 1865 (Hogue, 59).

The Civil War was a disaster for the Nation, a disaster for the South, and a disaster for Fentress County, Tennessee. As A. R. Hogue put it:

“No other region suffered more heavily from the hardships of war, than did Fentress County. No other region lost so many of its people. No other region staked so much on the fortunes of the Confederacy. Whole companies marched away to war. None were to return. Six sons in one family laid down their lives for the cause. Others suffered more or less heavily. But the longing for native land, and the longing to see home again, was denied to the living as well as the dead (Hogue, 56).”

Even allowing for local exaggeration, Mr. Hogue was not far from the truth. The Fentress County government and Court suspended operations at the start of the Civil War, and did not return to business until after the end of the War. All of the leading landowners, businessmen, County officials and Court officers in power in 1860 were gone by 1865—either killed or exiled by war. Those who survived the War were afraid to return to a county whose government and court system were run by Union appointees, and which held the rebel veterans criminally and civilly liable for all actions taken during the War in support of the Confederacy (Hogue, 56).

On the other hand, the wartime action in Missouri paled in comparison. Although there was a certain level of battlefield combat and raider violence in Missouri, the greatest portion of it was confined to St. Louis and points south and west. Nothing noteworthy occurred in the Hannibal region of the northeast part of the State (Randall, 197 & 234-236). As regarded one Samuel L. Clemens, distaste for war was quickly cured by making the easy sixty-mile trip upriver to the safety of the solidly Union free State of Iowa. From there it was relatively simple to ‘rough it’ with his brother Orion out to the Nevada Territory—and eventual fame and fortune.

Conclusion

Cut and polish

The sparkle of a finished diamond depends first upon the intrinsic quality and characteristics of the raw stone, and then upon the particular cut and polish executed by the jeweler. The sparkle—or lack of same—from a human being depends first upon the native traits and capacities of the individual person, and then upon factors such as family, community, culture and geographical location.

The bright, glittering gem known around the world as Mark Twain was the combination of the native drive and genius of Samuel L. Clemens and the peculiar characteristics of his childhood in the wide open Missouri plains town of Florida and the Mississippi River port town of Hannibal. In order to get Mark Twain, history had to bring John and Martha Quarles and her father Ben Lampton to the vicinity of Florida. Then history had to uproot John M. Clemens from his mountain knob in the northeastern part of Tennessee and entice him to migrate four-hundred miles northwest to Missouri.

To become Mark Twain, young Sam Clemens needed to feel the nurturing warmth and affection of the Quarles family in Florida; to mingle with the Quarles family slaves and to hear their stories (Hoffman, 6); to move to Hannibal so that he could fall in puppy-love with Laura Hawkins and run with the free-spirited juvenile delinquent Tom Blankenship, carousing on Glasscock's Island in the Mississippi River with his gang of adventure seeking youths (Hoffman, 17); to find the decomposed body of a runaway slave floating in the river, and visit the copper coffin containing the petrified girl in McDowell's Cave (Hoffman, 18-19); to enjoy the circuses and minstrel shows coming to town on the riverboats (Fishkin, 32); to see the fights, stabbings and killings along the waterfront; to witness as storekeeper William Owsley pumped two bullets into the town drunk Sam Smarr (Hoffman, 16); and a host of other experiences both wonderful and terrible that would shape the mind and mold the character of Samuel L. Clemens during the first twelve years of his life before his father died of pneumonia in 1847.

Failing that, history would have served up a significantly different Sam Clemens. Not necessarily inferior, but necessarily not the same person who would have written Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This, of course, assumes that he would not have been sacrificed by History upon the altar of War in the 1860's; cut down before a literary career could have begun.

In the end, the fascinating journey from Samuel L. Clemens to Mark Twain depended heavily upon the sad journey from a youthful, ambitious John M. Clemens to a bankrupt, pneumonic failure clinging—even with his final breath—to the fruitless dream of elusive wealth (Hoffman, 19-20).

References:

Bloom, Harold ed. [et al.]
Bloom's BioCritiques: Mark Twain
Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2003

Clemens & Warner
The Gilded Age
New York: Harper & Brothers, 1915

Coon, Carlton S.
Caravan: The Story of the Middle East
New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1951

Divine, Robert [et al.]
America Past and Present, Vol. 1
New York: Longman Publishers, 2002

Fishkin, Shelley ed. [et al.]
A Historical Guide to Mark Twain
New York: Oxford University Press, 2002

Hoffman, Andrew
Inventing Mark Twain: The Lives of Samuel Langhorne Clemens
New York: William Morrow and Company, 1997

Hogue, Albert R.
Mark Twain's Obedstown and Knobs of Tennessee (A History of Jamestown and Fentress County, Tennessee)
Jamestown: Cumberland Printing Co., 1950

Randall & Donald
The Civil War and Reconstruction
Lexington: D. C. Heath and Company, 1969

Ward, Duncan & Burns
Mark Twain: An Illustrated Biography
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001

Table of Contents

Millennial Kingdom

(NOTE: Read the Book of Revelation, especially chapters 17 through 22)

The apostles and disciples of Jesus fully expected the return of Christ during their lifetime. Christians down through the following centuries to the present day have been perplexed by the apparent slowness in the return of the One who said, “Behold, I am coming soon!” (Rev 22:12 NIV) Obviously God has a different definition of ‘soon’ than we do.

Be that as it may, God has an ongoing plan for the conquest of evil and rebellion, and the ultimate creation of an entirely new, perfect and eternal home for mankind. A major objective in the conquest of evil and rebellion will be the historical/experiential proof that mankind cannot achieve final perfection or lasting solutions to the problems of human existence on planet Earth through human effort—even with Divine assistance. From the pristine conditions of the Garden of Eden all the way through to the end of the Godly kingdom of the Millennial reign, mankind will have tried—and failed at—all possible human solutions.

To my mind the most fascinating aspect of the Millennial kingdom is that it will fail to solve any of the basic problems of mankind. Even with the physical presence and Lordship of Jesus Christ (some say that King David will sit on the throne) during the entire Millennial period, along with the conspicuous assistance of resurrected martyrs from the Tribulation and Battle of Armageddon, Satan will still be able to tempt and provoke mankind to open rebellion and warfare against the very throne of God in the Temple at Jerusalem.

It is generally—if vaguely—assumed by those who read the Book of Revelation that the people living during the Millennial Kingdom will be physically immortal, and that the human population will be static in size. My assertion is that the Millennial Kingdom will start out with the traumatized survivors of the Tribulation and Battle of Armageddon. Those survivors will be regular mortal humans. They will mate, bear children, grow old and die—just as people do right now. Each generation of people in the ever-expanding population of the Millennial Kingdom will need to come to a saving faith in Jesus Christ—just as people do right now. Indeed, the Millennial Kingdom will be surprisingly like the world as it is right now (minus the crime, violence and open immorality). By the end of the Millennial Kingdom, the Tribulation and Armageddon period will be as remote to human memory as the reign of King Charlemagne is to the present human mind. It may even seem the stuff of myth and superstition.

Picture a peaceful and prosperous commonwealth of nations loosely governed by Jesus from His throne at Jerusalem. The hardest thing to understand about this Kingdom is that Jesus will not be exercising full omnipotent power or omnipresent supervision over mankind. Though supernatural in character (just like the rule of the Anti-Christ!), the government of Jesus during His thousand-year reign will be strikingly similar to a regular human constitutional monarchy; that is, rebellion will seem to be an achievable objective to those people.

From the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden on through to the start of the Millenial Kingdom there have been three main driving forces of human sinful rebellion. The first is direct demonic temptation and deception. The second is the influence of Satan's worldly system which works to deceive, misguide and tempt people away from salvation through Christ. The third is our inborn sin nature; that is, our inclination to rebel against God. At the very beginning of the Millenial Kingdom, Satan (and presumably all of his demon angels) will be cast into the Abyss thereby ending his direct influence. Then Jesus will dismantle the sinful, immoral world system and establish a new worldwide system based upon righteous principles. However, the inborn sin nature of mankind will still be in play.

Throughout the Millennial Kingdom a significant portion of humanity will secretly harbor sinful, rebellious desires. These, however, will be stiffled or thwarted by the righteous rule of Jesus from His throne in Jerusalem. When released from the abyss, Satan will tap directly into this bubbling undercurrent of sinful desire. The great deception by Satan will be that if all those inclined to rebellion quickly mobilize and launch a blitzkrieg attack on Jerusalem, then Jesus can be dethroned and a New World Order of mankind established in His place.

Unlike riots which tend to be short-lived spontaneous outbursts of mindless violence, true revolts require three main ingredients. First, they require a very significant cause; a deep sense of dissatisfaction, injustice or inequity. Second, they require deeply dedicated leadership willing to risk death or exile in the event of failure. Third, true revolts require at least a ghost of a chance of success.

God will grant to humanity the full freedom of action and the latitude of organization needed by Satan in order to perpetrate the final great deception of mankind for the purpose of open rebellion and attack against the kingship of the Son of God. This drama will be allowed by God to play out to its final and bitter conclusion.

At the very end of the Millennial Kingdom, after the final rebellion has been put down, God is going to terminate human history in this universe. God will create an entirely new Heaven, new Earth and a New Jerusalem, employing a totally different set of physical laws that will do away with decay and degeneration. All those who were saved through faith in Jesus Christ will be given new, perfected and eternal bodies like unto the angels. The devil and his mutinous demons, along with those people who rejected Jesus, will spend the rest of eternity in the solitary confinement chamber of hell. The old Earth will be destroyed by fire, and the old universe sent back into the nothingness whence it came. Post-Millennial mankind will pass into God's dynamic eternity for purposes beyond our wildest dreams, and fulfillment beyond our deepest desires.

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

Table of Contents

Net Risk

We live in a world full of risk. The risk of hazard, injury, loss or death simply cannot be avoided in this life. Risk can be minimized. Risk can be mitigated. But risk cannot be eliminated. That being the case, what is my net risk of harm by being a Christian? Is it substantially higher than that of being an atheist or an adherent of another religion or philosophy?

I do not perceive that there is any additional risk worth worrying about. The teachings of Jesus are right-minded in and of themselves, and have been lauded by many who do not accept the religion as a whole. If called upon by God to enter the mission field so as to spread the Gospel of Christ, I may be exposed to increased risk. But no more so than that of an atheist explorer who heads into dangerous territory or even of an atheist social worker headed into the rough part of town. Being a Christian might expose me to persecution. However, people may be persecuted for a wide range of reasons having nothing to do with religion. Race, culture, sexual orientation, style, social status, ethnic or tribal origins, etc. spring immediately to mind as reasons for persecution.

Perhaps my Christian faith is simply wrong, and some other religion or philosophical position is actually correct. In that case, my risk depends entirely upon the penalty (if any) for being wrong. If the atheists are correct, there is no consequence at all beyond the universal fate of oblivion. If one of the Eastern religions is correct, then I would simply be pulled through the mill for a few extra reincarnations—assuming that Christianity would not actually put me ahead of the game! If some other pagan or barbarian religion is correct then I might suffer the consequences by being a Christian. But considering the incredible multiplicity of such religions throughout human history, it is unlikely that I would have found myself in the correct one to start with even if I wasn't a Christian. And the same holds with Judaism. I do not know of a single Jew in my family tree. That being the case, even if Christianity had never existed I would today almost certainly not be a Jew. If there is a judgment or penalty for not being Jewish, then I would simply join the rest of the 99.7% of the world's population and be damned to a burning hell—or whatever.

The net increase in risk by my being a Christian: virtually zero.

Table of Contents

Providence

Part of a letter from Benjamin Franklin to Ezra Stiles, Philadelphia, 9 March,1790:

“You desire to know something of my religion. It is the first time I have been questioned upon it. But I cannot take your curiosity amiss, and shall endeavour in a few words to gratify it. Here is my creed. I believe in one God, the creator of the universe. That he governs it by his Providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable service we render to him is doing good to his other children. That the soul of man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental points in all sound religion, and I regard them as you do in whatever sect I meet with them.

“As to Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think his system of morals and his religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is like to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupting changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some doubts as to his Divinity; though it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it. And think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble. I see no harm, however, in its being believed, if that belief has the good consequence, as probably it has, of making his doctrines more respected and more observed; especially as I do not perceive, that the Supreme takes it amiss, by distinguishing the unbelievers in his government of the world with any peculiar marks of his displeasure.

“I shall only add, respecting myself, that, having experienced the goodness of that Being in conducting me prosperously through a long life, I have no doubt of its continuance in the next, though without the smallest conceit of meriting such goodness.” (NOTE: This letter was written five weeks before Franklin's death)

I introduce the subject of God's general Providence by way of Benjamin Franklin's letter for two reasons. First, Dr. Franklin is almost universally recognized as a man of great wisdom, deep spirituality, wide-ranging genius, high achievement and good fortune. Second, this letter tragically underscores how a person even of Franklin's mental and spiritual capacities could mistake the general blessings of Providence for the specific blessing of eternal Salvation obtainable only through Jesus the Christ.

Christian clergy, theologians and apologists have made a grave error in failing to recognize and drive home the vitally important distinctions between general Providence and eternal Salvation. Providence (or more specifically the physical/material blessings of general Providence) is made available by God to all of mankind without any particular distinctions. That is, planet Earth was formed by God and has been conspicuously established so as to favorably support all human life. The rain falls and the sun shines on saint and sinner alike; on the rich and the poor alike; on the Christian and the atheist alike. The material blessings of God's creation are accessible and available to all of mankind.

Along the same lines, God has incorporated certain psychological and spiritual precepts into humanity. Precepts such as love, honesty, and generosity are universally available. All who recognize, submit to, and put these precepts into practice will almost assuredly reap both material and spiritual blessings thereby.

On the other hand, eternal Salvation from judgment and hell through Jesus the Christ is something entirely separate from God's general Providence. The subject of Salvation is treated in greater depth in my Christian Exclusivity article above, but in brief, God is working out the extremely difficult solution to the deadly dangerous problems of rebellion, evil, wickedness and suffering that were started by Lucifer when he coveted the throne of God and tried to become God. That solution will be achieved in God's good time right here on planet Earth. At the heart of the matter is how each person responds to the call of God. If a person denies that call or feels that he/she can approach God based on personal righteousness or merit, then that person will be rejected by God as a rebel and condemned to hell (see the associated article above). If, however, a person recognizes the hopelessness of approaching a perfect God on the basis of personal righteousness and merit, and throws him/her self on the mercy of God, then that person will be ascribed the righteousness of Jesus Christ and will be admitted into the eternal New Heaven and New Earth.

The terribleness of the situation is that although God has supplied adequate and sufficient evidence to mankind in order for us to make correct decisions and take correct actions, humans have a propensity to miss or misinterpret the evidence thereby coming to utterly incorrect conclusions. God, in His infinite wisdom, has chosen a course of minimal interaction and intervention in human affairs (not to be confused with Deism), thereby allowing maximum latitude for human free will—and the potential for horrific consequences. The problem here is that a person may live a life in such a way so as to experience the riches of God's general Providence while completely missing the need for eternal Salvation; that is, mistaking Providence as being the evidence of eternal Salvation. Hence the above letter by Dr. Franklin.

Confounding and confusing the situation is that a person can live life in such a way so as to almost totally miss out on the blessings of God's general Providence, yet have eternal Salvation through Jesus the Christ. This was illustrated in the parable of the rich man and the beggar in Luke 16:19-26. However, the lack of material blessings in this world seems, in the minds of many sincere and spiritual people, to be proof-positive of God's disfavor and eternal rejection.

To close, humans tend to mistake material blessings as being sure signs of God's approval, acceptance, and eternal Salvation. Christians need to do a much, much better job of explaining to people that there may be little or no connection at all between temporal, material Providence and eternal Salvation. Those (like Dr. Franklin) showered by the riches of God's general Providence may stand before God's terrible Great White Throne of Judgment shocked and bewildered by the seeming perverseness of the situation. Why, after all, would God go to the trouble of blessing them mightily during this life only to damn them in the Afterlife?

The answer to that question is: free will. God is looking to populate the New Heaven and the New Earth with people whose spirits will eternally honor and love His son Jesus the Christ; not rebel against Him. There has already been one war in Heaven due to the prideful rebellion of Lucifer and his fallen angels. God will not allow human enemies to enter the New Heaven and New Earth so as to start another war.

Table of Contents

Reality vs. Religion

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;” (from the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution)

Even a cursory examination of the world's religions (past and present) will show a bewildering array of beliefs demanding a wide range of ofttimes contradictory and incompatible views of ‘reality’. It would be weak minded or intellectually dishonest to suggest that all of these ‘realities’ are simultaneously true in fact. On the other hand, it would be improper to state that all of them are automatically false. The reason for this is that Science is not developed to the point where it can test for the existence of metaphysical, transcendent or supernatural realms. That being the case, there is no way to scientifically obtain a definitive or final answer regarding that which is ultimately true in fact and in reality.

Being in this state of ignorance, our Constitution and Courts have wisely left it to the individual to sort through the matter of ‘reality’ so as to reach an individual conclusion. The consequences (if any) of an incorrect conclusion would therefore be confined to the individual person and not forced upon the general population as a whole as would be the case with a State-mandated religion or philosophy.

Science, however, is not without value or utility in the search for ultimate reality. If nothing else, it can test those religious and philosophical claims that are within its reach. If there really are gods on Mount Olympus, they should be detectable with the instruments of modern science. If there really is a ‘soul’ that survives death so as to be rerouted (i.e. reincarnated) back to another physical body as featured in religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism and Scientology, then Science should (at least in principle) be able to detect and analyze the entire process. To my knowledge, Science has so far come up empty in this regard.

In any collision between science and religion (or philosophy), the question that must be answered by the individual is this: How will I react if science honestly and properly disproves (or casts serious doubt upon) essential points of my religious or philosophical position?

Having taken up my cross and followed Jesus, my personal answer as regards Christianity is that I would stop, take a deep breath, and reexamine the basis of the disputed points to determine if my understanding of my religion was correct, or if error in understanding had led me to an incorrect position in the first place. If it turns out to be an error in understanding, then science has done me a valuable favor by alerting me to the error so as to effect a correction. Such can only be to the good; and only dogmatic obstinacy would resist the change.

On the other hand, atheists and religious skeptics should honestly admit that science is not all-powerful nor is scientific knowledge fully complete, therefore there may be more to ‘reality’ than science can detect. Simple prudence should caution against outright rejection of the very idea of the Transcendent and Divine.

In the end, however, our Constitution leaves us free to adopt and adhere to any religion—or lack of religion—we choose; even if that religion flies in the face of scientifically validated reality.

Choose carefully.

Table of Contents

Reincarnation

We are all going to die, and something is going to happen to us after we die. Even atheistic oblivion is ‘something’; that is, it is an outcome. One of the more popular of the possible outcomes of death is that of ‘reincarnation’. The general idea here is that the human soul or spirit will survive the death of the physical body and go on to another life in another body. I intend to ignore the theological details of the various religions utilizing the doctrine of reincarnation and focus on the two main requirements of the straightforward mechanics of reincarnation.

The first requirement is that there actually be a ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’ that exists independent of the physical body. This begs the questions: Where did all of these ‘spirits’ come from originally, and why they need to be run through multiple physical lives on this—or any other—planet? As outlined above in my article Human Spirit, it would seem that this ‘spirit’ would have to be purely transcendent and supernatural or else modern science would have long ago detected and detailed the nature of that ‘spirit’. So far, science has come up empty on this question.

This is a very serious problem considering the findings of science regarding the evolution of our universe. Regardless whether you subscribe to Inflationary Hot Big Bang theory or Ekpyrotic Cyclical theory, literally billions of years would pass from the start of this current universe until the very first physical life forms could possibly come into existence anywhere in the cosmos. It has also been determined by science that modern humanity started in the relatively recent past from a small initial population (in general agreement with Genesis 1), but has exploded to more than eight billions of souls. So, where did all these billions of brand new ‘spirits’ come from; who/what made them; and why?

The second requirement is that there must be some sort of natural process or conscious intentional entity that has the power, knowledge, and wisdom to evaluate each and every ‘spirit’ so as to determine what type of life and body that spirit needs in its next incarnation. Two points derive from this observation. The first is that this process or entity must—like the ‘spirit’ itself—be supernatural and transcendent, for science has detected nothing of it. The second point is that this natural process or conscious entity must be of truly God-like capacity in order to do everything that must be done in order to make reincarnation work. I have wracked my brain trying to imagine a natural process similar to metabolism or photosynthesis that could make reincarnation work, but come up empty. The driving Force of reincarnation would have to be a conscious and purposeful entity.

If actually real, the driving Force behind reincarnation seems to be utterly transcendent, supernatural, impersonal, inscrutable, uncommunicative and undetectable. The ultimate goal(s) and objective(s) of that driving Force are also in question. Whatever the ultimate goal(s), the entire process of reincarnation appears to be a forced inevitability. That is, it doesn't matter whether you know or don't know; believe or disbelieve; cooperate or resist; accept or reject. Everyone will be pulled through the mill of reincarnation, like it or not. The only variable here would be the total number of incarnations a ‘spirit’ would be subjected to before arriving at the final destination—whatever that might be. In the end, you have no choice in the matter.

Table of Contents

The Second Amendment, Self Defence, and D. C. v Heller

Indeed, I do not believe, that Providence has done so much for nothing. It has always been my creed that we [i.e. America] should not be left as an awful monument to prove, “that Mankind, under the most favourable circumstances for civil liberty and happiness, are unequal to the task of Governing themselves, and therefore made for a Master.”

Gen. George Washington to the Marquis de LaFayette, June 19, 1788

Introduction

With the above quote from General Washington's letter as welcome, I present to you the distilled results of more than twenty years of study related to the Second Amendment and the U.S. Bill of Rights, and a carefull reading of the majority Opinion and two Dissents in the Supreme Court case D. C. v Heller (2008). I am confident that you will find here a Presentation not afforded elsewhere, either in print or on the web.

To understand the true meaning, purpose and intent of the Second Amendment we must clearly understand the true original purpose and intent of America itself as envisioned by the Founders and Framers of our constitutional federal republic. Many times I have heard America described as an experiment in democracy. No, America is an experiment in citizen self government. Certainly this would be accomplished through democratic means, but the Founders truly intended that We the People would be the government quite literally and in every way—including safety, security, the common defense, and law enforcement. That is, America is very much a ‘do it yourself’ nation.

This quickly brings us to the concept of the “well regulated Militia”. Because the original militia practiced in the early decades of America no longer exists, the general public today really has no factual understanding of this basic Institution. I refer to Article 13 of the Virginia Declaration of Rights (ratified June 12, 1776) and Article I, Section 8, clauses 15 & 16 of the original U.S. Constitution (ratified June 21, 1788) for clarification. In Article 13, Col. George Mason wrote, “That a well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural and safe defence of a free state.” Clause 16 of the Constitution granted to the federal and State governments full power and authority to organize, arm, equip, discipline, train and officer the Militia, thereby rendering it “well regulated”. Clause 15 stated that the Militia would be called forth to “…execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;”. It is important to note that the Constitution makes no other provision to the federal government for domestic security and law enforcement power other than the “well regulated Militia”.

The Second Amendment well regulated Militia can be more easily understood by considering its close cousin: the modern ‘well regulated’ volunteer fire and rescue company. A volunteer fire company is a civilian force properly organized, equiped, trained and led so that it can quickly respond to a call to muster in order to take to the field to successfully fight a fire and/or provide emergency medical assistance. The well regulated Militia obviously utilized firearms as part of its equipment in order to enable security and law enforcement performance. The well regulated Militia was also intended to enroll the entire population of able-bodied citizens whereas the volunteer fire/rescue company would include only those citizens willing to step forward to serve in that capacity.

The well regulated Militia was intended to be a citizens' force maintained so that the federal and State governments would not be required by necessity to raise up professional military/police forces out of the public Treasury for security and law enforcement purposes. As Col. Mason continued in Article 13, “…that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided, as dangerous to liberty,…”. Today those “standing armies” would have to include our professional paramilitary police forces from the FBI down to our local SWAT teams.

I approach the Second Amendment by way of the concept of a Bill (or Declaration) of Rights. Many people are unaware that the First Congress included an explanatory Preamble to the proposed Bill of Rights amendments submitted to the several States. The relevant portion of that Preamble declared, “The Conventions of a number of the States having, at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers,that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added:…”. This is a very good explanation of the purpose and intent of any citizens' bill of rights. Indeed, every Article in the U.S. Bill of Rights must address at least one of these four important subjects: ‘misconstruction’, ‘abuse’, ‘declaratory’ and ‘restrictive’. It will soon be clear that the Second Amendment addresses and satisfies all four subjects.

With the preceding as foundation I now directly examine the Second Amendment itself—enumerated as “Article the fourth” in the documents originally submitted to the several States for consideration: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” The phrase “A well regulated Militia…” refers to the citizens' force provided for in Article I, Secion 8 of the original Constitution. That is, a civilian force competent and capable of quickly answering a call to muster and then taking to the field to accomplish a security or law enforcement objective.

Furthermore, I would point out that the term “well regulated” must not be misconstructed as meaning “a rigidly controlled government asset”. Rather, it is to be understood as simply meaning that the federal and State governments were granted the power and authority to provide the general framework so that the citizens' Militia would be properly and uniformly organized, equiped, disciplined, trained and led for security and law enforcement purposes on a national basis, to the benefit and safety of all; as opposed to an uncoordinated armed mob, which works to the danger of all. As William Rawle put it in his A View of the Constitution… (1829, linked at end.), “That they should be well regulated, is judiciously added. A disorderly militia is disgraceful to itself, and dangerous not to the enemy, but to its own country. The duty of the state government is, to adopt such regulations as will tend to make good soldiers with the least interruptions of the ordinary and useful occupations of civil life. In this all the Union has a strong and visible interest.”

The two words “…being necessary…” serve a dual purpose. First, they declare the right to citizens' militia security as a fundamental fiber in the fabric of American society. As the Supreme Court observed in its Cruikshank decision (92 U.S. 542 (1876) which will be quoted later in this article), the ancient right of organized citizen's Militia security and the concomitant “right of the people to keep and bear Arms” that undergirds Militia security, preexists the U.S. Constitution and would continue to exist even if the Constitution were to be terminated. That is, Militia security is a fundamental and “necessary” right of citizenship, ergo the explicit right to Arms.

They also address the possibility of misconstruction or abuse of the Powers of Congress as relates to the “well regulated Militia”. As originally written, all of the Article I, Section 8 powers of Congress are discretionary in nature. That is, they may be exercised or not as Congress pleases. One of the fears of the Anti-Federalists was that the new federal government would weaken or destroy the Militia by simple neglect. It was hoped that the words “being necessary” would raise the Article I, Section 8, cl. 16 Militia from a discretionary option of the Congress to a mandatory duty to perform (Story, COMMENTARIES ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES, 286 § 318; quoting Tucker's Black. Comm. note D. p. 170).

However, the power to violate still remains. The reason for this is that both Rep. James Madison's original militia proposal to the House of Representatives (quoted later in the article) and the finalized Preamble of the Second Amendment as submitted to the several States for ratification were both grammatically framed as general political/philosophical observations rather than as firm imperative directives for Congress to perform. This goes a long way towards accounting for the decline and eventual extinction of the Second Amendment well regulated Militia.

“…to the security…” relates to the necessity of safety, security, law enforcement, and the common defense in a citizens' republic.

The prepositional phrase “…of a free State,…” is very tricky and must be handled with great care. The reason for this caution is that the words ‘free’ and ‘State’ have spectrums of definition, the various combinations of which can have very different final meanings. As regards the Second Amendment, the word ‘free’ can have a general meaning of: operating openly and respectfully; non-abusive; not arbitrary or tyrannical; conducive to liberty. However, a more modern, contemporary understanding of ‘free’ would be: able to act at will; not hampered; not under compulsion or restraint (courtesy of ‘synonym.com’). Relevant synonyms of ‘free’ can include ‘liberal’, ‘unrestrictive’, ‘safe’, and ‘open’. Once again, however, contemporary synonyms have a harsher edge: ‘sovereign’, ‘unbounded’, ‘unrestricted’, ‘unhampered’, ‘unrestrained’, ‘unconstrained’, ‘self-governing’, ‘unconfined’ and ‘autonomous’ (ibid).

The capitalized word ‘State’ also has its range of meanings. It can be understood in its obvious but strict, limited governmental sense, or in the less common but much larger and broader ‘conditional’ or ‘societal’ sense; that is, the word ‘State’ as the entire body politic of We the People, with the mechanism of government as a subordinate creature of the People (Story, at pgs. 193-196).

To fully comprehend my concern, let us do this simple exercise. We will write three different versions of the Second Amendment in order to cover the full spectrum of possible meanings:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of an open Society, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a safe Government, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of an unrestrained Government, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The difference between these three readings is, I feel, quite stark. While all three are correct according to the basic rules of grammar, they do not have the same meaning or effect. The first reading easily comports with the purpose of a citizens' Bill of Rights. It protects We the People while restricting and restraining the government. Indeed, substituting any societal/conditional word into the place of “State” along with any synonym of “free” yields the same desirable result. The second reading does not seem to invite misconstruction or abuse. Indeed, I feel that Justice Story would be quite comfortable with this reading, and little danger would result from it. The erroneous misconstruction resulting from the third reading, on the other hand, fairly invites abuse and would make the Second Amendment a ‘wolf in sheeps clothing’. Rather than restrict government, this reading (with any modern synonym for “free”) would declare the federal government to be an unrestricted sovereign Power, while leaving the citizens' Militia as a discretionary instrument of that Power. Such a dangerous clause would have no place in a citizens' Bill of Rights.

For maximal safety of the rights and liberties of the People in modern America, while keeping government in its subordinate role as a creature of the People, the correct and official understanding of the phrase ‘of a free State’ must be in the largest, most liberal societal sense. This conclusion is underscored by the fact that Rep. James Madison used the word “country” in his original proposal that would become the Second Amendment (quoted below), as did Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story in the Second Amendment section of his still authoratative Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833; also quoted below). The full import of the above will become quite clear in my critique of Justice John Paul Stevens' Dissent in D. C. v Heller later in the article.

Continuing with the analysis, “…the right of the people…” explicitly declares a citizens' ‘right’, thereby affirming the Second Amendment's place in a true Bill of Rights. It is well worth noting that the Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court in D. C. v Heller (2008) unanimously recognized this right as pertaining to the individual citizen.

The phrase “…to keep and bear Arms,…” clarifies that the ‘Arms’ in this clause are to be purchased, owned, kept and used by the Militia members—We the People! The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed this when it said, “…And further, that ordinarily when called for service these men were expected to appear bearing arms supplied by themselves and of the kind in common use at the time. … (pg 179)” in its lengthy historical review of the well regulated Militia in U.S. v Miller (1939; linked at end).

The concluding phrase “…shall not be infringed.” requires special attention. Parsing each word yields this result: My Webster's II New Riverside University Dictionary (1988) defines “shall” with the words ‘command’ ‘directive or requirement’, and ‘must’. The word “not” is defined as ‘in no way: to no degree — used to express negation, denial, refusal, or prohibition’. The word “be” is defined as ‘3.to take place’. The word “infringed” (and this is where the rubber meets the road, isn't it?) is defined as ‘to violate or go beyond the limits of’ and ‘to encroach upon something’. My Merriam-Webster Thesaurus (1989) gives ‘trespass’ ‘violate’ and ‘impose’ as synonyms for “infringe”. A stitched-together version would be: “…must to no degree take place encroachment.” This declaratory and restrictive phrase, of course, indicates that any ‘gun control’ enforced in modern America must be of the lightest and least inhibiting kind as regards the ordinary law abiding citizen.

I end this section by reemphasizing that the well regulated Militia protected by the Second Amendment is an ancient and fundamental right of the People, not a resource of power for the aggrandizement of government. The sole purpose of the Article 1, Section 8 Militia Clauses is to ensure that the People's Militia is competent and uniform so as to allow it to accomplish its responsibility of securing society on a national basis. While all of the other enumerated powers of Congress are purely discretionary in nature, and obviously pertain to and should only be exercised by government, the Militia Clauses uniquely establish a duty of the U.S. Congress and the legislatures of the several States to perform a service in support of a fundamental and “necessary” citizen's Right.

That fundamental Right, however, exists whether Congress and the several States perform their duty or not. As agravating and disturbing as they may be, the home-grown militias that have sprung up in recent decades are a result of governmental neglect to provide a “well regulated Militia” program on a national basis. Their logic is simply that if government neglects to do its duty, then the power to organize Militia devolves back to the People. The best way to quell these ‘militias’ is for the federal and State governments to do their duty to effect true Militia of “the body of the people, trained to arms” on a national basis. A citizen's Right must never be destroyed by simple governmental neglect (or refusal) to do its explicitly enumerated duty.

Indeed, militia training should be a routine part of public school education right along with phys-ed and drivers education programs, with formal Militia enrollment upon adulthood being as common and expected as getting a drivers license or voter registration as a sure sign of fully vested modern American citizenship. Every able bodied citizen should be able to answer these three question: What is the formal name of my Militia Company? Where do I muster? What is my formal Militia officer chain of command, from local Militia Company Commander, through State governor, up to the President of the United States?

To close this section of the article, the obvious demise of the Second Amendment “well regulated Militia” in modern America demands some explanation. I offer three reasons. First is simple human laziness. Ask yourself this question: “Where whould I rather be of a Saturday morning: in bed sound asleep, or down at the local armory for militia drill, inspection and instruction?” Why, the question fairly answers itself.

The second reason is population dilution. After the successful establishment of the new federal government, several generations of Americans lived in relative safety and security. The personal discipline and commitment necessary to maintain ‘well regulated Militia’ became more and more bothersome, and therefore undesirable. Add to this the immigration of people from countries having little or no concept of ‘citizen sovereignty’ or a ‘right to Arms’, and you see the dilution and weakening of the very idea of Militia security.

The third reason is simply that government itself has no incentive whatsoever to maintain the national Militia. Governments in general greatly prefer to regard themselves as the ultimate sovereign authority of their respective countries, and ours is no different. Therefore it is clearly in the interest of the federal and State governments to neglect their militia duties and instead to hire professional soldiers, officers, and agents out of the public Treasury for security and law enforcement purposes. These three reasons brought the Second Amendment “well regulated Militia” into steep decline by the time of Justice Story and his Commentaries in 1833, and then its extinction by the turn of the twentieth century. Today, the very idea of citizen Militia security and law enforcement is downright alien and frightening to the modern American mind.

Self Defense

With our basic understanding of a Bill of Rights and the Second Amendment fully secure, I take up the subject of personal self defense. This now brings into view the Ninth Amendment: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” The immediate goal of the Ninth Amendment was to declare that the U.S. Bill of Rights was not an exhaustive and finalized listing of all possible rights; that other Rights do exist, but remain unenumerated. As Justice Story put it, “This clause was manifestly introduced to prevent any perverse, or ingenious misapplication of the well known maxim, that an affirmation in particular cases implies a negation in all others;…”. (Story, at 751 § 1898)

As regards the conduct of civilized Society there are two general classes of rights: Political (i.e., related to Positive Law) and Natural (i.e., related to Natural Law). The primary purpose of a bill of rights is to act as an interface or buffer between the citizens of a country and their government. Beyond that are common and traditional rights such as personal property rights and hunting rights, along with the Natural rights pertaining to our existance as members of the Animal Kingdom. First and foremost of these Natural rights is the right to self defense in order to preserve physical life and existence. After all, what value is there in any of our other rights—Political or Natural—if you have been killed by a predator or enemy? Murdered people have no need for religion or free speech, and care nothing of “houses, papers, and effects”. “The privilege of the writ of habeus corpus” is moot if you are the ‘corpus’; killed by predator or enemy.

How may self defense against deadly attack be accomplished? Really, by any means commensurate with the threat. Ordinary animals use tooth, hoof, horn and claw for self defense. Humans have developed a fairly wide range of non-body weapons that can be used for self defense. Most relevant to this study is the personal protection handgun. It has earned high marks for effectiveness in warding off or ending a physical attack. There's nothing like looking down the barrel of a gun to get the undivided attention of a would-be attacker. With that observation in mind, I segue to the subject of U.S. Supreme Court case D. C. v Heller (554 U.S. 570, 2008, linked at end).

The driving issue in this case was the gun control laws in Washington D. C. that were so prohibitively restrictive that no one was allowed to have an assembled and functional firearm within the city limits at any time, for any reason, or under any circumstance—including self defense against direct criminal attack. Never mind that at that time Washington D. C. was regularly at, or near, the top of national homicide lists, illustrating that the criminals of that city were ignoring the laws. Only the law abiding were being restrained.

Enter Dick Heller, a resident of Washington D. C. who had no legal means to own or keep a functional handgun in his home for self defense. He initiated a case challenging the D. C. gun control laws. This case went all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. The late Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the Opinion for a bare minimum five justice Majority in a deeply divided Court. The majority held that the Operative Clause portion of the Second Amendment “right of the people to keep and bear Arms” extends to protecting having a loaded, functional handgun in the home for personal self defense. Justices John Paul Stevens and Stephen Breyer both authored dissenting Opinions which were signed by the remaining Justices. I will examine the Dissent by Justice Stevens later in this article, but the gist of both dissents was that the Second Amendment pertains only to the government's well regulated militia—which has nothing to do with individual self defense in the home. Therefore the D. C. gun control laws were constitutional; at least as far as these four Justices were concerned.

At this point we must seriously consider the interconnectedness of Arms for Militia security and Arms for personal self defense. Since the U.S. Supreme Court in U.S. v Miller (1939) used military utility as the acid test for firearms protection under the Second Amendment, any law that “infringed” upon the citizens' right to “keep and bear” such firearms would clearly violate the protection of the Second Amendment. But would the ownership—the ‘keeping and bearing’—of such a protected firearm preclude its use for personal self defense? I think it rank sophistry to argue that a militia-grade firearm can be ‘kept and borne’ by the Citizen only for governmentally authorized and organized militia purposes, but put to no other use by the individual Citizen.

There is hardly any firearm worthy of Militia use that can not also be used for defensive purposes. Militia security and personal security fit hand-in-glove. The ‘infringment’ of one effectively infringes the other. This would establish the baseline of firearms protection under the Second Amendment, thereby putting physicality to a Ninth Amendment-claimed right to personal self defense. I do not know the specifics of Dick Heller's handgun, but quite likely it would qualify as a military/militia grade firearm. After all, handguns are commonly used by military as well as law enforcement personnel. Indeed, Dick Heller was employed at that time as a professional armed security guard!

It is extremely unfortunate that in the more than two hundred years since the ratification of the U.S. Bill of Rights, the Ninth Amendment has languished in neglect by lawyers, scholars, judges—and the National Rifle Association. So much so that it was mentioned en passant only three times within the Majority Opinion (and then, only because of the words “the people”) and made no appearance at all in the two Dissents.

Justice Scalia did a true heroic job of shoehorning individual self defense into the Second Amendment, but it seems a forced fit. The plain and simple fact of the matter is that the Preamble to the Second Amendment clearly declares the general citizen's Political right of Militia security, not the Natural right of individual self defense against personal criminal attack. While the Majority in Heller correctly concluded that the utterly general, unrestricted, unqualified wording of the Operative Clause of the Second Amendment forms an umbrella of protection, it is highly debatable as to exactly what—beyond the explicitly declared “well regulated Militia”—lies within the shelter of that umbrella.

Of course, the two Dissents clearly indicate that many respected and qualified people deny that an umbrella exists at all, and that “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms” begins and ends with the government controlled militias. Had the Ninth Amendment been properly developed over the past two centuries to clearly include personal self defense, Heller's lawyer could have—should have—advanced a combination Second and Ninth Amendment case. This two-prong approach would have most naturally, understandably, and securely placed personal self defense handguns under the the very real umbrella of Second Amendment protection.

The D. C. gun laws clearly deprived the citizens of the most effective instrument for personal defence against criminal attack. The unrestricted Operative Clause of the Second Amendment unambiguously guarantees to the citizen the right to keep and bear Arms—period. The D. C. gun laws were equally violative not only of a Ninth Amendment unenumerated but obvious Natural right to citizen self defence, but also clearly ‘infringed’ the Second Amendment Political right to Arms, and effectively prevented even the possibility of Second Amendment militia protection. That is, the D. C. gun laws—like so many of the State and municipal gun control laws nationwide—directly violated the spirit and letter of both the Preamble and the Operative Clause of the Second Amendment.

Mr. Justice Stevens' Dissent in D. C. v Heller

Before directly examining the dissenting opinion by (now retired) Justice John Paul Stevens we must return to the Constitutional Era for some historical review. The inclusion of a citizens' bill of rights in the new Constitution was by no means an inevitability. A bill of rights was not produced by the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, and not every State Constitutional Ratification Convention called for one. However, several did, and even listed extensive suggestions for a bill of rights. On the other hand, there were many respected people who opposed adding an explicit bill of rights to the U.S. Constitution on the grounds that such an instrument was either unneeded or would, in practice, do more harm than good (Story, at 713 § 1852).

However, a very significant portion of the people of the Constitution Period desired that a real and substantial bill of rights be produced by the new Congress as soon as practicable. The temper, philosophy, experience, and genius of these people—the Anti-Federalists in particular—expected a full-blooded bill of rights.

The House of Representatives in the First Congress of 1789, on the other hand, was not in a generous or expansive mood as it was compelled by Rep. James Madison (after several postponements) to take up the subject of a bill of rights (Young, 647). Quite honestly they had other matters in mind that they felt were far more pressing, and resented the imposition on their time by the effort required by this relatively low priority task. Indeed, many of the members of the First Congress (both House and Senate) were philosophically opposed to the very idea of a ‘bill of rights’, feeling that such an instrument was unneeded or would actually be harmful and counterproductive. That being the case, they took Mr. Madison's extensive proposal for amendments and a ‘bill of rights’ and trimmed it down to the barest minimum essentials that they felt would take this nuisance problem off their table and allow them to get back to more important work.

As regards “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms”, the members of the First Congress really and truly had only one concern in mind: the continuation of the “well regulated Militia” provided for in Article I, Section 8 of the original Constitution. These men had lived under the bootheel of Imperial tyranny and had an almost pathological fear and hatred of standing armies, so their primary interest was in the preservation and effectiveness of the citizens' “well regulated Militia” that would preclude the use of professional military law enforcement and could be called into service by the new federal government to “execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions”. The amendment they proposed clearly emphasized and protected that particular purpose of Citizen firearms ownership while declaring and guaranteeing the general “right of the people to keep and bear Arms” as clearly stated in the Operative Clause of the Second Amendment.

To understand the difference between Public expectation and Congressional reality, we must compare Rep. James Madison's original proposal in the House of Representatives regarding the ‘right to Arms’ (which echoed the wording from three State Constitutional Ratification Convention suggestions, quoted later in the article) with the final finished product passed three months later by the Senate.

Original proposal in the House:

“The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country; but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.” (June 8, 1789)

Finalized version approved by the House and Senate:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” (September 9, 1789)

Richard Henry Lee was a Senator from Virginia in that First Congress. He commented that there were senators opposed to devoting time to a Bill of Rights, just as there was opposition in the House. In a September 14, 1789 letter to Patrick Henry he had this to say about the whole process:

“I have since waited to see the issue of the proposed amendments to the constitution, that I might give you the most exact accounts of that business. As they came from the house [sic] of Representatives, they were far short of the wishes of our convention, but as they are returned by the Senate they are certainly much weakened. …I am grieved to see too many look at the rights of the people as a miser examines a security, to find a flaw in it. …The preamble to the amendments is really curious. A careless reader would be apt to suppose that the amendments desired by the states had been graciously granted, but when the thing done is compared with that desired, nothing can be more unlike. Some valuable rights are indeed declared, but the power to violate them to all intents and purposes remains unchanged (Young, 713).”

James Madison's original proposal for “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms” went from the expansive to the specific. That is, he started with a large, unrestricted, imperative statement of citizens' general Right; then went on to a philosophical, but non-imperative, observation regarding the importance of a more specific subset of the general Right (i.e. the government-managed well regulated Militia); and then went to an imperative particular point of the subset (i.e. religious scruple to Militia service).

The House of Representatives (along with the Senate) appeared to turn this around, making the subset (i.e., the ‘Militia Preamble’) seem to be the exclusive purpose of the Amendment, and then making the unrestricted, imperative statement of citizens' general Right (i.e., the ‘Arms Operative Clause’) seem to be a greatly contracted and dependent auxiliary component of the subset. This confusing, and almost deceptive, grammatical sleight-of-hand confounds the will and understanding of the People and allowed the rather narrow application of the Second Amendment adopted by the Justices in U.S. v Miller (1939) and the even narrower and misguided strict interpretation from the four dissenting Justices in D. C. v Heller (2008).

With the preceding review under our belts I now briefly examine Justice John Paul Stevens' dissenting Opinion. A major problem with his entire work is that Stevens seemed to intentionally ignore the fact that he was dealing with a Peoples' ‘Bill of Rights’. Rather, he treated the Second Amendment as an enumeration and expansion of the governmental power, resource and prerogative related to the Article I, Section 8 Militia Clauses. A bill (or ‘declaration’) of rights is intended to protect and benefit the citizens of America while restricting and restraining the government. That being the case, Supreme Court justices should interpret and apply the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution with the largest liberality and expansiveness in favor of the Citizens over the government.

On page 10 of his opinion, Justice Stevens wrote: “Similarly, the words “the people” in the Second Amendment refer back to the object announced in the Amendment's preamble [i.e. “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,…”]. They remind us that it is the collective action of individuals having a duty to serve in the militia that the text directly protects and, perhaps more importantly, that the ultimate purpose of the Amendment was to protect the States' share of the divided sovereignty created by the Constitution.” [quotation added]

In his dissenting Opinion, Justice Stevens got so wrapped up in militia minutiae that he completely lost sight of ‘The Big Picture’. The Second Amendment “well regulated Militia” was not demanded by the People merely as a utility tool or prerogative of power for the benefit of government at either the State or federal level. The “well regulated Militia” is a fundamental right of the People that acts as a restriction and restraint on the physical power of government. Since the several States cannot maintain standing troops (i.e. professional soldiers) without congressional approval (Art. 1, Sect. 10, cl. 3), and since the federal government itself must rely upon the militia to “execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions” (Art. I, Sec. 8, cl. 15), the militia serves the interests of the People by being the final ‘check and balance’ on the physical power of the government. Indeed, We the People would be the power of the government! If government (at any level) acts tyrannically or abusively, “We the People” as the militia can stop the abuse and effectively disarm the government by simply refusing to answer the call to muster; or mustering, turn on the would-be tyrants so as to either “alter or abolish” them.

The act by Justice Stevens of reducing “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms” to a mere subservient “duty to serve” the governmental State, or worse yet “…more importantly, that the ultimate purpose of the Amendment was to protect the States' share of the divided sovereignty…”, makes a mockery of a citizens' Bill of Rights and turns the Second Amendment into a philosophical travesty. To borrow from Justice Scalia: “Grotesque” (pg. 13). This shocking misconstruction of the Second Amendment (and abuse of the English language) lacked but one vote on the High Court from becoming the official and binding meaning of the Second Amendment in modern America. From that point it would be but the smallest step to officially understanding the words “free State” as meaning ‘unrestrained Government’. From there the Second Amendment would effectively be subsumed out of the Bill of Rights and transfered to Article I, Section 8 as a full-fledged Power of an unrestricted, unrestrainable, sovereign governmental National State.

At this point I would pose a couple of questions to Justice Stevens:

1. How would you interpret the Second Amendment if Rep. Madison's original version had been passed unchanged by the First Congress and ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States? Would you still give it an exclusively military purpose for the advantage of government? If so, why?
2. If the ‘well regulated Militia’ of the Founding Era no longer exists in modern America, does ‘the right of the people to keep and bear Arms’ still exist? If so, what is the scope and application of that right? This question is very pertinent because “We the People of the United States” are, by the tens of millions, spontaneously arming ourselves (often with military/militia grade firearms, per U.S. v Miller) in spite of government neglect of the Article I, Section 8 Militia Clauses. Gun control laws actually inhibit this spontaneous citizen arming.

Proceeding onward, the First Congress took Rep. Madison's original overall—and rather extensive—proposal for amendments and a ‘bill of rights’ and trimmed it down to the bone. Justice Stevens harped on the utilitarian military nature of the Second Amendment. If merely protecting a prerogative of the several States and a resource of the new federal government was the sole meaning and purpose of the Second Amendment, then this clause could have been very efficiently included in the First Amendment thusly: “Congress shall make no law effecting a disarming of the militias of the several States; or respecting an establishment of religion…” etc., etc.; or keeping the unnecessarily wordy construction of the actual Amendment, simply changing the Operative Clause to say, “…the right of the people to keep and bear Arms for Militia service…” or “…the right of the several States to maintain Militias shall not be infringed.” All ambiguity, doubt, and disagreement would have been eliminated in Justice Stevens' favor.

On page 16 Justice Stevens wrote, “When each word in the text is given full effect, the Amendment is most naturally read to secure to the people a right to use and possess arms in conjunction with service in a well-regulated militia.” By the logic of his overall dissenting opinion, this would make sense only if the Second Amendment was generally understood thusly: “The federal government shall not infringe upon the right of the people to serve in the interests of the central State.” If you find this reading to be a bit odd, I find it to be absolutely monstrous. Yet Justice Stevens' (and Justice Breyer's) overall interpretation really allows no other meaning.

We the People do not have a “right” to be obligated to the service of the central State. Our ‘duty’ is not to the government but “to ourselves and our posterity”. The “right of the people to keep and bear Arms” is the fundamental source of justice, tranquility, the common defense, the general welfare, and the blessings of liberty. They are not established or guaranteed by ink-on-paper, nor by judicial ‘opinions’. They are established by “the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God”, and are guaranteed by power. Physical power. Nothing else will suffice to safeguard the liberties of the People in a dangerous world riddled with criminals, madmen, tyrants—and misguided Justices.

The Second Amendment clearly protects the ancient and fundamental Peoples' right of militia security. It does so by declaring and guaranteeing the general “right of the people to keep and bear Arms” for all purposes legitimate, proper and traditional. So, Mr. Justice Stevens, let's see to it that “each word in the text is given full effect” as understood and practiced by the People of this country for over two hundred years. Stevens wrote, “The burden would remain on those advocating a departure from the purpose identified in the preamble…”; that is, the Preamble of the Second Amendment. But that “purpose” would be the security and rights of the People, not the power and prerogatives of government. I would further point out that the Majority Opinion in D. C. v Heller in no way cancelled or even weakened the Preamble of the Second Amendment. That Opinion simply recognized that the Operative Clause extends beyond its obvious Militia purpose to include all other right and proper uses of firearms. As for “settled law”, it will just have to give way to the rights of the People. The government and its laws are here for the benefit of the People, not the other way around.

Continuing, on page 25 Justice Stevens wrote, “Madison's decision to model the Second Amendment on the distinctly military Virginia proposal is therefore revealing, since it is clear that he considered and rejected formulations that would have unambiguously protected civilian uses of firearms.” Rep. Madison did not “reject” any of the rights of the People. He knew that he was going to have to be concise in his proposals to a decidedly hostile Congress, so he simply refrained from insulting their intelligence and trying their already strained patience by needlessly stating the obvious: that We the People have a preexisting fundamental right to Arms for legitimate and traditional purposes such as hunting, self defense, manufacture and trade, recreation, personal property, etc.—in addition to Militia security.

On pages 21-24, Justice Stevens effectively refuted his own assertion regarding the purely governmental military purpose of the Second Amendment by quoting from the relevant portions of ‘bill of rights’ proposals from the State Constitutional Ratification Conventions of Virginia, North Carolina and New York:

This, from both the Virginia and North Carolina Convention's twenty proposals: “17th, That the people have a right to keep and bear arms; that a well regulated Militia composed of the body of the people trained to arms is the proper, natural and safe defence of a free State. That standing armies are dangerous to liberty, and therefore ought to be avoided, as far as the circumstances and protection of the Community will admit; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to and be governed by the civil power.” Elliot 659. “19th. That any person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms ought to be exempted, upon payment of an equivalent to employ another to bear arms in his stead.” Ibid

And this, from the New York Convention's twenty-one proposals: “That the people have a right to keep and bear Arms; that a well regulated Militia, including the body of the People capable of bearing Arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defence of a free State… That standing Armies, in time of Peace, are dangerous to Liberty, and ought not to be kept up, except in Cases of necessity; and that at all times, the Military should be kept under strict Subordination to the civil Power.” 2 Schwartz 912.

In the relevant portion of his extensive proposal to the House of Representatives for Constitutional amendments and a bill of rights (see link at end), Rep. James Madison simply carried forward the grammatical construction used in those proposals from the State Constitutional Ratification Conventions by stating the large, unrestricted, unqualified, general people's “right to keep and bear Arms” first; then observing the strict, dependent point of particular philosophical concern (the State-managed well regulated militias); and following up with any related or peripheral concerns (such as religious scrupal to militia service); everything compartmentalized by the use of semicolons.

I would also point out (along with the Justices on the Miller Court in 1939) that the Second Amendment “well regulated Militia” is a quintessentially civilian endeavor: “…the common view was that adequate defense of country and laws could be secured through the Militia—civilians primarily, soldiers on occasion. (p. 179)” A standing army is established as a creature of the government; subservient and obedient to its Master. A true militia will have a mind of its own. “Composed of the body of the People, trained to arms…” (Va. Dec. of Rights, Art. 13), called forth for a specific purpose and officered by those of its own choosing, a militia will not slavishly act so as to abuse or tyrannize its own families, neighbors, and communities. A professional standing army (which today would include our paramilitary standing professional police forces) is on the government payroll, and therefore will go where it is ordered to go, do what it is ordered to do, and do so without question; which is why Col. George Mason continued Art. 13 with “…That standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty.” A professional standing army—and modern professional police forces—will slavishly obey where a Citizens' militia might balk—or rebel.

Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story (quoted at length by Justice Stevens on page 33) clearly understood this when he wrote in his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833, linked at end) that “The militia is the natural defence [sic] of a free country against…domestic usurpations of power by rulers.” and “The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium [i.e., the ‘safeguard’, ‘defense’ or ‘protection’] of the liberties of a republic, since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers, and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them. …” (Story, at 746 § 1890; synonyms for the archaic meaning of ‘palladium’ added. This section echoed James Madison in Federalist No. 46)

Justice Story's analysis in no way constricts or reduces the “right of the people to keep and bears Arms” to only the support of the State-run militias, though its application in the Second Amendment obviously facilitates that particular purpose of individual citizen firearms ownership. As Justice Scalia quite correctly pointed out on page 4 of the majority opinion: “…a prefatory clause does not limit or expand the scope of the operative clause.” I would further point out that the wording of the Operative Clause in the Second Amendment is utterly general and unrestricted, and is therefore the “supreme Law of the Land” (Article VI, Clause 2. From the Table of Contents please select my Bill of Rights article, above, for a critique of the serious problems in Barron v Baltimore (1833)).

Starting on page 38, Justice Stevens wrote: “The postratification history of the Second Amendment is strikingly similar. The Amendment played little role in any legislative debate about the civilian use of firearms for most of the 19th century, and it made few appearances in the decisions of this Court. Two 19th-century cases, however, bear mentioning.” Those two cases being Cruikshank (1876) and Presser (1886), detailed below.

With due respect to Justice Stevens, I think that a third 19th-century case is highly relevant and should also be considered: Dred Scott v Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1856). At page 417 of that infamous antebellum decision, Chief Justice Roger Taney (writing for a seven justice majority) gave a litany of racist reasons why negroes should not be recognized as citizens under the U.S. Constitution. In their opinion…

“…It would give to persons of the negro race, who were recognized as citizens in any one State of the Union, the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, singly or in companies, without pass or passport, and without obstruction, to sojourn there as long as they pleased, to go where they pleased at every hour of the day or night without molestation, unless they committed some violation of law for which a white man would be punished; and it would give them the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went. …[emphasis added]”

I would remind the reader that the above list enumerated some of the common rights, liberties, privileges and immunities enjoyed by the ordinary free white Citizenry of that time. Considering that Justices McLean and Curtis did not object to this assessment in their respective Dissents, I think that I can safely say that a 19th-century Supreme Court unanimously recognized “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” to be an individual, discretionary right of the People that is not dependent upon militia membership or service; that is, a privilege and immunity of American citizenship for all legitimate, lawful, proper and traditional purposes.

Continuing on page 38, Justice Stevens began an examination of three Supreme Court cases relevant to the Second Amendment. The first case was United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1876). Stevens quoted from the single paragraph in that rather lengthy Decision (at page 553) related to the Second Amendment and then made his own comments undermining the Majority Opinion in D. C. v Heller. I'm going to include both the quote and Justice Stevens' comments. As you read the quote, note that the phrase “bearing arms for a lawful purpose” was the Cruikshank Court quoting directly from the respondents' original indictment. Please read the entire quote very, very carefully:

“The right there specified is that of ‘bearing arms for a lawful purpose.’ This is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent on that instrument for its existence. The second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed; but this, as has been seen [per Barron v Baltimore, (1833)], means no more than that it shall not be infringed by Congress. This is one of the amendments that has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the national government.” Id., [at 553; reference added]

Please clearly understand that when the Court said “This is not a right granted by the Constitution…” the Cruikshank Court was not saying that the right did not exist, but simply that the Constitution did not create the right. The right existed before the Constitution was written, and was merely formalized by ‘ink on paper’ in the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights. Also, the statement “Neither is it in any manner dependent on that instrument for its existence…” the Court was not saying that the right of “bearing arms for a lawful purpose” depended on the existence of the Constitution. Quite the contrary, the ‘right’ exists utterly independent of the U.S. Constitution and would continue to exist even if the Constitution was terminated. And now Justice Stevens' comments:

“The majority's assertion that the Court in Cruikshank “described the right protected by the Second Amendment as ‘“bearing arms for a lawful purpose,”’” ante, at 47 (quoting Cruikshank, 92 U.S., at 553), is not accurate. The Cruikshank Court explained that the defective indictment contained such language, but the Court did not itself describe the right, or endorse the indictment's description of the right [citation and emphasis in Stevens' original Opinion].”

Although I disagree with Justice Stevens in most of what he wrote in his Dissent, it is obvious that he sincerely and honestly believed in the correctness of what he wrote. The above quote, however, is the only place in his Dissent that I can charge Justice Stevens with being intentionally disingenuous. True, it is in the narrowest possible sense correct that “…the Court did not itself describe the right, or endorse the indictment's description of the right [emphasis added].” This, really, is to be entirely expected. Cruikshank was not a case focused on the Second Amendment. The Court in Cruikshank was dismissing a multitude of defective counts in the original case that covered a wide range of constitutional and legal issues, and was not called upon by this rather large case to render an exhaustive analysis of the Second Amendment or the wording of the original indictment on this subject. They handled all matters in this case with dispatch.

However, it is quite obvious upon a very careful and honest reading of the Court in Cruikshank that those Justices did not bat an eye at the assertion that the Second Amendment means that We the People have a right of “bearing arms for a lawful [i.e. ‘proper’, ‘recognized’, or ‘legitimate’] purpose”. They clearly accepted the assertion by neither rejecting, correcting or modifying it, and then saying, “The second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed;”. I would further point out that neither the original indictment nor the Court's Opinion mentioned Militia service in relation to the keeping and bearing of Arms by the individual citizen. The Court also confirmed that the Second Amendment is a restriction of governmental power, not an augmentation. The rest of this single paragraph devoted to the Second Amendment (out of more than 30 counts dealt with in this case) was just technical clarification regarding the proper application of Constitutional civil rights, and how State-on-citizen or citizen-on-citizen violations of Constitutional rights might be remedied through Law and the Courts. (Again, please read my Bill of Rights article, above, regarding the serious defects in Barron v Baltimore)

The second case was Presser v Illinois, 116 U.S. 252 (1886). This was a 100% pure ‘militia’ case. Presser was leading and parading a home-grown militia group in violation of local and State laws, therefore the Supreme Court's entire focus was on militia issues. Self defense and the overall scope of the Second Amendment simply had no part in this case at any level—city, State or federal. Indeed, Presser is most noteworthy as an example of the Supreme Court dodging both Second and Fourteenth Amendment issues by saying that the Second Amendment does not apply to the States (per Barron v Baltimore), and that insufficient reference was given by Presser to warrant invoking the Fourteenth Amendment. This case, therefore, sheds no light at all on either Amendment as regards personal self defense and the overall scope of the Second Amendment.

I now pause to comment on a single, casual, almost throwaway sentence found on page 41 of Stevens' dissent: “In 1901 the President revitalized the militia by creating “‘the National Guard of the several States,’” Perpich, 496 U.S., at 341, and nn. 9-10;…” With this token tidbit a careless reader would be apt to suppose that the Second Amendment ‘well regulated Militia’ had been graciously granted a new lease on life in modern America. But when the National Guard is compared with the original understanding, intent, and practice of the “well regulated Militia”, nothing can be more unlike. The ‘well regulated Militia’ of the Founding Era was “the body of the people, trained to arms”, keeping and bearing Arms supplied and owned by themselves (see U.S. v Miller (1939), pgs. 179-181), and acting in concert, with officers appointed by and loyal to the several States, not only for the common defence and domestic tranquility, but also as a bulwark against tyranny and abuse (per Justice Story, quoted above; and Mr. Madison in Federalist No. 46, along with Mr. Hamilton in Federalist No. 29).

The National Guard, however, fails as the Second Amendment “well regulated militia” on at least three major points. First, the Second Amendment “well regulated Militia” is to be composed of the “body of the people, trained to arms”. As of the 2010 census, the ‘body’ of people in the 18 to 45 year Militia age group was about 113 million souls, while the number of people in the National Guard is only about 450 thousand souls; roughly 0.4 percent of the Militia age population. This means that the National Guard is composed of only a tiny subset of the general population of able-bodied eligible citizens, and is therefore a ‘select militia’; that is, a creature of the government.

Second, the officers of the National Guard are fully commissioned federal Army officers—in direct violation of Art. I, Sect. 8, cl. 16 of the U.S. Constitution. Third, literally all of the equipment—especially the Arms and ammunition—of the National Guard is owned and kept by the government in locked armories. The National Guard is, in truth and reality, merely a reserve extension of the U.S. federal standing Army, and is therefore the philosophical and practical opposite of the Second Amendment “well regulated Militia”. Indeed, the National Guard is the very thing that the Founders of this nation and Framers of our Constitution and Bill of Rights sought to ‘guard’ against.

Moving on, the most relevant and important pre-Heller Second Amendment case is U.S. v Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939). Two points must be clearly understood about this case. First, the very narrow and highly specific question before the Supreme Court was whether or not Congress had violated the Second Amendment by placing in the 1934 National Firearms Act what amounted to prohibitive requirements on purchasing, registering, tax-stamping, owning and possessing sawed-off shotguns, and the stringent regulations for transporting them across State lines. It was the illegal interstate transport of an unregistered sawed-off shotgun that brought about the original arrests. The defendants in this federal case, a pair of common criminals named Jack Miller and his partner Frank Layton, however, were silently assumed by the Miller Court to have an individual ‘right to keep and bear Arms’ quite apart from their criminal records or membership and service in any militia. Those questions were never at issue.

Second, as Justice Stevens pointed out on page 43 of his Dissent, the Federal District Court Judge in the original trial did not give a “reasoned opinion” (i.e., ‘detailed explanation’) as to why he agreed with the argument by Miller's defense attorney and ruled that the 1934 National Firearms Act was unconstitutional on these very specific points, and therefore dismissed the charges against the defendants. It was the U.S. Justice Department that appealed this case directly to the Supreme Court. Also highly relevant was the fact that the lawyer for the defendants in this case neither submitted a brief on their behalf nor attended oral arguments before the Supreme Court so as to defend their right to “keep and bear” such a firearm. The High Court considered only the legal brief and the oral arguments from the U.S. Justice Department, which was acting on behalf of the Police Power interests of the federal government and its laws.

Justice Stevens tried to brush aside the critically serious deficiency in the Miller decision of the lack of any Bill of Rights counterpoint to the government's Police Power side of the case. He wrote, “But, as our decision in Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, in which only one side appeared and presented arguments, demonstrates, the absence of adversarial presentation alone is not a basis for refusing to accord stare decisis [i.e., ‘respect for prior decisions’; emphasis in the original] effect to a decision of this Court.”

Mr. Justice Stevens flirts with disingenuousness by saying “…absence of adversarial presentation alone…[emphasis added]”. He is well aware of the multiple problems with U.S. v Miller. He is also well aware that Marbury v. Madison was not a Bill of Rights case. Considering the serious deficiencies and inherent limitations in the Miller decision (along with the aforementioned prior decisions of the High Court), and the fact that it dealt with fundamental Citizens' liberties and protections related to the Bill of Rights, Justice Stevens and his three Brethren and Sister should have welcomed with large and open minds a fresh airing of this difficult but important issue.

I now need to make two points as relate the cases U.S. v Miller and D. C. v Heller. First, the Heller Majority Opinion did not reverse Miller; it expanded upon it. Second, that technically the Miller Court did not actually close the door to the Majority Opinion in D. C. v Heller as Justice Stevens asserts. After quoting the Article I, Section 8 Militia Clauses, the Miller Court said: “…With obvious purpose to assure the continuation and render possible the effectiveness of such forces, the declaration and guarantee of the Second Amendment were made. It must be interpreted and applied with that end in view. (pg. 307, U.S. 178)”

Well, no duh. If the Second Amendment does not do that, then it does nothing at all! At issue is whether the Miller Court actually meant: “With obvious and exclusive purpose…” and “…must be interpreted and applied with only that end in view.” As regards the very narrow technical points being considered by the Miller Court, and its lack of Bill of Rights historical review, Justice Stevens tried to force the Miller Court to a narrow extreme that it might not have intended.

Unfortunately, the Justices on that Court are currently unavailable for consultation;-)

It is important to keep in mind that by the year 1939 the Miller Court was a truly modern court. Firearms technology, including militia-grade semiautomatic guns with large capacity detachable magazines, was fully developed and those firearms and accessories were commonly available on the civilian marketplace. All of this was fully known by the High Court. Also, the legal doctrine of an overriding ‘Police Powers’ authority of government for general safety, security, and law enforcement purposes was fully developed by that time, and the extinction of the physical Second Amendment ‘well regulated Militia’ was utterly complete. The Justices on that Court could very well have sided with the Police Powers of government by declaring that both the Article I, Section 8 Militia Clauses and the Preamble of the Second Amendment were effectively ‘dead letters’ by abandonment, so therefore the Operative Clause “right of the people to keep and bear Arms” was now a mere privilege that could be regulated—or terminated—at the pleasure of government at any level.

Instead, the Miller Court quoted (and therefore validated) the Article I, Section 8 Militia Clauses, and then explicitly recognized both the declaration of the Preamble and the guarantee of the Operative Clause of the Second Amendment to be alive and well in modern America despite governmental neglect of its duties regarding the Militia Clauses in the original Constitution.

To close, I feel that the Majority Opinion in the Heller decision adequately covers the subject of U.S. v Miller. I would add only this from the very end of the opinion in Miller: “Most if not all of the States have adopted provisions touching the right to keep and bear arms. Differences in the language employed in these have naturally led to somewhat variant conclusions concerning the scope of the right guaranteed. But none of them seems to afford any material support for the challenged ruling of the court below.”

If, as Justice Stevens asserts, the Second Amendment pertains only to governmental Militia service, it seems strange to me for the Miller Court to use the words “right guaranteed”, or even mention the idea of “scope”. It is almost laughable to suggest that “We the People” have a constitutional ‘right’ to serve the interests of the governmental State. Also, a ‘duty to serve’ is not something that is “guaranteed”. A ‘duty to serve’ is something that is imposed or enforced upon the People by a government through Law, not guaranteed to the People through a Bill of Rights. And if the Second Amendment pertains only to service in the State controlled militias, then what “scope” can there be? Mere comparison of State militia statutes? Differences in drill and presentation of Arms? Variations in armory and equipment requirements? This does not seem like “scope” to me, and would have no philosophical or practical application as far as a fundamental, enumerated “right of the people” is concerned.

Or perhaps the question is really this: In the view of Mr. Justice Stevens and his three miserly, dissenting Fellows, what is the micro-scope of the Second Amendment “right of the people to keep and bear Arms” in modern day America?

Conclusion

Thus ends my review of the dissenting Opinion by Mr. Justice Stevens. The dissenting Opinion in this case by Mr. Justice Breyer was so deficient, defective and ill-reasoned that it stands as its own refute and therefore deserves no review. I continue with a question strangely avoided in all three opinions in D. C. v Heller: in the Second Amendment, what is the meaning and application of the closing phrase “…shall not be infringed.”? The possible extent of legitimate and constitutional ‘gun control’ in modern America surely hinges on this phrase.

As relates to this issue, the concept of ‘control’ (please read the related article above for my comments on modern gun control) can run the gamut from ‘advice’ to outright ‘prohibition’. However, the word “infringed”, as intentionally and consistently used throughout the framing of the Second Amendment, would strongly indicate that any ‘control’ of the “right of the people to keep and bear Arms” must be of the lightest and least restrictive kind. That being the case, the continuing efforts by city governments such as Washington D. C. and Chicago (in the wake of the McDonald v Chicago (2010) Fourteenth Amendment case, linked below) to enact gun control regimes as harsh and constrictive as possible would certainly be clear-cut cases of ‘infringing’ the “right of the people to keep and bear Arms”. Only time will tell if these efforts succeed or fail.

At this point I must admit ignorance as to the internal workings of the U.S. Supreme Court as it formulates its opinions. Are the Justices bound in their opinions by the limitations of the cases that rise to their review? As regards Heller, was the High Court required to consider only the Second Amendment because that was all that was advanced by Hellers' lawyer? If the U.S. Supreme Court is truly Supreme, then it seems to me that in a case dealing with a subject pertaining to the Bill of Rights that the Justices should take as wide-ranging, exhaustive and comprehensive a view as needed in order to fully resolve the issue(s) at hand. Again, I admit ignorance. Perhaps the Justices must bake their cakes with only the ingredients provided them from below.

In closing, my conclusion is that the Supreme Court got it wrong in D. C. v Heller. Both the Majority and Dissenters simply did not do their homework in regards to the fundamental nature of America, the original purpose and intent of the peoples' ancient right to a “well regulate Militia” (clearly declared in the Preamble of the Second Amendment), and the true purpose of a citizens' bill of rights in a free Society. This was compounded by the almost total neglect of the Ninth Amendment since it's ratification in 1791.

It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here, have, thus far, so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. (emphasis added)

Pres. Abraham Lincoln
Gettysburg Address, 1863

IN our future commentaries upon the constitution we shall treat it, then, as it is denominated in the instrument itself, as a CONSTITUTION of government, ordained and established by the people of the United States for themselves and their posterity. They have declared it the supreme law of the land. They have made it a limited government. They have defined its authority. They have restrained it to the exercise of certain powers, and reserved all others to the states or to the people. It is a popular government. Those who administer it are responsible to the people. It is as popular, and just as much emanating from the people, as the state governments. It is created for one purpose; the state governments for another. It may be altered, and amended, and abolished at the will of the people. In short, it was made by the people, made for the people, and is responsible to the people. (emphasis added)

Justice Joseph L. Story, LL. D.
Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, Book 3, Chapter 5 at § 397
Hilliard, Gray & Co., Boston, 1833.

Questions? Comments?
e-mail the author!
bloedel@verizon.net

Table of Contents

References/Resources:

Young, David E.
The Origin of the Second Amendment: A Documentary History of the Bill of Rights 1787 - 1792 (Second edition)
Ontonagon: Golden Oak Books, 1995

Kammen, Michael
The Origins of the American Constitution: A Documentary History
Penguin Books, 1986

Farrand, Max
The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787
Farrand's Records (1911)
Library of Congress website

Story, Joseph, LL. D.
COMMENTARIES ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES
Commentaries (1833)
Lonang Institute website

Hamilton, Jay & Madison (writting as “Publius”)
The Federalist Papers
The Federalist (1788)
U.S. Congress website

The Founders' Constitution
Presented online by the University of Chicago
The Founders' Constitution

Rep. James Madison's original proposal for amendments, presented in the House on June 8, 1789:
Madison to the House

Why DC's Gun Law is Unconstitutional
David E. Young

D.C. v Heller

McDonald v Chicago

U.S. v Miller

Dred Scott v Sandford

Table of Contents

SETI, Space Alien Techno-Gods, and UFOs

by Brian Bloedel

bloedel@verizon.net

Focus points

“In what sense, then, would the most advanced SETI aliens not be gods? In what sense would they be superhuman but not super-natural?”
Prof. Richard Dawkins, from his book “The God Delusion”

“The Truth Is Out There.”
The recurring motto from the TV series “The X Files”

Introduction

The primary purpose of this article is to provide a reasonably brief yet reasonably thorough overview of the great sweep of scientific requirements related to the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence—SETI. Also, this article is currently a ‘work in progress’ in that I will be making certain assertions later in the article regarding biochemistry based on preliminary conclusions which may require correction, modification, or deletion upon further investigation. With that caveat I procede with my evaluation of the likelyhood of true Earth-like planets, the workings of atheist naturalist evolution, and the possible rise of advanced SETI techno-god lifeforms—and their associated UFO interplanetary spacecraft—on other planets in the observable universe. I will touch only briefly and infrequently on the subject of theistic Old Earth Creationism. The great majority of the material in this article derives from the fruits of the modern, established, mainline Sciences.

Getting true Earth-like planetary systems

For the first time in the history of our species (indeed, in the entire history of life on Earth), the modern Sciences have given mankind a view of the universe that is virtually complete. From the quantum to the cosmic, through the full spread of the electromagnetic spectrum, and from the Time Zero ‘inflationary hot big bang’ origins event to the present day, the scientific Picture is remarkably clear and is only becoming more and more detailed with each passing day. However, the Picture still has places that are doubtful or obscure. What follows is my attempt to bring clarity to these questions and to ‘fill in the blanks’ so as to complete the Picture.

The examination will proceed according to the following list:

1. Cosmic Constants at our Time Zero (TZ).
2. Cosmic, galactic, and solar system development.
3. Earth-like plantetary development.
4. Origins and evolution of life.
5. Rise of SETI techno-gods.

As regards the basic constants, ratios and laws governing our Cosmos, the reader will find authors in the Reference list who will provide more thorough detail. In general, the many constants, ratios and laws of this universe (gravity, electromagnetism, thermodynamics, speed of light, etc., etc.) that allow the possibility of advanced complex lifeforms are incredibly exacting, yet independent of each other. Such an alignment of a wide array of independent factors must be either the result of an unbelievably fantastic lucky stroke of a single role of the physics dice at our unique Time Zero, or require an appeal to an infinite number of roles of those dice, with our particular universe as just one of a multitude of lucky winners. We are here, therefore atheist naturalism must try to account for either an incredibly improbable single role of the physics dice at our unique TZ, or account for an infinitely crowded multiverse. This multiverse, however, would exist in a trans-cosmic, possibly extra-dimensional, and eternally transcendent metaphysical realm beyond the detectable/testable/verifiable reach of our physical Sciences; at least as they currently stand.

Getting to Earth-like planetary solar system development will require a short trip through the first nine billion years of cosmic and galactic development. Beginning at Time Zero, our tiny universe was an extremely hot and dense blob of quantum particles and energy in a rapidly expanding Space-Time Continuum. After approximately four minutes of expansion and cooling, the first atomic elements (all of the hydrogen that will ever exist, along with some helium and small quantities of a few of the lighter elements) formed. The ensuing years and millenia brought the beginnings of cosmic structure. Millions of years with copious hydrogen allowed the formation of medium to giant sized stars and the formation of primordial galaxies, thereby beginning the seeding of the young universe with the heavier elements necessary for life-sustaining planets through normal star evolution and supernovae explosions.

After about nine billion years we are at the point in cosmic development where fully formed, mature, and stable spiral galactic structures exist (especially our own Milky Way Galaxy) and hydrogen gas clouds within stable spiral galaxies have the chance of forming reasonably Sun-like stars. It bears mentioning that there are really only three ingredients needed to make a basic Sun-like star: a sufficiently dense cloud of hydrogen, gravity, and time. But what we have here is nothing more than a thermonuclear fusion hydrogen gas ball producing radiant energy, helium, and some of the lighter elements (i.e. a ‘metal poor’ star). Such stars are certainly out there by the trillions, but there is virtually no material around these stars (i.e., a primordial accretion debris field) to make planetary systems, including rocky Earth-like planets. Getting the material necessary to form planetary systems is optional, at extra cost.

At this point we must slow down considerably in order to take into account a number of factors that play into the formation of actual planetary systems that could result in life-sustaining planets comparable to the ‘blue jewel of life’ we call Earth, and the possible rise of SETI creatures. The first of the considerations are the four minimally required factors for volumes of space necessary for the development of such planetary systems. They are:

1. Low levels of local radiation.
2. Low levels of local gravitational disturbance.
3. Proper spectral distribution and intensity of parent star radiation.
4. An accretion debris field having the full spread of the naturally occuring Periodic Table of Elements.

The first stop is on the subject of damaging or sterilizing radiation. It's a real shooting gallery out there, and on a galactic level the physical positioning of possibly SETI-qualified stellar systems is very important. High levels of potentially lethal radiation stream out of galactic cores, with more localized radiation due to higher levels of supernovae explosions from neighboring star-clustering in the galactic arms contributing to the hazard, thereby disqualifying the vast majority of the volume of space in all types of galaxies. For the best chance of the occurance of life-supporting planets and rise of SETI creatures, all potential systems must reside in the sparsely populated regions between the arms of spiral galaxies (to minimize lethal radiation and gravitational disturbances), at or near the galactic plane (for maximum radiation shielding from the core), and at or near the galactic co-rotation radius away from the core so as to allow these candidate systems to track along with galactic rotation over the course of hundreds of millions and billions of years in these most protected and stable regions of space.

Our next stop regards gravitational disturbance. All potentially SETI-qualified star systems in all spiral galaxies throughout the cosmos must have planets traveling in reasonably circular orbits, and be reasonably safe from late-term asteroid/cometary bombardment events caused by gravitaional disturbance of debris clouds around these young stellar systems. It is critical that neighboring stars (along with black holes and neutron stars) not be close enough so as to gravitationally interfere with these circular planetary orbits and debris clouds, therefore all neighboring stellar-mass objects must be sufficiently distanced from our candidate parent stars. Once again we find that the galactic core and spiral arms are disqualified, this time due to the gravitational disturbances caused by stellar overcrowding and/or stellar drift, therefore only the sparsely populated regions between the arms of spiral galaxies can possibly satisfy this requirement.

Indeed, the problems of excessive radiation and gravitational disturbance are what disqualify all other types of galaxies (lenticular, elliptical, etc.). They simply won't have regions of space that will allow stable, shielded planetary systems with all planets traveling in reasonably circular orbits over the course of the billions of years necessary in order to fully terraform an Earth-like planet. Only those very special volumes of space between galactic spirals, near the galactic plane, and at the galactic co-rotation radius will be suitable for SETI-qualified systems. Relative to the overall size of a spiral galaxy, these safe and stable volumes of space are actually very small, very few, and very far between.

Getting closer to our new planetary system, the next point regards stelar radiation. On a local level, the parent star of a planetary system emits radiation that directly affects all planets in the system. Certain levels and spectral distribution of radiation from the parent star are critical for the occurance and rise of advanced life in that system. As the authors of the book Rare Earth pointed out, such radiation is a highly non-linear factor of stellar mass. They used ultraviolet radiation to illustrate. Our Sun radiates approximately four percent of its energy in the ultraviolet portion of the electromagnet spectrum; just sufficient to aid life without overwhelming our Ozone Layer, which would sterilize the surface of the Earth. Increasing the mass of a star to just fifty percent greater than the Sun results in an ultraviolet output of more than ninety percent; far too great to allow advanced life. On the other hand, reducing the mass of a star to just half the mass of the Sun reduces ultraviolet output to less than one-tenth the output of the Sun; far too little to sustain advanced life as regards SETI. In practical reality, and for several additional reasons beyond the scope of this short article, all potentially SETI-suitable stars throughout the entire cosmos must be fairly close to the mass and type of our own G-II, yellow dwarf star—the Sun.

I now get to the issue of the development of true SETI-qualified Earth-like planets. The critical necessity of obtaining the full spread of the naturally occurring Periodic Table of Elements in order to form true Earth-like planets throughout the cosmos is obvious enough, but actually obtaining this full spread is not as easy or assured as atheist naturalists lead us to believe. Normal Sun-like star evolution, all the way through the Red Giant phase to the end result of a White Dwarf Planetary Nebula, produces most—if not all—of the lighter elements from Helium up to Manganese. Nova and supernovae explosion events produce the heavier elements from Iron out to Uranium. But here's the rub. There are at least seven different types of supernavae, but there is no single type of supernova explosion that produces all of these heavier elements.

Thanks to the fruits of the mainline Sciences of the past fifty years, it is now known that in order to form and properly seed the accretion debris field of a well positioned young Sun-like star with the full spread of elements requires the detonation of three specific and different types of supernovae (a Type Ia nova, and two different, and specific, species of Type II supernovae). Along with these three specific supernovae events, it is also now known that we definitely need at least one Binary Neutron Star Merger and maybe a White Dwarf Planetary Nebula event to fully round out the Periodic Table of Elements. Bear in mind that all of these totally independent celestial events must happen in correct proximity of time and space (not too early or too late in the candidate star's life, and not too close or too far away from the star) to allow the presence of such elements in the parent star's primordial accretion debris field in sufficient quantities and proportions so as to allow the rise of actual Earth-like rocky planets essential to SETI, civilization, science, high technology—and UFOs.

It must be strenuously emphasized at this point that each and every potential volume of space throughout the entire cosmos must satisfy all four of the above points, or else it is disqualified from consideration. Atheist naturalists tend to muddy the waters by disingenuously asserting that there are billions of suitable volumes of space throughout the cosmos, therefore there are billions of earth-like planetary systems throughout the cosmos. However, an honest appraisal of each such volume of space will likely show a failure on one or more of the above four points. Those billions of volumes of potentially suitable space will almost certainly disappear upon critical evaluation. Due to the utterly contingent and random nature of planetary formation, any rocky Earth-like planets that might possibly form around these young Sun-like stars will almost certainly either be outside the Habitable Zones or be in unusable elliptical orbits, and/or be deficient or lacking in critically important elements. Proceeding onward…

Assuming the ignition of reasonably Sun-like stars in favorably sheltered and stable regions of spiral galaxies throughout the Cosmos, seeded with sufficient material to form SETI-essential rocky planets, we now have to actually get those planets in overall systems conducive to advanced lifeforms. We know what happened in our own Solar System, but in an atheistic universe without Guide or Direction only blind chance physics determines outcomes. Assuming the formation of suitable planets in these systems, all properly positioned and spaced, and traveling in reasonably circular orbits (which is by no means a certainty), we now get down to the question of obtaining roughly Earth-sized, Earth-massed rocky planets in reasonably circular orbits within the Habitable Zones of these parent stars—again, on a cosmic basis by blindest chance.

These primordial Habitable Zones, however, will each stand at a crossroads. There are an almost unlimited number of planetary developmental pathways possible through physics, astrophysics, and planetary geology/hydrology. Virtually all such pathways will preclude the possibility of the rise of advanced SETI lifeforms. Mercury, Venus, Mars, the Asteroid Belt beyond Mars, and the gas planet Jupiter, all demonstrate possible planetary developmental pathways within Habitable Zones that would lead, quite literally, to dead-ends. Something truly extraordinary must happen within Habitable Zones to form candidate planets with a pathway allowing a truly Earth-like and fully terraformed planet fit for advanced lifeforms and the possibility of SETI techno-gods.

Earth itself is highly cautionary at this point, however, because the extremely Contingent/Chaotic/Non-linear (CCN) events that transpired here from primordial stellar accretion debris field around five billion years ago to current blue jewel of life were fantastically improbable in the first place and would be almost impossible to dublicate elsewhere in the universe. I mention nine utterly Contingent factors that shaped the actual natural history of Planet Earth, and would shape the geological and biological natural histories of all potentially “Earth-like” planets throughout the universe:

1. Mass and elemental composition of the planet.
2. Having a reasonably stable circular orbit within the ‘Habitable Zone’ around the parent star.
3. Surface gravity of the planet. Check out our next door neighbor Venus on this point.
4. Having a proportionately large satellite similar to our Moon. Again, check out Venus.
5. Axial tilt, axial stability, and orientation of the planet to its parent star. Again, check out Venus.
6. Sufficient level of geological activity within the planet in order to shape a dynamic surface geography. Again, check out Venus.
7. Sufficient level of hydrological activity on and within the planet. Again, check out Venus.
8. Strenghth of planetary magnetic field for radiation shielding. Once more, check out Venus.
9. Planetary rotation rate. Make one last trip to Venus. Turns out our ‘twin’ planet is not so much of a twin after all.

Change any of these and you will get a natural history of life on those other planets markedly different from what happened on Earth——and that's making the huge assumption that life even occurs on these other planets. Most important in the transformation of Earth to the almost idealized conditions of today was the utterly contingent Moon Formation Impact Event, along with the utterly random, chaotic asteroid/comet bombardments of early Earth. Planetary scientists are in something of a flux right now as to exactly what happened with the Moon Formation Impact Event around four and a half billion years ago, but all current ideas on the subject indicate something wildly improbable in our particular instance, with duplication in other stellar systems all but impossible. Therefore, atheist naturalist astrophysicists and planetary geologists are going to have to come up with a Planetary Developmental Model that is not dependent upon an utterly improbable Major Impact Event, and has some true likelihood of dependably producing and terraforming planets on a relatively frequent basis—again, on a cosmos-wide scale. Failure to produce such a Planetary Developmental Model will derail the SETI train just as it leaves the station.

Atheist naturalist evolutionary terraforming of Earth-like planets.

The blind chance occurance of minimally terraformable rocky planets throughout the cosmos presents to atheist naturalists a pair of problems which may be intractable. The first problem is the independent rise of life itself on each of those planets, and the second problem is the oxygenation of planetary atmospheres along with the formation of protective ozone layers. The first problem is a bit of a sticky situation for atheist evolutionists because after more than a century of intense scientific investigation they have not yet explained the naturalistic origin of life here on Earth, let alone how it could independently occur numerous times cosmos-wide. As Stewart Kaufman of the Santa Fe Institute put it in his book At Home in the Universe (pg. 31), “Anyone who tells you that he or she knows how life started on the earth some 3.45 billion years ago is a fool or a knave. Nobody knows. Indeed, we may never recover the actual historical sequence of molecular events that led to the first self reproducing, evolving molecular systems to flower forth more than 3 million millennia ago. But if the historical pathway should forever remain hidden, we can still develop bodies of theory and experiment to show how life might realistically have crystallized, rooted, then covered the globe. Yet the caveat: nobody knows.”

The origin of life on Earth still remains to the present day as one of the great unanswered—and perhaps unanswerable—questions of Science.

At this point I must say that I am amazed to find that many atheist naturalists in the Scientific community are actually asserting that life is common throughout the universe. It appears they have not thought this one through to its obvious conclusion, otherwise they would not touch this idea with a ten-foot pole. No doubt they think that the commonness of life cosmos-wide would get rid of God. In reality, just the opposite would be the case. If life itself is common throughout the universe, then life can not be a mere naturalistic chemical “accident”. Life would have to be a deeply embedded, automatically emergent property of the physics, chemistry and mathmatics of this universe starting at Time Zero.

This does not get rid of God. Quite the contrary, this fact would make the God of Genesis 1 absolutely mandatory. And not like some local pagan/heathen god who creates willynilly ‘on the fly’ as it goes along, but as the eternally transcendent Lord God Almighty who intentionally, specifically, and copiously creates before Time Zero; has the power and capacity of incorporating that creative Work into the very fabric of the new universe at Time Zero; and the stately Sovereignty to guide that universe along a particular natural historical path from Time Zero, through 13.8 billion years of cosmic/terrestrial development, to our present day.

My God, how great Thou art.

So, atheist naturalists, you may pick your poison. If life is unique to planet Earth, then the God of Genesis 1 is nearly one hundred percent certain. If life is common throughout the cosmos, the probability of God hits one hundred percent.

Bon appétit!

Moving on to the second problem of the oxygenation of planetary atmospheres, I will now be making assertions regarding biochemistry which further study may require modification or retraction. Oxygen is a key component in a truly terraformed planet because it is the only chemically reactive yet reasonably stable element/substance that is sufficiently abundant in the universe that has the capability of supporting the high metabolic rates required by advanced SETI-level creatures, along with providing an ozone shield against damaging or lethal UV radiation from the parent star. All other elemental candidates are either too chemically reactive, and/or don't produce an ozone layer, and/or not sufficiently abundant in the universe to support the chemistry of advanced SETI lifeforms.

Now, there are only two possible ways in which planetary atmospheres can be oxygenated: volcanic action and photosynthesis. Volcanos, along with all other related gas-emitting geological activity, spew out a lot of stuff including some free oxygen. The problem here is that oxygen is chemically reactive, quickly combines with other substances during both organic and inorganic chemical reactions, and is therefore taken out of play and must be replaced with fresh oxygen. This, however, would require continuous and extensive volcanic action on a planetwide basis to the present day. Not only would volcanos not be able to produce enough free oxygen to create a surplus in the oceans and atmosphere, such volcanic action would disrupt any possible evolution of higher, complex lifeforms on the habitable planets throughout the cosmos. Further complicating matters would be the volcanic support of anaerobic, methane/sulphur producing organisms inimical to the accumulation of free oxygen in the atmosphere. Please read the books and the linked article found in the References/Resources section at end for elaboration. It turns out that volcanos really cannot get the job done.

That leaves photosynthesis, which presents to atheist naturalists a full suite of problems. First up is the problem of getting the light-harvesting chlorophyll class of molecules (and their associated energy transfer proteins) that form the basis of photosynthesis. While there are a few other molecules with some limited light-harvesting capabilities, my ongoing studies indicate that no other known molecule(s) will drive full-blown, large-scale oxygenating photosynthesis. The problem here is that the chlorophylls (both bacterial and green plant) are complex, difficult molecules that must be constructed in a lengthy, very specific, stepwise, sequential manner. That is, the chlorophylls NEVER self assemble in nature and therefore would not be present in the early-Earth environment for evolutionary natural selection. They exist in the natural background only as abstract chemical potentials requiring conscious intentional actuation.

Even assuming the easy availability of every last one of at least 32 discrete chemical steps needed for the naturalistic self assembly of chlorophyll at the very dawn of life roughly 3.5 billion years ago, mindless atheist naturalist evolution would be utterly incapable of arranging those discrete chemical steps into a strict sequential order as a fully functioning, permanent, synthetic system blindly producing the tremendous numbers of chlorophyll molecules neccesary for natural selection and atheist evolution; has no brain and therefore would not be able to generate the complex, abstract DNA Code detailing the construction and operation of this synthetic system; has no intentionality and therefore would not be able to load this specific abstract Code into the overall nucleotide sequence of the complete organism DNA molecule for physical actuation. This would not be a problem for an intentional Creator Deity, but is really a brick wall for atheist evolution. If you cannot get the light-harvesting chlorophylls, you cannot get photosynthesis. No photosynthesis, no oxygenated atmosphere and Ozone Layer. No oxygenated atmosphere, no SETI-level evolution. It's ‘game over’ for naturalism—cosmos wide.

Generously assuming the accidental rise of the chlorophylls, we find that all of the rest of the bio-molecules, biosynthetic mechanisms, and molecular nanomachines of photosynthesis (and ATP production, for that matter) are just as intractable. There will be no way for mindless, goalless, undirected atheist evolution to produce all of these complex molecules and mechanisms, in the tremendous numbers and high chemical concentrations required for unguided evolutionary natural selection, regardless the time allowed for their naturalistic and accidental occurance. But even assuming their virtually instantaneous appearance in this primative early Earth-like state, the entire complex process of photosynthesis itself (along with general cellular metabolism) would have had to have accidentally come into existence as fully integrated wholes, and then been incorporated into some overall controlling mechanism. On Earth, that ‘mechanism’ is the fantastically complex, mathematically abstract, and specifically functional genetic codes physicalized in DNA molecules (both of which are extremely improbable—if not outright impossible—through chemical self assembly, natural selection, and evolution). This, or some other equivalent mechanism, must quickly arise independently at First Life purely by chance, ex nihilo and in toto, or else—once again—it is ‘game over’ for evolution—everywhere.

While we're on the subject of DNA, I pose this question to atheist naturalists. Is the DNA Code of Life a purely local phenomenon, or is the Code universal? For example, will the DNA code for a fruit fly get a fruit fly only on planet Earth; and then only in direct chemical connection with all prior fruit flies and ancestor creatures back to an accidental First Life? Or will that Code, effected anywhere in the universe that a fruit fly could physically exist, get you a fruit fly? As a Biblical Christian I am on extremely strong ground regardless the answer. If purely local, the probability of the naturalistic rise of the DNA Code of Life is virtually zero, while if the Code is universal then that Code would have had to have been established before Time Zero, embedded into the very fabric of the new universe at TZ, and then lay dormant for many billions of years while awaiting favorable physical conditions for actuation. Therefore, the probability of naturalistic evolution hits absolute zero, while the probability (the necessity) of the God of Genesis hits 100%. As above, atheist naturalists may pick their poison.

Also, if the DNA Code of Life is truly universal, then this question is of critical importance because it would be a fundamentally Scientific question that could—at least in principle—be tested in the laboratory. Now, the direct question regarding fruit flies might be beyond the reach of the current ‘state of the art’ in laboratory synthesis, but there might be other, simpler, tests that can be done to resolve the question. Eventurally, however, Science will progress to the point where this specific question can be directly tested—and answered.

The Rise of SETI Techno-Gods and Interstellar UFO Spacecraft

In order to move ahead with this article we must simply assume the occurance of life, photosynthesis, and an oxygenated atmosphere with ozone layer on every one of the planets that achieve fully terraformed habitability. We are now faced with the problem of getting a natural history of life that actually culminates in advanced SETI-level creatures. I must now define ‘SETI creature’ with a little more rigor. A while back I read this very neat definition: “A SETI creature is one that is capable of designing and constructing a radio telescope”. With this definition, the natural history of life on Earth once again gives pause. There are currently on planet Earth several creatures other than modern humans that must be regarded as ‘intelligent’: whales, dolphins, elephants, parrots, crows, pigs, rats, dogs, cats, octopuses, monkeys, the high apes, etc., yet none qualify according to the definition.

Whales, pigs, and elephants may have the requisite brainpower, but they are somewhat ‘opposable-thumb’ challenged. They could, conceivably, design a radio telescope but could never build one. Monkeys and the high apes have the manual dexterity but lack the IQ for the job. If Neanderthals and Denisovans had the capabilities to achieve the radio telescope, they (along with all of the other Hominids) went extinct before getting much beyond mastering fire and basic stone tools. In the three and a half billion years of life on Earth, we—modern Homo Sapiens Sapiens—are the only ones ever mentally and physically capable of this feat—and to actually achieve it!

That final point above puts the problem of any natural biological history in stark relief. Atheist naturalistic evolution has no conscious brain, sets no goals or objectives, and doesn't care if anything happens at all. Therefore, evolution is in no way required to deliver up even one single creature capable of making a radio telescope—in the entire universe, throughout all time! Evolution could have missed our species entirely or sent us to the scrapheap of extinction along with our close cousins, as could very well be the case with all advanced lifeforms throughout the cosmos. That is, getting basic life and actually getting advanced, civilized, scientific, technological SETI creatures from basic life are two very widely separated issues. The first is necessary for the second, but the first absolutely does not guarantee the second—or even make it likely.

Moving forward, we will assume the rise of SETI-level creatures on each of the fully terraformed, habitable planets in the cosmos. Does this automatically give us SETI technological gods? By no means! Human history itself gives serious pause. In the thousands of years of recorded human history, with its multitude of complex cultures and high civilizations worldwide, only one has allowed us to achieve that radio telescope: Christianized Western Europe. All others missed the target; some by only a thin margin. But that ‘thin margin’ can be the difference between being an intelligent SETI lifeform and being a ‘SETI technology god’ lifeform. Had modern humanity missed that mark we would be no more significant, from a SETI perspective, than whales and elephants—and Neanderthals.

We have achieved the radio telescope. Are we SETI techno-gods? Well, no, not really. At best we are currently living in squalor at the base of Mount Olympus while staring self-inflicted extinction square in the face. Having achieved the radio telescope we are in the infancy of SETI god technology. Forget starships, X-wing fighters, and Imperial cruisers. We're having trouble right now with dependable Low Earth Orbit heavy lift capability, and the International Space Station is little more than a child's Tinker Toy. Interstellar travel is on a cold back burner. But what about other SETI techno-gods (i.e., UFOs) coming to Earth? It should be obvious by now that we are almost certainly alone in the Milky Way Galaxy, therefore if such SETI creatures actually exist at all, they are very few in number and probably reside in such distant galaxies that they would never know of our existance, let alone have the capital “G” God-like technological capabilities to be able to quickly traverse the vastness of intergalactic space in order to get here during our species lifetime.

Contingency and ‘us’

If atheist naturalism is true in reality, then modern humanity in our actual universe is an astoundingly improbable freak of nature in a cosmos with an actual physical reality rendered unique not only by the basic cosmic Constants, Ratios, and Natural Laws at our Time Zero (TZ), but also by the extremely complex outworkings of natural history through Contingency, Chaos, and Nonlinearity (CCN) from our TZ, through many billions of years, to the present day. Because atheist naturalist physics (which must now operate transcendently) has no brain; no awareness; sets no goals and has no objectives, it must blindly achieve and exhaust all possibilities for all Time Zeros (see graphic, below). I dare say that it would take a full infinity to run through all possible combinations of Constants, ratios, physical laws and other related Factors for all possible universes in order to randomly hit the precise specifications for our exact TZ.

An X-axis second dimension of infinities is required because every last TZ universe will have an unlimited number of possible natural historical results due to the complex outworkings of Contingency, Chaos, and Nonlinearity (CCN) within those universes over the course of billions of years. Atheist Naturalism would not only have to produce an infinity of TZs to randomly hit our TZ, but would have to plow through every last infinite X-axis possibility of CCN in every last one of those infinite TZs in order to blindly stumble upon—us! And that would include the virtual infinity of ‘us’ that either misses the radio telescope or goes extinct before achieving civilization, science, and high technology. That is, the infinite multiverse of ‘us’ that doesn't matter!

Adding a Z-axis third dimension of fun is that once you rip the lid off the Pandora's Box of ‘infinity’, you would have to allow that there would be an infinite number of duplications of every last one of the X-Y two dimensional possibilities.

In for a penny, in for a pound…

Friar William of Ockham advised that, “Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity.” The Bible says, “In the begining, God created the heavens and the earth.” That is a single Entity multiplied by one overall creative Work. A single, conscious and intentional Diety can go directly to the exact specifications for our actual TZ, and then shephard that singular universe along a particular CCN natural history from TZ to our present day. The atheist naturalist position, however, is saddled with all possible entities multiplied by at least four dimensions of infinity—perhaps a fifth, if you allow that these infinities have been popping into existence throughout all transcendent eternity. This begs the questions of what could possibly house all these infinities, and why the various universes are not colliding with each oth

NOTE: It is with great regret that I must inform the gentle reader that the author of this work, Mr. Brian Bloedel, has been struck and killed by an intruding alternate universe. I, !%*@=? of the colliding $~£¥¿ cosmos will endeavor to finish the work as intended. I apologize for any inconvenience to the reader—and author;-)

Conclusion

In conclusion, an atheist explanation of our universe as it actually exists from Time Zero to the present day requires an extremely long series of incredibly fortuitous, non-repeatable, accidental events—liberally sprinkled with IMPOSSIBLES—each and every one of which would be fantastically unlikely even under the most ridiculously favorable conditions. If any step in this series fails or misfires, then there will be no ‘us’, and no SETI techno-god lifeforms anywhere in the cosmos. The Biblical theistic position, with its conscious and purposeful Diety, has none of these limitations or problems. So the choice is yours: atheism, which operates at absolute 0% probability, or Biblical ”Old Earth“ theism, which operates at absolute 100% probability. This seems a ‘no-brainer’ to me.

I end this article with observations on a subject that seems to have captured the imagination of the general public: the colonization of other planets. The stated goal of such colonization would be to ensure the survival of our species against terrestrial extinction. This certainly seems a laudable goal, but there are technological and philosophical problems that should be honestly addressed.

The technological problems of interstellar space travel and planetary colonization are truly Legion. The most immediate problems include radiation/debris shielding, propulsion, life support/suspended animation, and developing all technologies with the ability to function flawlessly over spans of time measured in decades—if not centuries. Humanity will absolutely need to colonize our Moon and Mars just to gain the requisite experience and to perfect all methods and technologies. After all, if we cannot successfully get our collective act together so as to fully colonize Mars (which is right next door; almost spittin' distance) then all hope for interstellar travel and planetary colonization is mere pipe dream.

Assuming that humanity unites worldwide so that all sociopolitical, economic and technological problems are solved, spacecraft constructed and planetary destinations identified, we must honestly ask ourselves a couple of important philosophical questions. First, does humanity really deserve to be perpetuated by galactic expansion? Considering the royal mess we've made of Earth, we're really unlikely to do better elsewhere. We would only be spreading the disease. If Klaatu and Gort actually exist, their wisest course of action upon First Contact should be to wipe us out——with “Extreme Prejudice”.

Second, what will we do if we get to another planet and find lifeforms comparable to humanity ten thousand years ago? That is, lifeforms that are SETI advanced but not yet technologically advanced? Remember, our goal is planetary colonization. Read that as “planetary conquest”. Let's call it what it actually would be. These space travelers, upon finding such creatures, would not say, “Oops! Already occupied. Let's go home.” No, at that point our intrepid space folk would do whatever necessary to take the planet—even committing species extermination. Hey, we're already doing that now on planet Earth, so why would we have any qualms about doing it elsewhere? Of course, this would make us the “UFO Space Alien” invaders! In such case we'd better hope they don't have a Will Smith in their ranks…

To sum up this subject, the technological problems involved with interstellar space travel and plantetary colonization are so extreme, and progress towards those goals so scant, that I can safely say that you—along with every last man, woman and baby on this planet right now—will be dead of old age long before the first such craft is ready to embark on its maiden—and one way—voyage to the stars. Let's face it: the final fate of mankind will be decided in the fairly near future right here on good old planet Earth.

In final closing, “The Truth Is Out There”, but you're going to have to dig for it. If this article has served its purpose, the reader will be spurred to deeply investigate these questions in order to determine if there really is a transcendent, supernatural, creator diety—specifically, the Creator God of Genesis 1 in the Bible. If you conclude that God might plausibly exist, then the hope of life after death should be given greatest consideration. The ‘Prime Directive’ of Darwinian naturalism is to survive; to live! The raison dêtre of Biblical Christianity is eternal life. If there is even a ghost of a chance that Jesus can deliver on the promise of John 3:16 then that promise deserves the highest priority of your time and effort. After all, it's not like you are risking anything. If the atheists are correct, your time and effort—your very life itself—are futile almost by definition. Your ultimate and unavoidable fate in an atheist universe is eternal oblivion. In the end it's your life; your eternity. So dig deeply and choose wisely.

What have you got to lose?

Parting thought

The devil is in the details, but God is to be found in the fundamentals.

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

Questions? Comments?
e-mail the author!
bloedel@verizon.net

References/Resources

Dr. Peter D. Moore
Historical Geology
©2002, Facts on File, Inc., NY, NY.
(Really, just pick any decent Planetary Geology text written by any qualified author. The Science of the past twenty years has only solidified the assertions presented in this article.)

Dr. Stuart Kauffman
At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity
©1995, Oxford Universtiy Press

Hugh Ross (PhD, astronomy)
A Matter of Days
Creation As Science
The Creator and the Cosmos
www.reasons.org

Fazale Rana (PhD, chemistry) and Dr. Hugh Ross
Origins of Life
www.reasons.org

Reasons to Believe bookstore

Drs. Paul J. Steinhardt and Neil Turok
Endless Universe: Beyond the Big Bang
©2007, Doubleday, NY, NY.
(Technically, this book explains and defends the Ekpyrotic cyclical universe theory. However, as the Authors point out, the Ekpyrotic and Big Bang theories very quickly merge to give the same observable results, therefore I recommend this book as a good overveiw of general Cosmology.)

Dr. Martin Rees
Just Six Numbers; The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe
©2000, Basic Books, NY, NY.

Drs. Peter Ward & Donald Brownlee
Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe
©2000, Copernicus Books, NY, NY.

Moon Formation Impact Event: Moon formation

Volcanism and anaerobic organisms

Chlorophyll biosynthetic pathway:
Biosynthesis

Dr. Robert B. Woodward laboratory synthesis of chlorophyll:
Woodward synthesis

Dr. Roderick K. Clayton
Photosynthesis: physical mechanisms and chemical patterns
©1980, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England
(As with planetary geology, our knowledge regarding photosynthesis has only improved in the past forty years, and the implications of that knowledge only solidifies the assertions made in this article.

Drs. Staehelin and Arntzen, eds.
Photosysnthesis III; Photosysnthetic Membranes and Light Harvesting Systems
©1986, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, GmbH

Dr. Walter Harm
Biological effects of ultraviolet radiation
©1980, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England
(I doubt that scientific research in the past forty years has shown UV radiation to be less harmful to the DNA in living organisms.)

Dr. James D. Watson, with Andrew Berry
DNA: The Secret of Life
©2004, Alfred A. Knopf, New York

Oliver Morton
Eating the Sun (How Plants Power the Planet)
©2008, HarperCollins, NY, NY.

Dr. Paul G. Falkowski
LIFE'S ENGINES How Microbes Made Earth Habitable
©2015, Princeton University Press

Dr. Donald Eugene Canfield
OXYGEN A Four Billion Year History
©2014, Princeton University Press

Dr. Richard Fortey
LIFE A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth
©1997, Alfred A. Knopf, NY, NY

Viginia Hamilton
IN THE BEGINNING Creation Stories from Around the World
©1988, Harcourt, Inc., NY, NY.

Prof. Barbara C. Sproul
PRIMAL MYTHS Creation Myths Around the World
©1979, HarperCollins, NY, NY.
(NOTE: More than 120 myths presented in this book in addition to the Biblical passages.)

My ‘letter to the editor’ regarding manned space flight:
Letter to the editor
Printed Friday, July 29, 1994 in the Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk) newspaper. It is as relevant today as when first published.

My letter to Dr. Michael Shirmer at the Skeptics Society regarding Darwinian Evolution:
Letter to Dr. Shirmer
Scroll down about half way through this multi-letter page to find my letter, which begins: “I have been waging a one-man war…”.

Table of Contents

Slavery and the American Civil War

A Brief Examination of the Social, Economic, Religious, and Constitutional Factors Leading to Violent Conflict.

by Brian Bloedel

bloedel@verizon.net

[NOTE: This article is an expanded and improved version of my 200-level college Civil War course term paper.]

Monticello, August 28, 1797

“Dear Sir,—l have to acknowledge the receipt of your two favors of the 2d and 22d instant, and to thank you for the pamphlet covered by the former. You know my subscription to its doctrines; and as to the mode of emancipation, I am satisfied that that must be a matter of compromise between the passions, the prejudices, and the real difficulties which will each have their weight in that operation. Perhaps the first chapter of this history, which has begun in St. Domingo, and the next succeeding ones, which will recount how all the whites were driven from all the other islands, may prepare our minds for a peaceable accommodation between justice, policy and necessity; and furnish an answer to the difficult question, whither shall the colored emigrants go? and the sooner we put some plan under way, the greater hope there is that it may be permitted to proceed peaceably to its ultimate effect. But if something is not done, and soon done, we shall be the murderers of our own children. The “murmura venturos nautis prudentia ventos” has already reached us: the revolutionary storm, now sweeping the globe, will be upon us, and happy if we make timely provision to give it an easy passage over our land. From the present state of things in Europe and America, the day which begins our combustion must be near at hand; and only a single spark is wanting to make that day to-morrow. If we had begun sooner, we might probably have been allowed a lengthier operation to clear ourselves, but every day's delay lessens the time we may take for emancipation.”

Thomas Jefferson to St. George Tucker
(Jefferson, 184-5)

Thesis Statement

The Civil War was a defining moment in American history. But was this trip really necessary? Could it possibly have been avoided? The position I take on this matter is that the actual historical forces at work in America from the early 1600s to the middle 1800s made serious—if not violent—conflict virtually inevitable.

The “Peculiar Institution”

Natural fear overcame curiosity as the Blue Heron took to wing and flew away from us into the trees. My wife and I had gotten up a good head of speed in our canoe before putting down our paddles, and we silently glided quite close to the great bird. It's passing left us alone in silence on that lake near Williamsburg, Virginia. Surrounded by trees and water, there was nothing to suggest civilization but our own presence. It was easy for me to imagine the feelings of those early English settlers. Here was a land of unimaginable expanse. New. Untamed. Virtually empty.

The English colonists came to America for a variety of reasons. Some thirsted for personal liberty, or religious freedom. Others sought economic opportunity. Still others were escaping from poverty or political persecution, while some were sent unwillingly as exiles. But the reason most relevant to this examination was the creation and accumulation of personal wealth; for the New World was a vast treasure trove of natural resources. But those resources were raw and undeveloped. Choices would be made and actions taken in the quest to turn raw potential into personal wealth, position and power. And those choices would be made with little care for future consequences.

The middle-Atlantic and southern regions of North America were particularly suited for medium to large-scale agricultural operations. However, in this ‘pre John Deere’ era any man thinking of making his fortune off the land immediately realized the absolute necessity of dependable and reasonably priced manpower—and lots of it. Although slavery was certainly an available option, it was by no means a foregone conclusion. While the British were not averse to putting the screws to people overseas, they did not have a domestic culture of chattel slavery. The early colonists simply needed manpower, and they were not too picky as to the kind of manpower or where it came from as long as the work got done.

The most immediate and available manpower sources were Native American Indians taken as slaves and Englishmen indentured to servitude for a period of years. Black Africans were also available as slaves, but the Dutch controlled the African slave trade during the early through mid 1600s and their prices were prohibitively high. Indian slaves were a disappointment because they were not culturally suited to structured labor, and since they were on ‘home ground’ they had the tendency to successfully escape. As a result, most Indians captured for slavery in North America were sold to plantation owners in Latin America (Kolchin,7-9). Keep firmly in mind that the Spanish and Portugese were up to their eyeballs in the slave labor system in their respective Caribbean and Latin American colonies long before the first black African slaves were brought into the Chesapeake Bay colonies in 1619.

The use of indentured English during this period was much more common. Political and economic turmoil in Europe made service in America seem a relatively attractive option to those out of work, homeless and hungry. Landowners in America also benefited from a cheap supply of labor that could be counted on for several years of work. An added incentive for many landowners was a government bonus of additional acreage for every indentured servant brought into the colonies.

However, the restoration of the British monarchy (1660) and British victory in the Anglo-Dutch War (1664-1667) changed the dynamic of labor forces in the American colonies. Almost simultaneously, the improved conditions in Europe dried up the supply of people willing to indenture to America, while newly won British control of the African slave trade brought prices down to a reasonable level. To illustrate, consider that in York County, Virginia from 1680-1694 the ratio of white indentures to black slaves dropped from 1.9 to 1 down to 0.07 to 1. The entrenchment of the slave labor system had begun (Kolchin, 11-12).

The problems of the initial cost of slaves and the difficulties in breaking them to lifelong, hard field labor were more than compensated by the fact that those slaves represented a permanent work force with absolutely no rights or privileges. And whereas white indentures could walk away and blend in with the general white population, black slaves had virtually no hope of escape and nowhere to go if they did escape. A truly major side benefit of the slave labor force was that it was self-regenerating, with the offspring being chattel property like their parents.

That last point above is very important because it illustrates a major difference between North American slavery and that existing elsewhere in the hemisphere. A good 85% of all Africans brought to the New World ended up on the giant commercial plantations in the Caribbean, Central or South America. Those operations—sometimes covering entire islands—were run strictly for profit and it was not uncommon for the black slave population to outnumber the total white population by a factor of ten to one. But those work forces were mostly male and needed constant replenishment because of high mortality levels and low birth rates. Those slave populations were actually in natural decline throughout their entire histories (Kolchin, 22).

Contrast this with conditions in North America. While slavery here was certainly no picnic, the chances for survival were much better than in Latin America for the following reasons: the climate was more temperate and less prone to epidemic diseases; the plantation operations were smaller and the slave work force was generally broken up into smaller work gangs; and plantation owners were more likely to be personally involved in operations. And most important, the slave women experienced a higher birth rate and infant survival level than in Latin America. By the mid 1700s the North American slave population was in solid natural increase. By 1808 (the Constitutional deadline for stopping the importation of slaves) America had little real need for the international slave trade, as the natural birthrate of slaves supplied the domestic needs (Kolchin, 22-23).

While the slave labor system by the late 1700s had proved itself to be a very workable arrangement (at least from the plantation owners' point of view), it is relevant to ask if America would have been better off instead with a free labor system as was being practiced in the northern States. In the long run and with the wisdom of 20-20 hindsight the answer would be “Yes”. But the primary purpose of the men involved in establishing the slave labor system was the creation and accumulation of personal wealth. Any practical plan for dismantling the slave system would have had to been derived from that perspective. If the institution of slavery was to be dismantled, the best opportunity was probably presented during the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention of 1787. While rice production was vigorous in South Carolina and Georgia, land exhaustion in the middle-Atlantic states had depressed the tobacco trade and the demand for slave labor in that region. This, however, was a factor of bad land management, not a problem with the slave labor system itself.

The deficiencies of the slave labor system were certainly well known at the time. On August 21, 1787, Luther Martin of Maryland opened the subject at the Convention with the following critique:

“In the first place, as five slaves are to be counted as 3 freemen, in the apportionment of Representatives, such a clause would leave an encouragement to this traffic. In the second place, slaves weaken one part of the Union, which the other parts are bound to protect; the privilege of importing them is therefore unreasonable. And in the third place, it is inconsistent with the principles of the Revolution and dishonorable to the American character, to leave such a feature in the Constitution (Farrand, pg. 364).”

What should have developed into a plan to peaceably and equitably end the institution of human slavery in North America was cut short by the delegates from South Carolina and Georgia, who had no intentions of allowing anything to possibly interfere with their profitable operations. Said John Rutledge of South Carolina:

“Religion and humanity have nothing to do with this question. Interest alone is the governing principle with nations. The true question at present is, whether the Southern States shall or shall not be parties to the Union. If the Northern States consult their interest, they will not oppose the increase of slaves, which will increase the commodities of which they will become the carriers (ibid).”

Charles Pinckney was even more blunt: “South Carolina can never receive the plan if it prohibits the slave trade (ibid).” That solid opportunity was allowed to pass not only without resolution but with actual protection of slavery (Art. I, Sect. 9, para. 1 & Art. IV, Sect. 2, Cl. 3). Such an opportunity would not come again. From that time forward, any resolution of the institution of slavery could come only with the greatest of difficulties.

After the turn of the century, the differences between the Northern and Southern States would increase and accelerate. The North would develop an expanding and multifaceted industrial/commercial economy based on an open, circulating, capitalist system. Workers would create wealth that would then be sold both domestically and overseas. The workers would receive a share of this wealth in wages that would then circulate throughout the region and economy. While this system was often cruel and hard, it represented the basis of the economic prosperity we enjoy today.

The South, on the other hand, developed a rigid rural/agrarian economy based on a closed, linear capitalist system. Slaves would create wealth from the soil. The staple products they produced would mostly be sold outside the region or overseas and the resulting wealth of money and goods would return to the hands of the minority landowners. This wealth would circulate only weakly in the region because the slaves received little or no portion of the wealth, nor did the non-slave owning white majority who, for the most part, were priced out of the plantation system. This wealth went into the acquisition of more land and slaves, or was dissipated in extravagance or thriftlessness (Kolchin, 171-3).

The invention of the Cotton Engine by Eli Whitney in 1793 along with the development of steam power locomotion, and the adoption of proper land reclamation and management practices, caused an explosion in commercial agriculture and demand for slave labor. Cotton production went from 4,000 bales in 1791 to over 5,000,000 bales in 1859, and land under tillage stretched from the Atlantic coast through Texas and Missouri (Randall/Donald, 36). During the 1840s and 1850s prudent plantation owners could reasonably look forward to profits on investment on the order of 5% - l0% per year, with even higher returns in the virgin Southwest. In the Old South, plantation owners who inherited land and slaves, and practiced good land management, could take advantage of their low overhead and reap healthy profits (Stampp, 408-11).

But the entire slave-based economic system was unbalanced and increasingly at odds not only with the North but with the international community. With the force of an Old Testament prophet, Col. George Mason of Virginia very neatly summed up the issue of slavery during the Constitutional Convention:

“This infernal traffic originated in the avarice of British merchants. The British Government constantly checked the attempts of Virginia to put a stop to it. The present question concerns not the importing States alone, But the whole Union. …Maryland and Virginia have already prohibited the importation of slaves expressly. North Carolina has done the same in substance. All this will be in vain if South Carolina and Georgia be at liberty to import. The Western people are already calling out for slaves for their new lands; and will fill that country with slaves, if they can be got through South Carolina and Georgia. Slavery discourages arts and manufactures. The poor despise labor when performed by slaves. They prevent the emigration of whites, who really enrich and strengthen a country. They produce the most pernicious effect on manners. Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant. They bring the judgment of Heaven on a country. As nations cannot be rewarded or punished in the next world, they must be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes and effects, Providence punishes national sins by national calamities (Farrand, pg. 370).”

Monticello, January 6, 1821

“…The pusillanimous idea that we had friends in England worth keeping terms with, still haunted the minds of many. For this reason, those passages [in the Declaration of Independence] which conveyed censures on the people of England were struck out, lest they should give them offence. The clause too, reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who, on the contrary, still wished to continue it. Our northern brethren also, I believe, felt a little tender under those censures, for though their people had very few slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others.”

Thomas Jefferson
Autobiography (Jefferson, 345)

The Peculiar Constitution

“The amazing thing about the constitution is that it is as good as it is—that so subtle and complete a document emerged from that long debate. Most of the framers, obviously, were second rate men; before and after their session they accomplished nothing in the world. Yet during that session they made an almost perfect job of the work in hand.”
(H. L. Mencken to James M. Beck, 1924)

The original Founders of this nation—in the Spirit of '76—felt that the purpose of this country was to maximize the freedom and liberty of the people; the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness being the essence of meaningful existence. They realized that government was necessary to the successful conduct of civilized society, but held that such government should be conducted by We the People at the lowest level which would effect satisfaction. Local government was preferable to State government, which would be recurred to only in those areas beyond the capability of local government. State government was preferable to general government, which would be recurred to only to ensure the peaceful coexistence of the several States and to secure our place among the Nations of the world.

However, ten years of practical experience with the government established during the Revolutionary War by the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union (November 15, 1777) demonstrated the imbecility, impotence, and ineffectiveness of a general government endowed with insufficient powers, resource, and vigor. In 1787 this dire domestic crisis and international embarrassment led to a call for constitutional convention; ostensibly to improve the Articles, but in fact to fashion a new Government. With a virtually blank slate before them, the men who convened at the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention faced a fundamental choice: adhere with the genius of the American people and propose a carefully limited, restricted, Federal Republican form of general government or give the new government maximum latitude by establishing an essentially unrestricted Unitary National form of government; but risk rejection by the People.

The advantages, efficiencies, and effectiveness of a truly overarching ‘unitary national’ form of government are very appealing, but the real dangers of such an instrument were matters of great sensitivity to the people of that era, and the proposal of a limited Federal Republican form of government with clearly divided Sovereignties was very much expected from the Convention. A convincing case, however, can be made that the Framers desired, and actually formed, a strong unitary national government, but artfully packaged the new general government so as to make it appear to the general public to be a carefully limited republican form of government. My readings on this subject give no hint of deception on the part of the Framers. They were sincere in their belief that they had crafted a true limited general government. However, the peculiar construction of the final document is central to this examination of the Origins of the American Civil War.

The Constitution of the United States of America is a masterpiece of brevity and conciseness. But this very conciseness leaves open the question of States Rights (Actually a misnomer. People have rights; governments have powers and authority). Place yourself in the position of a person fluent in the English language but utterly ignorant of English and American history and government. Now read the original U. S. Constitution, in particular Article 1, Section 8. What are the explicit powers of the States? Aside from the appointment of Senators and militia officers, and authority for training the militia, these powers are nil. Are the States explicitly protected from federal powers? Only to the extent of protecting slave importation until 1808 and prohibiting export taxes, and some general restrictions found in Article I, Section 9. The general government was granted extensive authority to act as referee between the States in order to prevent trade frictions, as provided in Article 1, Sections 9 & 10, and Article 4.

Most important to this question of States Rights is the grammar employed in framing the Article I, Section 8 powers of Congress. These powers are quite rightly wide ranging, but note that—with the exceptions of the disposition of tax revenues, Army appropriations and militia officer appointment—they are logically and grammatically unbounded. There are no internal indicators as to limits or constraints. Patrick Henry railed against this apparent defect in his very extensive critique of the proposed Constitution during the Virginia Ratification Convention in 1788. On June 14, for example, he said, “…For if its powers be infinite, what rights have the people remaining?” And later, “…This unlimited authority is a most dangerous power: its principles are despotic. If it be unbounded, it must lead to despotism; for the power of a people in a free government is supposed to be paramount to the existing power (Young, 413 & 417).”

At this time, Virginia's governor Randolph hit to the heart of the matter when he commented, “…Ought not common sense to be the rule of interpreting this Constitution?…(ibid, 414)” For the nature and character of our federal government depend entirely on the “sense” of those people elected or appointed into federal office. If their genius be republican in spirit then we will have a limited and restrained general government. If, however, their genius be towards an unlimited Unitary National form of government, then the boundless and grammatically unrestricted powers of the Constitution are more than sufficient to that end.

The “Peculiar Institution” was in the peculiar position of existing by the graces of a general government of ill-defined nature. The Rights and Powers of the several States are all those not granted to the general government nor explicitly prohibited to the States by the federal Constitution, per the 10th Amendment.

But if the powers of the general government can be expanded to infinity, then the powers of the States are—by mathematical extension—reduced to zero. This was why the Southern States were so sensitive to “balance” in government from 1820 until 1861. As long as an evenly balanced Senate could block—or a racist Supreme Court overturn—hostile legislation, the threat of abolition was kept at bay. However, the election of Abraham Lincoln and the very real prospect of political imbalance in the future brought the “States Rights” issue to a head. The Southern States could not trust their economic wealth to the thin—and possibly nonexistent—shield of “States Rights”. Rather than put the issue to a test, they sought to sidestep it entirely through secession and the formation of an entirely new and independent Nation. The fundamental questions regarding the nature and bounds of the Federal government remain unanswered to this day. Consider the professional differences in opinion on this issue between Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story in his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833) and that of Judge Abel P. Upshur in his Brief Enquiry into the True Nature and Character of Our Federal Government (1840), both linked at end.

It is interesting and relevant to note that the Confederate Constitution itself made scant extra provision for States Rights (see Appendix). While the Southern States were hypersensitive to their prerogatives (often to the detriment of their own war effort) they really had no more ‘rights’ under the new constitution than they had under the old. To my mind, the issue was never that of ‘States Rights’, but rather the preservation of the slave labor system for acquiring personal property, wealth and power. The Confederate Constitution made extensive and explicit provisions to protect, expand, and perpetuate the Peculiar Institution of human chattel slavery.

However, lurking in the background was a very subtle defect in the original U.S. Constitution that was brought to light by the infamous Dred Scott v Sandford case of 1857. In short, the chattel slave named Dred Scott was taken in 1834 by his owner Dr. Emerson from the slave State of Missouri first to Illinois and then in 1836 to Fort Snelling on the west bank of the Mississippi River in what was at that time the northern part of the Louisiana Purchase Territory (in present day Minneapolis, Minnesota). In 1838 Dr. Emerson returned to Missouri and then sold Dred Scott, along with Scott's family, to John Sandford. In 1846, Scott sought his freedom through the Courts by arguing that since Congress had declared this part of the Louisiana Purchase Territory to be a non-slave ‘free’ territory that he and his family were effectively emancipated regardless their forced return to the slave State of Missouri.

This argument was predicated on the belief that Congress had the constitutional power under Article IV, Section 3, Clause 2 “…to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States;…” , and therefore had the authority to ban slavery in the territories. Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney, however, showed with awful correctness in the seven-justice Majority Opinion that this clause appertained only to those territorial lands and property ceded to the general government by the original States shortly before and immediately after the ratification of the new federal Constitution crafted by the Philadelphia Convention of 1787.

The defect in the original Constitution was that the Framers had made provision for the regulation and disposal of lands ceded to the new federal government by the original States, and also made explicit provision for admitting as new States those fully settled and politically developed territorial lands (acquired by any means), but made no explicit provision for Congress to manage undeveloped territorial lands acquired by the new federal government through treaty, purchase, or conquest after the adoption of the Constitution. That being the case, the Supreme Court majority ruled that Congress could not prohibit common property ownership rights such as chattel slaves in undeveloped, federally purchased (finalized on April 30, 1803), territorial regions like Fort Snelling. Therefore all such laws affecting slavery were struck down as unconstitutional.

Although Supreme Court justices McLean and Curtis vigorously disagreed with the reasoning and historical review of the Majority in their respective Dissents, they in no way opined against the Peculiar Institution of human slavery itself in the Southern States. Even if they had spoken for the majority, only a small percentage of slaves (such as Dred Scott and his family) would have been affected by any such decision from the High Court. The vast majority of slaves would never have been in the free territories and therefore would not have been affected by even the largest, most liberal opinion the Supreme Court could have possibly rendered in this particular Case.

For that reason I regard the Dred Scott v Sandford case as little more than irrelevant irritation and historical distraction.

Monticello, January 6, 1821

“The bill on the subject of slaves, was a mere digest of the existing laws respecting them, without any intimation of a plan for a future and general emancipation. It was thought better that this should be kept back, and attempted only by way of amendment, whenever the bill should be brought on. The principles of the amendment, however, were agreed on, that is to say, the freedom of all born after a certain day, and deportation at a proper age. But it was found that the public mind would not yet bear the proposition, nor will it bear it even at this day. Yet the day is not distant when it must bear and adopt it, or worse will follow. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate, than that these people are to be free. …”

Thomas Jefferson
Autobiography (Jefferson, 348)

Let My People Go

The institution of slavery is as old as civilization. The benefits of slavery to owners and rulers are fairly obvious. But these owners—unless particularly kind and humane—are required to either not think about or not care about the plight of those who are enslaved. This has been a cruel world and down through the ages there have been many people more than willing to trample down their fellow Man in order to achieve wealth, position and power.

However, as soon as you develop any sort of sensitivity or conscience you are in trouble. And if you claim adherence to Christianity, slaveholding becomes a real problem. Even the most cursory examination of the gospels shows slave owning—and the methods necessary to maintain it—in serious conflict with the teachings of Jesus. When He said, “And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” (Matthew 22:39 KJV) or, “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another” (John 13:34-35 KJV) He really put slave owners between a rock and a hard place.

Regretably, the original British colonial slave owners and their American successors did not worry about this. Slaves were regarded as subhuman tools; wealth was the main object; and that was that. But a spiritual revival occurred in America during the mid to late 1700s and the institution of slavery felt the first heat of the Abolition Movement. That heat would only intensify as slavery weakened and effectively disappeared in the North. After all, abolitionists in the North could afford to be righteous where there was no economic interest at risk. While the economic criticism of slavery was weak, the moral and religious objections were quite strong. The “Peculiar Institution” had no friend in Jesus, and Southern slave owners were hard put to defend their position in light of the teachings and commands of the Christian New Testament.

As if religion was not problem enough, the mid to late 1700s also saw the full flowering of the American Enlightenment. The philosophical ideal of the equality of Man—so eloquently expressed in the Declaration of Independence—ran headlong into the realities of slavery. But this awakening did have its effects in the manumission or emancipation of slaves, particularly by will upon a slaveholder's death. This is illustrated by the following figures:

Unfortunately, the American Enlightenment was in dusk by 1810 and few slaves were freed in the South after that time. By 1861, not only the percentages, but the actual numbers of free Blacks in the South were in decline (Kolchin, 81-2).

Monticello, April 13, 1820

“Although I had laid down as a law to myself, never to write, talk, or even think of politics, to know nothing of public affairs, and therefore had ceased to read newspapers, yet the Missouri question aroused and filled me with alarm. The old schism of federal and republican threatened nothing, because it existed in every State, and united them together by the fraternism of party. But the coincidence of a marked principle, moral and political, with geographical line, once conceived, I feared would never more be obliterated from the mind; that it would be recurring on every occasion and renewing irritations, until it would kindle such mutual and mortal hatred, as to render separation preferable to eternal discord. I have been among the most sanguine in believing that our Union would be of long duration. I now doubt it much, and see the event at no great distance, and the direct consequence of this question; not by the line which has been so confidently counted on; the laws of nature control this; but by the Potomac, Ohio and Missouri, or more probably, the Mississippi upwards to our northern boundary. My only comfort and confidence is, that I shall not live to see this; and I envy not the present generation the glory of throwing away the fruits of their fathers' sacrifices of life and fortune, and of rendering desperate the experiment which was to decide ultimately whether man is capable of self-government?”

Thomas Jefferson to William Short
(Jefferson, 336-7)

Collision Course!

The realities of maintaining a large-scale human chattel slave system were in stark contrast and conflict with the teachings of Jesus and the philosophic ideals of the American Enlightenment. By 1860, slavery was deeply entrenched in the South as a very lucrative, successful, and expanding labor system. Nothing short of gunpowder could loosen it. The door to a peaceful solution of the “Peculiar Institution” was closed by South Carolina and Georgia in 1787. Then Eli Whitney locked that door shut in the 1790s with the invention of the cotton gin, along with the subsequent development of steam power engines and locomotion.

The hundred year rise of the Abolition Movement virtually guaranteed violence. After 1820, this movement gained in numbers, political strength and activism. Abolitionists were quite willing to go toe-to-toe with slavers in the territories, and fanatics like John Brown had no compunction about murder if they thought it would help end slavery.

The “Peculiar Institution” was a particular embarrassment to America in the international community. Our own Declaration of Independence made us look like hypocrites in the face of nations that had formally renounced slavery and the slave trade. There was no apology for this other than selfish personal gain.

Conclusion

Was this trip really necessary? In the Year of our Lord 1787 the answer might possibly have been “No”. But by 1860, the forces involved were beyond containment. Any compromise allowing the continuation of slavery would only have postponed the Day of Reckoning. We have perhaps to thank South Carolina for precipitating secession before the Southern Confederacy was fully organized, prepared, and mobilized for war. Otherwise, the Confederacy might very well have won independence, with all of its attending problems echoing to the present day.

Questions? Comments?
e-mail the author!
bloedel@verizon.net

Table of Contents

Bibliography

Farrand, Max
Farrand's Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, Vol. 2
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1911

Jefferson, Thomas
Jefferson's Letters
Whitman, Willson ed.
Eau Clare: E. M. Hale & Co., undated

Kolchin, Peter
American Slavery: 1619-1877
1st rev. ed., 10th anniversary ed.
NY: Hill & Wang, 2003

Randall/Donald
The Civil War and Reconstruction, 2nd ed.
Lexington: D. C. Heath and Co., 1969

Stampp, Kenneth M.
The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South
NY: Knopf, 1956

Thomas, Emory M.
The Confederate Nation: 1861-1865
NY: Harper & Row, 1979

Story, Joseph, LL. D.
COMMENTARIES ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES
Commentaries (1833)
Lonang Institute website

Upshur, Abel, P.
A Brief Enquiry into the True Nature and Character of Our Federal Government
A Brief Enquiry (1840)
Constitution.org website

Young, David E. ed.
The origin of the Second Amendment: A Documentary Historyof the Bill of Rights 1787-1792, 2nd ed.
Ontonagon: Golden Oak Books, 1995

Recommended supplemental material:

Kammen, Michael, ed.
The Origins of the American Constitution: A Documentary History
NY: Penguin, 1986

Dred Scott v Sandford

Appendix

(Note: the Confederate Constitution was a modified version of the original U. S. Federal Constitution of 1787. Significant differences between the two are presented below and shown in italics)

The Constitution of the Confederate States of America, March 11, 1861

We, the people of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a permanent government, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity-invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God-do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Confederate States of America.

Art. I [the Legislative]

Sec. 6. (2) No Senator or Representative shall, during the time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil office under the authority of the Confederate States, which shall have been created, or the emoluments whereof shall have been increased during such time; and no person holding any office under the Confederate States shall be a member of either House during his continuance in office. But Congress may, by law, grant to the principal officer in each of the Executive Departments a seat upon the floor of either House, with the privilege of discussing any measure appertaining to his department.

Sec. 7. (2) Every bill which shall have passed both Houses shall, before it becomes a law, be presented to the President of the Confederate States; if he approve he shall sign it; but if not, he shall return it with his objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the objections at large on their journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If, after such reconsideration, two-thirds of that House shall agree to pass the bill, it shall be sent, together with the objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two-thirds of the House, it shall become a law. But in all such cases, the votes of both Houses shall be determined by yeas and nays, and the names of the persons voting for and against the bill shall be entered on the journal of each House respectively. If any bill shall not be returned by the President within ten days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the same shall be a law. The President may approve any appropriation and disapprove any other appropriation in the same bill. In such case he shall, in signing the bill, designate the appropriations disapproved; and shall return a copy of such appropriations, with his objections, to the House in which the bill shall have originated; and the same proceedings shall then be had as in case of other bills disapproved by the President.

Sec. 8.The Congress shall have power-(1) To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, for revenue necessary to pay the debts, provide for the common defence, and carry on the Government of the Confederate States; but no bounties shall be granted from foreign nations be laid to promote or foster any branch of industry; and all duties, imposts, and excises shall be uniform throughout the Confederate States.
(3) To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes; but neither this nor any other clause contained in the Constitution shall be construed to delegate the power to Congress to appropriate money for any internal improvement intended to facilitate commerce; except for the purpose of furnishing lights, beacons, and buoys, and other aids to navigation upon the coasts, and the improvement of harbors, and the removing of obstructions in the river navigation, in all which cases, such duties shall be laid on the navigation facilitated thereby, as may be necessary to pay the costs and expenses thereof.
(7) To establish post-offices and post-routes; but the expenses of the Post-office Department, after the first day of March, in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and sixty-three, shall be paid out of its own revenues.

Sec. 9. (1) The importation of Negroes of the African race, from any foreign county, other than the slaveholding States or Territories of the United States of America, is hereby forbidden; and Congress is required to pass such laws as shall effectually prevent the same.
(2) Congress shall also have power to prohibit the introduction of slaves from any State not a member of, or Territory not belonging to, this Confederacy.
(4) No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in Negro slaves shall be passed.
(9) Congress shall appropriate no money from the treasury except by vote of two-thirds of both Houses, taken by yeas and nays, unless it be asked and estimated from by some one of the heads of departments, and submitted to Congress by the President; or for the purpose of paying its own expenses and contingencies; or for the payment of claims against the Confederate States, the justice of which shall have been judicially declared by a tribunal for the investigation of claims against the Government, which it is hereby made the duty of Congress to establish.
(10) All bills appropriating money shall specify in federal currency the exact amount of each appropriation and the purposes for which it is made; and Congress shall grant no extra compensation to any public contractor, officer, agent, or servant, after such contract shall have been made or such service rendered.
[NOTE: Clauses 12-19 duplicated Amendments 1-8 of the federal Bill of Rights]
(20) Every law, or resolution having the force of law, shall relate to but one subject, and that shall be expressed in the title.

Sec. 10. (3) No State shall, without the consent of Congress, lay any duty on tonnage, except on sea-going vessels, for the improvement of its rivers and harbors navigated by the said vessels; but such duties shall not conflict with any treaties of the Confederate States with foreign nations; and surplus revenue, thus derived, shall, after making such improvement, be paid into the common treasury; nor shall any State keep troops or ships of war in time of peace, enter into any agreement or compact with another State, or with a foreign power, or engage in war, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent danger as will not admit of delay. But when any river divides or flows through two or more States, they may enter into compacts with each other to improve the navigation thereof.

Art. II Sec. 1. (1) The Executive power shall be vested in a President of the Confederate States of America. He and the Vice-President shall hold their offices for the term of six years; but the President shall not be reeligible. The President and Vice-President shall be elected as follows:…

Sec. 2.(3) The principal officer in each of the Executive Departments, and all persons connected with the diplomatic service, may be removed from office at the pleasure of the President. All other civil officers of the Executive Departments may be removed at any time by the President, or other appointing power, when their services are unnecessary, or for dishonesty, incapacity, inefficiency, misconduct, or neglect of duty; and when so removed, the removal shall be reported to the Senate, together with the reasons therefore.

Art. III Sec. 1. (1) The judicial power of the Confederate States shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The judges, both of the Supreme and inferior courts, shall hold their offices during good behavior, and shall, at stated times, receive for their services a compensation, which shall not be diminished during their continuance in office. [Note: my copy of the Confederate Constitution trails off at this point. Sections 2 and 3 from the U.S. Federal Constitution do not appear.]

Art. IV Sec. 2. (1) The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens of the several States, and shall have the right of transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy, with their slaves and other property; and the right of property in said slaves shall not be thereby impaired.
(3) The Confederate States may acquire new territory; and Congress shall have power to legislate and provide governments for the inhabitants of all territory belonging to the Confederate States, lying without the limits of the several States, and may permit them, at such times, and in such manner as it may by law provide, to form States to be admitted into the Confederacy. In all such territory, the institution of Negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress and by the territorial government; and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories shall have the right to take to such territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States.

Art. V Sec. 1 (1) Upon the demand of any three States, legally assembled in their several Conventions, the Congress shall summon a Convention of all the States, to take into consideration such amendments to the Constitution as the said States shall concur in suggesting at the time when the said demand is made; and should any of the proposed amendments to the Constitution be agreed on by the said Convention —voting by States—and the same be ratified by the Legislatures of two-thirds thereof—as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the general convention—they shall thenceforward form a part of this Constitution. But no State shall, without its consent, be deprived of its equal representation in the Senate.

Art. VI (1)—The Government established by this Constitution is the successor of the provisional Government of the Confederate States of America, and all the laws passed by the latter shall continue in force until the same shall be repealed or modified; and all the officers appointed by the same shall remain in office until their successors are appointed and qualified, or the offices abolished.
[NOTE: Clauses 5 & 6 duplicated Amendments 9 & 10 of the federal Bill of Rights]

Art. VII (1)—The ratification of the conventions of five States shall be sufficient for the establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the same.
(2) When five States shall have ratified this Constitution in the manner before specified, the Congress, under the provisional Constitution, shall prescribe the time for holding the election of President and Vice-President, and for the meeting of the electoral college, and for counting the votes and inaugurating the President. They shall also prescribe the time for holding the first election of members of Congress under this Constitution, and the time for assembling the same. Until the assembling of such Congress, the Congress under the provisional Constitution shall continue to exercise the legislative powers granted them; not extending beyond the time limited by the Constitution of the Provisional Government.

Adopted unanimously by the Congress of the Confederate States of South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, sitting in convention at the capitol, in the city of Montgomery, Alabama, on the Eleventh day of March, in the year Eighteen Hundred and Sixty-One.

Howell Cobb, President of the Congress
(Thomas, 307)

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Two Questions:

Deep Thought 1 nears a close with these observations. I believe that most of the serious objections against Christianity can be reduced to the following two questions:

1. If God is truly God, and if Christians are truly the Children of God, then why aren't the blessings of God conspicuously showered down upon His “children” while being just as conspicuously withheld from those who are not His “children”?
2. If God is truly God, and if Jesus is truly the Son of God, then why isn't the evidence in favor of Christianity overwhelming and beyond any doubt or dispute?

The short answer to both questions is this: human free will. As detailed in my articles Hell, Just Seven Words (Christian Exclusivity) and Providence, God intends to populate the New Creation as heavily as possible, but can only allow entry to those who willingly submit to the Lordship of Jesus the Messiah. For that reason God will not compel anyone to accept Jesus. God may woo; God may pursue; God may persuade; but God will not compel.

For that reason God's treatment of Christians (and Jews, for that matter) is not noticeably different from that of non-Christians. And while I may assert that the evidence in favor of Christianity is adequate and sufficient, that evidence is highly disputed and hotly challenged. The evidence will allow you to swing either way. It's your choice.

Be careful.

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World Peace

The popular desire for world peace runs headlong into the problem of human leadership. No, I do not mean the difference between good leadership and bad leadership. Rather, the problem of human leadership itself. Virtually all of the strife, contention and warfare in human history can be tied directly to the fundamental differences in the goals and objectives of human leaders. These leaders have control over their respective populations and national resources, and therefore have the means to command violence in order to achieve their personal goals and objectives. War becomes inevitable.

In order to achieve world peace, humanity would need to effect the total extermination of the entire population of ‘leaders’. And I mean every last one them, from presidents, prime ministers and dictators down to local business and Scout leaders. Unfortunately, this program would itself require leadership! Since leaders are not going to work to their own extinction, humanity would merely exchange one set of leaders for a new set of leaders. Eventually the world would be right back at square one with strife, contention—and WAR.

World peace cannot be achieved by human means. Come, lord Jesus.

Table of Contents

Axis Triumphant!

A World War 2 Counterfactual History

The horror that very well could have been

“A far graver danger was added to these problems. The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril. …I was even more anxious about this battle than I had been about the glorious air fight called the Battle of Britain.”
(Winston Churchill, from his wartime memoir Their Finest Hour)

“It's not the size of the dog in the fight that counts. It's the size of the fight in the dog.”
Common proverb.

Introduction

This article considers the oft-posed speculation of what might have happened if Hitler, Tojo and Emperor Hirohito had done two or three things differently—and correctly—shortly before and in the early parts of World War 2. That is, to show that the history that did happen was by no means the history that had to happen. World War 2 could very realistically—and all too easily—have played out radically different from actual history.

The following counterfactual history will posit only those things within the actual knowledge and authority of these Axis leaders and their top commanders, and only those things known to have been within the industrial/military capacity of Germany and Japan in the mid-1930s through the early 1940s.

In Europe and the North Atlantic

I start by asserting that there was no historically required reason why Hitler and his Naval High Command could not have placed a proper emphasis on the submarine service during the mid-to-late 1930s. Everyone in Germany, Hitler and the admirals included, knew the tremendous effectiveness and importance of U-boats (Unterseeboot) from their experience in World War 1. However, as Nazi U-boat fleet commander Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz pointed out in his book Memoirs: Ten Years and Twenty Days, the submarine service was so neglected during these pre-war years that even though Germany was nominally respecting the tonnage restrictions laid down in the 1935 Anglo-German Naval Agreement, the German Naval High Command was not even utilizing all the tonnage allowed under that Agreement for submarines. That is, the Nazis were cheating themselves out of U-boats!

Compounding the problem was that there was no effort or intent by the German Naval High Command to establish the naval shipyard capacity, effect the engineering redesign of the Type VII submarine for modular fabrication and assembly line construction techniques (that were easily within the engineering and manufacturing capabilities of Germany at that time), and secure the industrial contracts for a full-blown U-boat mass production program during this time of peace and easy opportunity.

Such a program would have been entirely within the normal authority of the admirals of the German Naval High Command with or without the formal approval (or even knowledge) of Adolf Hitler, and would hardly have been noticed against the much larger backdrop of the tremendous buildup of the entire German military along with the extensive civil construction programs going on at that time (read Albert Speer's book Inside the Third Reich for further detail).

In historical reality, German submarines (like battleships) were basically custom built in the shipyards and only 703 Type VII U-boats were constructed during the entire war. With a proper U-boat mass production program in place by September 1939, the Nazis could easily have had several hundred fully operational Type VII North Atlantic-grade U-boats by the end of 1941.

Besides initiating the U-boat mass production program, the easiest and most obvious thing that could have been done during this period of peace was to simply replace all of the existing submarines with brand new North Atlantic-grade Type VII U-boats while utilizing every last ton allowed under the 1935 Naval Agreement (and more, if you consider the possibility that the Nazis might actually cheat on the terms of a treaty). Less obvious, but easily within the authority and capabilities of the German Naval High Command, would have been a U-boat crew mass training program to have pre-trained crews ready to man new submarines as they slid out of the shipyards. This would not have violated the Naval Agreement and would have put the U-boat service on an excellent footing for war.

Assuming that declared war with Great Britain in September 1939 would have voided the Naval Agreement and its tonnage restrictions, the pre-established industrial/shipyard base for mass producing Type VII U-boats could quickly have been put into full effect before the end of 1939, with pre-trained crews ready to bring the new submarines into nearly immediate combat service.

In historical reality, when war started in September 1939 there was no U-boat mass production program, no large-scale crew training program, and just fifty-six submarines available to the whole German Navy—only forty-six of which were operational at the time, and only twenty-two that were suitable for North Atlantic duty (again, read Dönitz). As regards the U-boat fleet, the German Naval High Command was caught totally flat-footed by the outbreak of formal war.

So I begin this World War 2 counterfactual history around 1936 with Hitler and his Naval High Command initiating the U-boat mass production and crew training programs, while renewing and maximizing the existing fleet of subs optimized for North Atlantic service. With only this single, easy, and relatively minor historical modification, everything else in the 1930s happens exactly as it happened in Germany and Japan until the Nazis invaded Poland in September 1939, when Britain and France immediately declared war on Germany, and World War 2 in Europe formally began. Early on, however, this minimally modified history has Germany armed with a fully formed, modernized North Atlantic-ready U-boat fleet with more submarines quickly coming out of the shipyards, manned with pre-trained crews.

In addition to the possible early U-boat sinkings or damaging of major British Navy capital ships in 1939 (Ark Royal, Rodney, etc.) mentioned by Adm. Dönitz in his book, along with wreaking havoc on British supply shipping and Royal Navy operations in the North Atlantic, Mediterranean Sea (possibly preventing Operation Judgement and the neutralization of the Italian Navy at Taranto in November 1940), and the South Atlantic (in conjunction with the German cruiser Admiral Graf Spee which, in historical reality, effectively operated alone until its scuttling on December 13, 1939), the modernized and expanded Nazi U-boat fleet could have virtually annihilated the British fleet sent to counter-invade Norway in April 1940 (Which, in historical reality, suffered only trivial U-boat related losses. Again, read Dönitz along with Churchill in his book The Gathering Storm).

Following on the heels of the devastating Nazi U-boat victory in the waters off Norway would have been the one-two punch of actual, functional U-boat wolfpacks successfully choking off a truly significant percentage of shipping supplies to Great Britain (Prime Minister Winston Churchill's greatest fear during the war) while the Luftwaffe rained destruction from above during the Battle of Britain starting in July of 1940.

As suggested by many military historians, had Hitler and Göring simply stayed true to their original battle plan of the Luftwaffe destroying military/industrial/supply targets, they almost certainly would have eventually grounded the RAF (by simple combat attrition of irreplaceable fighter and bomber aircraft, along with dwindling fuel, munitions, and spare parts supplies), finished the destruction of all industrial/military assets through aerial bombardment, and brought England down to a state of prostrate emaciated impotence.

From mid-to-late 1940 on into early 1941, with swarms of U-boat wolfpacks surrounding the British Isles and the Luftwaffe in full control of the skies, Germany could have destroyed or driven out the Royal Navy and then taken possession of one or two British ports most important to Nazi naval operations (especially Scapa Flow) along with a couple of key airfields to easily extend their reach over the entirety of Britain and far out into the North Atlantic. A full-blown “Operation Sea Lion” ground invasion of Great Britain would have been unnecesary. They could have left all the rest of Britain to starve into submission, with His Majesty's Crown Government almost certainly evacuated to Canada.

Cutting a neutrality deal with the Irish would have put them peacefully out of the picture, and quite possibly the same with the Scots. For all practical purposes the Battle of the North Atlantic would be over and Nazi victory in Western Europe would have been complete. German and Italian victory in the Mediterranean Sea, North Africa and the Middle East would eventually have followed.

What about Operation Barbarossa and war with the Soviet Union? As pertains to this World War 2 counterfactual history I simply let it play forward as it happened. Hitler would have realized that Barbarossa could not have started until spring of 1941 at the very earliest even with total victory over the British. It would simply have been too late in the year of 1940 for Hitler to have even toyed with such an idea. But with the British conquered or neutralized he could have continued building up the German military over the winter of 1940 so as to be able to put his full force and resources behind the attack in the spring of 1941 as it happened with no danger of the Three Front War that ultimately developed in historical reality.

I only suggest as counterfactual possibility that Hitler might have correctly dealt with Yugoslavia and Greece in 1940, or put off those problems until a later date, or even handed these problems off to Mussolini rather than waste precious time in the spring of 1941 before the start of Barbarossa thereby giving his forces maximum time and resource to take all important objectives in Russia, properly establish supply lines, and be in a position to dig in for the early winter of historical reality so as to survive reasonably intact until the spring of 1942 and then continue the offensive.

Regardless these fine points, this would have left all the western, northern, and southern parts of the Reich firmly in German and Italian hands well into 1942 and beyond, with naval shipyards safely finishing work on Bismarck and Tirpitz while cranking out U-boats by the dozens—turning into hundreds—by the end of 1941. With Britain, the RAF, and the Royal Navy neutralized in 1940, and therefore no Battle of the North Atlantic nor bombing raids on German targets, the Bismarck would have been spared the destruction suffered in historical reality on May 27, 1941, and U-boat losses would have been minimized while their numbers increased dramatically.

In the Pacific

“It's not the size of the dog in the fight…”

Meanwhile, back in Japan, we find the Empire expanded to the full extent of historical reality by mid-1941. Tojo, the Emperor and their military advisors, however, would now be at a Decision Point: do they keep America at arm's length and concentrate exclusively on consolidating their gains in the Western Pacific and Asia, or risk attacking America to take it out of the picture on a long-term or permanent basis? Had they chosen the former, the long-term results could have been a consolidated Empire with America fussing and fuming on the sidelines but otherwise taking little or no direct military action—at least not immediately.

Likewise, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy would have continued their consolidation and fortification of the totally conquered Western Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East on into 1942. Japan might at some future time have chosen to attack America, but that attack would most likely have been from a position of even greater resource and power, although with the increasing risk that America might launch its own preemptive surprise naval attack on Japan—a reverse Day of Infamy. The second choice of Japan attacking America without warning at Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7, 1941 will now be assumed.

I maintain that the decision to attack was not fundamentally bad. The strategic blunder by Tojo, Hirohito, and their military advisors was a cultural blunder of the Mind in that they badly misread the character of America thereby thinking that a single devastating blow at Pearl Harbor would have either bought them enough unobstructed time from a shocked, traumatized, and politically paralyzed America in order to consolidate and secure Japanese gains in the Orient before any effective American military response (against which, by that time, the Japanese would have been totally prepared), or caused America to cut a deal of military/economic neutrality in Japanese affairs regarding The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere in exchange for an end to hostilities.

In the aftermath of the actual attack on Pearl Harbor, those Japanese leaders were probably just as shocked, stunned, and discombobulated by America's immediate declaration of war and rapid military mobilization as Hitler was shocked and stunned by the totally unexpected immediate declarations of war by Britain and France after the Nazi invasion of Poland two and a quarter years earlier. The “Sleeping Dragon” of pre-war America was now wide awake—wings unfurling and breathing fire.

“…It's the size of the fight in the dog.”

However, Japan's cultural misreading of America was not a historical requirement or inevitability. This counterfactual history therefore has Tojo, Hirohito, the army generals, and naval admirals all correctly reading the situation and realizing that a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor would result in a quick declaration of war and swift military mobilization by an outraged, united, and fully committed America. That is, the clear and sober realization in their collective Japanese Mind that an attack on Pearl Harbor would start an immediate all-out death fight with the largest industrial powerhouse on the planet——America.

They would have correctly concluded that Pearl Harbor, though very important, was not a war-winning critical installation, but mainly a naval forward operating, supply, and repair base. Therefore, an attack on Pearl Harbor would have had to have been just the first stroke in a much larger—and immediate—offensive against the truly war-winning strategic naval/shipyard/port assets on the American West Coast to cripple America's supply, shipbuilding, and naval might at its source. That is, to chop off the Dragon's head on ‘day one’ of the War so as to achieve Adm. Yamamoto's personal goal of securing de facto military victory over America during the first week of conflict.

To that end they would have quietly pulled the landing craft carrier ship Shinshu Maru and any other suitable Japanese troop, equipment and supply transport ships out of the Western Pacific to add a full amphibious ground invasion force to the Pearl Harbor assault group, plus a larger contingent of destroyers (strangely, only nine were included in the original assault group out of more than a hundred destroyers available in the IJN), along with the six first-line aircraft carriers, two battleships (out of ten), three cruisers (out of thirty-eight), and at least eight ocean-going submarines (out of sixty-three long range subs) plus the five midget subs actually used in the real Pearl Harbor attack.

Coincident with the departure of the Pearl Harbor assault/invasion force, most of the remaining Japanese long range submarines would have been sent east into the Pacific along with refueling tankers so as to have ‘topped off their tanks’ at the midway point and then gone to position themselves off of every important American West Coast naval base and shipyard port along with a contingent assigned to cover the Panama Canal in order to prevent reinforcement of the U.S. Pacific Fleet from the American East Coast, and then lie in wait for the order to attack. In reality, only two Japanese subs were sent to cover our entire West Coast that day.

Following on the heels of the long range submarines, the Japanese would have sent every last remaining seaworthy aircraft carrier, battleship, cruiser, destroyer and minelayer, organized into four separate battle groups, to position themselves out in the Pacific for coordinated nighttime strikes on the Bremerton Washington Naval Shipyard, the San Francisco Bay military bases, ports and shipyards, the Ports of Los Angeles/Long Beach, and the San Diego Naval Station/Camp Pendleton on command.

Only a minimal Home Island defense force of their oldest cruisers, destroyers and short-range submarines would have been held back to keep up a façade of naval power. The Japanese would have gambled that the utterly secret nature of their whole operation would have prevented any enemies in the Western Pacific from organizing a meaningful attack on Japan during the relatively short period of time involved before the bulk of their forces returned to Japan. The Main Battle Plan for the whole operation would have been very simple: Attack all targets with unrelenting and ruthless ferocity. Come home victorious——or don't come home. Banzai!!

The immediate objectives would have been to hit Battleship Row in Pearl Harbor and the Oahu air bases on the morning of December 7, 1941 as actually done so as to defang the U.S. Navy and gain mastery of the skies over Oahu. Coincident with the departure of the first wave of planes headed to Pearl Harbor at 6:20 a.m., at least one of the battleships and cruisers would have charged at full speed towards Oahu, with the ground-invasion troop transport and supply ships following in their wake as fast as they could behind a shield of destroyers.

The ‘Big Guns’, clearing the way, would have covered the 230-mile trip to Oahu and arrived at Pearl Harbor sometime in the afternoon of December 7, and could have begun bombardments of the harbor and airfields along with a supporting air raid from the Japanese carriers in order to finish off all of the ships in Pearl Harbor and the drydocks, and to suppress any remaining American air response.

An on-site command decision would have had to been made as to whether the troop transport ships would invade during the last light of December 7, risk a nighttime invasion under the light of a waning gibbous moon, or wait until first light on the morning of December 8. Whichever way, their objectives would have been to take the Harbor, dry docks, munitions and fuel stocks, and key airfields—Hickam, at the very least.

If the invasion was successful, all the rest of Oahu and the Hawaiian Islands could have been ignored as unimportant and left to starve into submission, with Pearl Harbor now the Japanese forward operating base. Midway Island could later have been taken at Japan's leisure or left to starve, with a different island built up as a Japanese ‘midway’ support base.

If the invasion and taking of Pearl Harbor failed on December 7/8, the destruction of the supply dumps and dry dock facilities (the aborted “Third Wave” bomber attack in the original Pearl Harbor battle plan) could have been accomplished by no later than midafternoon on December 8 as the final act of the mission before withdrawing; most easily through naval bombardment by the close-in battleship(s) and cruiser(s). Then, the main body of the task force would have abandoned the flaming wreckage of Oahu and headed northeast at full speed on their three-and-a-half-day trip to reinforce the San Diego and San Francisco assault groups, with submarines and destroyers guarding the rear.

As the Fortunes of War might have played out, this movement could actually have drawn U.S. Navy Aircraft Carrier Task Force 12 (formed around USS Lexington (CV-2), at sea around 460 miles southeast of Midway Island that morning) and carrier Task Force 8 (formed around USS Enterprise (CV-6), returning to Pearl Harbor from Wake Island, and stalled by severe storm damage about 200 miles west of Oahu) into a Japanese submarine trap.

Indeed, had the Japanese included a larger contingent of destroyers along with the original Pearl Harbor assault force, or had included a larger number of submarines for that day, an expanding picket line around the Japanese assault force might very well have detected Task Force 8 fairly early on December 7, which could then have been pounced on by the full might of six first-line Japanese aircraft carriers. At the very least, our aircraft carrier Enterprise could have been sent to the bottom. Bagging the escorts would have been icing on the cake, with the scraps cleaned up by the destroyers and subs.

Upon hearing “Tora Tora Tora” broadcast from the Pearl Harbor strike fleet around 8 a.m. on the morning of December 7, the dozens of pre-positioned Japanese submarines stationed on our West Coast would have begun immediate torpedo attacks on all American ships in order to shut down access to our West Coast ports and naval bases (quite possibly nailing the carrier Saratoga (CV-3) that was nearing San Diego on the afternoon of December 7 after a Bremerton shipyard overhaul), and to clear the corridor from Midway to Oahu, with special emphasis on finding and sinking our aircraft carriers still at sea. Bagging any capital escort vessels would have been a big plus.

A large contingent of Japanese destroyers would have been posted around Hawaii to screen against American submarines and provide picket intelligence against any possible American counterattack, the remainder providing close-in anti-submarine protection for the carriers and gunnery support for the harbor invasion force.

“Tora Tora Tora” would have triggered all four of the carefully pre-positioned Japanese reserve battle groups out in the Pacific to charge east at full speed, timed in order to arrive at the American West Coast under cover of darkness so as to begin mine laying and naval artillery bombardments of their West Coast targets on the night of December 7 or in the predawn hours of December 8. Aerial attacks on the strategic San Diego and San Francisco Bay area targets by the four remaining carriers in the Japanese arsenal would have begun at first light on the 8th, with the surface forces pulling out of range of any American defensive artillery fire during the day—only to return the following nights to continue the shelling.

A word on attacking the Bremerton Naval Shipyard near Seattle, Washington would be appropriate at this point. Unlike all the other strategic targets to be hit on America's West Coast starting on the night of December 7/8, that were easily within range of naval artillery from the sea, Bremerton's inland location would have put it beyond the reach of naval gunfire from the coast. Since the Bremerton shipyard was basically a defenseless static target, not a strategically active naval base like Pearl Harbor or San Diego, the Japanese would have had two options to destroy Bremerton. First would be to simply wait until all the other strategic targets were destroyed, then send a carrier task force north to do ‘mop up’ work on Bremerton and then head home to Japan. If the Japanese wanted to attack Bremerton on the night of December 7/8 for maximum shock effect, they certainly had the naval force to do that.

I do not believe that the Japanese would have wanted to expend the use of one of their four remaining aircraft carriers for the purpose of hitting Bremerton; that carrier being much more needed for the San Francisco or San Diego attacks until the first-line carriers arrived around three and a half days later after the Pearl Harbor operation. From the suicidally fanatical point of view of the Imperial Japanese Navy, the easiest and most obvious plan to destroy Bremerton on the night of December 7/8 would have been to take their oldest seaworthy and functional battleship, with maybe one or two of their oldest cruisers, all manned with skeleton crews of volunteer Samurai warriors, and sent them on a Kamikaze mission into Puget Sound. Including a couple of oceangoing tugboats and minelayers for this party would have been nice.

As best as possible, sail into Puget Sound along with the flooding tide under the darkling silver light of a waning gibbous moon, use the tugboats to help navigate the narrows to get within artillery range of Bremerton—even at the risk of grounding the ships—launch a spotter plane for fire control and then blaze away. After giving Bremerton a thorough shellacking, if they could get turned around and sail out with the ebbing tide, then great! After firing a few salvos on the Port of Seattle as a parting gift, they could make good their getaway out of Puget Sound while leaving naval mines in their wake, and then head south to join the festivities down at San Francisco. If any ship got totally grounded, then light off its munitions and powder magazines and go out with a bang. Glory to the Emperor! Banzai!! The destruction of the Bremerton Naval Shipyard (plus the battleship Colorado, drydocked there that night for overhaul), along with the general terror induced by such a brazen penetration into American territory, would have been well worth any sacrifice of warriors and ship(s).

Tightening the Noose

Two things would now be happening very close together. The initial attack on Pearl Harbor and the West Coast would have resulted in America declaring war on Japan the very next day. Soon thereafter Hitler and Mussolini would have declared war on America, as happened in actual history on December 11. Bear in mind that Hitler and Mussolini were actually not under compelling treaty obligation to aid Japan in a fight that Japan itself started and could very properly have ‘stood back’ from that fight thereby keeping America out of Europe—at least for the moment.

However, in this particular counterfactual history the Nazis would have had a very large fleet of U-boats available for immediate use. As William L. Shirer pointed out in his book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (along with Adm. Dönitz in his book), in actual history the size of the German U-boat fleet even in late 1941 was still so stunted from low construction rates, shipyard repairs and North Atlantic battle losses, that Adm. Dönitz had only enough submarines to attack the entire East Coast of the United States with just six U-boats. In historical reality, Nazi U-boat action did not get fully underway off the American East Coast until early 1942.

In this counterfactual history the Germans could easily and immediately have put sixty or a hundred U-boats directly off our entire East Coast from Newfoundland to the Bahamas, with wolfpacks infesting the rest of a Nazi-controlled North Atlantic. Also remember that Great Britain was neutralized or occupied back in mid-to-late 1940, with the RAF Bomber Command grounded and the Royal Navy either destroyed or driven out. By December 1941 the battleship Bismarck (and possibly Tirpitz) would have been fully functional, with suitable escort and support vessels at the ready. One or both could have set sail along with the U-boat armada as fully formed battle groups into totally friendly North Atlantic waters with no fear of British interference. Also, if the Regia Marina was spared the destruction of an Operation Judgement in 1940, the Italian Navy also could have been moving west across the Atlantic out of a totally Axis-secured Mediterranean Sea.

Indeed, had the Japanese coordinated their operation with Der Fuehrer and Il Duce in advance, the full force of the Kriegsmarine (and perhaps the Italian Navy) could have been secretly moving west across the Atlantic in early December 1941 even as Japanese forces were silently heading east across the Pacific, and the German/Italian declarations of war could have been coincident with the Japanese declaration on December 7, 1941.

A gutsy move by the Nazis would have been a simultaneous surprise attack by both battleship groups on East Coast targets on the night of December 7 or the predawn hours of December 8. One battleship group making a leisurely swing through the NY/NJ Bight for an all-guns barrage on New York City and Bayonne, NJ area targets, the other pulling a slow loop into the Chesapeake Bay with the battleship main batteries shelling the Norfolk Naval Station (possibly bagging the carriers Yorktown (CV-5) and Hornet (CV-8), at port there that night), the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, and the Newport News yard (possibly nailing the carriers Essex, Yorktown (CV-10), and Intrepid; all under construction), with the escort cruisers' main guns hitting the defensive shore batteries and any other targets of opportunity for maximum effect. A quick naval artillery attack on His Majesty's Dockyard in Bermuda by the Italian Navy would have added to the terror of the night.

Laying naval mines at the harbor entrances as they left and then hightailing it into the darkness of the open Atlantic to elude aircraft attacks in the morning, any pursuit of the Nazi assault groups by American/British surface forces would have been through thick minefields, and then right into the jaws of hungry U-boat wolfpacks guarding the rear. As with Japanese submarines in the Pacific, only the Fortunes of War would decide if Nazi U-boats could have found and nailed the aircraft carriers Ranger (CV-4, returning to Norfolk from the Caribbean that day) and Wasp (CV-7, at port in Bermuda and therefore possibly exposed to Italian naval gunfire in addition to the U-boat threat).

I now take a brief pause from the main counterfactual to consider a speculative amusement. Many times over the years I have read articles that pitted the German battleship Bismarck against the USS Iowa in a fantasy death fight. Of course the Iowa always wins, being the newer, bigger, and clearly superior vessel. However, on this very special December night described above, the Bismarck could have actually “sunk” the Iowa——in its construction berth at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. But I digress…

The Germans have delivered terror and destruction on our East Coast, and the U-boats/battleship groups have shut down all shipping and Allied naval operations in the Atlantic. Western Europe and North Africa would have been totally secure from invasion, and Hitler would have had his Fortress Europe. Meanwhile, back at Pearl Harbor, the Japanese on-site commander would have been evaluating the effects of the attack. As above, if the ground invasion failed then the Japanese would have quickly finished the total destruction of Pearl Harbor and Oahu air bases by no later than the midafternoon of December 8, and then sailed away at full speed on their three-and-a-half-day trip to reinforce the West Coast assault groups.

On the other hand, assuming that the ground invasion was successful, then absolutely as soon as the ground situation on Oahu stabilized in the evening of December 7 or morning/early afternoon of December 8, the Japanese commander would have cut loose three or four of his six carriers and maybe one of the battleships and cruisers to head northeast at full speed to reinforce the San Diego and San Francisco assault groups, the remainder securing Oahu for Japanese use.

Submarines could very well have shut down the major ports and naval bases on the West Coast thereby leaving them as sitting ducks for attack by Japanese carriers, battleships, cruisers and minelayers. Only the Fortunes of War would decide if Japanese destroyers and submarines could have found and nailed our aircraft carriers still at sea. Even if they were spared immediate destruction, those carriers and any escort vessels would have been hunted animals on the run for their lives with virtually nowhere to go but the open ocean, food and fuel supplies dwindling day by day. Tick-tock, tick-tock…

After a week of continuous naval shelling, aerial bombardment, torpedo attacks and mine laying, the American East Coast is now totally shut down and neutralized by the Germans while Adm. Yamamoto would have seen the fulfillment of his personal goal with our West Coast shipyards, ports and military bases reduced to smoking ruins. Pearl Harbor/Hickam Airfield would either have been utterly destroyed or held firmly in Japan's grip, with maybe one, two, or even three of our Pacific Fleet aircraft carriers and their escorts sent to Davy Jones's Locker. With the American East Coast under direct Nazi attack, and the Panama Canal secured by Japanese submarines, there would be no reinforcement of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Sorry, Col. Doolittle, but your ride got sunk at Norfolk by the Nazis.

At this point the Japanese could safely have begun rotating the bulk of their forces back to Japan for refit and defense of the Home Islands while maintaining just enough presence on our West Coast to keep America's nose pressed firmly to the ground. The continued expansion and securing of the Empire could have resumed by the end of 1941, with maybe a plan to attack the eastern portion of Russia in the spring of 1942 so as to turn Operation Barbarossa into a two-front war in support of their Tripartite partner in Hitler's continuing death fight with Stalin and the Soviet Union. After all, the Japanese had a really big bone to pick with Russia over prior grievances. At this point, would the Axis have won the war?

Maybe.

All would depend on the iron will of Joseph Stalin in the U.S.S.R. to continue his lonely unaided fight against the Nazis (and maybe the Japanese), plus the fortitude and leadership of F.D.R., Churchill, and King George VI along with the resolve of America and Canada as a whole. Also, the Western Allies would not have stood alone. There would still have been the remaining British Commonwealth nations on our side even if Britain herself was neutralized. Almost certainly the British government and those surviving elements of His Imperial Majesty's Royal Navy and RAF along with every possible ground force would have evacuated to Canada and America in 1940, adding to Allied military force.

Neither the Germans nor the Japanese would have been able to invade America proper. Both would have been at the farthest end of their military reach. This would leave the vast majority of American and Canadian industry free to produce war materiel. Efforts to rebuild the military installations, ports and shipyard facilities on both coasts would immediately have begun, and the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean would have been available for American naval buildup because the increased distance and clear waters of these areas would have made U-boat and Nazi surface battle-force operations either too dangerous or out of reach.

So, to conclude this World War 2 counterfactual history I have Japan going ‘all-in’ with its attack, invasion, and occupation—or utter destruction—of Pearl Harbor, with sustained attacks on American West Coast naval, port, and shipyard assets. It would be ‘do or die’ for the Empire—no turning back and nothing held in reserve. Banzai!! I also leave America taking a direct pounding on both coasts, but still in a very real fighting position. However, this history also leaves Hitler and Mussolini in full control of the North Atlantic, Western and Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean Sea, North Africa, and the Middle East on into 1943. Hitler might have had a death fight going on with the Soviets, but that battle would be waged to the East.

Even an eventual ground victory by the Soviets in Western Europe would have left Nazi naval assets as the last to fall to Stalin, with the Kriegsmarine totally blocking the Soviet Navy from the North Atlantic while shutting down the American East Coast so as to prevent any Allied supplies or reinforcements from getting to the Soviet Union. The entire North Atlantic would have been Hitler's to the very end, with maybe a Nazi last stand on Britain itself. And that's making the huge assumption of a final Soviet victory over the Nazis in Western Europe.

Remember, in historical reality the Nazis tenaciously fought a three-front war against multiple enemies all the way into May 1945 before ultimate defeat at the Führerbunker. This counterfactual history barely makes it out of 1942, and Hitler would have been fighting only a single, isolated, unreinforced foe attacking from the East. The whole rest of the Reich would have been totally safe and secure thereby giving the Nazis and Fascists a tremendous ‘home court’ advantage in this fight.

The Japanese would also have been at the farthest reach of their punch. Maintaining pressure on our West Coast naval/shipyard/port assets would have stretched all the Japanese military and supply resources to the breaking point. Even so, by early 1942 the Axis would have backed America into a very tight corner. Almost certainly there would be (could be) no Doolittle Raid or Battle of Midway in a Japanese-dominated Pacific lacking U.S. Navy aircraft carriers, nor a suicidal Operation Torch Allied invasion attempt of North Africa across three thousand miles of a Nazi and Fascist controlled Atlantic in November 1942 to open up the Third Front of the war in Europe as it actually happened. America fighting its way out of this situation would have been a far more costly, dangerous, and difficult effort than in historical reality.

In actual history, America easily pushed out from totally undamaged and barely threatened East and West Coast ports and bases along with the still usable Pearl Harbor and Midway Island in the Pacific, plus the British Isles with its RAF Bomber Command and Royal Navy directly off the west coast of Europe to continue the Battle of the North Atlantic along with bombing raids on German targets, and to act as the staging ground for Allied forces to enable the Three Front War of actual history.

In this counterfactual history, America would have had to fight its way out of heavily damaged East and West Coast ports and bases into submarine and mine infested waters, with the unknown perils of Japanese aircraft carriers and German/Italian/Japanese battleship groups lurking in the distance, with the Far Ends of the oceans held firmly in enemy hands. What then? Who knows. But without a doubt, history would have played out radically different from actual reality.

Speculative Counterfactuals

Thus ends the formal part of the World War 2 counterfactual history. I am very confident in its validity and historical achievability. I now proceed to more speculative suggestions; speculative, but still within the realm of reasonable possibility. These begin during the period of late 1938 in a laboratory at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Nazi Germany. Two radiochemists, Drs. Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman, were conducting experiments with the objective of forming more massive isotopes of Uranium through neutron bombardment of pure Uranium test targets. They were dumbfounded when they detected traces of elements about half the atomic weight of Uranium in those targets.

Unable to account for the strange results, they were at a Decision Point: either confer with physicists within the Nazi scientific community or confer with outside expertise. They chose the latter——and unwittingly changed the course of history. In historical reality they conferred with a former colleague, the physicist Lise Meitner, a Jew who had fled Nazi Germany and was residing in Sweden. She, along with her physicist nephew Otto Frisch, determined what was actually happening with nuclear fission. However, rather than report their findings back to Hahn and Strassman, they went to press by publishing their results in January 1939, issue number 143 of the international science journal Nature. The race for the A-bomb was now an international race.

But reasonably, ‘what if’ Hahn and Strassman had done the easy and obvious thing of simply walking down the hall or picking up the phone to confer with immediately available Nazi scientific colleagues within the Institute? There was absolutely nothing preventing them from doing so. Almost certainly those colleagues would have figured out what was happening with Uranium fission, and also realized the tremendous possibility of a superweapon. A tight lid of secrecy would have been clamped on this discovery, with only the highest and most important players in the Nazi regime informed of the news. Plans could immediately have been formed in early 1939 to weaponize the discovery; the project given the highest priority by Hitler himself.

The importance of this would have ultimately depended on Hitler and his Naval High Command putting a proper emphasis on the submarine service so as to have had a large and growing number of U-boats available from the start of war in September 1939. Also, the correct play by Hitler and Göring during the Battle of Britain in 1940 to stick with the original battle plan so as to continue choking off shipping supplies with unrelenting U-boat wolfpack attacks and then grounding the RAF by bombing military installations, airfields, factories, fuel and supply depots thereby gaining mastery of the skies over England and neutralizing Great Britain in Germany's favor.

This would have secured Germany military victory in Western Europe, ended The Battle of the North Atlantic, and left the Nazi Uranprojekt A-bomb development program totally secret, safe, and unmolested. There would be no Operation Gunnerside commando raid on the heavy water facility in Norway nor Allied air attacks on the Peenemünde rocket research and manufacturing facility. The greatest danger to those facilities would have been the occasional bird droppings.

Continuing, with Britain's RAF Bomber Command neutralized in 1940 thereby leaving clear and friendly skies over the whole western Reich, German aircraft research, development and production would have been in high gear. Although counterfactual, it is entirely reasonable to suggest that even Hitler could have looked at his own planning maps and clearly recognized the tremendous distances—not to mention a major mountain range—involved with actually waging Operation Barbarossa to ultimate victory. It could very well have occurred to him, Göring, and top-ranking Luftwaffe officers during the planning phases of Barbarossa in 1940 that long-range heavy bombers would be needed to strike deep into Soviet territory. Their strategic blindness on this point was not a historical requirement.

Even a fantastic success with Barbarossa in 1941 would have left German ground forces west of the Ural Mountains. Once Stalin recovered his senses after the start of Barbarossa and realized his dire situation, he would have used ‘scorched earth’ tactics and pulled back towards the shield of the Ural Mountains—as he did in historical reality. This left a very large portion of Stalin's population, military, natural resources, and industrial facilities beyond the reach of Nazi air power as it actually existed in 1941 and 1942.

Beginning the design and mass production of long-range heavy bombers in 1940 (perhaps simply copying the British Lancaster), and the eventual development and mass production of truly perfected guided missiles from an unmolested Peenemünde, would have extended the reach of Nazi air power all the way into, and east of, the Urals. Now, by itself this would not have won the war for Germany on the Eastern Front but would have significantly hindered Stalin and his military response to Barbarossa in 1942 and beyond.

I now return to the question of German capital ships. With Britain neutralized and the Royal Navy almost certainly either destroyed or evacuated to Canada and the United States in 1940, the whole of Western Europe and the North Atlantic would have been Hitler's front yard. Nazi naval shipyards could have continued unhindered with work on Bismarck and Tirpitz. But what about at least one functional aircraft carrier? There was no fundamental reason why German naval engineers could not have solved all problems in the design and construction of such a ship.

Even if armed only with Stuka dive bombers, the addition of one or two Nazi aircraft carriers to the battleship strike groups would have added much greater ‘punch’ to the attacks suggested on New York City and the Chesapeake Bay area naval targets, especially an air attack on the Yorktown Naval Weapons/Munitions Station which would have been beyond the range of the battleship main batteries. This would have required the perfection of nighttime carrier air-ops, but the Germans were used to attacking by night. The benefits of terror and destruction would have far exceeded the difficulties, dangers, and costs.

With a likely multiyear head start on any possible Manhattan Project, Nazi development of the A-bomb would also have progressed secret and unhindered. Assuming that German progress with the Uranprojekt would have been similar to the American progress with the Manhattan Project, its achievement could have been as soon as early-to-mid 1942. The Nazis would have had to figure out how to deliver this massive device to American and/or Soviet targets at that time. Three possibilities come easily to mind: heavy bombers, dirigibles, and long-range guided missiles. Jet engine technology was still in its infancy at the start of Barbarossa, but as the British Lancaster and American B-29 showed, you don't need jet engines for a fully functional long-range heavy bomber capable of delivering an A-bomb.

A Hindenburg-class airship would have had the range and load carry capacity for an A-bomb, but its slow speed would have made it unusable against the Soviets. On the other hand, America had East Coast targets attackable by the dirigible. Such an attack would have required the scientists at Peenemünde to design radar signal homing missiles delivered by sub, ship, or plane in order to blind American air defenses against the nighttime approach of nuclear armed dirigibles coming in from the Atlantic.

One bomb dropped by parachute on the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the other dropped on the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard or the Newport News yard, both with time delay detonators to allow the dirigibles suitable distance before the blasts. The wide destruction from the explosions (extending from Brooklyn all the way into the lower east side of Manhattan Island) and resulting radioactive fallout would have utterly neutralized both areas, thereby dealing critical blows to American naval construction and repair capabilities. The general terror induced by these attacks might very well have brought America to the peace table in Hitler's favor in 1942, just as Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought the Japanese to their knees in surrender in 1945.

Delivery to Soviet targets would have required the Nazi equivalent of a B-29/Lancaster heavy bomber (with or without jet engines) and/or heavy lift ICBM-sized guided missiles from Peenemünde. Doable? Yes, with proper priority. Whatever the results of Operation Barbarossa, the need for either or both delivery methods would have become obvious to the Nazis for conventional as well as nuclear weapons in the protracted death fight with Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union.

Of course, this assumes that Stalin would not have ‘thrown in the towel’ after the nuclear attacks on America and cut a deal with Hitler to simply give up any claims to territory west of the Urals so as to end the War with some portion of the Soviet Union left intact east of the Urals. Japan opening up a second front in eastern Siberia in the spring of 1942 might have hastened Stalin to the peace table even if nukes didn't seal the deal.

Thus ends the speculative counterfactuals. I really have nothing additional to suggest for the Japanese. This author does not believe that successfully completing the destruction of the supply dumps and dry dock facilities during the actual Pearl Harbor attack (the aborted Third Wave bomber mission) would have changed the ultimate outcome of the war in the Pacific. The almost shocking timidity and restraint of the Japanese in December 1941 meant that fully completing Adm. Yamamoto's actual Pearl Harbor battle plan would have been a grievous blow to America, but not a decisive blow.

Having totally misjudged the character, leadership, and resolve of America (which, as I have shown above, was not a historical requirement), the Japanese simply had no meaningful battle plan for strategic ‘follow through’ after the Pearl Harbor attack as it actually happened in historical reality. They simply hit Oahu a couple of times and then sailed away! Therefore, they really had only three possibilities beyond the eventual (I dare say, inevitable) crushing defeat of actually history: consolidate Empire but don't attack America, or consolidate Empire and then attack America, or attack on schedule as suggested above. Banzai!!

The ultimate end effects of this World War 2 counterfactual history would have been Axis Triumphant! resulting in an ever-expanding Japanese Empire and a Nazi racial extermination program brought to a horrible Final Solution. The history of the Twentieth Century would have been radically changed to the present day.

“If you can read this sticker, thank a teacher. If it's written in English, thank a WW2 veteran.”
Bumper sticker.

Addendum to the article.

This article, of necessity, was actually quite brief. I had to make my case as swiftly and directly as possible. Those readers with in-depth knowledge of World War 2 history will not be satified with that brevity. In this addendum I will address what I feel are the most important points.

1. The first issue I address regards the serious problem of defective torpedoes supplied to the U-boat fleet by the German Naval Torpedo Inspectorate. The two most serious defects reported by Adm. Dönitz in his Memoirs were in the areas of defective warhead detonator pistols, and defects in torpedo depth controls that caused torpedoes to run significantly deeper that the settings indicated thereby having the torpedoes totally underrunning the targets. I regard the dereliction and failure of the Torpedo Inspectorate to be so amazingly anomalous as to be downright Providential. My article therefore reasonably assumes that the Inspectorate supplied the U-boat fleet with torpedoes that were at least as dependable and effective as the torpedoes supplied to the submarine services of Great Britain, America, and Japan. If you grant Nazi Germany a U-boat mass production program with dependable torpedoes, the results would have been devastating far beyond the already frightful toll taken by the U-boats in actual history.
2. I made no mention in my article of the situation at Dunkirk simply because a total ground victory by the Germans at Dunkirk would not have changed the nature of the Battle of Britain. As Churchill reported in his book Their Finest Hour, the British very carefully husbanded their air forces during the Battle of France to ensure sufficient airpower for the battle that they knew would surely ensue with the likely fall of France.
3. I am not a student of World War 1 therefore I have not done an appraisal of the effect of German U-boats during The Great War. There is, however, strong indication in my general reading regarding WW2 that a larger U-boat fleet in WW1 might have successfully weakened Britain to the point of actuall neutralizing them on the Continent. If that is the case, then the neglect of the U-boat service before WW2 would have to be recognized as outright dereliction of duty and incompetence on the part of the German Naval High Command——again, verging on being downright Providential.
4. In evaluating the Battle of Britain, an important question would be if German military intelligence had determined the exact location(s) of British aircraft engine production facilities—especially the Rolls-Royce fighter plane engine factories. The Luftwaffe attacking and destroying the RAF Fighter Command airbases around London would be a 'no brainer'. As Churchill pointed out, destroying both the fighter bases and the engine factories would have grounded the RAF thereby giving Germany the ultimate victory. So, did the Germans know the exact location(s) of these factories? If so, then German victory would have been entirely possible. Their failure in the Battle of Britain would then be downright Prividential.
5. Due to the brevity of my article, I downplayed the importance and great difficulties in Germany and Italy successfully taking the Mediterranean Sea in the face of very substantial British naval assets, including control of Gibraltar and Suez. As I recall, Adm. Dönitz related in his Memoirs that Adm. Raeder presented to Hitler a battle plan to take the Mediterranean. However, Hitler took no action regarding that plan so we will never know what the outcome might have been. In conjuction with taking the Mediterranean, it would be worthwhile to consider the implication for any kind of Operation Torch invasion attempt on North Africa if Germany and Italy had built up the arc of the Azores/Madeira/Canary Islands with naval surface force, submarine, and air bases. Also, invading and taking Iceland along with taking Scapa Flow in addition to the already secured Norwegian naval and air bases to completely seal off the North Atlantic and block the Soviet Navy.
6. I finish with an evaluation of the great differences in the strategic characteristics between the American East Coast and the West Coast. The two Coasts have very long shorelines, but the internal features of the two halves of America are radically different. The eastern half of America had a large population, extensive transportation systems, natural resources, and industrial facilities. All of this stretched inland for more than a thousand miles from the coast. Adding to Allied strength were the full population, resources, and industrial capabilities of central through eastern Canada. On the other hand, the strategic capabilities on the West Coast hardly stretched more than thirty miles inland from the shoreline—easily within the range of Japanese naval artillery and carrier-borne aircraft. Beyond that lay a thousand miles of thinly populated deserts,mountains, and high plains, with little more than scattered roads and rail service, and virtually no natural resources or industry. Germany could effect nothing more than blockade and embargo on America's East Coast. The very idea of a German ground invasion of America would be ludicrous. The Japanese, however, would have been able to destroy just about everything worth destroying within that thin thirty-mile strip along the shoreline from Seattle down to San Diego in just a single week of attack. The Japanese could have easily maintained blockade and embargo of our entire West Coast out of a conquered and occupied Pearl Harbor and Midway Island. America rebuilding the West Coast would have been extremely difficult. The Nazis would have had to content themselves with perpetual patrol and surveillance—plus sporadic direct attacks—along the entirety of our East Coast from Newfoundland down to the Caribbean, with America doing everything it could to rebuild and rearm outside the range of the Kriegsmarine.

I close with this final observation: the Allies did not win World War 2. The Axis lost it.

Questions? Comments?
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bloedel@verizon.net

Table of Contents

Young Earth Creationism and Noah's Flood

by Brian Bloedel

For the purposes of this article, Young Earth Creationism is predicated on the Biblical translational/interpretational assumption that the Hebrew word ‘yom’ used in Genesis chapter 1 must—and can only—mean a twenty-four hour period of time; that is, a normal terrestrial day. Although completely correct according to the ordinary everyday grammatical rules and usage of the ancient Hebrew language, this understanding of ‘yom’ in Genesis chapter 1 clearly indicates that God created the entire universe, Earth, life on Earth, and Adam during a mere hundred forty-four consecutive hours of time—the six days of Creation. Further assuming that the Genesis genealogies are exhaustively complete and rigorously sequential, and working backwards from the time of Abraham (a very simple exercise that anyone can do), puts the creation of everything that exists at about six thousand years ago. Of course that's an awful lot happening in a very short period of time in what calculates to be a very recent past. This article will briefly consider a few problems related to the recent creation of the universe, and some problems with the Young Earth Creationism (YEC) assumption that Noah's Flood was a global event.

While researching the question of major changes in the speed of light during the Creation Week, I found the article “Speed of light slowing down after all?” by Dr. Carl Wieland on the Creation Ministries International website (creation.com). This is a very important issue for YEC because of the vast distances involved with the observable and measurable universe. A hundred years ago, science considered that the Milky Way Galaxy included the totality of the physical material in a universe that was infinite, eternal, and basically static in its operation, therefore eons of time under ideal conditions would be available on Earth for Darwinian evolution to work its atheistic magic. That being the consensus within the scientific community, the Christian Fundamentalist community sought to counter this with the recent—and nearly instantaneous—creation of the universe called for by their accepted Biblical translational/interpretational position. Over the course of the Twentieth Century, however, improvements in astronomical instrumentation and theoretical/empirical knowledge decreased the observable size of the universe down to billions of light years of distance—and age. Although certainly smaller than ‘infinite’, this verified and well documented scientific information put YEC into a very hard position.

The most obvious difficulty for the YEC position is simply getting the light of the observable, verified, and vastly large universe here to Earth within ten thousand years. The only way to do this (without invoking Divine magic) is for the speed of light to have been much faster during the Creation Week; and by ‘faster’, I mean by factors of millions or billions. This, of course, runs right smack into Einstein's famous equation: e=mc². This equation means that the energy (in metric Joules) released in all nuclear reactions—most notably solar hydrogen thermonuclear fusion reactions—is equal to the rest mass (in metric kilograms) being converted into energy multiplied by the constant factor of the speed of light squared. As it is, the speed of light is 300,000,000 meters per second. Squaring that figure yields the number 9 with sixteen zeros behind it. A very big number indeed, which is why all nuclear reactions produce such large amounts of energy from small amounts of rest mass. But the good thing about this number is that once it is computed, the number becomes a permanent ‘constant’ that never has to be computed again. Einstein's equation then becomes a simple fifth grade arithmatic problem. Just plug in the amount of rest mass in kilograms being converted to energy, multiply by the permanently constant factor, and voila: energy in Joules!

To assert that the speed of light was vastly faster during the Creation Week would require fantastic increases in solar energy output that would be immediately obvious to astronomers and astrophysicists. Such energy release, however, has no basis whatsoever in the observed data. In order to solve this problem, Dr. Wieland posited that rest mass itself is inverse square dependent upon the squared increase of the speed of light, therefore there is no energy increase involved. This, of course, is a simple Algebra 101 manipulation of Einstein's equation. But again there is no empirical evidence to support the necessity. Further complicating the matter is that if rest mass were actually to decrease by the many orders of magnitude demanded by the YEC position, the gravitational attraction holding stars together for hydrogen fussion would be disrupted. Again, if true in actual reality then this would be immediately obvious to astronomers and astrophysicists.

A truly heroic effort to solve such problems is presented by Dr. John Harnett in his article “A 5D spherically symmetric expanding universe is young”. However, my concern is not with the far distant objects of the observable universe, but rather those objects that are nearby. In particular are black holes, neutron stars and white dwarf stars in our own immediate neighborhood of the Milky Way Galaxy. The problem is that these objects are the remains of stars that have gone through their full life spans, blown off their outer layers, leaving behind dead cores. The stellar physics behind all of this is now very well known and emperically verified. There are at least one black hole and one neutron star within a thousand light years from Earth (a distance that is actually very close to us, and well within the YEC time frame) plus several white dwarfs within 30 light years of Earth—right on our own back doorstep. Since they are so close to us, they are to all intents and purposes coincident with our own recent Divine creation. Therefore, any ‘time dilation’, major changes in the speed of light, or ‘dimensional expansion’ arguments from YEC are irrelevent to these objects. They absolutely require the same amount of time it would take for our own sun to be born, burn through all of its hydrogen in a normal lifespan, go through the death gasps of the red giant stage, then blow off its outer layers in final stellar death.

This necessitates millions or billions of years of age for our immediate locality in the Milky Way Galaxy. There is simply no way around this by any mathmatical manipulations or distortions of science. Either these nearby objects represent millions or billions of years of local age or else God Almighty created everything from stellar infants through middle-aged stars such as our Sun, to stellar corpses enveloped in their nebula death shrouds during a single day six thousand years ago; a clear case of Divine hocus pocus for no conceivable purpose. I think that even the most ardent Young Earth Creationist would be deeply disturbed by the implications of such a confusing, misleading, and deceptive Act.

Even with a full survey of the most advanced material on the Creation.com website (which, at the time this article was written, boasted more than 11,700 articles and 700 videos supporting its position), I'm sure that a fully qualified physicist/astronomer would be able to identify a multitude of additional factors that would need to significantly and detectably vary in order for the YEC position to possibly work. All of this leads to intellectual gymnastics and theoretical contortions more fitting to Lewis Carol's Wonderland than to factual reality. The YEC position related to the Creation Week ends up being easily refutable, which allows atheists and other enemies of Biblical Christianity to hold the Faith up to ridicule. Honest skeptics will simply shake their heads and turn away from Biblical Christianity—to their eternal destruction.

To close this portion of the article, let us try a couple of thought experiments to see how Six Day Young Earth Creationism should have played out if it is actually true in verifiable reality. First, I will posit the Divine creation of everything that exists during one hundred forty-four consecutive hours roughly six thousand years ago, and ask this simple question: what would Adam have seen during the first night of his life? Assuming a good vantage point and crystal clear skies, what is the most that he should have been able to see? In a cosmos Divinely created in toto, in situ mere hours earlier, the most that Adam should have seen with the setting sun would have been the Moon, Mercury and Venus. Under ideal conditions, Moonset and full darkness should have brought Mars, Jupiter and Saturn into view. With brand new and flawless eyes, Adam might possibly have caught the slightest glimmer of Uranus and Neptune.

But beyond that there would be an inky, radiation-free blackness to the entire night sky absolutely unimaginable to our modern eyes, for it would be another four years before the first light from our nearest neighbors in the Alpha Centauri group winked into view. The following years, decades, centuries and millenia would have brought more and more stars into view from our immediate region of the recently and Divinely created Milky Way Galaxy. Indeed, the nightly appearance of newly visible stars measured to a distance of no more than 10,000 light years would be an absolute confirmation of the YEC version of Genesis 1—and physical reality. This scenario, however, leaves the rest of the Milky Way Galaxy and the entire cosmos behind a radiation-free vale of blackness, and therefore invisible to modern astronomers, because the first light from Andromeda Galaxy would be another two million years in the future. Even the most hardened atheists would be forced by this evidence to acknowledge Genesis 1 as being correct, even if they denied the existence of the creator Diety behind Genesis 1.

The second scenario has God Almighty creating the heavens and the earth during that single week six thousand years ago. However, in this scenario all observable objects are Divinely created the same age as our sun and Earth. That is, there are no infant stars, and certainly no stellar corpses like black holes, neutron stars or white dwarf planetary nebulas. The sameness of the age of all observable objects in our immediate region of the Milky Way galaxy would, like above, be incontrovertable evidence of the recent Creation of the universe. As above, the rest of the universe would be hidden behind a radiation-free vale of blackness. Case closed. Genesis confirmed.

Alas for YEC. There is hardly a shred of emperical evidence from any branch of the reputable Sciences that supports its claims and assertions regarding the Creation Week from Genesis 1. There is absolutely no way to get a comprehensive and cohesive Young Universe Creation Model that accounts for the universe, the Milky Way Galaxy, our solar system, planet Earth, and the full natural history of life on Earth as they are actually known to exist, in ten thousand years or less. The Creation itself clearly speaks to vastly ancient age to the tune of hundreds of millions and billions of years.

Moving on to Noah's Flood, I will consider two major concerns: the confirmed asteroid impacts on Earth (indeed, on all of the solid bodies in our Solar System) and the confirmed thick sedimentation in deep-water oceans. The known major asteroid impact events (check this out for the ‘Top Ten’: National Geographic along with “How many impact craters should there be on the earth” by Michael J. Oard on the “creation.com” website) would have had devastating effects either regionally or globally. Then add to that all of the confirmed lesser impacts, such as Meteor Crater in Arizona. Had this global shotgun-blast of impacts occurred during the recent Creation Week, the surface of planet Earth would have been absolutely wrecked—to the present day. Eden would either have been a lifeless wasteland every bit as bad as the backside of the Moon, or turned into a lake of glowing lava. If these impact events occurred during the Flood period, the overall effects would have been much the same. Noah's Ark would have been capsized and broken up by super-sized waves—or outright vaporized by a direct hit. None would have survived these major impact events. Humanity (indeed, the entire animal Kingdom) would not be here today. I would further point out that there is not the slightest hint of any of this in either the secular historical record or the Biblical Genesis record. Things seemed to have been quite safe and peaceful in Eden, and Noah had a relatively uneventful ride on the Ark from start to finish.

An illustrative thought experiment similar to the ones above would be an impact-free Earth, and an impact-free and featureless Moon and other solid bodies in our Solar System. Add to that a Solar System lacking meteoroids, asteroids, comets, and all of the other normal debris expected from an Inflationary Hot Big Bang cosmic evolution and ordinary planetary system development, and the evidence for the virtually instantaneous in toto, in situ Divine Creation of the universe and planet Earth in the very recent past would be secure and beyond doubt.

As regards the problem of deep-water sedimentation, check out this graphic from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: ocean sedimentation. In particular, consider the very deep sedimentation off the East Coast of the United States and the Gulf of Mexico. Also, very problematical are the thick sedimentation areas in the mid Pacific Ocean—far from any continental landmass. Young Earth Creationists claim that these layers were caused by sedimentary runoff from the continental landmasses during the very recent Genesis Flood. But this is untenable according to the assumptions mandated by their Biblical translational/interpretational choices. As YEC specified, Noah's Flood had four main points detailed in Genesis chapter 7:

1. Sudden torrential rainfall lasting forty days and forty nights.
2. Upwelling of water from the “fountains of the great deep”. (verse 11; KJV)
3. Planetwide covering of all landmasses “Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered.” (ibid, verse 20)
4. The sustained covering of the entire planet for at least 150 days.

The first three points from above are interlinked. To achieve the specification of planetary waters 15 cubits above the highest mountains would require approximately 1 billion cubic miles of water from the sky and the “fountains of the great deep” to raise the planetary water levels 15 cubits above K2 and Everest in the Himalayas, and the summit of Mount Chimborazo in Equador (the point of land farthest from the center of the Earth). There is no known way to quickly get this much water from the atmosphere and crust/mantle of planet Earth under anything other than direct supernatural miraculous Cause. This miraculous ‘Cause’, however, is not indicated in the Biblical text. The event is clearly described as involving readily and naturally available water. There is no hint of tremendous amounts of Divinely ‘created’ water at the beginning of the Flood, nor its Divinely caused removal at the end of the Flood.

I now address the problem of accounting for the known global oceanic sedimentation levels, including coal and oil deposits. Young Earth Creationists claim that runoff from the continental landmasses during the 40 days of flooding caused this oceanic sedimentation, and that the animals and plants buried under this sedimentation during the flooding account for oceanic coal and oil deposits. But this is untenable, as I will now show. While planetwide torrential downpoar would most certainly have caused very substantial sedimentary runoff from continental landmasses, the immediate rise in global sea waters would have met and stopped this runoff dead in its tracks, thereby preventing oceanic sedimentation. As YEC specified, the planetary water levels at the peak of the Flood after forty days would have been approximatelly thirty thousand feet above present sea level—that's almost six miles. A simple linear division of thirty thousand by forty yields a minimum daily rise in global sea levels of at least 700 feet—about 30 feet per hour; six inches per minute. Of course, in any reality such flooding would have been non-linear. The Deluge would have been maximal during the first week of the Flood, then tapering off towards the end of the 40 days.

But either way, the main point here is that every hour from the very start of the Flood would have seen oceanic waters pushing inland, thereby stopping the sedimentary materials, along with animal and plant remains, from reaching the oceans. Any such material reaching the oceanic areas would have been in a thinned out and dispersed form; too dispersed for meaningful sedimentation. Also, every hour of flooding would have seen less and less exposed landmass available for sedimentary erosion as the oceanic waters forced their way inland—and up. Therefore there is absolutely no way for YEC to account for the extremely thick deep-water deposits known and verified to exist in the Earth's oceans.

Associated with this are the extensive oceanic oil deposits. There would be no way to get the tremendous amounts of animal remains out to these areas, no way to pile these remains in concentrated heaps, and no way to bury all of this under deep sedimentation for oil production. Similarly regarding coal deposits, there would not have been enough biomass produced in the fairly short period from the Creation Week to the start of the Flood to account for the known (and vast) coal deposits, and not enough sedimentary material to cover these bio-remains and form the coal deposits. Also extremely problematical for YEC are the known and verified highland sedimentary deposits and fossil fields such as the Burgess Shale on continental landmasses. There would not have been enough erosive material nor animal remains available to form thick sedimentary fossil deposits at these higher elevations.

I now go out on a limb and propose a possible model for the Genesis Flood that is plausible, faithful to the Biblical account, and minimizes recurrence to Divine Intervention. I start by placing the Flood period during one of the major ice ages roughly thirty thousand to a hundred and fifty thousand years ago. This time frame is within the range of the Genesis genealogies if you allow the reasonable assumption that there were many generations of people between each person actually named in the genealogies. A major feature in this model is that as the ocean levels drew down hundreds of feet during the ice age to produce greatly expanded polar ice caps and glaciers (especially glaciation in the Mountains of Ararat and other nearby mountain chains), an earth dam would form across the Strait of Hormuz similar to the verified earth dams that have occurred at different times in geological history across the Strait of Gibraltar and the Bosporus. I place Noah's human population in the Tigris and Euphrates river valley, perhaps even deep into what is now the Persian Gulf which would have been mostly if not totally drained of water as worldwide oceanic levels dropped due to the ice age.

With the stage set I must now invoke the only case of Divine Intervention. This model posits an absolutely astounding—possibly unique—meteoroligical event requiring stationary storm systems in the Arabian and Mediterranean Seas that dump torrential rains into the entire Mesopotamian area, including the Ararat glaciers, over a continuous forty day period of time. This deluge rainfall and glacier melt off (fountains of the great deep?) would not only pin down both human and animal populations but would begin the flooding of the entire Mesopotamian region, the waters held in by the earth dam at Hormuz. Only Noah, his family and the animals within the Ark could possibly survive the suddenly rising waters.

At the end of this admittedly supernatural, Miraculous weather event, Noah's Ark would be floating in a vast sea of water. To his eyes, the entire world would be covered with water. The Ark could drift in this vast sea for all of the months called for in the Genesis record, be pushed by prevailing winds to the north, then the earth dam at Hormuz would slowly break down, allowing the drainage of the Mesopotamian area back into the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean. The Ark would settle down in the region near the Mountains of Ararat, and the rest of the story would unfold according to Scripture.

With only one case of Divine Intervention, the story of Noah's Flood becomes physically plausible yet fully faithful to the Genesis record.

To conclude, Young Earth Creationism utterly fails to explain the known and verified results that currently exist on planet Earth, in our immediate solar system, and throughout the observable universe. My personal conclusion is that the translational/interpretational choices of Young Earth Creationism are simply—and honestly—wrong. No disgrace or discredit here. Biblical translation of the ancient Hebrew texts into English is very difficult and fraught with the potential of unintentional error. The competent and honest Scholars who produced the King James Version of the Bible completed their work in the year 1612 A.D.; at the very dawn of Modern Science. The microscope had only recently been invented and had produced no significant information while the telescope was only just then being invented by Galileo in Italy.

At that time, the modern Sciences of astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, planetary geology/hydrology and paleontology/anthropology were either in their infancies or not yet invented. The KJV translators simply didn't have any reason to question their translational choices, and therefore chose the most simple, direct, and obvious English words in place of the Hebrew originals. I would have done exactly the same if put in their position. There was literally nothing in their world view that would have challenged the longstanding doctrinal assumptions that the Earth sat stationary at the center of the universe with the entire cosmos orbiting around Earth on a daily basis, and that the heavens, the earth, all of the creatures of the Earth, and Adam were created in a single week mere thousands of years ago.

On the other hand, modern Biblical translators and those who would interpret the Holy Bible are in a much different position. The ancient Hebrew language was a small and very limited language used by a simple people leading the ordinary lives in the pre-scientific era of 3,500 years ago. The Biblical Hebrew language had a core vocabulary of fewer than 1,500 words, with all possible variations totaling fewer than 9,000 words in the entire language. Contrast that with modern English, with its vast vocabulary of available words. I have next to me at this writing a shirt pocket Websters dictionary that boasts “More than 40,000 Entries Defined”. With only the words contained in this small dictionary I can be as exacting and precise as I like on virtually any general subject. Not so the Hebrew. Therefore, in light of the findings of modern Science, modern translators and interpretors of Genesis 1 must ask this question: “Do we shrink the known physical Creation down to fit the ordinary everyday usage and limitations of the ancient Hebrew language, or do we expand the Hebrew language to account for the “vast array” of the known and verified Creation?”

It is most likely, given the full fruits of modern Science, that Genesis chapter 1 in the original Hebrew Torah describes absolutely amazing, extraordinary, titanic events spanning six very long (but physically finite) periods of time, each period of time called a “yom”, with the ordinals (day 1, day 2, etc.) establishing that the list of events in Genesis 1 is a structured, rigidly sequential, ordered list; as oppossed to the vague, unstructured, random, or ‘bullet list’ accounts so common to all of the other ancient creation stories. Also, that chapter 7 describes a regional flooding event of large enough scale and duration so as to appear to Noah and his family as covering the entire planet. In recent times we have seen such horizon-to-horizon flooding events in the American Midwest. I feel that this is Biblically reasonable given that the Judgement was against humanity, not the planet itself. Noah's Flood need only have impacted a relatively small and clustered population of humans and the animals in their corrupted locality. Global coverage was not needed to achieve this Judgment.

I close this article—and Deep Thought 1—with these final observations on Genesis 1 as literature. A major characteristic of all the creation myths of other cultures, around the world and back through time, is that these stories are just that——stories! The most obvious literary characteristic of Genesis 1 is that it is most definitely not a story. There are no characters, no dialog, no plot, no storyline, no action—nothing of literary significance. Genesis 1, as written, has the characteristics of a travel itinerary, or a business meeting agenda list, or a warehouse inventory sheet. It is a very calm, straightforward, concise, chronological listing of verifiable physical events.

Some have argued that Genesis 1 is simply a literary device used to get the Biblical story going. If, however, Genesis 1 (and its companion account in Genesis 2) is nothing more than literary device, then it is either way too long or way too short. If its only purpose is to launch the mythical Biblical story into the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve, then Genesis 1 as written is way too long—and boring. The same literary purpose could have been accomplished in just a couple of sentences thusly: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and all of the creatures of the earth. And God created man in His own image; male and female created He them.”; then launched right into the Garden story starting at Genesis 2:15. There would be little or no conflict with modern science or with other religions. If, however, a true literary introduction to the Garden story was desired, then a full-blown mythical Enuma elish-style epic story of the conflicts, wars and struggles in the transcendent heavenlies before a transition through the short Creation statement to the Garden story would have held the interest of listeners through generations of telling and retelling until finally put down in written word by whomever you choose to credit.

However, when all is said and done, Genesis 1 is there—as written. It must serve a purpose—as written. The claim of Biblical Christianity is that Genesis 1 is not a mere myth concocted by the human mind in order to try to explain our own origins. Genesis 1 is Divine Revelation given by the Creator Lord God Almighty to His prophet Moses. My conclusion is that God is ‘leading with His chin’ by starting the Bible with this testable/falsifiable chronological listing of natural historical events. The full import of Genesis 1 lay obscured by human ignorance throughout our entire species history until the latter part of the twentieth century of the Christian Era. With the dawning of the twenty-first century of the Christian Era, human science has finally caught up with the subject matter presented in Genesis 1. This allows present day Christians to use the full fruits of modern Science to verify and validate Genesis 1 as uniquely correct. Genesis 1 identifies the primal Cause of this universe: God Almighty, thereby rendering the Bible plausible and worthy of further investigation and consideration by honest, open-minded, truth-seeking skeptics.

I end with two verses from the Bible that I feel connect Genesis 1 with John 3:16, “To the Lord your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it. Yet the Lord set his affection on your ancestors and loved them, and he chose you, their descendants, above all the nations—as it is today.” (Deut. 10:14-15, NIV)

Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.

Word study of “yom”: OEM

Reasons to Believe bookstore (most important are the three books The Creator and the Cosmos, Creation as Science, and A Matter of Days by Dr. Hugh Ross)

Prof. Barbara C. Sproul
PRIMAL MYTHS Creation Myths Around the World
©1979, HarperCollins, NY, NY.
[NOTE: more than 120 myths presented in this book in addition to the Biblical passages.]

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Deep Thought 1 now draws to a close. Thank you for visiting my site.

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