However, I realize, not all people have that background, and because the fossil is being used as part of an organized propaganda event, most people will be impacted by it.

So I would like to pass on some information that can be helpful. First of all, there is nothing significant about human evolution that can be learned or proven from a fossil that is claimed to be 47 million years old. According to evolution theory, our ancestors even 3 million years ago were still 3 feet high, stooped over, probably walking on all fours on their knuckles. So something from a supposed 47 million years ago is not a missing link between humans and apes. This find is simply a tool for a media blitz to brainwash our culture with the “truth” of darwinism.

Here is a quote and link from a New York Times article from May 18:

It is science for the Mediacene age.

On Tuesday morning, researchers will unveil a 47-million-year-old fossil they say could revolutionize the understanding of human evolution at a ceremony at the American Museum of Natural History.

But the event, which will coincide with the publishing of a peer-reviewed article about the find, is the first stop in a coordinated, branded media event, orchestrated by the scientists and the History Channel, including a film detailing the secretive two-year study of the fossil, a book release, an exclusive arrangement with ABC News and an elaborate Web site.

“Any pop band is doing the same thing,” said Jorn H. Hurum, a scientist at the University of Oslo who acquired the fossil and assembled the team of scientists that studied it. “Any athlete is doing the same thing. We have to start thinking the same way in science.”

(http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/business/media/19fossil.html?emc=eta1)

So this is science thinking like a pop band. Remember that.

What is remarkable is how well the fossil is preserved. It is valuable in that sense and will add to the knowledge we have of extinct creatures. This fossil has a lot of similarities with living creatures today, especially lemurs. A more in depth analysis of this find is given on the Answers in Genesis site. http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2009/05/19/ida-missing-link

Approximately 90% of all species that have lived on the planet are now extinct. So finding fossil creatures that no longer exist should be, and is, the norm. But because a species is now extinct does not mean that it was a transition evolving into something else. Logic, science and what we really know about the fossil record all indicate that many more things existed in the past than exist now. For a variety of reasons (one of which being a world wide flood) many creatures from the past have become extinct. They did not disappear because they were a link in an upward moving macroevolutionary chain but because they are part of a fallen creation and ecosystem that has been subjected to a global catastrophe. The clearest message of the fossil record is that many life forms have existed in the past – and they do not change over time in the fossil record, but they do go extinct.

Remember, the incredible media blitz you are seeing is not about science. It has nothing to do with the significance of this fossil, which was actually found in 1983. (Don’t you think the fossil hunters who dug this up 26 years ago would have failed to recognize it as significant if it really was so critical to human evolution?) Let me end with a quote from another media expert who understood the process of shaping cultural thought. It may encourage you in thinking independently.

All this was inspired by the principle – which is quite true in itself – that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes. (Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf)

Did you catch what Hitler said?  All big lies leave their mark, even after they have been exposed as being false.  Again and again evolutionary claims like the one above are proven to be false or irrelevant.  But that doesn’t matter.  They have had their effect.  This one will as well.
But the effect on you can be to make you more aware of the distinction between pop band marketing and the truth about science and history.  Check out the links above.  And remember, some people’s goal is to influence a culture.

The gay marriage issue relates very much to the gender identity topic
I am attempting to pursue in this blog. Last fall, after the passage
of Proposition 8, I actually felt more concerned than victorious. Few
of the other political outcomes of our last election were determined by the
perspective that won on Prop 8.  Though I tried to celebrate with others, the picture that came to mind for me was the Japanese victory at Pearl Harbor.

Christians will very shortly face the situation where the Good Book
they read will teach a morality that is, to most, baffling at best and
evil if applied to everyone. What is more troubling is that the great majority of
Christians will not have a clear understanding on why their
religion does teach a message that is good, even wonderful, for
everyone.  These posts (The Image of God) are one attempt to give an answer to that.

I wrote a paper after the election regarding the state and need of the
Christian church in the West. Because of its length it can be found
in my blog sidebar, entitled, “A Foundation on Which to Stand”. I
will continue the blog posts on gender and the image of God in the
next few days.

May God grant to the Remnant a heart and mind of grace and truth.

But often times our response as Christians is reactionary and simply a list of reasons why gay marriage or homosexuality is wrong.  Though a good case can be made for that, especially from a Christian perspective, it is also a response without much value except as a negative response to our world.

I think Christians miss the great power and beauty of the Biblical message regarding these contemporary cultural issues because we are not grounded ourselves in what God has created in human gender or human morality.  The Christian view of marriage and gender is not just “normal” or “Biblical”, it is amazing.  And wonderful.  And the answer to so much pain and emptiness that is engulfing our world.

Rather than be defensive about my “narrow” view of marriage I want to shout the wonder and glory of what God has made in gender – male and female, masculinity and femininity – which are God revealing expressions that the world has erased to replace with the selfishness of recreational sex.  How sad!  What loss!  And yet we as Christians are often so unaware of what God has made that we spend our own lives seeing no more than a battle with sexual temptation.  We have a sad message when Christians and non Christians alike believe the lie that male and female are ultimately about sexual gratification, but Christians must acknowledge they are not supposed to act on the belief!

The world justifies men having sex with men, or multiple women, or children, or worse, because the world does not know that sex is an aspect, a subset of something much greater and more profound. That sex has a place in a greater purpose, and it is in that greater purpose we discover who we are as men and women, and find a fulfillment – rather than an emptiness – which grows over time.

Most Christians probably know that in the Bible the terms male and female are introduced in Genesis chapter 1 as part of the creation account.  What most Christians haven’t noticed is that “male and female” have a very important introduction – one which does not relate to biology.  Although our first-thought definition for those words brings the notion of  biology or sexuality, the Bible does not provide a basis for that definition in what we are supposed to take away from Genesis 1.

In Genesis 1:20-23 we find ourselves in Day 5 of the creation week.  On Day 5 God creates the birds and the bees and tells them, as you might suspect , to be fruitful and multiply (He also creates the sea creatures).  But we should note that this command to sexually reproduce is not where the Bible introduces the terms or concept of male and female.  Nor are those terms introduced early in Day 6 when God creates the land creatures.  “Male and female” is introduced later in the most remarkable context of the whole account – that of the image of God.

Genesis 1:26-27 Then God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.  So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

As believers in both God and Scripture, we must believe that what God did and what God revealed to us about what He did all have a purpose.  Every detail, every word, is accomplished and communicated to express something or reveal something to us.  In that light, Genesis 1:26 is certainly among the most remarkable verses in all the Bible.  The God who wanted His people to know, above all things, that “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4), speaks at this unique moment of being God in the plural.  And what is this unique moment?  The bringing of His image into the creation.  “Let us make man in our image…”  Wow.  The one God is an “us”.  The one God is plural.  The one God is Relationship.

What does the plural God look like, relationally?  We are about to get the best picture ever brought into this creation.  “In the image of God He made him (singular), male and female He made them (expressed in a relational plurality).”

So male and female are introduced to us in the most profound context possible.  “Male and female” is not about the birds and the bees.  “Male and female” is about God.

Does this mean the Mormons are right and God is a physical male being reproducing spirit babies into our world with a female?  Not if the Bible is a revelation from God.  We have already shown that male and female are not here intended to describe biology.  They are relational terms pointing upward into the eternal “us”-ness of God, not downward to the physical creation around us.  Remember, God is not just using those terms in Genesis 1:26-27.  He is defining them.

We are told as plainly as possible that Man as male and female is the fullest expression in the creation of that which is God, and that relationship between male and female is the closest expression of the relationship that exists within the Godhead.  Reflections of this relationship have been created other places – as in father and son, ruler and subject.  But none of them come as close to capturing what is really in God as that of “male and female” in covenant relationship called marriage.

But if the point is not biology, then what is it?  How is “male and female” related to the image of God? The next post will explore how we can understand God’s intent – and our gift – in male and female.