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Archaeological findings show that Noah's immediate descendants used sophisticated technology, some of which hasn't been replicated in modern times. The evidence confirms the Bible's eyewitness account of man created in the image of God, not evolving from the primordial slime. But a recent book shows how Darwinists deliberately suppress and even destroy the evidence.
"Primitive" Man?
If you listen to evolutionists, you'll believe that man evolved onward and upward from a "primitive" state. Hot slime became homo sapiens through billions of years of time and chance. The Bible gives a very different account - the only eyewitness account:
Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, 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. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth" (Genesis 1:26-28).
And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul (Genesis 2:7).
Far from the grunting, dull-witted, ape-like creature of pagan books and movies, man from the very beginning was the pinnacle of God's creative work. We have the Genesis record of man's intelligent activity from the beginning, as well as his increasing skillfulness in conjuring up new kinds of evil after the Fall (e.g., Genesis 6:5).
Suppression of the Truth
We also have abundant archaeological evidence of man's use of sophisticated technology after the Genesis Flood. But evolutionists deliberately suppress and even destroy the evidence, just as they suppress all of God's truth in unrighteousness (Romans 1:18-25).
The Puzzle of Ancient Man: Evidence for Advanced Technology in Past Civilizations by Dr. Donald E. Chittick (Creation Compass, 2006) is a fascinating examination of the abundant evidence of the sophistication and ingenuity of man immediately after the Flood. A physical chemist and Bible-believing creationist, Dr. Chittick describes the archaeological evidence of post-Flood sophistication in many technical fields.
The evidence shows that Noah's descendants made highly precise astronomical measurements not replicated until recent times. Post-Flood civilizations used powered precision machine tools, and intricate surveying tools and techniques, at a level of precision not duplicated until the modern invention of the laser. Massive civil engineering projects in the generations after the Flood employed complex logistics, scientific management methods, and sophisticated large-scale construction techniques.
Dr. Chittick tells how he frequently encountered evolutionists' suppression of this evidence during his research into the advanced technology of the post-Flood world. One of the examples he cites is in the field of precision optics.1
[The] evidence indicates that fairly sophisticated optical technology was being used soon after the Flood ended. Although the evidence has been available in museums and other places for many years, up until recently it has been largely ignored because of [evolutionist curators'] mindset that ancient people were primitive. However, what we are now learning through continued research is that ancient technology was not at all primitive. It was already mature when it first appeared.
Sophisticated Optics in the Post-Flood World
Dr. Chittick then gives the example of the use of precision optical lenses in the generations after Noah:
Modern utilization of optical technology and the science of optics is relatively new. Because we moderns have only begun to apply optical technology to any great extent in the last several hundred years, and because of the [evolutionary] assumption that ancients were primitive, we assume that they didn't use optics. The mindset that the ancients were primitive has greatly hindered our investigations in archaeology. It has been noted that "nothing is harder to dislodge than a 'conventional notion' held by experts." In spite of that, however, there are some tireless investigators who have continued to carry out their research on early use of optics. The problem has not been a lack of evidence for ancient lenses. Rather it is that the evidence has either been ignored or misinterpreted or both. For example, one researcher relates his experience as follows. He had seen references to British lenses and he began a search for them.
When I finally found the British lenses, in two unexpected museums which have no connection whatever with archaeology, I discovered that they were ground and polished to a high degree of perfection. It is likely that [at a very early time] Britain was the centre of a superb crystal lens industry, though no workshop has apparently ever been found, and it is possible that the lenses may all have been imported.2
Not Only Suppressing the Evidence, But Destroying It
Anyone who examines evidence does so based on presuppositions. Creationists and evolutionists have the same evidence. The question is, who employs the correct presuppositions in examining that evidence? Furthermore, it is intellectually and morally dishonest to shape and twist evidence just so that it will fit presuppositions. But this is what evolutionists frequently do. Dr. Chittick continues:
The mental framework one uses to interpret evidence is extremely important. It has a very strong influence on how that evidence is interpreted and explained. The question can be asked, "Well, if early post-Flood peoples used lenses, why do we not find those lenses?" The answer is, "Many lenses have in fact been found, indeed several hundreds of them. However, scholars, both past and even up to the present, tend to dismiss the implication that these archaeological objects were lenses."
It is not that these artifacts were not discovered or known. They were in fact even noted in various writings. However, scholars tended to disbelieve what the older texts were reporting.
The scholars who 'edit the texts' of Greek and Latin have taken out many optical words and have said these must be scribal errors. Then, having substituted new words of their own invention, they have said that there is no ancient textual evidence of optics. Yet they are the ones who destroyed it!...That's because the story of ancient optical technology is so large that [an evolutionist's] immediate reaction is to believe that it is impossible! Otherwise, surely, everybody would know about it.3
One's mindset strongly influences how evidence is interpreted. A natural or even obvious conclusion regarding evidence can be completely missed.
More and more lenses are being discovered all the time.4 Curators of museums where these objects exist are either misinformed or reluctant to admit that they could be lenses. In one instance, a specialist at a museum when shown a lens, denied that it was a genuine lens. Instead, the specialist insisted that it was a recent glass fake rather than an ancient artifact. The speculation that it was a glass fake instead of a ancient genuine rock crystal lens can be checked by making scientific tests. The tests in the form of x-ray analysis showed that it was not just an unusual blob of glass.5 It was in fact a quality lens made from rock crystal.
Rock crystal is highly transparent. It is very nearly pure quartz and is a very hard material. Thus, it has excellent optical properties. Because of its physical properties, considerable technological finesse is required to grind and polish it into a lens. Yet, the early Egyptians [a nation that began soon after the Flood] did exactly that....It would be difficult to find a modern crystal grinder who could do as well.
Refusing to Admit the Obvious
But postmodern man, steeped in evolutionary thinking and unwilling to acknowledge the historicity and authority of the Bible, refuses to see what stares him in the face. Dr. Chittick concludes his book with this statement:
Rather than generating so many ad hoc assumptions to explain away negative evidence [i.e., evidence against Darwinism], how much better it would be to straight-forwardly accept what the Creator has told us. His Word is true.6
References:
1. The quotations that follow are from Donald E. Chittick, The Puzzle of Ancient Man: Evidence for Advance Technology in Past Civilizations (Newberg, Oregon: Creation Compass, 2006), pages 81-87.
2. Here Chittick quotes Robert Temple, The Crystal Sun: Rediscovering a Lost Technology of the Ancient World (London: Arrow Books,2000), page 246.
3. Here Chittick quotes Temple, page 6. Italics in the original.
4. Here Chittick cites Temple, page 54.
5. Here Chittick cites Temple, page 185.
6. Chittick, page 245.
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