Narcissus and Echo

From Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Volume I, Book III, pages 149 – 161, translated from the Latin
by Frank Justice Miller

[The Seer Tiresias], famed far and near through all the Boeotian towns, gave answers that none could censure to those who sought his aid. The first to make trial of his truth and assured utterances was the nymph, Liriope, whom once the river-god, Cephisus, embraced in his winding stream and ravished, while imprisoned in his waters. When her time came the beauteous nymph brought forth a child, and named him Narcissus. When asked whether this child would live to reach well-ripened age, the seer replied” “If he ne’er know himself.” Long did the saying of the prophet seem but empty words. But what befell proved its truth – the event, the manner of his death, the strangeness of his infatuation. For Narcissus had reached his sixteenth year and might seem either boy or man. Many youths and many maidens sought his love; but in that slender form was pride so cold that no youth, no maiden touched his heart. Once as he was driving the frightened deer into his nets, a certain nymph of strange speech beheld him, resounding Echo, who could neither hold her peace when others spoke, nor yet begin to speak till others had addressed her.

Up to this time Echo had form and was not a voice alone; and yet, though talkative, she had no other use of speech than now – only the power out of many words to repeat the last she heard. Hera had made her thus; for often when she might have surprised the nymphs in company with her lord [Zeus]upon the mountain-sides, Echo would cunningly hold the goddess in long talk until the nymphs were fled. When Hera realized this, she said to her: “That tongue of thine, by which I have been tricked, shall have its power curtailed and enjoy the briefest use of speech.” The event confirmed her threat. She merely repeats the concluding phrases of a speech and returns the words she hears. Now when she saw Narcissus wandering through the fields, she was inflamed with love and followed him by stealth; and the more she followed, the more she burned by a nearer flame; as when quick-burning sulphur smeared round the tops of torches, catches fire from another fire brought near. Oh, how often does she long to approach him with alluring words and make soft prayers to him! But her nature forbids this, nor does it permit her to begin; but as it allows, she is ready to await the sounds to which she may give back her own words. By chance the boy, separated from his faithful companions, had cried: “Is anyone there?” and “Here!” cried Echo back. Amazed, he looks around in all directions and with loud voice cries “Come!”; and “Come!” she calls him calling. He looks behind him and, seeing no one coming, calls again: “Why do you run from me?” and hears in answer his own words again. He stands still, deceived by the answering voice, and “Here let us meet,” he cries. Echo, never to answer other sound more gladly, cries: “Let us meet”; and to help her own words she comes forth from the woods that she may throw her arms around the neck she longs to clasp. But he flees at her approach and, fleeing, says: “Hands off! Embrace me not! May I die before I give you power o’er me!” “I give you power o’er me!” she says, and nothing more. Thus spurned she lurks in the woods, hides her shamed face among the foliage, and lives from that time on in lonely caves. But still, though spurned, her love remains and grows on in grief; her sleepless cares waste away her wretched form; she becomes gaunt and wrinkled and all moisture fades from her body into the air. Only her voice and her bones remain: then, only voice; for they say that her bones were turned to stone. She hides in woods and is seen no more upon the mountain-sides; but all may hear her, for voice, and voice alone, still lives in her.

Thus had Narcissus mocked her, thus had he mocked other nymphs of the waves or mountains; thus had he mocked the companies of men. At last one of these scorned youth, lifting up his hands to heaven, prayed: “So may he himself love, and not gain the thing he loves!” The goddess, Nemesis, heard his righteous prayer. There was a clear pool with silvery bright water, to which no shepherds ever came, or she-goats feeding on the mountain-side, or any other cattle; whose smooth surface neither bird nor beast nor falling bough ever ruffled. Grass grew all around its edge, fed by the water near, and a coppice that would never suffer the sun to warm the spot. Here the youth, worn by the chase and the heat, lies down, attracted thither by the appearance of the place and by the spring. While he seeks to slake his thirst another thirst springs up, and while he drinks, he is smitten by the sight of the beautiful form he sees. He loves an unsubstantial hope and thinks that substance which is only shadow. He looks in speechless wonder at himself and hangs there motionless in the same expression, like a statue carved from Parian marble. Prone on the ground, he gazes at his eyes, twin stars, and his locks, worthy of Bacchus, worthy of Apollo; on is smooth cheeks, his ivory neck, the glorious beauty of his face, the blush mingled with snowy white: all things, in short, he admires for which he himself is admired. Unwittingly he desires himself; he praises, and is himself what he praises; and while he seeks, is sought; equally he kindles love and burns with love. How often did he offer vain kisses on the elusive pool? How often did he plunge his arms into the water seeking to clasp the neck he sees there, but did not clasp himself in them! What he sees he knows not; but that which he sees he burns for, and the same delusion mocks and allures his eyes. O fondly foolish boy, why vainly seek to clasp a fleeting image? What you seek is nowhere; but turn yourself away, and the object of your love will be no more. That which you behold is but the shadow of a reflected form and has no substance of its own. With you it comes, with you it stays, and it will go with you – if you can go.

No thought of food or rest can draw him from the spot; but, stretched on the shaded grass, he gazes on that false image with eyes that cannot look their fill and through his own eyes perishes. Raising himself a little, and stretching his arms to the trees, he cries: “Did anyone, o ye woods, ever love more cruelly than I? You know, for you have been the convenient haunts of many lovers. Do you in the ages past, for your life is one of centuries, remember anyone who has pined away like this? I am charmed, and I see; but what I see and what charms me I cannot find” – so serious is the lover’s delusion – and, to make me grieve the more, no mighty ocean separates us, no long road, no mountain ranges, no city walls with close-shut gates; by a thin barrier of water we are kept apart. He himself is eager to be embraced. For, often as I stretch my lips towards the lucent wave, so often with upturned face he strives to life his lips to mine. You would think he could be touched – so small a thing it is that separates our loving hearts. Whoever you are, come forth hither! Why, O peerless youth, do you elude me? Or whither do you go when I strive to reach you? Surely my form and age are not such that you should shun them, and me too the nymphs have loved. Some ground for hope you offer with your friendly looks, and when I have stretched out my arms to you, you stretch yours too. When I have smiled, you smile back; and I have often seen tears, when I weep, on your cheeks. My becks you answer with your nod; and, as I suspect from the movement of your sweet lips, you answer my words as well, but words which do not reach my ears. – Oh, I am he! I have felt it. I know now my own image. I burn with love of my own self; I both kindle the flames and suffer them. What shall I do? Shall I be wooed or woo? Why woo at all? What I desire I have; the very abundance of my riches beggars me. Oh, that I might be parted from my own body! And, strange prayer for a lover, I would that what I love were absent from me! And now grief is sapping my strength; but a brief space of life remains to me and I am cut off in my life’s prime. Death is nothing to me, for in death I shall leave my troubles; I would he that is loved might live longer; but as it is, we two shall die together in one breath.”

He spoke and, half distraught, turned again to the same image. His tears ruffled the water, and dimly the image came back from the troubled pool. As he saw it thus depart, he cried: “Oh, whither do you flee? Stay here, and desert not him who loves thee, cruel one! Still may it be mine to gaze on what I may not touch, and by that gaze feed my unhappy passion.” While he thus grieves, he plucks away his tunic at its upper fold and beats his bare breast with pallid hands. His breast when it is struck takes on a delicate glow; just as apples sometimes, though white in part, flush red in other part, or as grapes hanging in clusters take on a purple hue when not yet ripe. As soon as he sees this, when the water has become clear again, he can bear no more; but, as the yellow wax melts before a gentle heat, as hoar frost melts before the warm morning sun, so does he, wasted with love, pine away, and is slowly consumed by its hidden fire. No longer has he that ruddy colour mingling with the white, no longer that strength and vigour, and all that lately was so pleasing to behold; scarce does his form remain which once Echo had loved so well. But when she saw it, though still angry and unforgetful, she felt pity; and as often as the poor boys say “Alas!” again with answering utterance she cries “Alas!” and as his hands beat his shoulders she gives back the same sounds of woe. His last words as he gazed into the familiar spring were these: “Alas, dear boy, vainly beloved!” and the place gave back his words. And when he said “Farewell!” “Farewell!” said Echo too. He drooped his weary head on the green grass and death sealed the eyes that marveled at their master’s beauty. And even when he had been received into the infernal abodes, he kept on gazing on his image in the Stygian pool. His naiad-sisters beat their breasts and shore their locks in sign of grief for their dear brother; the dryads, too, lamented, and Echo gave back their sounds of woe. And now they were preparing the funeral pile, the brandished torches and the bier; but his body was nowhere to be found. In place of his body they find a flower, its yellow centre girt with white petals.

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CHAPTER 1: THE ATHEISTS’ NEST

Evo-atheists (evolutionist-atheists) dominate the hierarchy of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). They boast that 85% of their members reject God, and demand to know why the other 15% don’t.

CHAPTER 2: THE THEFT OF TRUE SCIENCE

The atheistic hierarchy at the NAS has arbitrarily excluded the scientifically valid design hypothesis (creation hypothesis, God hypothesis) in favor of their own materialistic speculation that they insist on calling, without the requisite evidence, a “theory” and even a “fact.” Natural “selection,” their be-all and do-all of evolution, turns out to be nothing more than an overworked figure of speech (a metaphor and a personification).

CHAPTER 3: PHILOSOPHY AND EMPTY SEDUCTION: THE EMPTINESS

Out of the two million or so species alive on this planet, the NAS cannot pick one (an anchovy, a pine tree, a polar bear, a bluebird, or anything else) and identify the species from which it allegedly evolved. They cannot explain how the sexes allegedly evolved, the documented efforts of The Washington Post and Nature magazine to falsify evidence for it notwithstanding. Further, the NAS admits that they do not have a “plausible hypothesis” for the chemical origin of life.

CHAPTER 4: PHILOSOPHY AND EMPTY SEDUCTION: THE SEDUCTION, PART I

Absent actual evidence for speciation, for the evolution of the sexes, and for the chemical origin of life, the NAS resorts to seduction. Their deceptive techniques include: authoritative repetitive false affirmations, disguised tautologies, authoritative obfuscations, baiting and switching, and slapping “sciency” lipstick on their no-evidence pig.

CHAPTER 5: PHILOSOPHY AND EMPTY SEDUCTION: THE SEDUCTION, PART II

The NAS uses atheist professor, Michael Zimmerman, to round up thousands of apostate Christian ministers (i. e., unbelievers) to function as “religious” witnesses for evolution in front of school boards, parents, and the media.

CHAPTER 6: PHILOSOPHY AND EMPTY SEDUCTION: THE PHILOSOPHY

Instead of welcoming an open-ended search for truth in nature, the NAS insists upon a closed materialistic philosophy of science with roots in the ancient philosophical enchantments (Gk. = epodai) of Sokrates. In that they cannot tell the difference between saying something is true and proving it is true, they reveal themselves to be incompetent as scientists.

CHAPTER 7: VIOLATING THE FIRST AMENDMENT: RELIGION

The spontaneous chemical generation of life from matter, the evolution of the sexes, and speciation have never been observed or proven, yet evo-atheists share an unshakable belief in all three. The atheistic NAS foists its evolutionism on our children, not because it is true or proven, but because it is their mal-angelical faith. Thus, their relentless proselytizing in our public schools violates the freedom of religion clause in the First Amendment the U.S. Constitution.

CHAPTER 8: VIOLATING THE FIRST AMENDMENT: FREE SPEECH

The widespread efforts of the NAS to suppress criticism and free thought in science is reminiscent in many particulars of the successful effort of the government welfare industry to ban a controversial board game in the 1980s.

CHAPTER 9: THE FORBIDDEN THEORY OF ANCIENT GREEK ART

The pall of evo-atheism has so darkened the comprehension of academics that they are unable to accept or even evaluate any evidence in any field that contradicts their own belief that they themselves evolved over hundreds of millions of years by chance from worms. Especially taboo is any evidence from ancient art or literature that tends to validate the Genesis account of human origins. The author’s analysis of the Parthenon sculptures and Greek vase-paintings is a case in point.
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www.solvinglight.com RBowieJ@comcast.net

Sowing Atheism Recommendation

In the current culture war over science education and the teaching of evolution, Bob Johnson’s Sowing Atheism provides a unique and insightful perspective. In critiquing the National Academy of Science’s (NAS) missionary evolution tract—Science, Evolution and Creationism, 2008, he identifies their theft of true science by their intentional neglect of other valid scientific possibilities. Then, using NAS’s own statements, he demonstrates that the great “process” of evolution—natural selection—is nothing more than a figure of speech. These chapters alone are worth the reading of this book.

Next he shows how the NAS attempts to seduce the unwitting reader by providing scanty empirical evidence but presented with great intellectual bullying—both secular and religious. He actually embarrasses the NAS with a long list of their quotes where they make the obvious claim that evolutionists believe in evolution. He then shines light on the Clergy Letter Project, again showing the obvious—theistic evolutionists believe in evolution.

Again, Sowing Atheism brings a unique perspective to an always interesting debate; advocates for both sides should find the book intriguing. The questions it raises are important; they deserve a hearing.

Don McLeroy
Chair, Texas State Board of Education
9277 Brookwater Circle
College Station, Texas 77845

The Obamas Look to Oprah as Their “Global Role Model”
Oprah Looks to Her Mentally Deranged Guru, Eckhart Tolle
Tolle Looks to His “Source,” an Exact Match for Satan

By Robert Bowie Johnson, Jr.

The overlooked imperious theme of Michelle Obama’s convention speech was “the world as it should be.” She used the phrase four times, emphasizing that she and Barack are “committed” to “building the world as it should be.” Mrs. Obama often speaks about remaking the world, as she did at the end of her UCLA speech: “We can change the world. Yes we can.” But how do she and her husband imagine that they are going to effect this change? Michelle’s own carefully considered written words give us a frightening clue, suggesting that the Obamas look to television personality, Oprah Winfrey, as their guide and inspiration in world affairs. What is doubly frightening is that Oprah looks, in turn, to her mentally deranged guru, Eckhart Tolle, and Tolle looks, in turn, to his inner “Source,” an exact match for Satan.

On May 20, Time magazine published Mrs. Obama’s tribute to Oprah as part of its 100 most influential people of 2008. It read in part: “Oprah is a wonderful friend and an incredible force. Her friendship and support have meant so much to Barack and me . . . Using her platform to serve as a global role model, she challenges us [Barack and me] to make the world as it is, the world as it should be. And she is always the first to show us how it can be done.” The Obamas’ vision of the “world as it should be” jibes with Oprah’s.

Oprah’s Obama-admired remake of the world is well underway. There is “a new kind of tribe emerging – a global community of seekers learning from and teaching each other how to be with our humanity,” Oprah says. This new “global community” is made up of the millions who have responded favorably to her relentless promotion of her pathologically narcissistic, anti-Christian guru, Eckhart Tolle.

In March of this year, Oprah kicked off her ten-week global Internet online class touting Tolle’s book, A New Earth, and its importance in raising everyone’s “consciousness.” The interactive webcast reached 500,000 people in more than 139 countries. Since that time, according to Oprah’s Web site, millions more have downloaded Oprah’s and Tolle’s teachings. When Michelle Obama, two months after the Tolle kick-off, lauded Oprah as being “a global role model . . . show[ing] us how it can be done,” to what was she referring, if not this most focused effort on Oprah’s part to “benefit” humanity by building a one-world multi-cultural tribe?

When Barack speaks of himself as “a fellow citizen of the world,” is he visualizing world peace becoming a reality through Oprah’s expanding tribe? Don’t doubt it. Michelle introduced Oprah in Iowa prior to Oprah’s introducing Obama, gushing that the talk-show queen “touches the souls of so many of us” and “empowers us all.” Michelle’s “us” includes Barack. In his Berlin speech entitled, “A World that Stands as One,” the Oprah-empowered Barack said that the “walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.” That’s exactly what Oprah is all about, promoting the lunacy that Tolle’s teaching transcends and unites all religions. Once the Christians, Muslims, and Jews join Oprah’s tribe and accept Oprah’s guru as their chief prophet, then Presto: world peace!

Oprah’s guru, Eckhart Tolle, is a troubled and troubling individual. He claims to have experienced “a reincarnation as a spiritual teacher” through a self-admitted psychotic episode. He is a case study in the development of the mental illness of malignant narcissism. Like the original Narcissus, Tolle is obsessed with the two-dimensional reflection of his image. In his The Power of Now, Tolle writes about what he learns from viewing his own image in a mirror: “If you accept the image, no matter what it is, if you become friendly toward it, it cannot not become friendly toward you. This is how you change the world.”

Here, in a nutshell, Tolle expresses the fundamental delusion and extreme grandiosity of his own malignant narcissism. A mirror image is not true, but backwards. Tolle is not the greatest spiritual teacher in the world as he imagines, but one of the least competent. Oprah welcomes Tolle’s preposterous claims with uncritical glee because they justify the adoration of her own backwards and exalted mirror image of herself. Obama also exhibits the characteristics of malignant narcissism, most notably the delusions of grandeur that lie at the heart of the complex. His entire campaign is nothing more than a demand to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements.

To review: Barack and Michelle Obama look to Oprah Winfrey as their “global role model” for change. To effect this worldwide change, Oprah, in turn, relies on the “infallible” teachings of her guru, Eckhart Tolle. Tolle, in turn, looks in the mirror and makes friends with the backwards image of himself, thus enabling him to “change the world.”

Beyond his backwards reflected image, Oprah’s guru relies on something even more disturbing to change the world. It is a spirit or a force Tolle calls the “Source” which he claims resides within himself and Oprah, and within all those others who have learned through his teachings to “dissolve” their egos. That “Source” has told Tolle that the word of the God of the Bible is not reliable, that there is no death, and that he and Oprah both are as God, able to say of themselves “I Am That I Am.” These things that the “Source” has told Oprah and Tolle are the exact same things the serpent told Eve in the ancient garden.

Let’s review one more time: To change the world, the Obamas look to the New Age babblings of a self-adoring talk-show host, she looks to her mentally deranged guru, he looks to a friendly, backwards image of himself and relies upon the utterances of a “Source” that Christians, Jews, and Muslims recognize immediately as the deluding “wisdom” of the Genesis serpent.

But to Oprah, in her morally backwards narcissistic state, Tolle’s recycled serpent’s “wisdom” does not seem delusive, but true. Oprah goes on to attribute that same “wisdom” to Barack Obama. She praises his “intelligence” and calls him “brilliant.” She says he has the “gift of wisdom,” and a “tongue dipped in unvarnished truth.” According to Oprah, not only does Obama always tell the truth, but also knows how “to be the truth,” a straightforward messianic reference.

Oprah has said, “I don’t think there’s anything more important than awakening and also knowing what your purpose is.” To her, awakening means embracing and spreading the ludicrous, grandiose notions of her guru, as she shamelessly tries to reconcile all of humanity to her and Tolle’s “Source.” Oprah and Tolle believe that “the transformation of human consciousness” is an “urgent task.” We must “evolve” or perish. Oprah refers to Obama as an “evolved leader.” After Obama’s convention speech, before meeting with him, Oprah said, “We have to do whatever it takes to get [Obama] in office.” Oprah’s purpose is to expand her mutually parasitic coupling with her guru into a politically powerful triumvirate, getting Obama elected president so he will help her “save” the world, on behalf of her and Tolle’s “Source.” That is frightening.

Revelation 12:9 refers to “the ancient serpent called Adversary and Satan, who is deceiving the whole inhabited earth.” Oprah Winfrey leads a global tribe that is part of that sinister process. She is backing a man for president whom she views as being part of that process, as well. Now we have a better understanding of what the Obamas and Oprah mean by “the world as it should be,” and what their guru really means when he says, “This is how you change the world.”

***

Mr. Johnson, a West Point grad and an airborne ranger infantry veteran of Viet Nam, is the author of “The Parthenon Code: Mankind’s History in Marble” and “Noah in Ancient Greek Art.” His Web sites are www.welfaregame.com and www.solvinglight.com, where you can find more details on the Obama/Oprah connection.

By Robert Bowie Johnson, Jr.

Author’s Web sites: www.solvinglight.com www.welfaregame.com

Barack Obama’s connections to Oprah Winfrey and her New Age guru, Eckhart Tolle, are the least examined, yet most revealing, and by far the most potentially ruinous of the senator’s nefarious associations. Obama claims to be a “committed Christian,” yet appears to support Oprah in the worldwide dissemination of Tolle’s and her virulent anti-Christian doctrine.

Who is Eckhart Tolle? According to his own account, after a childhood of trauma and a young adult life of despair and depression, Tolle, at age twenty-nine, experienced a psychic split in his personality during which his ego or his false, suffering-self collapsed, leaving him with the realization of his “true nature as the ever-present I am, consciousness in its pure state prior to identification with form.” Not long after that, he entered into what he calls his “new incarnation as a spiritual teacher.” Believe it or not, Tolle thinks that he has become the greatest living spiritual teacher on earth by overcoming “egoic delusion.”

Oprah accepts Tolle’s doctrine completely and promotes it globally with a fervor unmatched in her other pursuits, so we may call the foundation of their joint venture, the Oprah/Tolle doctrine. But what exactly is it?

According to Tolle, the Sacred Scriptures (the apostle Paul’s term) are no longer sacred, having lost their essence, power, and inspiration. Tolle himself is now the ultimate interpreter of all things spiritual. Tolle’s words, not Christ’s, “contain a great deal of spiritual power.” Tolle’s books, not the Bible, are “spiritually alive.”

The Oprah/Tolle doctrine says that God the Father is a worn-out phrase disguising the true “it” behind all things: “universal intelligence,” in and of which, Tolle and Oprah imagine they partake abundantly. Jesus Christ is not the Son of God, but rather a “rare” human being, in contrast to the stoic Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius, whom Tolle describes as an “exceedingly rare” human being. The second coming of Christ is not at all what the scriptures describe, but rather “the transformation of human consciousness, a shift from time to presence, from thinking to pure consciousness, not the arrival of some man or woman.” According to Tolle, when Christ spoke of “salvation,” He actually meant “enlightenment,” more specifically, the “radical transformation of human consciousness.”

If we were to put the Oprah/Tolle doctrine into the form of a bumper sticker or a sound bite it would be this: “Forget Christ and the Bible. Believe Tolle and Oprah.” In short, the Oprah/Tolle doctrine makes a mockery of Christ and all of scripture.

The false teaching inherent in the Oprah/Tolle doctrine is bad enough. What makes it a thousand times worse, egregiously reprehensible even, is the fact that Oprah tells the lie of lies about it. She introduces her online class presenting the Oprah/Tolle doctrine by asserting that it “is not for or against any religion.” Not against Christianity? For the purpose of grasping the destructive violence that the Oprah/Tolle doctrine does to Christianity, picture the complete word of God as existing on baked clay tablets. Now visualize Oprah and Tolle taking sledgehammers to them. Those who seek to obliterate the very foundation of Christianity are not against it?

On Oprah’s Web site, next to the words, “This online class is not for or against any religion,” she has placed an image of the spire of a Christian church with a cross at its top. How much more morally corrupt could Oprah be?

The Oprah/Tolle doctrine asserts that “A significant portion of the earth’s population will soon recognize, if they haven’t already done so, that humanity is now faced with a stark choice: Evolve or die.” Oprah and Tolle, in their own minds, have “awakened” and “evolved.” Oprah sees Barack Obama as having “awakened” and “evolved” as well. In South Carolina, Oprah called Obama “an evolved leader who can bring evolved leadership to our country.” This suggests that Oprah, who describes her relationship with Obama as “very, very personal,” knows the senator to be one who subscribes to the Oprah/Tolle doctrine.

At a UCLA rally, Oprah said, “I’m just following my own truth, and that truth has led to Barack Obama.” Oprah’s “own truth” is the anti-Christian Oprah/Tolle doctrine. Is the real Obama the Obama Oprah knows?

In Iowa, Michelle Obama said that Oprah had touched her soul and empowered her. How so? Through the blatantly anti-Christian Oprah/Tolle doctrine?

Is Obama a “committed Christian” as he claims, or is he on board with Tolle and Oprah in their global anti-Christian crusade? Or, as a third explanatory possibility, is the Tolle-entranced Oprah, “the richest and most influential woman in the world,” not the Oprah Obama knew?

Tolle describes those who embrace his teaching as being “not for ‘my’ country but for all of humanity, not for ‘my’ religion but the emergence of consciousness in all human beings, not for ‘my’ species but for all sentient beings and all of nature.” Sound familiar? Are those the values we want in an American president? Time magazine called Tolle’s book, The Power of Now, so much “mumbo jumbo.” Even if you’re not a Christian, do you want a president whose vision of the American future is based, to any degree, on Tolle’s mumbo jumbo?

The writer is the author of The Parthenon Code: Mankind’s History in Marble. More on the Oprah/Obama connection at www.solvinglight.com

By Robert Bowie Johnson, Jr.

Author’s Web sites: www.solvinglight.com www.welfaregame.com

ESSAY SUMMARY

Barack Obama’s connections to Oprah Winfrey and her New Age guru, Eckhart Tolle, are the least examined, yet most revealing, and by far the most potentially ruinous of the senator’s nefarious associations. Obama claims to be a “committed Christian,” yet supports Oprah in the worldwide dissemination of Tolle’s and her virulent, albeit partially disguised, anti-Christian teachings. While the mainstream media (MSM) may not care that the Oprah/Tolle doctrine makes a mockery of the teachings of Christ and all of scripture, they have already recognized that what Tolle presents to a gullible public is nothing more than so much, according to Time magazine, “mumbo jumbo.” Thus, the MSM must reluctantly join with evangelical and other Christian media in a detailed examination of the Obama-Oprah-Tolle connection, in order to determine to what degree Tolle’s “mumbo jumbo,” through Oprah or otherwise, influences Obama’s current thinking and his vision of the American future. The evidence presented here suggests that Obama’s candidacy cannot survive such a detailed examination.

***

Obama is Barack Hussein Obama, the Democratic nominee for president of the United States who claims to be a “committed Christian.” Oprah is Oprah Gail Winfrey, the richest, and some say, the most influential woman in the world. Oprah has enthusiastically endorsed Obama in person and raised millions of dollars for him. Oprah’s New Age guru is Eckhart Tolle, a self-styled “spiritual teacher” whose doctrine, in the form of the books, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment and A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, Oprah continues to promote as truth throughout the world on her show, in her monthly magazine, and in free classes on the Internet.

As the illustration (modified from The Fall of Adam by Hugo van der Goes, circa 1470, oil on wood) suggests, we’ll see that Oprah, through Tolle, has welcomed with specificity, each and every lie the serpent fed to Eve in the garden. We’ll see that Oprah’s grandiose plan to lead the human race to a higher level of “consciousness” as part of a new “awakening” does nothing less than spread the serpent’s lies and false promises throughout the world, in furtherance of her own exaltation as a great spiritual innovator and leader. We will further see that Oprah and Tolle meet the scriptural definition of antichrists. And we will see that the scriptures identify Tolle and Oprah as rapacious wolves in sheep’s clothing whose New Age fangs rip to pieces the written revelation from the Supreme Spirit of Light and Love to His creations.

The illustration also suggests that Oprah shares with Obama the “enlightenment” she has received from the Tolle-headed serpent, and that Obama receives it willingly. We’ll see that the public record proves this to be so beyond a reasonable doubt. This means that when Obama claims to be a Christian, committed or otherwise, he is lying. We’ll see that it would not have been possible for Oprah to endorse Obama for president if he were a bona fide Christian; that is, a member of the body of Christ. By Oprah’s own admission, the spread of the Oprah/Tolle doctrine is the most important thing in her life, and as Christians and Christianity are the foremost obstacles to the spread of that doctrine, she would never, she could never, endorse a Christian, someone who actually believes the word of God. Oprah needs someone who approves of, and is willing to go along with, her grandiose plans to bring her brand of “consciousness” and “awakening” to an “unconscious” world, not someone who would get in her way, balking at the flagrant and delusional megalomania of it. She needs someone who entertains grandiose global delusions as well.

We will get to the details of Obama’s relationship with the guru presently, raising some questions as we go along, but first we need to understand the key details of the Oprah/Tolle religious doctrine.

Who is Eckhart Tolle? According to his own account, after a childhood of trauma and young adult life of despair and depression, Tolle, at age twenty-nine, experienced a psychic split in his personality during which his ego or his false, suffering self collapsed, leaving him with the realization of his “true nature as the ever-present I am, consciousness in its pure state prior to identification with form” (The Power of Now, p. 5). Not long after that, he entered into what he calls his “new incarnation as a spiritual teacher” (The New Earth, p. 274). Believe it or not, Tolle thinks that he has become the greatest living spiritual teacher on earth by overcoming “egoic delusion.” He writes that his book, The Power of Now . . .

. . . can be seen as a restatement for our time of that one timeless spiritual teaching, the essence of all religions. It is not derived from external sources, but from the one true Source within, so it contains no theory or speculation (The Power of Now, p. 10).

The heart of “that one timeless spiritual teaching” Tolle embraces should be very familiar to us because it goes right back to Eden. Tolle simply repackages the serpent’s sales pitch to Eve in the garden. Same lies, same false promises, same rotten fruit. Oprah buys it all, including the phony warranties.

In Chapter Three of Genesis, the first thing the serpent did was undermine the word of God, injecting doubt into Eve’s mind as to whether God could be believed, insisting as it proceeded with Eve’s seduction, that the words of God have no inherent validity. The serpent challenged Eve, “Yea, hath God said?” Tolle likewise insists that the word of God is not true. It can only make sense, Tolle says, if the words and phrases of scripture are interpreted solely in accord with his own contrary doctrine. According to Tolle, the deeper meaning of the scriptures has been lost. Only he has the power to reveal their true meaning and restore their transformative power. Referring to himself and his teachings, he writes that “there is no need to go elsewhere for the truth” (The Power of Now, p. 10).

Does Obama share the same misplaced reverence for Tolle that Oprah does? Obama has said, “I believe that Jesus Christ died for my sins and I am redeemed through Him. That is a source of strength and sustenance on a daily basis.” Does Obama believe that Tolle is a legitimate interpreter of scripture?

After convincing Eve that what God had said was not to be taken seriously, the serpent offered two false promises which Eve readily accepted. Oprah accepts these very same false promises as channeled through Tolle and his books. The first promise to Eve is that she would not die, contradicting God’s warning to Eve that death would be the consequence of eating from the forbidden tree. The serpent told Eve, “You shall not surely die.” Tolle makes the same false promise as the serpent, and Oprah receives it as truth. Tolle writes that “there is no death . . . you are indestructible, immortal. This is not a belief. It is absolute certainty that needs no external evidence or proof from some secondary source” (The Power of Now, pp. 46, 220). On one of her shows exalting Tolle’s teaching, Oprah questioned him about death. He responded, “There is no death . . . [There is] something inside saying, ‘I know there is no death.’” Oprah nodded in agreement, just as Eve probably did, as she welcomed this same false promise from the serpent.

The second false promise from the serpent to Eve was “You shall be as God.” Tolle teaches that he himself is God (“the ever-present I am”), and that all of his “enlightened” followers can become God also. Tolle applies directly to himself the self-authenticating words of God to Moses from the burning bush, “I Am that I Am” (A New Earth, p. 79). Tolle says that all of his followers can proclaim of themselves, when they become “conscious” and “awakened” enough, “I Am that I Am.” In Hebrew, this is YHVH, or Yahweh, the sacred name of God. Oprah fully receives this false (and some would say, blasphemous) promise that she is a “divine presence” as well. (The Power of Now, p. 196).

Larry King asked Oprah why she decided to endorse a presidential candidate for the first time in her life. She answered in reference to Obama: “Because I know him personally . . . I didn’t know anybody we’ll enough [before Obama] to be able to say I believe in this person.” Why does she believe in him? Does she see in him another “divine presence,” like herself?

In the process of undermining the authority of God’s word and offering two false promises, the serpent devised an insinuation that convinced Eve to abandon God altogether. Not only would Eve be “as God” but she would be “knowing good and evil” as well. The serpent deftly ascribed the prohibition of eating from the serpent’s tree to jealousy on the part of God. The serpent insinuated that God’s motive in forbidding Eve to eat of the fruit was to keep her from progressing spiritually and intellectually. Only by defying a jealous God could Eve obtain the intellectual knowledge she thought she should have, and be the spiritual person she thought she should be. God, supposedly, was jealous of her and her potential to be as He is. The serpent’s false imputation of a jealous motive is what sealed the deal for the Adversary of God and Christ. Any glimmers of faith Eve may have retained at this point dissolved completely. Then, relying only upon her senses, her sight primarily, she turned eagerly to the fruit of the serpent’s tree.

Oprah’s own story about how she finally decided to abandon God in favor of Tolle’s teaching involves the same insinuation of God’s “jealousy.” Oprah says she had accepted the Baptist teaching with its demonstrative worship and preaching until, during one sermon, she heard the preacher say that the God of the Bible “is a jealous God.” Although I was not there, there is no doubt the preacher was speaking of God’s jealousy for, and on behalf of, his chosen people, Israel. That is the context in which God’s “jealousy” almost always comes up in church. But Oprah understood it to mean that God was jealous of her: Oprah said snidely on her show:

“Go figure. God is all, God is omnipresent, God is all, and God is also jealous? God, God is jealous of me? And something about that didn’t feel right in my spirit. Because I believe that God is love and that God is in all things. And so that’s when the search for something more than doctrine started to stir within me” (My emphasis).

Just as was the case with Eve, only by defying what she conveniently perceives as a “jealous” God and turning to the fruit of Tolle’s tree (his teachings), can Oprah obtain the intellectual knowledge she thinks she should have, and be the spiritual person she thinks she should be. This same false “realization” is the final impetus that led both women to turn away from God and toward poisonous fruit, the poisonous fruit offered by the serpent and the poisonous fruit offered by Tolle.

Let me interject here, briefly, that when Oprah says “God is love,” as in her above television statement, she is not referring to sacrificial love which requires concern for others and effort, but to something more akin to a mere inner sensation. Tolle: “What is love? To feel the presence of that One Life deep within yourself and within all creatures” (The Power of Now, p. 155).

Jesus said to the Adversary who tempted Him in the wilderness, “Not on bread alone shall man be living, but on every declaration going out through the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4). Oprah lives by the words of Eckhart Tolle and the fruit of his tree, rooted in the soil of the serpent’s deceptions. Tolle and Oprah have agreed that belief in God is a pointless exercise:

Oprah: God in the essence of all consciousness isn’t something to believe. God is.

Tolle: Yes.

Oprah: God is. And God is a feeling experience, not a believing experience.

Tolle: That’s right.

Oprah: . . . If God for you is still about a belief, then it’s not truly God.

Tolle: No.

Oprah: That’s what you’re saying?

Tolle: Yes.

According to Washington Post staff writer, Matthew Mosk, the Obamas know Oprah very well. Obama and his wife, Michelle, met Winfrey on the Chicago social circuit before his 2004 Senate bid, and they have remained friendly since. Three years ago, the Obamas attended the white-tie Legends Ball at Winfrey’s Montecito home, where she first broached the idea of hosting a political event, something she had never done before. Since then, Winfrey has had the Obamas as guests on her television show, featured them in her magazine, and raved about the senator’s potential to change American politics in repeated public appearances. Do the “Christian” Obamas realize what kind of contrary doctrine Oprah is spreading throughout the world?

Tolle has convinced Oprah, or more likely, Oprah has used Tolle to convince herself, that faith in God and His word must be abandoned in favor of feeling. This is just what happened when Eve abandoned her trust in God’s word and turned to examine in detail the fruit of the serpent’s tree using her senses and flawed reasoning. The fruit of the serpent’s tree had the same attraction to Eve as the fruit of Tolle’s teaching now has to Oprah.

First, Eve saw that the serpent’s fruit was “good for food.” Likewise, Tolle’s fruit looks good, too. It will feed Oprah’s desire to grow and prosper intellectually and spiritually. It will nourish her delusions that she will be as God, and that she will not die.

Second, the serpent’s fruit brought “a yearning to the eyes” of Eve. Likewise, Oprah longs for the fruit of Tolle’s poisonous tree. Oprah is eager to make use of Tolle’s teaching. The “awakening” and “enlightenment” it offers will separate her from the “still unconscious majority of the population.” (The Power of Now, p. 218). If Tolle’s doctrine is attractive to her, it will be attractive to others. She will lead others to it, glorify it, and urge others to partake, and she will take the credit for bringing them into this new “awareness.”

Third, Eve saw that the serpent’s tree was “to be coveted as the tree to make one intelligent.” This is exactly what the fruit of Tolle’s doctrine offers to Oprah. Tolle gives her the ability to embrace and align herself with flawless “consciousness,” what Tolle also calls “universal intelligence.” (The New Earth, p. 289). The serpent’s and Tolle’s lies, and their fruit, and what Oprah accepts, all meld into one. This, then, is what the Oprah/Tolle doctrine presents as “that one timeless spiritual teaching.”

At a UCLA rally, Oprah said, “I’m not voting for Barack Obama because he’s black, I’m voting for Barack Obama because he’s brilliant.” Does Oprah see a manifestation of “universal intelligence” in Obama?

The apostle Paul enjoins Christians, “As children of light be walking (for the fruit of the light is in all goodness and righteousness and truth) testing what is well pleasing to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:9). Embracing as they do the serpent’s “enlightenment,” how can anything that Tolle and Oprah teach be well-pleasing to the Lord?

Obama has said, “Oprah, you’re my girl.” What did he mean by that? Oprah has called Obama, “my favorite guy,” and “my choice.” What did she mean?

Revelation 12:9 mentions “the ancient serpent called Adversary and Satan, who is deceiving the whole inhabited earth.” Ephesians 2:2 describes Satan as the “the chief of the jurisdiction of the air, the spirit now operating in the sons of stubbornness.” This evil spirit opposes Christ, and is thus, by definition, an antichrist spirit. The literal meaning of antichrist in ancient Greek is instead-anointed. It refers to one who takes upon himself (or herself) the office of the Anointed One, thus displacing Him, not so much as his outward opponent, but rather as a false messiah coming in the true Messiah’s stead. I John 2:18 tells us that “there have come to be many antichrists.” The question is, do Tolle and Oprah meet the scriptural definition of antichrists as defined by I John 2:22: “Who is the liar, if not he who is denying, saying that ‘Jesus is not the Christ’? This one is the antichrist, who is disowning the Father and the Son”?

According to the teaching of Eckhart Tolle and Oprah Winfrey, Jesus Christ is not the Son of God Who reconciles mankind to God the Father through the blood of His cross (Luke 1:35, Colossians 1:20), the Image of the Invisible God (II Corinthians 4:4), the Mediator of God and Mankind (I Timothy 2:5), or the Savior of all mankind, especially of believers (I Timothy 4:9). Tolle sees Jesus instead as a “rare” human being, in contrast to the stoic Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius, whom he describes as an “exceedingly rare” human being (The New Earth, p. 89, The Power of Now, p. 179).

Oprah and Tolle do not believe that God the Father gave his only-begotten Son so “that everyone believing in Him should not be perishing” (John 3:16), or that God the Father has made Jesus Lord and Christ (Acts 2:36). To them, God the Father is a false phrase disguising the true “it” behind all things: “universal intelligence,” in and of which, Tolle and Oprah imagine they partake abundantly. Oprah and her followers do not believe that all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are concealed in Christ and God (Colossians 2:3), but rather in the writings of Eckhart Tolle, a man who is himself, in my opinion, an “extremely rare,” and deeply disturbed human being.

Jesus said “The declarations I have spoken to you are spirit and life” (John 6:63). Paul added that the word of God is “living and operative” (Hebrews 4:12). Not so, according to Tolle. The scriptures have lost their essence, power, and inspiration. It is Tolle’s words, not Christ’s, that “contain a great deal of spiritual power;” it is Tolle’s books, not the scriptures that are “spiritually alive” (The Power of Now, p. 8, The New Earth, p. 7).

Does Obama believe that Tolle is a truly great teacher whose “spiritually alive” words countermand those of Christ? Has he discussed this with Oprah or with his wife, Michelle?

Thus in Tolle’s and Oprah’s scheme, Tolle replaces Jesus Christ and himself becomes, in their minds, the chief spiritual teacher of all mankind. Oprah promotes him worldwide as such. Tolle and Oprah both deny God the Father and replace Him with the “it” they call “universal intelligence.” (The New Earth, p. 132). Tolle and Oprah take upon themselves the office of Jesus Christ, the True Anointed One, thus denying, disowning, and displacing Him and the Very Source of His anointing, God the Father. In no uncertain terms then, we are justified according to I John 2:22, in referring to them both as antichrists. If we were to put the Oprah/Tolle doctrine into the form of a bumper sticker or a sound bite it would be this: “Forget Christ and Scripture. Believe Tolle and Oprah.”

At a UCLA rally, Oprah said, “I’m just following my own truth, and that truth has led to Barack Obama. The truth has led me to Barack Obama.” Let’s not forget, as Oprah speaks of her “own truth,” what she means by it. We’ve seen that she has embraced the exact same lies from Tolle that Eve accepted from the serpent – that God is jealous of her spiritual and intellectual development, that the word of God cannot be trusted, that she is, in some sense, God, and that she will not die. She thinks these lies are the truth. Oprah’s “own truth” turns out to be the serpent’s lies, and that is what has led her to Barack Obama, encouraging her to extol his imaginary virtues. Does Obama realize this? Does he understand where Oprah is coming from spiritually?

Jesus warned us to “Take heed of those false prophets who are coming to you in the apparel of sheep, yet inside they are rapacious wolves” (Matthew 7:15). The phrase, “rapacious wolves,” presents us with a grim and vicious image. The evil in the image is magnified by the idea that the “rapacious wolves” pretend to be harmless sheep. In relation to the effect Tolle’s and Oprah’s doctrine has on the body of Christ and the word of God, are we justified in comparing them with rapacious wolves who wear the deceitful apparel of sheep? Let’s see.

Wolves attack their prey in packs. Tolle, Oprah, and her entourage make up the pack of rapacious wolves. The word of God is their prey. Once wolves sink their teeth into their victim, they don’t let go until it is dead. They shred it to pieces and chew it up. With the word of God ripped apart, discredited, and devoured, only the teachings of Tolle and Oprah seem to have life in them.

In what sense do Tolle and Oprah wear the apparel of sheep? Rapacious means ravenous. That conjures up the image of scavenger birds feasting on a dead body. Tolle and Oprah do indeed scavenge from the carcass their bloody fangs have made of the word of God. They peck out a few phrases here and there, and drape them over themselves to make it appear that they respect a Man whom Christians believe is the Good Shepherd of the sheep. They also make it appear that they admire a book which most people, at least to some degree, revere. In The New Earth, Tolle quotes more from the Bible than any other book, and more from Jesus than any other person, but always out of context, and always to bolster his antichrist philosophy.

Let me give you just four out of more than a score of examples. Tolle quotes the words of Jesus, “Man does not live by bread alone,” but ignores the part about living by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. He instead relates the phrase to the needs of his followers to feed upon the timeless intelligence within their inner bodies. (The Power of Now, p. 116) According to Tolle, when Christ spoke of “salvation,” He actually meant “enlightenment,” more specifically, the “radical transformation of human consciousness” (The Power of Now, p. 13). Likewise, the second coming of Christ is not at all what the scriptures describe, but rather “the transformation of human consciousness, a shift from time to presence, from thinking to pure consciousness, not the arrival of some man or woman” (The Power of Now, p. 105). Tolle steals the inspiration for the title of his latest book from Revelation 21:1 which refers to “a new heaven and a new earth.” According to Tolle’s private interpretaton, the “new heaven” is not a future creation of God, and the “new earth” is not the promised, future glorious abode for redeemed Israel. Tolle’s infallible esoteric discernment tells him that:

Collective human consciousness and life on our planet are intrinsically connected. “A new heaven” is the emergence of a transformed state of human consciousness, and “a new earth” is its reflection in the physical realm (The New Earth, p. 23, emphasis in original).

Further, Tolle claims that this is what Jesus really meant. Thus, wearing makeshift cloaks haphazardly strung together from out-of-context quotes from scripture, Tolle and Oprah give the deceitful impression that they are part of the flock of believers. As recently as March, Oprah has said, “I am a Christian.” By contradicting scriptural prophesies with a prophesy of their own, and by acting toward the truth of God as rapacious wolves disguised as non-threatening sheep, they meet the scriptural criteria for identifying them as false prophets.

In Iowa, when Michelle Obama referred to Oprah as a woman “who empowers us all,” what did she mean? Did she mean that it is the Oprah/Tolle doctrine which empowers her and her husband?

Tolle and Oprah have no standing or depth whatsoever when it comes to the body of Christ. They are not part of it, and have nothing to contribute to it. Christ gives to Christians whom the scriptures refer to as “the ecclesia which is His body” evangelists, pastors, and teachers for the specific purpose of edifying them (Ephesians 4:11-12). The word ecclesia, used in the Concordant Literal Translation, gets closer to the original meaning of the Greek word ekklesia (Greek = out-called) than the word “church” used in the King James Version. The body of Christ is not a building, but rather a called-out group of individuals who believe that “Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that He was entombed, and that He has been roused the third day according to the scriptures” (I Corinthians 15:3-4). Tolle and Oprah deny that Christ rose from the dead.

The risen Christ commissioned Paul to take the evangel (well-message, or good news) of the grace of God to the people of the nations, “to open their eyes, to turn them about from darkness to light and from the authority of Satan to God, for them to get a pardon of sins and an allotment among those who have been hallowed by faith that is in Me [Christ]” (Acts 26:18). Paul, who therefore has authority to teach the body of Christ, issued two very clear guidelines to believers to make certain they retained the true teachings built upon the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. First:

You, then, child of mine, be invigorated by the grace which is in Christ Jesus. And what things you hear from me through many witnesses, these commit to faithful men, who shall be competent to teach others also (II Timothy 2:1-2).

Tolle and Oprah do not even acknowledge that Christ is the Son of God, much less “hear” anything that Paul has to say about Him. Tolle and Oprah exhibit no faith whatsoever in the words of Paul or Christ. Their god, “universal intelligence” does not require a belief, only a “feeling.” They are thus not competent to teach anyone anything about the truth of God. Second:

Have a pattern of sound words, which you hear from me, in faith and love which are in Christ Jesus. The ideal committed to you, guard through the holy spirit which is making its home in us” (II Timothy 1:13-14).

When you change the words and their pattern, you change the teaching. This is exactly what Tolle and Oprah do. In Paul’s teaching, there is no “alignment with the evolutionary impulse of the universe,” “transformation of consciousness” – “awakened,” “arising,” “flowering,” or otherwise. To the contrary, the Holy Spirit, which will lead us into all truth, “is making its home in us.” We cultivate love, the sacrificial kind, not some vague inner “awareness” unless it is the awareness inherent in the fact that we are not ignorant of Satan’s devices (II Corinthians 2:11). Coincidentally, Tolle refers to his book, A New Earth, as “a transformational device that has come out of the arising new consciousness” (The New Earth, p. 6).

Tolle’s teaching is completely contrary to Christ’s and Paul’s, contradicting them on every meaningful point. The true teacher’s purpose is to build up the body of Christ. Tolle’s purpose, and Oprah’s as well, is to tear it down. Their teachings are poison to the body of Christ, and they want vulnerable Christians to drink that poison.

When Michelle Obama said in Iowa that Oprah “touches the souls of so many of us,” what exactly did she mean? Has Michelle’s soul, through Oprah, been touched by the teachings of the Tolle-headed serpent?

Jesus refers to His and our Adversary as a thief, explaining that the “thief is not coming except that he should be stealing and sacrificing and destroying” (John 10:10). Oprah steals away the attention of her followers from Christ to herself. She sacrifices them to the antichrist doctrine of Tolle, and ultimately, she and Tolle together, through repetition and insistence, destroy the faith of her followers in Christ.

In many cases, the word of God has been recently sown in the lives of Oprah’s viewers, but it has not had time to take root, and they remain babes in Christ. They need a qualified teacher of the scriptures to help them mature, and they need to study the word more on their own; but before either is able to transpire, “coming is the wicked one and snatching what has been sown in [their] heart[s]” (Matthew 13:18). This is exactly what Tolle and Oprah do.

In direct opposition and contradiction to the words of Jesus in the prayer he taught his apostles, Oprah leads her followers, especially the vulnerable members of the body of Christ, into temptation and delivers them into evil. She turns them away from God’s revelation, toward herself and Tolle. The scriptures are very terse and right on point about matters such as these. According to Romans 1:25, Tolle and Oprah “alter the truth of God into the lie, and are venerated, and offer divine service to the creature rather than the Creator.”

The false teaching inherent in the Oprah/Tolle doctrine is bad enough. What makes it a thousand times worse, egregiously reprehensible even, is the fact that Oprah tells the lie of lies about it. She introduces her online class presenting the Oprah/Tolle doctrine by asserting that it “is not for or against any religion.” The Oprah/Tolle doctrine is not against Christianity? Most of the scriptures were written on scrolls, but for the purpose of grasping the destructive violence that the Oprah/Tolle doctrine does to Christianity, picture the complete word of God as existing now on baked clay tablets. Now visualize Oprah and Tolle taking sledgehammers to them. Those who seek to obliterate the very foundation of Christianity are not against it?

On Oprah’s Web site, next to the words, “This online class is not for or against any religion,” she has placed the above image of the spire of a church with a cross at its top. How much more morally corrupt could Oprah be?

How deeply involved in all of this deception is Barack Obama? Let’s look first at Oprah’s perspective. Why did Oprah feel “compelled” to endorse Obama? The answer is to be found in what Oprah considers the most important issue of our time – the new awareness, the “awakening,” “the evolution of human consciousness” (The New Earth, p. 229). In promoting worldwide Internet classes teaching Tolle’s doctrine, Oprah gushes with unbridled enthusiasm, “I don’t think there’s anything more important than awakening, and also knowing what your purpose is.” If this really is the most important consideration in her life, by endorsing Obama, Oprah must believe, she must know, that he shares her “spiritual” outlook, the Tolle/Oprah doctrine, and that he sanctions her worldwide crusade to raise everyone’s “consciousness.”

Oprah spoke of her intimate relationship with Obama as she introduced him in Iowa:

I am not here for partisan beliefs. Over the years I’ve voted for as many Republicans as I have Democrats, so this isn’t about partisanship for me, this is very, very personal. I am here because of my personal conviction about Barack Obama and what he can do for America (my emphases).

Michelle Obama wrote the tribute to Oprah as part of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people of 2008. In it she said:

Oprah is a wonderful friend and an incredible force. Her friendship and support have meant so much to Barack and me . . . Using her platform to serve as a global role model, she challenges us to make the world as it is, the world as it should be. And she is always the first to show us how it can be done.

Michelle’s tribute was published on May 20, 2008, two months after Oprah had kicked off her ten-week global Internet online class touting Tolle’s mega-bestseller, A New Earth, and its importance to everyone’s “spirituality.” The interactive webcast reached 500,000 people in more than 139 countries, becoming “one of the largest single online events in the history of the Internet.” Since that time, according to Oprah’s Web site, millions more have downloaded Tolle’s teachings. What is Michelle Obama referring to, if not this? Is not the promotion of the Oprah/Tolle doctrine Oprah’s most focused effort, in Michelle Obama’s words, “to make . . . the world as it should be”? Do Michelle and Barack Obama feel that the esoteric doctrine of the Tolle-headed serpent should be the ruling philosophy of the world?

Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, and Oprah Winfrey know each other very well. Their relationship is “very, very, personal.” Common sense tells us that Obama and Michelle have read, and agree with, the doctrine expressed in Tolle’s The Power of Now and A New Earth. If you were running for president and had the opportunity to receive the endorsement of the most influential woman in the world, would you look into what mattered most to her on a casual basis, or would you look into it seriously and deeply?

The Oprah/Tolle doctrine asserts that “A significant portion of the earth’s population will soon recognize, if they haven’t already done so, that humanity is now faced with a stark choice: Evolve or die” (A New Earth, p. 21). Oprah and Tolle, in their own minds, have “awakened” to the purpose of their lives and “evolved.” Oprah believes Obama is one of them, imagining that he has “evolved” as well. In South Carolina, Oprah said:

The reason I love Barack Obama is because he is an evolved leader who can bring evolved leadership to our country.

Does not this imply that she knows Obama has read Tolle’s books and agrees with the Oprah/Tolle doctrine, a doctrine that spreads the Tolle-headed serpent’s “enlightenment”? We have to ask, what kind of person must Obama be in order for Oprah to consider him “evolved”? Here’s the answer according to the Oprah/Tolle doctrine: Obama must:

Realize that “The Truth is inseparable from who [he is],” that “[he is] the Truth,” and that “If [he] look[s] for it elsewhere, [he] will be deceived every time” (The New Earth, p. 71).

See himself as aligned with universal intelligence “which means be [a] conscious participant in the unfolding of that higher purpose” (The New Earth, p. 194).

See himself as being in “alignment with the evolutionary impulse of the universe” (The New Earth, p. 163).

Believe that he possesses the intelligence that underlies the evolutionary impulse of the universe, is in conscious alignment with this “universal intelligence,” and that he will express it “on a higher, more wondrous level” (The New Earth, pp. 268-69, 277).

Believe that “All spiritual teachings originate from the same Source.” (The Power of Now, p. 115).

“Know” God “not as something outside [himself] but as [his] own innermost essence.” (The Power of Now, p. 146).

See himself as one of the few people on the planet “who can sustain a state of continuous presence” in the now (The Power of Now, p. 191).

Believe that “Only through awareness – not through thinking – can [he] differentiate between fact and opinion” (The New Earth, pp. 68 – 69).

Believe that the “ultimate purpose of human existence, which is to say, [his] purpose, is to bring that power [awareness] into this world” (The New Earth, p. 78).

See himself as a bringer of “the new consciousness,” and as a man whose “mere presence” has a “transformational effect on whoever [he] comes in contact with” (The New Earth, p. 108).

Believe that the “intelligence” operating through him, “is the same intelligence that manifests as Gaia, the complex living being that is planet earth” (The New Earth, p. 132-33).

Believe that “Real love doesn’t make you suffer” (The Power of Now, p. 30).

Imagine that “All problems are illusions of the mind” (The Power of Now, p. 64).

Think that “Who [he is] requires no belief” since “every belief is an obstacle.” (The New Earth, p. 189).

Believe that “There is only one perpetrator of evil on the planet: human unconsciousness.” (The New Earth, p. 160).

Believe that “self-esteem and humility” are “one and the same” (The New Earth, p. 109).

Believe that to be enlightened means to “regain awareness of Being and to abide in that state of feeling-realization” (The Power of Now, p. 13).

Imagine himself to be an aware and enlightened being who is “not for ‘my’ country but for all of humanity, not for ‘my’ religion but the emergence of consciousness in all human beings, not for ‘my’ species but for all sentient beings and all of nature” (The New Earth, p. 290).

Does any of that ring a bell?

At a Los Angeles rally, Oprah spoke of the “energy and intelligence” Obama has already brought to the election process. At a UCLA rally, Oprah said, “I’m not voting for Barack Obama because he’s black, I’m voting for Barack Obama because he’s brilliant.” This suggests that Oprah sees Obama as embodying “universal intelligence” and expressing it “on a higher, more wondrous level,” as per the Oprah/Tolle doctrine. The real Obama is the Obama Oprah knows.

In Iowa, Oprah said,

But when you listen to Barack Obama, when you really hear him [as Oprah is uniquely and personally qualified to do], you witness a very rare thing. You witness a politician who has an ear for eloquence, and a tongue dipped in unvarnished truth.

According to James 3:8, the tongue is “a turbulent evil, distended with death-carrying venom” that no man can tame. But Oprah sees Obama as having tamed his tongue – with “awareness,” “universal intelligence,” and “higher consciousness.”

Let me reiterate what I mentioned, above. At UCLA, Oprah said, “I’m just following my own truth, and that truth has led to Barack Obama. The truth has led me to Barack Obama.” Let’s not forget, as Oprah speaks of “truth,” what she means by it. We’ve seen that she has embraced the exact same lies from Tolle that Eve accepted from the serpent, and that she believes these lies – that God is jealous of her spiritual and intellectual development, that the word of God cannot be trusted, that she is, in some sense, God, and that she will not die. It is the lies of the Tolle-headed serpent, not the truth of the Creator God, that have led her to Barack Obama, and to extol his imaginary virtues.

Referring to Obama in South Carolina, Oprah said, “It isn’t enough to tell the truth. We need politicians who know how to be the truth.” Tolle and Oprah believe that each “evolved,” “aware” person can say of himself or herself, “I am the way and the truth and the life,” wrenching these words right out of the mouth of Christ to their own perverted purpose. (The New Earth, p. 71). Of course, they ignore the immediate follow-up statement of Jesus, “No one is coming to the Father except through Me.” By calling Obama an “evolved leader,” and affirming that he knows how “to be the truth,” Oprah reveals that she believes that he is qualified to make the statement, “I am the way and the truth and the life” in referring to himself. From the standpoint of Oprah/Tolleism, Oprah sees Obama’s leadership as messianic.

***

Now let’s turn to Obama himself. Elements of the Oprah/Tolle doctrine show up in many of the things Obama has to say, particularly the things relating to global issues. In his Berlin speech on July 24th, entitled “A World That Stands as One,” Obama said “now is the time” twice, and “this is the moment” fourteen times, as in “This is the moment when we must come together to save this planet,” and “This is the moment to give our children back their future,” etc. He also said, “Now the world will watch and remember what we do here – what we do with this moment,” and “People of Berlin – people of the world – this is our moment. This is our time.”

But did anything really happen during the “moment” or the “now” of his speech, other than his giving a speech? When he said, “This is the moment when we must defeat terror and dry up the well of extremism that supports it,” did terror get defeated at that “moment,” or did the well of extremism dry up at that “moment”? No. None of Obama’s references to “the moment” and the “now” make any sense unless we relate them the writings of Eckhart Tolle.

Tolle urges his followers to go ever deeper into the Now, growing in awareness or “presence power” because

It generates an energy field in you and around you of a high vibrational frequency. No unconsciousness, no negativity, no discord or violence can enter that field and survive, just as darkness cannot survive in the presence of light. (PN 75)

As his speech progressed, Obama moved deeper into the Now. I expect that Senator Obama experienced some anxiety before speaking to those 80,000 Berliners. Here is Tolle’s solution to such nervousness: “You can stop this health- and life-corroding insanity by simply acknowledging the present moment” (The Power of Now, p. 85). Obama acknowledged the present moment nineteen times. His invocation of the “moment” had no meaning, no relevance, outside or beyond Tolle’s teaching. Obama has bought into Tolle’s “Power of Now.” Here are a few more of Tolle’s gems:

Narrow your life down to this moment (The Power of Now, p. 63).

The present moment holds the key to liberation (The Power of Now, p. 23).

Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the Now the primary focus of your life (The Power of Now, p. 35).

. . . honor and acknowledge the present moment and allow it to be (The Power of Now, p. 48, emphasis in original).

Always work with [the present moment], not against it. Make it your friend and ally, not your enemy. This will miraculously transform your whole life (The Power of Now, p. 35 – 36).

Saying “this is the moment” over and over in his speech appears to have been some kind of mystical incantation Obama gleaned from the Oprah/Tolle doctrine.

Consider this excerpt from Obama’s Berlin speech:

The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down (my emphasis).

Barring the return of Jesus (the only Man qualified to rule humanity spiritually and politically) none of those walls will be torn down in this century or the next, except in the twisted imaginations and wishful dreams of those who embrace the Oprah/Tolle doctrine. Why does Obama say that these walls “must” come down now? Because, as per the Oprah/Tolle doctrine, there is a “profound shift in planetary consciousness that is destined to take place in the human species” (The New Earth, p.5). And because, “A new species is arising on the planet. It is arising now, and [if you have read Tolle’s books and welcome the Oprah/Tolle doctrine] you are it!” (The New Earth, p. 309).

Can you fathom the chaos that would ensue having a president of the United States who actually believes these kinds of things?

Obama is talking about the entire world in the above quote. How much realistic thinking went into these remarks? None. The Oprah/Tolle doctrine is not about analyzing or thinking: “If there is an apparent conflict between [thought and emotion], the thought will be the lie, the emotion will be the truth” (The Power of Now, p. 122). Obama’s words reveal that he is only slightly more sophisticated than Rodney “Why can’t we all just get along” King. In his Berlin speech, Obama expressed nothing more than a feeling, a globalist feeling of “universal consciousness,” grounded not in reality, but in the magical fantasies of the Oprah/Tolle doctrine.

***

CONCLUSION

Obama, Oprah, and Tolle share with the mainstream media (MSM) many mistaken beliefs, the most foundational of which, in my opinion, is the notion that they are all descended by chance over millions of years from worms, reptiles, and monkeys (The New Earth, pp. 1-3). This mistaken belief often serves as a unifying condescension toward those of us who believe that the Sacred Scriptures, in the original Hebrew and Greek, represent the living and true words or our Creator. However, in this case, the MSM’s shared, imagined origins with Obama, Oprah, and Tolle as worm-reptile-monkey people is not enough of a unifying connection for them to accept, without examination, Obama’s association with Oprah and her guru.

After Tolle released The Power of Now in 1997, Time magazine referred to it as so much “mumbo jumbo” (The Power of Now, p. xv, author’s preface to the new edition). This indicates that even the worm-reptile-monkey crowd can see right through the superficiality and idiocy of the Oprah/Tolle doctrine, when they do their jobs and take a critical look at it. While the MSM might not care whether Obama is a genuine Christian, or whether the Oprah/Tolle doctrine makes a mockery of Christ and scripture, do they really want a president whose vision of the American future is based, to any degree, on Tolle’s “mumbo jumbo”? The MSM has turned a blind eye to this huge story for about as long as it can.

Taking the Tolle-headed serpent’s fruit from Oprah appears to have been the greatest mistake of Obama’s career. He and his wife are in too deep, and the details are much too public. He cannot ignore his connection to Oprah and Tolle, and he cannot lie his way out of it. Without making a fool of himself, Obama cannot say, “This is not the Oprah I knew.”

The endorsement from the “most influential woman in the world” that propelled Obama to his party’s nomination is a thing of the past. This has become the moment that Obama needs to explain his relationship with Oprah and her New Age guru. That is the Power of Now.

Robert Bowie Johnson, Jr., is the author of The Parthenon Code: Mankind’s History in Marble, Athena and Kain: The True Meaning of Greek Art, Noah in Ancient Greek Art, and most recently, Sowing Atheism: The National Academy of Science’s Sinister Scheme to Teach Our Children They’re Descended from Reptiles. He is also the co-inventor of the controversial board game, banned in the 80s, Public Assistance: Why Bother Working for a Living?

www.solvinglight.com
www.welfaregame.com

The structure, with all its precision, had three purposes that the Smithsonian barely touched upon: first, to make a covered space for the 40-foot-tall gold and ivory idol-image of Athena; second, to elevate the seven sculptural themes; and third, to make sure their messages to posterity as expressed in the sculptures survived as long as possible.

The evo-atheist editors at the Smithsonian accept academia’s lame explanation that the sculptures depict “mythical themes,” so they do not even question their real meaning or their relevance to us today. Is that what the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials in our nation’s capital depict, mythical themes? No, these monuments, these modern temples, say to the visitor, “Look at the historical foundations of our society. Look at the ideals we value and live by.” The ancient Greeks, who created the living basis of our Western culture, expressed the same kind of sentiment to their own citizens and to posterity with their magnificent temples. But the art historians, the archaeologists, and the anthropologists who examine the Parthenon today cannot see it. The reason: evo-atheism rules those fields of study, and even when presented with the most obvious artistic depictions of Genesis events on the Parthenon, or in any other part of Greek art, they must be summarily denied and dismissed. The Genesis interpretation of Greek art is forbidden.

As we look at my forbidden theory of ancient Greek art in this chapter, we’ll see specifically how the NAS’s taboo against postulating a Creator works against the progress of understanding in the historical sciences, and against true scientific understanding in general.

Figs. 1, 2, and 3. Greek artists made certain there was no mistaking Athena’s association with the serpent and its wisdom. Above left, from her pre-Parthenon temple, she wears a crown of serpents. In the vase-depiction below left, she wears the Gorgon Medusa, the head of serpents on her aegis, or goatskin. And as a part of her reconstructed idol-image in the Parthenon in Nashville, the ancient serpent rises up next to her as a friend. She holds Nike in her right hand: her friendship with the serpent has led her to Victory.

THE ORIGIN OF THE FORBIDDEN THEORY

I started thinking about ancient Greek art when I was a cadet at West Point. The helmet of Athena, goddess of war and wisdom, is the centerpiece of the academy crest which we wore for four years on our caps and shirt collars. Beginning with senior year, we carried the academy crest, with Athena’s helmet, on our class rings. When I first saw a replica of Athena’s Parthenon idol-image in the officers’ club, I was most struck by the huge, friendly serpent rising up next to her. As a rule, women don’t like serpents and men aren’t crazy about them either. I remember thinking, “The Genesis serpent befriended Eve. Could this be the Genesis serpent?” Such was my speculation, based on something tangible and real in humanity’s past. Scientific study begins with a question about something we observe, but don’t yet understand.

Most mythology books refer to Athena as the goddess of wisdom, but as I looked deeper into her ancient idol-image and other depictions of her, I learned that the ancient artists made a point to associate her irrevocably with the serpent. On one sculpture, she wore a crown of serpents (fig. 1). This suggests that the serpent ruled her thinking. She was often depicted wearing a serpent-fringed aegis, or goat skin, as a symbol of her authority. On that aegis, she wore the Gorgon Medusa—the head of serpents (fig. 2). Was she, in truth, the goddess of the serpent’s wisdom? The wisdom of the ancient serpent from Genesis?

From that point, I developed this working hypothesis: “Greek art depicts the early events described in Genesis, but from the standpoint that the serpent enlightened, rather than deluded, mankind.” I called it the Genesis hypothesis. For my hypothesis to progress, I needed more factual connections. Did the Greeks speak of a first couple in an ancient paradise? Yes. You can examine the plentiful evidence for this, and for other connections between Genesis events and ancient Greek art in detail in my publications and at solvinglight.com. Let me here present a brief outline of what I have uncovered.

THE FIRST COUPLE

There is no Creator-God in the Greek religious system. Ancient Greek religion is about getting away from the God of Genesis, and exalting man as the measure of all things. You may think to yourself that the Greeks are exalting gods, not man; but haven’t you ever wondered why the Greek gods looked exactly like humans? The answer is the obvious one: for the most part, the gods represented the Greeks’ (and our) human ancestors. Greek religion was thus a sophisticated form of ancestor worship. In Plato’s Euthydemus, Sokrates referred to Zeus, Athena, and Apollo as his “gods” and as his “lords and ancestors.”₁ Greek stories about their origins are varied and sometimes contradictory until their poets and artists present Zeus and Hera as the couple from whom the other Olympian gods and mortal men are descended.

This brother/sister and husband/wife pair, the king and queen of the gods, are a match for the Adam and Eve of Genesis. This couple is the beginning of the family of man, and the origin of the family of the Greek gods, Zeus and Hera. With no Creator-God in the Greek religious system, the first couple advances to the forefront.

ZEUS AND HERA ARE THE FIRST COUPLE DESCRIBED IN GENESIS

According to the Book of Genesis, Eve is the mother of all humans, and the wife of Adam. Since God is the Father of both Adam and Eve, some consider them to be brother and sister as well. After they had both eaten the fruit, Adam named his wife Eve (“Living” in Hebrew) and Genesis 3:20 explains why: “… for she becomes the mother of all the living.” In a hymn of invocation, the 6th-century BC lyric poet, Alcaeus, refers to Hera as “mother of all.”₂ As the first wife, the Greeks worshipped Hera as the goddess of marriage; as the first mother, the Greeks worshipped her as the goddess of childbirth.

We are told in Chapter 2 of Genesis that Eve was created full-grown out of Adam. Before she was known as Hera, the wife of Zeus had the name Dione. The name relates to the creation of Eve out of Adam, for Dione is the feminine form of Dios or Zeus. This suggests that the two, like Adam and Eve, were once a single entity.

From the Judeo-Christian standpoint, the taking of the fruit by Eve and Adam at the serpent’s behest was shameful, a transgression of God’s commandment. From the Greek standpoint, however, the taking of the fruit was a triumphant and liberating act which brought to mankind the serpent’s enlightenment. To the Greeks, the serpent was a friend of mankind who freed us from bondage to an oppressive God, and was therefore a savior and illuminator of our race.

In his Works and Days, the poet Hesiod wrote of “how the gods and mortal men sprang from one source.”₃ The first couple, Zeus and Hera, were that source. Hera is the single mother of all humanity, and Zeus is, according to Hesiod, “the father of men and gods.”₄ The term “father Zeus” is a description of the king of the gods which appears over 100 times in the ancient writings of Homer.₅ As the source of their history, Zeus and Hera became the gods of their history. Those without a belief in the Creator have only nature, themselves, and their progenitors to exalt.

The Greek tradition insists that Zeus and Hera were the first couple; the Judeo-Christian tradition insists Adam and Eve were the first couple. Two opposite spiritual standpoints share the same factual basis.

THE GREEK VERSION OF EDEN

If the above is true, then the Greeks ought to have directly connected Zeus and Hera to an ancient paradise, a serpent, and a fruit tree. They did, indeed, make such a direct connection.

The Greeks remembered the original paradise. They called it the Garden of the Hesperides, and they associated Zeus and Hera with its enticing ease, and with a serpent-entwined apple tree.

Some mythologists have mistaken the Hesperides for guardians of the tree, but they certainly are not. Their body language, their easy actions and their very names serve the purpose of establishing what kind of a garden this is: a wonderful, carefree place. In figure 4 (next page), we see the Garden of the Hesperides depicted on a water pot from about 410 BC. The serpent entwines the apple tree with its golden fruit. The names of the figures are written on the vase. Two of the Hesperides, Chrysothemis (Golden Order) and Asterope (Star Face) stand to the immediate left of the tree. Chrysothemis moves toward the tree to pluck an apple. Asterope leans pleasantly against her with both arms. To the left of them, Hygeia (Health) sits on a hillock and holds a long scepter, a symbol of rule, as she looks back towards the tree. To the right of the apple tree, Lipara (Shining Skin) holds apples in the fold of her garment, and raises her veil off her shoulder.

The names of the Hesperides describe what the garden is like. It is a land of gold for the taking, soft starlight, perfect health, and wondrous beauty. The Hebrew word for Eden means “to be soft or pleasant,” figuratively “to delight oneself.” The Garden of the Hesperides is the Greek version of the Garden of Eden.

Figure 4: Vase-depiction of the Garden of the Hesperides, the Greek version of Eden

ZEUS AND HERA IN THE ANCIENT PARADISE

If Adam and Eve, in the Greek religious system, have become Zeus and Hera, there should be literary evidence for their presence in this garden, and there is. Apollodorus wrote that the apples of the Hesperides “were presented by Gaia [Earth] to Zeus after his marriage with Hera.”₆ This matches the Genesis account: Eve became Adam’s wife right after she was taken out of Adam (Genesis 2:21–25), and the next recorded event is the taking of the fruit by the first couple. Connecting Zeus and Hera with the Hesperides connects them with the serpent and the fruit tree with which the Hesperides are always represented.

The chorus in Euripides’ play Hippolytus speaks of “the apple-bearing shore of the Hesperides” where immortal fountains flow “by the place where Zeus lay, and holy Earth with her gifts of blessedness makes the gods’ prosperity wax great.”₇ Thus Euripides put Zeus in the garden, and his language affirms that this is where Zeus came from.

You have probably heard one time or another about Eve eating the apple. The Hebrew word for fruit in Chapter 3 of Genesis is a general term. The idea that Adam and Eve took a bite of an apple comes to us as part of the Greek tradition.

Up to this point, we have developed a sound working hypothesis. The evidence is compelling. But we must remember, the ruling evo-atheist paradigm is not about evidence, but rather, about validating their evo-atheist standpoint, and that’s all. My line of thinking challenges their evo-atheist standpoint; therefore, it is forbidden. Evo-atheist writer Joseph Campbell, articulates the operative taboo as it applies to the fields of art history, Classical studies, archaeology, and anthropology today:

No one of adult mind today would turn to the Book of Genesis to learn of the origins of the earth, the plants, the beasts, and man. There was no flood, no tower of Babel, no first couple in paradise, and between the first known appearance of men on earth and the first building of cities, not one generation (Adam to Cain) but a good two million must have come into this world and passed along. Today we turn to science for our imagery of the past and of the structure of the world, and what the spinning demons of the atom and the galaxies of the telescope’s eye reveal is a wonder that makes the babel of the Bible seem a toyland dream of the dear childhood of our brain.₈

The Scriptures are false. Science is truth. Evolution is science. Evolution is truth. We’ve heard all of these atheistic assumptions before from the NAS. But where is the evidence that the Genesis events did not occur? And where is the evidence that evolution did occur? Campbell does not produce a shred of evidence to back up his speculation. Campbell’s writings express the same profane prattlings, and the same philosophy and empty seduction we find in the NAS book. Genesis events must be explained away as fairy tales, and never examined as history; Greek art must be explained away as myth, and never examined as history—even though Genesis and Greek art corroborate each other. The truth is that Genesis describes the key events in early human history, while ancient Greek art depicts those same events, albeit from an opposite perspective. Let’s see what else in ancient Greek art stares the evo-atheists in the face, but which they are forced to ignore and dismiss because of the narrow and limiting scope of their atheistic religious philosophy.

THE TWO ANTAGONISTIC SONS OF THE FIRST FAMILY

Now if Zeus and Hera are pictures of Adam and Eve, we would expect them to have two male children with antagonistic lines of descent just as the Genesis couple did. Zeus and Hera did have two male children: Hephaistos, the elder, and Ares; and they were as averse to each other as Kain (Cain) and Seth.

Adam and Eve actually had three sons: Kain, Abel and Seth, but Kain killed Abel before the latter had offspring. Greek artists knew all about that first murder. They depicted that event in a series of four metopes (square sculpted scenes) on the south side of the Parthenon (see Chapter 6 of The Parthenon Code). An explosion in 1687 destroyed the metopes, but fortunately, French artist, Jacques Carrey, had drawn them in 1674. You can see them at solvinglight.com. Classical scholars have no other cogent explanation for the four related scenes.

Since Seth replaced Abel, we look at Adam and Eve as having two sons, each of whom, in turn, had offspring. In the Scriptures, the line of Seth is the line of Christ. The Book of Matthew traces the lineage of Christ through David to Abraham; and the Book of Luke further traces the lineage of Abraham to Adam through his son Seth. This is often referred to as the line of belief in the Creator-God or the line of faith. On the other hand, the Scriptures define the line of Kain as one of unbelief in the Creator-God. According to I John 3:12, “Kain was of the wicked one,” a reference to “the ancient serpent called Adversary and Satan, who is deceiving the whole inhabited earth” (Revelation 12:9).

The Greeks deified Kain as Hephaistos, god of the forge. They deified his younger brother, Seth, as Ares, the troublesome god of conflict and war. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, Kain is the evil one whose way is to be shunned. In the Greek religious system, Ares, the Seth of Genesis, is the traitor and the one who causes ruin and woe.

HEPHAISTOS/KAIN

By his Roman name, Vulcan, we associate Hephaistos, the deified Kain, immediately with the forge and the foundry. According to Genesis 4:22, the members of Kain’s family were the first to become forgers “of every tool of copper and iron.” These surely included the hammer, the axe, and the tongs—the tools most often associated with Hephaistos in Greek art.

Hephaistos’ banishment from, and return to, Olympus (a place where the Creator is excluded from the pantheon) is a “myth” which constituted an essential element of Greek religion. It appeared painted, sculpted and bronzed throughout the Archaic and Classical periods. In the Greek religious system, the banishment and return of Hephaistos to Olympus corresponds, in Genesis, to Kain’s being commanded to wander the earth by God, and his defiant return to establish the first city (Genesis 4:9-17).

ARES/SETH

Zeus loved his son Hephaistos, who performed an indispensable and appreciated function as armorer of the gods. On the other hand, Zeus considered his youngest son, Ares, to be worthless, calling him “hateful” and “pestilent” and a “renegade.”₉ The ancient poet, Homer, referred to Ares as “the bane of mortals.”₁₀ The only reason Ares has a place in the Greek pantheon is that he is the son of Zeus; that is, he is one of the two actual sons of the first couple, Adam and Eve, of whom Zeus and Hera are deifications. Zeus hates Ares, but accepts responsibility for siring him: “[F]or thou art mine offspring, and it was to me that thy mother bare thee,” and then rails at this son of his, telling him that if he were born of any other god, he would have been “lower than the sons of heaven” long ago.₁₁ Some scholars say Greek religion is anthropomorphic; that is, gods take human form. That’s not quite right. What happens is that real human ancestors retain their original identities and take on godlike qualities. Ares, as a deification of Seth, is trapped by the historical framework. His father, Zeus, had to hate him, and the Greek hero, Herakles, was expected to kill Ares’ children.

While the scriptural viewpoint defines Seth/Ares as the God-believing, or spiritual son, Greek religion defines him as hated by, and antagonistic to, the ruling gods who are part of the serpent’s system. Likewise, while Zeus-religion looks on Hephaistos/Kain as the true and devoted son, the scriptural viewpoint defines him as part of the wicked one’s system. Jews and Christians dislike and shun the line of Kain, but they can’t get rid of him or his line without altering their spiritual standpoint and history itself. Kain is part of the Scriptures, and he is there to stay. Zeus-religion has the same kind of situation. It hates the line of Ares, but it cannot eliminate the line from its history because the basic achievement of Zeus-religion, its grand celebration even, is the triumph of the way of Kain over the way of Seth. Ares is part of Greek sacred literature and art, and he is there to stay.

THE GREEK DEPICTION OF THE FLOOD

According to Genesis, the Flood temporarily wiped out the way of Kain. Noah, in the line of Seth, “a just man” (Genesis 6:9), survived with his wife, three sons, and their wives in the ark. All but these eight people disappeared into the earth. The Greeks pictured this cataclysmic event as half-men/half-horses known as Kentaurs (Centaurs) pounding a man named Kaineus into the ground (fig.5). Kaineus means “pertaining to Kain,” or more directly, “the line of Kain.”

Who were the Kentaurs? The original Greek word for Kentaur, Kentauros, means hundred (where we get century and cent) and most likely relates to the fact that Noah, the chief of the line of Seth, warned of the Flood for one hundred years.₁₂ In most vase paintings of them, the Kentaurs carried symmetrical branches, a sign that they belonged to a certain branch of humanity. The Greeks, who embraced the way of Kain, did not acknowledge the Creator God, and so they couldn’t blame Him for the Flood. They blamed the survivors of it, that strange branch of humanity they didn’t really understand—the line of Seth.

The evo-atheists have no explanation for the connection between Kain and Hephaistos and Seth and Ares, nor do they have an explanation for Kaineus and the Kentaurs. Because ignorant atheists say so, entire fields of scientific enquiry must arbitrarily dismiss the only real evidence we have for the origin of mankind.

Let’s see what else the evo-atheists scholars and their spell-bound students are forced to ignore in the ancient Greek record.

Figs. 5 and 6. Left, Kaineus (the line of Kain) disappears into the earth during the Flood at the hands of the Seth-men (Kentaurs). Right, after the Flood, Athena welcomes the reborn line of Kain (the child is the seed of Hephaistos/Kain) from the earth in Athens.

THE RESURGENCE OF THE WAY OF KAIN AFTER THE FLOOD

For a number of years after the Flood, God’s awesome and decisive intervention in human affairs remained fresh in the minds of Noah’s descendants, and the way of Kain remained dormant. Then, gradually, a yearning for a return to the serpent’s wisdom began to take hold.

The evidence I present in my books and in my 950-slide PowerPoint presentation shows irrefutably that Greek religious art celebrated the resurgence and victory of the way of Kain after the Flood. The question is, how did the way of Kain come through the Flood? The answer is, through a woman. The evidence for this is found in an extremely well-researched 782-page book by Anne Baring and Jules Cashford called The Myth of the Goddess. The authors trace the goddesses of the ancient Near-eastern and Mediterranean world to a single original goddess named Nammu.

“The earliest Sumerian creation myth,” they write, “tells the story of Nammu, Goddess of the Primordial Waters, who brought forth the cosmic mountain, An-Ki, Heaven and Earth.”₁₃ The Primordial Waters are the Flood waters; the cosmic mountain, where the ark landed. The peaks of the mountains of Ararat often disappeared into the clouds, so it seemed Nammu had come from above, from heaven to earth.

Most of the significant ancient goddesses were linked to the Flood in some way, beginning with the one whom they represented, Nammu. Baring and Cashford: “The images of water and sea, the unfathomable abyss of the Deep, return us to Nammu, the Sumerian goddess whose ideogram was the sea . . .”₁₄ Baring and Cashford again: “Asherah [a Caananite goddess] was called ‘the Lady of the Sea,’ which links her to the Sumerian Nammu, and to the Egyptian Isis, ‘born in all wetness.’”₁₅ Those descriptions of the goddess evoke the memory of the Flood. But where did Nammu come from? Baring and Cashford do not know.

Operating in the academic world under the evo-atheist paradigm, the authors cannot make the obvious Genesis connection. Genesis 4:17-22 records the descendents of Kain beginning with his son, Enoch, going down to his great-great-great-great grandson, Tubal-kain. The writer of Genesis pens one more sentence at the end of the male line of Kain: “And the sister of Tubal-kain is Naamah” (Genesis 4:22). The line of Seth (Genesis 5:6-32) mentions no women. Why is Naamah mentioned in the line of Kain?

My answer, as expressed in Section I of Noah in Ancient Greek Art, is that Noah’s son, Ham, married her, and brought her with him on the ark through the Flood. After the Flood, Naamah/Nammu reverted to the way of Kain, and instigated the rebellion which the Greeks, as well as other nations, celebrated.

The Greeks recognized Ham as the friendly Kentaur, Chiron. Other Kentaurs of the line of Seth were enemies of the resurgent line of Kain, but not Chiron. Although he was a son of Noah, Ham connected with the line of Kain through his marriage to the Kain-woman, Naamah/Nammu. Greek artists honored him for bringing her through the Flood, and depicted him in a radically different way from all the other Kentaurs. He is not pictured as a crude enemy, but as a civilized friend. His front legs are not equine, but human. If you stood directly in front of him, you wouldn’t even know that he was a Kentaur. They called him Chiron because it means “hand” in Greek, and suggests that he gave an early helping hand to the development of Zeus-religion.

On the following page, we see how the Greeks depicted and named Noah, his son Ham, his grandson, Cush, and his great-grandson, Nimrod. In The Parthenon Code and Noah in Ancient Greek Art, I present detailed evidence which connects these ancient historical figures.

Over several generations, Naamah, with the help of her son and grandson, Cush and Nimrod, won the adoration of the majority of humanity, taking credit for bringing civilization through the Flood. As the tribes and nations began to form, they worshipped different aspects of Naamah using different names.

Figure 7. An ancient depiction shows Herakles shoving Nereus aside. Nereus means the “Wet One.” The Greeks also referred to him as the “Salt Sea Old Man.” He is the Greek version of Noah. Herakles is the Nimrod of Genesis, the grandson of Naamah. He led mankind’s rebellion after the Flood with her as his guide.

I would change the title of Baring’s and Cashford’s book from The Myth of the Goddess to The Memory of the Adored Woman, because that’s what it is really all about. The authors cannot see this simple truth, and so remain puzzled as to why ancient goddesses so dominated ancient Mediterranean cultures: Ishtar, Inanna, Asherah, Isis, Demeter, Artemis, Athena—all, in their own scholarly judgment, derived from Nammu. Baring and Cashford confess that they do not know how the goddess image first arose, “whether from dreaming sleep or from waking vision.” But it was not a dream or a vision that led to the veneration of the goddess throughout the ancient world, but rather a real woman named Naamah, the last person mentioned in the line of Kain before the Flood. The majority of humanity adored her because she brought the way of Kain through the Flood, and through her offspring, Cush/Hermes and Nimrod/Herakles, reestablished its dominance.

NEREUS/NOAH

A prophet of God in the line of Seth who brought mankind through the Flood.

CHIRON/HAM

The “good” Kentaur (Seth-man) because he brought his wife, Naamah, of the line of Kain, through the Flood.

HERMES/CUSH

Born on his mother’s side from the line of Kain, turned from Noah and God, embraced and spread Zeus-religion.

HERAKLES/NIMROD

As Naamah’s grandson, led the armed rebellion against Noah and his God-fearing children.

Figure 8. Here is how the renunciation of Noah and his God proceeded from his son, Ham (who brought Naamah through the Flood as his wife) through his son, Cush, to his son, Nimrod. Or as the Greeks remembered them, from Chiron through Hermes to Herakles. The most influential person in this great spiritual transformation, Ham’s wife Naamah/Athena, is not shown here.

If, in the Greek religious system, Demeter, Artemis, and Athena are all personas or aspects of the real woman, Naamah/Nammu, why is Athena the dominant one? Why is she the favored daughter of Zeus? It is because Athena represents the most essential aspect of Naamah—dedication and submission to the ancient serpent and its wisdom. That is the heart and soul of Zeus-religion and the way of Kain. As Naamah/Demeter, the goddess of vegetation, she brought the seeds through the Flood; as Naamah/Artemis, the mistress of wild beasts, she brought the animals through the Flood. Both were very important, but it is the exaltation of the serpent’s wisdom that is the distinguishing, defining, and crucial achievement of Naamah/Athena. Only two ancestors are ever depicted in Greek art holding Nike, or Victory, in their hand. One is Adam/Zeus, the original purveyor to humanity of the serpent’s wisdom before the Flood. The other is Naamah/Athena, the woman who brought back the serpent’s enlightenment to mankind after the Flood. That is why Greek artists almost always depicted Athena with a serpent or serpents. That is why Athena’s temple stood in all its glory above the city of Athens. That is the secret of the Parthenon.

Naamah/Athena’s grandson, Nimrod/Herakles became the great hero who supplied the muscle to overthrow Noah/Nereus and his God-fearing offspring. At solvinglight.com, I present 37 images of Noah from ancient Greek art. In almost all the scenes, the patriarch’s authority is being usurped by the rebel, Nimrod/Herakles, or he is being forced by the artists to witness key events leading to the triumph of Zeus-religion. Noah/Nereus is a benchmark figure. Artists placed him in scenes as the known character, the constant against which they could portray the great spiritual/religious change taking place after the Flood.

Also at solvinglight.com, we restore the 12 labors of Herakles in color, as they originally appeared on the temple of Zeus at Olympia. Once you examine the images of Noah, the labors of Herakles, and the restoration of the east pediment of the Parthenon, with their respective explanations on the Web site, I think you will agree that the Genesis hypothesis of Greek art has become an authentic theory. I go so far as to consider it fact, but I leave that determination up to you.

Figs. 9 and 10. From opposite sides of the same vase, Cush/Hermes, with Nimrod/Herakles in his arms, runs away from his father, a bewildered, Ham/Chiron. Hermes has sided with his mother, Naamah/Athena of the line of Kain. Naamah/Athena inspired and led her grandson, Nimrod/Herakles, in his labors and other exploits.

Figs. 11 and 12. The sculpted scenes above the east entrance of the temple of Zeus at Olympia, restored by Holmes Bryant. Left, Herakles kills the three-bodied Geryon, symbolizing the authority of the three sons of Noah. Right, with Noah’s sons overcome, and with Athena’s help, Herakles pushes away the heavens, and with them, the God of the heavens, enabling the strong man to retrieve from Atlas the golden apples from the ancient serpent’s tree.

Herakles’ labors chronicle and celebrate mankind’s successful rebellion against Noah and his God after the Flood. The Greek hero’s labors and battles were directed toward one goal: getting back to the serpent’s enlightenment in the ancient garden, as symbolized by possession of the apples from its tree (figs. 11 and 12). Of course, Herakles did not really get back to the ancient garden; it is a figurative artistic statement: the Greeks will not live under Noah and his God any longer, but will re-embrace the “enlightenment” of the ancient serpent, and live by the fruit of its tree. Zeus-religion celebrates the great change in the post-Flood religious paradigm. Noah and his God are out. The serpent and its enlightenment are back in. Humanity has decided this: mankind is now the measure of all things.

This is exactly what the evo-atheists believe. This is the sentiment Zimmerman and Mr. X express in their Clergy Project Letter. The members of the hierarchy of the NAS go a step further than exalting mankind as the measure of all things. They exalt themselves as the measure of all things. They redefine science to accord with their atheism. They decide what our children will be taught about their origins. They determine which thoughts are mandatory in the science classroom, and which are impermissible. They insist that their atheistic philosophy and religion be honored as supreme.

Do the evo-atheists understand the meaning of Greek art in general or the Parthenon sculptures in particular? No. This is one of the great ironies of our time. The evo-atheists at the NAS, the editors at the Smithsonian, the thousands of other evo-atheist media chieftains, and the evo-atheists throughout academia do not recognize their own humanistic belief system as it appears glorified in ancient Greek sculpture and vase-painting. They are blind to it. In their enchanted state of cognitive obliviousness, it doesn’t matter to them.

In all my research, I have never encountered a sound theory of Greek art, other than the one presented here. That is because nothing but the Genesis theory fits the facts. After the Flood, the Greeks rebelled against Noah and his God, preferring to idolize their human forebears in the way of Kain who had reestablished and systematized their man-centered religious outlook. It is as simple and as obvious as that.

Modern academia has yet to learn the simple lesson that, without reference to the early events described in the Book of Genesis, it is not possible to make any real sense of ancient Greek art and religion. In fact, the entire formidable religious framework of ancient Greek society means virtually nothing without reference to those events. The problem for these academics is that they cannot entertain the Genesis theory of Greek art without abandoning, or at least seriously questioning, their own evo-atheism. The evo-atheist taboo forbids them to explore a rich world of deep intellectual (in the best sense of the term) stimulation and understanding. They are called teachers and professors, yet they fail to comprehend the meaning of the symbolic art that our ancient ancestors have left for us, just as they fail to recognize the handiwork of our Creator throughout the earth, and within all the life upon it.

Atheism leads nowhere. It is nothing more than an outright denial of what is intuitively apparent. Atheists have taken over the National Academy of Sciences. With God pushed out of the picture, they need to concoct an alternative explanation for our existence. That’s all molecules-to-man evolution is—a concocted rationale for atheism.

Today, those working in the historical sciences who want their careers to progress must rigidly follow the evo-atheist paradigm of the NAS. Mainstream archaeologists hardly think about Genesis. The NAS insists that mainstream anthropologists study chimpanzees, while ridiculing those who dare to examine with open minds the true record of our origins found in ancient art and literature.

Look what the NAS atheists have done to science in order to justify their own unbelief in God. To them, science is not an open-ended search for truth. Beginning with their denial of the obvious, they have made science into the manipulation of language, the philosophical contamination of nature, and the fabrication of evidence to validate the atheism of the NAS hierarchy.

Their illogic and their seductions cannot bear the salutary tonics of open debate and free inquiry. The NAS atheists detest the valid God hypothesis and the proven (in my opinion) theory of the meaning of ancient Greek art. They cannot disprove these ideas, so they must intimidate those who are inclined to consider them. Brandishing a club as dangerous as the one wielded by Herakles, the NAS hierarchy threatens us, spiritually attacking our children and our way of life in a most serious and sinister way. It is time to call them to account for the evil they have done, and are doing, in the name of “science.”

NOTES

CHAPTER 1

1. Julian Huxley, Essays of a Humanist (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), p.125.

2. Provine, Will, “No Free Will,” in Catching Up with the Vision, ed. by Margaret W. Rossister (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. S123. Thanks for citations 1 and 2 to Henry M. Morris in ‘The Scientific Case Against Evolution,” icr.org.

3. Richard Dawkins, “Put Your Money on Evolution,” The New York Times (April 9, 1989), section VII, p. 35.

4. Law, Stephen, “Is Creationism Scientific,” in Darwin Day Collection One, ed. by Amanda Chesworth, et. al (Albuquerque: Tangled Ban Press, 2002), p. 291.

CHAPTER 2

1. Unlocking the Mystery of Life: The Scientific Case for Intelligent Design, DVD/VHS, Illustra Media, 2002.

CHAPTER 3

1. Peter Hastie, Creation Magazine, Sep.-Nov. 1995, Vol. 17, No. 4, pp. 14-16. Creation Ministries International.

2. Niles Eldredge, as quoted in: Luther D. Sunderland, Darwin’s Enigma: Fossils and Other Problems, fourth edition (revised and expanded), Master Book Publishers, Santee (California),1988, p. 78.

3. Scienceagainstevolution.org/v7i1n.htm

4. Feduccia, A.; in: V. Morell, “Archaeopteryx: Early Bird Catches a Can of Worms,” Science 259(5096):764–65, 5 February 1993.

CHAPTER 4

1. Henry M. Morris, “The Scientific Case Against Evolution,” Institute for Creation Research, icr.org, p.4

CHAPTER 6

1. Ruse M., Darwinism Defended: A Guide to the Evolution Controversies Addison-Wesley: Reading MA, 1983, Third Printing, p. 280.

2. Kofman, Sarah, Socrates: Fictions of a Philosopher, Cornell University Press, 1998, p. 203.

CHAPTER 7

1. Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, Acquiring Genomes: A Theory of the Origins of the Species, (Basic Books, 2003), p. 29.

CHAPTER 9

1. Plato, Euthydemus, from: The Dialogues of Plato, Jowett, B. (Translator), Third Edition, Vol. I, Oxford at the Clarendon Press: Oxford University Press, Humphrey Milford Publisher, 1892, 302d.

2. Hornblower, S. and Spawforth, A. (Eds.), The Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization, Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 1998, p. 332.

3. Hesiod, Works and Days, Evelyn-White, H.G. (Translator), William Heinemann Ltd and Harvard University Press, London, 1914, 105.

4. Hesiod, Ref. 3, 59.

5. Homer, The Iliad, Lattimore, R. (Translator), University of Chicago Press, Lattimore, R. (Translator), University of Chicago Press, Iliad Chicago and London, 1961, 503 and frequently.

6. Apollodorus, Apollodorus, The Library, with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, 2 Volumes, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. and London, 1921, 2.5.11.

7. Euripides, Hippolytus, Kovacs, D. (Translator), Harvard University Press, Cambridge,1996 , 744–750.

8. Campbell, Joseph, The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology. The Viking Press, Inc., New York, 1964, p. 520.

9. Homer, Ref. 5, 885–889.

10. Homer, Ref. 5, 846.

11. Homer, Ref. 5, 895.

12. See 2 Peter 2:5; Genesis 5:32 and 7:6.

13. Baring, Anne and Cashford, Jules, The Myth of the Goddess, Arkana Penguin Books, London, 1993, p. 152.

14. Ibid., p.473.

15. Ibid., p.454.

On the third reading of the NAS book, I could see plainly that it shared all the anti-free speech elements of the illegal, yet successful, nationwide plan to “remove the [welfare] game from the marketplace.” A review of that situation in the 1980s will prove to be instructive for comparison to what the NAS is doing in the American science classroom today. After a two-and-a-half-page introduction to the game, I will interject comments every so often, using parentheses and a different font, about how the NAS’s efforts to ban the God hypothesis correspond to the banning of the game.

PLAYING THE WELFARE GAME

Ron Pramschufer, the co-inventor of the game, and I intended it to be a parody of government liberalism, with a special focus on the able-bodied loaferism, welfare fraud, and the social chaos its domestic policies promote. The object for the players of the game is to accumulate as much money as possible in twelve circuits around the board, each lap representing a month, as they move back and forth between the “Able-bodied Welfare Recipient’s Promenade” and the “Working Person’s Rut.”

The able-bodied welfare recipient collects money through such methods as having out-of-wedlock children, playing the lottery and the horses, drawing “Welfare Benefit” cards, stealing hubcaps, and making profitable side trips into the four “Saturday Night” crimes: drug dealing, gambling, prostitution, and armed robbery.

Players unfortunate enough to land on one of the “Get a Job” blocks have to move out of the Welfare Promenade and into the Working Person’s Rut. There, they usually experience an unending series of bills, meager paychecks, discrimination, welfare taxes, and other assorted “Working Person’s Burdens.”

Both able-bodied loafers and those in the Working Person’s Rut have opportunities to land a high-pay/no-work job for their other playing piece, representing their live-in or spouse, on the “Government Cakewalk.” To portray the American reality, we made it so that the only way a player’s live-in or spouse can be removed from the lucrative Cakewalk is to land on the square that says, “You are conscience-stricken. Quit government job.”

The “Jail Jaunt” rounds out the socialist reality represented by the game. Able-bodied loafers turned Saturday night criminals must move there if they get caught in one of their illegal acts. Players in the Working Person’s Rut do not experience the Jail Jaunt, because they are too busy or too tired to engage in criminal activity. The Jail Jaunt, as most of the rest of the game, typifies the reality of liberal government policies: one roll—“Lawyer gets you off on technicality,” for example—and you’re right back at the welfare office ready to collect all benefits and resume your strut on the welfare promenade.

The winner is the one with the most money at the end of twelve months, and chances are, unless you can get off that Working Person’s Rut and back on the Able-Bodied Welfare Recipient’s Promenade, it isn’t going to be you.

The game wasn’t meant as a 100% accurate and thorough critique of American social policy, but as a lampoon. The research for it consisted of television and newspaper reports, observations and conversations and one visit to a local Maryland welfare office where an administrator was very candid with us.

Our spoof was based on street knowledge and common sense. Ron and I saw ourselves more as packaging experts than game inventors. We often told people, “We didn’t invent this game; government liberals did. We just put it in a box.”

We designed the package for the impulse buy in high traffic locations, and we felt we had a large, natural market for the game with everybody’s “Uncle Charlie” or “Aunt Bea” who complained about welfare. We expected some criticism, certainly, but not much more than a political cartoonist might receive. There are more than 5,000 words in the game. It is provocative political opinion, words and ideas supposedly protected by the First Amendment.

Inasmuch as the game deals with welfare chiselers, able-bodied loafers, and liberal government bureaucrats who tolerate and encourage massive welfare fraud across the United States, the game met with much media attention.

In the fall of 1980, Ron and I, like most Americans at that time and even today, had never heard of The American Public Welfare Association (APWA)—the nerve center of America’s welfare empire. (They have since changed their name to The American Public Human Services Association, or APHSA, but I will continue to refer to them as the APWA). Its board of directors is made up mostly of the welfare commissioners of state and local welfare agencies. The APWA pushes relentlessly for expansion of the empire and what it calls its “progressive” agenda by skewing welfare data to make it look like more funding is always needed, by manipulating bills through various Congressional committees, by translating welfare laws into the welfare rules that the various executive agencies use to dole out government largess, and by propagandizing in the media. When the APWA meets public opposition in a certain program, it holds its ground there, while pushing hard to expand other welfare programs not under public scrutiny. The majority of its budget comes from taxes in the form of dues which the state and local welfare agencies pay annually. The APWA bureaucrats who run the welfare empire are not elected by the public; they are not even appointed by elected officials. They elect themselves.

(The members of the NAS hierarchy aren’t popularly elected either. They don’t respect what the public thinks except in the sense that they want to manipulate and control public thinking in order to further their evo-atheist agenda.)

The APWA controls the National Council of State Public Welfare Administrators (changed in 1997 to the National Council of State Human Service Administrators) and the National Council of Local Public Welfare Administrators (changed in 1997 to the National Council of Local Human Service Administrators). Its affiliate groups include The American Association of Public Welfare Attorneys, the American Association of Public Welfare Information Systems Management, the Association of Food Stamp Directors, and the State Medicaid Directors’ Association.

(The NAS spreads its atheist tentacles through the Council of the National Academy of Sciences, People for the American Way, the National Center for Science Education, the Institute of Medicine, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Science Teachers Association, the Biotechnology Institute, the various state academies of science, hundreds of colleges and universities, and many other evo-atheist organizations.)

“PROPERLY EDUCATING” THE PUBLIC

In the fall of 1980, the APWA was riding high on the waves of unprecedented welfare expansion. Its leaders had become sophisticated propagandists. In its November newsletter, the APWA interviewed its treasurer, Jerome Chapman, who was also the welfare commissioner of Texas. The article concluded thus:

Chapman notes that administrators have only just begun the task of educating the public so that it understands and supports public welfare. He believes usually overlooked but potential allies in this endeavor are business and industry. He notes that certain industries benefit directly from welfare programs, e.g., food chains from food stamps and the medical profession from Medicaid. And businesses that sell the necessities of life, such as clothing, rental housing, and utilities would find higher benefit levels in programs such as aid to families with dependent children (AFDC) to their advantage.

In Texas, one member of the commissioner’s staff spends part of his time helping corporations understand how welfare programs work. Chapman believes that once corporations are won over, they can be enlisted to help sell the public on the welfare system.

(“Properly educating” the American public is the aim of the NAS as well. In the process, they’ve become very sophisticated propagandists. Their influential allies, themselves thoroughly propagandized by the NAS, include the editors of National Geographic, Discovery, Science, Scientific American, Time, Nature, U.S. News and World Report, and Newsweek magazines, as well as the editors of the major daily newspapers in America. PBS and the History, Discovery, and Science channels also report their “science” under the Darwinist journalistic paradigm: evolution is always assumed, never proven; and creationism is always denied, never refuted.

The focus of the NAS is, of course, “properly educating” science teachers, principals, and school boards about their descent from reptiles.)

PRESIDENT REAGAN NOT CONSIDERED A THREAT TO WELFARE EMPIRE’S GOALS

The APWA did not consider the election of Ronald Reagan in November of 1980 to be a real threat to its power because its leaders knew that they could push their programs through a democratic Congress. And this they did. Back in the early eighties, the public may have been fed a chorus of complaints about the Reagan administration’s so-called brutal cuts in welfare, but in reality, from 1980 to 1983 the total cost of the top five welfare programs rose 37%, from $42.8 billion to $58.6 billion.

(Like the APWA, the National Academy of Sciences operates within its field with impunity, with no significant Congressional oversight. The House Science and Technology Committee ought to be holding hearings right now on why the NAS insists the creationist hypothesis must be banned from science classes, and why the only acceptable hypothesis is the empty atheistic evolutionary one.)

GAME POPULARITY SCARED WELFARE BIG WIGS

The APWA’s leaders felt threatened by the game, by the publicity it was receiving, and by its growing popularity. Once Ron and I had the first copies of the game in our hands in October of 1980, we took one to the Annapolis Evening Capital newspaper, and the editors ran a front page story on it. The Associated Press picked it up and made it front page news across the country. After that, Ron and I were asked to appear on several nationwide radio and television talk shows including The Donahue Show. The publicity generated calls for the game to toy and gift stores, and these retailers turned to their manufacturer’s representatives to locate the game, and these, in turn, ordered the game from us. We were well on our way to establishing a successful marketing network across the country.

The press just kept getting better. New York Daily News reporter Edward J. Fay quoted a Macy’s worker in a full page article, “Everyone’s asking for it, but we don’t have it yet.” Giftware News called it “the most original game of the decade if not the century,” and wrote of “overwhelming support from major metropolitan department store customers.” The Donahue producers had to hire a new person to handle all the calls for the game after we appeared on his ten minute segment of The Today Show. It was about this time that the welfare empire potentates determined that the game Public Assistance—Why Bother Working for a Living? had to be removed from the marketplace of ideas.

(The banning of the welfare game and the attempt to keep the God hypothesis out of public school science classrooms both involve a clash between elitist bureaucracies and everyday citizens who want what is their natural right—open and free access to all opinions. A 2006 Zogby Poll revealed that about 70% percent of Americans believe that scientific criticism of evolution should be included in public schools. The NAS cannot tolerate that, any more than the APWA could tolerate wide-spread criticism of their welfare policy in the form of a board game.)

In a speech before the National Association of Broadcasters, President Jimmy Carter’s head of Health and Human Services, Patricia Roberts Harris, spoke out against the game. Fearful of the effect of its continued sale on welfare empire expansion policy, she called it “racist and sexist” and urged the media not to give it any more publicity.

There is no basis whatsoever to the claim that the game is racist and sexist. Racism and sexism are just not part of the game, period. You can check the game board, the rules, and sample Welfare Benefit and Working Person’s Burden cards for yourself at welfaregame.com. The APWA’s intent in this vile, oft-repeated, name-calling was to brand us as ignorant and ill-motivated people.

(The writers of the NAS book have a similar intent when it comes to creationists, portraying us—for embracing a viable scientific hypothesis that they despise for philosophical and religious reasons—as stupid, non-scientific, narrow-minded religious fanatics. When presidential candidate, Mike Huckabee, revealed he was a creationist, University of Michigan professor Gilbert Omenn, one of the authors of the NAS book, said he would “worry that a president who didn’t believe in evolution arguments” would also, for instance, disregard evidence that smoking cigarettes is unhealthy. “This is a way of leading our country to ruin,” Omenn told reporters. The head of the NAS book committee, Francisco Ayala, put creationists and witches in the same category: “We don’t teach witchcraft as an alternative to medicine. We must not teach creationism as an alternative to evolution,” he said.)

Meanwhile, privately, other leaders of the welfare empire worked on the specifics of the plan to ban the game nationwide. Peter Slavin, the editor of the APWA’s monthly newsletter, was one of those leaders. He wrote in his notes as he helped prepare the plan, “Game could be very harmful . . . Game will reinforce moves to cut public assistance . . . Will create backlash toward social service programs as a whole and welfare in particular.” The head of the New York City welfare agency admitted under oath that he worked along with the APWA to get the game off the market because he didn’t want the state legislature to see the game, fearing it might not increase welfare grants as he had requested.

(It is all about money and power. A science classroom open to the God hypothesis and other threatening ideas, will lead to much embarrassment for the NAS, a loss of prestige, and most important, a loss of the money associated with that prestige.)

Slavin and the APWA’s executive director, Edward Weaver, based their nationwide plan to ban the game on the successful efforts of Maryland officials who worked with the NAACP and other welfare “rights” groups to keep the game off shelves there, and upon a plan already implemented by the National Organization for Women (NOW). After speaking with Maryland welfare officials and officials from NOW, Slavin wrote in his notes, “Yes, good chance of organized opposition being successful . . . Opponents need to contact stores directly, bring economic pressure.”

(The pressure the NAS brings is of a different sort, relying on their authority as “experts” in science, threatening that the abandonment of evo-science will lead to a return to the Dark Ages. In their book, the NAS writers make the outrageous assertion that without evo-science, counteracting threatening viruses with antibiotic resistance would be impossible. The reality is that molecules-to-man evolution has nothing to do with that at all.

NAS propagandist, Paul A. Hanle, president of the NAS-affiliated Biotechnology Institute, carries this scare tactic to the extreme. He has written in nationally published editorials that teaching human evolution from reptiles is essential for solving “food-related and environmental problems,” necessary to “combat the spread of AIDS, biowarfare and pandemic diseases, [and] to give us lifesaving new cures and lifeimproving new breakthroughs.”

Hanle opined in The Washington Post:

The opposition to evolution discourages the development of entire high-school classes of future scientific talent. “It seems like a raw deal for the 14-year-old girl in Topeka who might have gone on to find a cure for resistant infections if only she had been taught evolution in high school,” H. Holden Thorp, chairman of the chemistry department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, wrote in the New York Times last spring. Hanle, the Chicken Little of evo-atheism, goes so far as to say that opposing evolution “could decimate the development of U.S. scientific talent and erode whatever competitive advantage the United States enjoys in the technology-based global economy.” The APWA implies that unless their funding demands are met, millions of children will starve. Hanle and the NAS imply that unless we teach our children we’re all descended from reptiles, we’ll become a third-rate power overnight. This is fear-mongering of the most despicable sort. If you want a good laugh, read his articles in full at biotechinstitute.org. His ideas are as well-thought out as those in the Clergy Project Letter.)

THE GOVERNMENT PLAN TO “REMOVE THE GAME FROM THE MARKETPLACE”

The APWA first sent its plan to ban the welfare game on November 19th, 1980 to the welfare “CEO’s of states” [their term] in the form of an “action alert,” then to all members of the APWA, about 10,000 in number, including all state and local welfare agencies from the Virgin Islands to Alaska and from Maine to Hawaii, in its December, 1980 newsletter, Washington Report. This is what it said:

An Open Letter to All APWA Members from Executive Director Edward T. Weaver.

I am writing this letter to alert you to a new board game entitled, “Public Assistance—Why Bother Working for a Living?”. This game is described in the accompanying article.

I agree with Secretary [of Health and Human Services Patricia] Harris, the NAACP, and the National Organization for Women that the game is callous, racist, sexist, and a “vicious brand of stereotyping.” We, who are part of the reality of public welfare, understand the myths that surround the work we do and the people we serve. This game, however, plays out the basest forms of this mythology; we must not let it go unchallenged. I encourage you, as concerned APWA members, to take the following course of action:

1. Do an informal survey to see if the game is being sold in your area. If it is not, keep a watchful eye and initiate the actions in No. 2 below if it appears. You may be able to join with others to contact store owners/managers to discourage buying.

2. If the game is available in your area:

a. Don’t buy it yourself. Let your friends know it is not a “cute” holiday gift.

b. Spread the word to other interested groups (welfare rights advocates, civil rights groups, and women’s groups).

c. Either alone or in combination with the groups identified in “b” contact the store owner manager and/or buyer to explain why the game is offensive and should not be carried.

d. Keep us informed of your efforts

As executive director of the American Public Welfare Association, I feel an obligation to you and to the mission we commonly serve to alert you to the “Public Assistance” game and to suggest the course of action I have outlined. If there are any questions that I, or APWA staff, can answer for you or information that we can share, please do not hesitate to contact us.

We at APWA headquarters will be doing what we can, in conjunction with our Washington colleagues, to remove the game from the marketplace.

It was a brilliant, government-directed, publicly-financed plan, utilizing all of the intimidating power of the political left. In practice, the plan was designed to go like this: first, the local welfare empire official calls or writes to the store president or owner and expresses “concern” that the game just might not be in good taste or in the best interests of poor people. Next, representatives of the NAACP call or drop by unannounced and demand to know how the store can conceivably consider carrying a “racist” game. They threaten the store with a boycott and negative publicity. If the store has not caved in by this time, representatives of NOW pay a visit and demand to know how the store could consider carrying such a “racist” and “sexist” item. They threaten endless phone calls and picketing, and noise in the street at the store entrance.

Central to the plan to ban the game is the idea that, if the American voter and taxpayer is offered a choice between welfare “mythology” as expressed in the game and welfare “reality” as espoused by the bureaucrats, he or she will mindlessly embrace the welfare “mythology” of the game, and be thus tricked by a couple of guys from Maryland into opposing welfare expansion. Let me put that another way: implicit in the efforts to ban the game is the elitist bureaucratic notion that the American people are too stupid to know which games are worthy of their own independent purchase and which are not; therefore, the game, Public Assistance—Why Bother Working for a Living?, had to be forced out of the marketplace for the good of the taxpayers themselves!

(The same things are true about the NAS’ plan to keep the discussion of creationism out of the classroom. If the students are allowed to hear arguments in favor of creationism, they might be mindlessly drawn into believing that it makes more sense than evolution. The underlying idea is that science teachers and students are not qualified to evaluate evidence on their own. One Maryland welfare official said about Public Assistance, “This is a game the American people are better off not knowing about.” The writers of the NAS book don’t say it outright, but they infer throughout, “Evidence for creationism and the God hypothesis are things that American students and science teachers are better off not knowing about.”

Bureaucratic thugs think alike. All we have to do is make a few key changes in the APWA’s censorship plan, and we have the essence of the NAS plan to keep the God hypothesis out of public school science classrooms:

An Open Letter to All Public School Science Teachers from Ralph J. Cicerone, President, National Academy of Sciences.

I am writing to alert you to a very dangerous idea now being circulated in some science classrooms known as the God Hypothesis. The falsity and dangers to us of the spread of this idea are described in the accompanying booklet. I agree with Neil Tyson, Richard Dawkins, the ACLU, the Institute of Medicine, the Darwin Day organizers, and the signers of the Clergy Letter Project that this God Hypothesis is anti-science, the work of religious fanatics, and a vicious brand of science misrepresentation. We, who are part of atheistic evolutionary science, understand the myths that surround the work we do, and the students and teachers we serve. This God Hypothesis plays out the basest form of this mythology.

I encourage you, as concerned science teachers and advocates for evolutionary atheism, to take the following course of action:

1. Do an informal survey to see if this God Hypothesis is being expressed in any of the schools in your county. If it is not, keep a watchful eye and initiate the actions in No. 2 below if you hear of any mention of it. You may be able to join with others to contact educators and school boards to discourage the expression of the God Hypothesis.

If the God Hypothesis is being expressed in the schools in your area:

a. Do not listen to explanations of it yourself. Let your friends know that it is not a “cute” idea to discuss the merits of the God Hypothesis.

b. Spread the word to other interested groups (the ACLU, the Clergy Letter Project, and humanist societies in your area).

c. Either alone or in combination with the groups identified in “b” contact the principal and school board overseeing the school in violation of our educational policy. Explain why the God Hypothesis is offensive and should not be expressed.

d. Keep us informed of your efforts.

As president of the National Academy of Sciences, I feel an obligation to you and the mission we commonly serve to alert you to the dangers of the God Hypothesis being expressed, and suggest the course of action I have outlined. If there are any questions that I, or the NAS staff, can answer for you or information that we can share, please do not hesitate to contact us. We at the NAS headquarters will be doing what we can, in conjunction with our Washington colleagues, to remove the God Hypothesis from all science classrooms, and from the larger marketplace of ideas.)

THE CENSORSHIP MENTALITY OF THE NAS

Those who worked to ban the game fit in the historical matrix with those who, in order to retain power, drew up the Alien and Sedition Acts; with those who, throughout the Southern States, passed laws restricting the press, speech, and discussion regarding slavery, and who made it a crime to merely possess abolitionist literature—so that their unjust economic system of involuntary servitude might prevail; and with those who jailed anti-war speaker Eugene Debs to keep him quiet. Those who forced the game off the market stepped beyond these three historical illustrations because, although those perpetrators were dreadfully wrong, they at least followed due process. Those who worked to ban the game did not act in accord with any law, good or bad: they acted above the law, as a law unto themselves, in order to keep a game they feared away from an electorate they manipulate.

(The same can be said of the NAS officials who demand that the God hypothesis be censored in science classrooms. They act above the law. They don’t care about the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. Theirs is an anti-free speech, censorship mentality.)

You can read the details of our failed law cases at welfaregame.com. Lies of some of the defendants, and lies and manipulation of the law by some of their attorneys, and the bias of the judges kept us from getting either of two actions in front of a jury. Both cases were appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but our writs of certiorari were rejected.

Judges tend to favor establishment “experts,” because they see themselves as part of the same class. Underlying the various decisions of the judges was the assumption that social engineering by the government involving massive welfare expenditures is a good thing, and that those who initiate and carry out expansive welfare policies are the good guys. I would argue that welfare empire “entitlements” have destroyed incentives to work, and created and perpetuated a crimeridden, dependent underclass in the process.

By taking a pro-welfare point of view, the federal judges who heard our cases violated their own standards. The Supreme Court has stated firmly that this country has “a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust and wide-open, and that it may include vehement, caustic and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials” (New York Times Co. v. Sullivan); that First Amendment freedoms are protected not only “against heavy-handed frontal attack, but also from being stifled by subtle governmental interference” (NAACP v. Alabama); the “evils to be prevented (are) not the censorship of the press, merely, but any action of government by means of which it might prevent such free and general discussion of public matters . . .” (Grossjean v. American Press Co.); “It is firmly settled that under our Constitution the public expression of ideas may not be prohibited merely because the ideas are themselves offensive to some of their hearers” (Bachellar v. Maryland); that the avoidance of censorship is to “preserve an uninhibited marketplace of ideas in which truth will ultimately prevail” (Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC); and that it is the duty of the government “to preserve inviolate the constitutional rights of free speech, free press and free assembly in order to maintain the opportunity for free political discussion, to the end that government may be responsive to the will of the people and that changes, if desired, may be obtained by peaceful means” (Dejonge v. Oregon).

One of the judges who denied one of our appeals himself had written that embedded in our democracy was the basic conviction that wisdom and justice are most likely to prevail in “public decision making if all ideas, discoveries, and points of view are before the citizenry for its consideration . . . (and that) we must remain profoundly skeptical of government claims that state action affecting expression can survive constitutional objection” (Thomas v. Board of Ed., Granville Cent. Sch. Dist.).

The judges had no business taking a position on the merits of the game. Only our right to distribute our political impressions in the form of a satirical board game should have been at issue. Whether the game has a “distasteful nature” or is “the most original game of the decade, if not the century,” whether it “perpetuates outdated myths” or is an accurate lampoon of America’s welfare system in action, is for the American people to decide. There ought to be no other censor in our democracy.

(Creationists and intelligent design proponents also run into the problem of the judges’ embracing of overriding false assumptions in court cases. In ruling against creationists regarding the Louisiana Creation Act, the Supreme Court was upset that creationism rejects “the factual basis of evolution in its entirety,” the judges of course assuming that evolution has a factual basis (Edwards v. Aguillard, 1987). The NAS’s big lie technique—“evolution is a fact and all scientists believe it”—has been very effective. In the most recent case concerning evolution (Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, 2005), the judge embraced the same false assumption in ruling against intelligent design. In addition, much of his published opinion was cut and pasted directly from ACLU pleadings in the case.)

Could the U.S. Congress pass a constitutional law saying that, in the science classroom, a certain hypothesis—specifically, the God hypothesis—is forbidden? No, they could not. Yet, based on the situation in our public school classrooms today, such a menacing law may as well have already been passed. The effect is the same, and that’s what matters. The God hypothesis, a valid scientific hypothesis, has been censored in our public school science classrooms by the evo-atheists of the NAS.

Let me give you a visual representation of what is really happening. While passing through Saigon during my tour as an infantry officer in Viet Nam, a Vietnamese newspaper caught my eye because of the white space on the front page where an article should have been. I soon learned that the South Vietnamese government censored every news article that put the government in a bad light, or even hinted at its rampant corruption. They censored the paper by pulling the offending articles off the paste-up boards before they shot the negatives and burned the plates. Every page had white space where an article should have been. The censorship could not have been more obvious.

Think about information on the subject of science as a newspaper being circulated in our public school science classrooms. Because of pseudo-intellectual intimidation from the NAS, on every page where there should be an enlightening and useful article, there is white space. Before long, writers with something important to say, but forbidden to say it, will stop writing. There won’t be any more white space—not because there is no more censorship in the science classroom—but because the NAS censorship has triumphed. Students will not even realize that what they are being taught is the version censored by the goons from the NAS.

The hysterical rantings of the NAS propagandist Paul Henle blame the decline of science education in America on the “unwarranted” criticism of evo-atheism. The leaders of the NAS, with their outright contempt for free speech and free thought in the science classroom, are the true villains.

Amendment I to the Constitution of the United States of America

BELIEF IN EVOLUTION REQUIRES AN ENORMOUS AMOUNT OF FAITH

We saw in Chapter 3 that the NAS admits in its book that they have no evidence whatsoever for how matter turned into life. They do, however, speculate wildly about it in the following paragraph from page 22 of their book. I have italicized the iffy words and phrases:

. . . researchers have shown how this process might have worked by studying a molecule known as RNA. Researchers recently discovered that some RNA molecules can greatly increase the rate of specific chemical reactions, including the replication of parts of other RNA molecules. If a molecule like RNA could reproduce itself (perhaps with the assistance of other molecules), it could form the basis for a very simple living organism. If such self-replicators were packaged within chemical vesicles or membranes, they might have formed “protocells”—early versions of very simple cells. Changes in these molecules could lead to variants that, for example, replicated more efficiently in a particular environment. In this way, natural selection would begin to operate, creating opportunities for protocells that had advantageous molecular innovations to increase in complexity.

When I read in the second chapter of Genesis that God makes Adam “of soil from the ground, and He is blowing into his nostrils the breath of the living, and becoming is the human a living soul,” I find it very easy to believe. On the other hand, evolutionists, in order to believe their above paragraph, have some extraordinary faith-stretching to do. Their paragraph is written entirely in the subjunctive—the mood which presents the molecular events not as factual, but as contingent, possible, and doubtful. It might have happened, perhaps, if. The point is that their views constitute a belief-system, an extremely far-fetched belief system at that. They believe that their above speculation is a reasonable explanation for the origin of life. Faith in molecules-to-man evolution, absent evidence for it, is a belief-system. It is thus religious in essence.

Happiness is one of the emotions. Its opposite, unhappiness, also falls under the category of emotions. Likewise, since theism is a belief-system or religion, its opposite, atheism, also falls under the category of a belief-system or religion.

Within the framework of their own book, they define themselves as embracing a religious belief. They write on page 50:

. . . an important component of religious belief is faith, which implies acceptance of a truth regardless of the presence of empirical evidence for or against that truth.

Do they accept as one of their “truths” that life spontaneously generated itself from matter through the operation of natural selection—“regardless of the presence of empirical evidence for or against that truth”? Yes, they do. Ergo, hence, and therefore, evo-atheism is a religious belief. They say quite correctly that “an important component of religious belief is faith.” How do the evo-atheists make up for the fact that they don’t have a stitch of evidence to put into the bushel baskets? They make up for it with their remarkable faith. Let’s go even deeper into this rich faith of theirs—because it surely is not science. And why isn’t it science? Because as the NAS writers say on page 12 of their book, “. . . science is a way of knowing that differs from other ways in its dependence on empirical evidence . . .” (my emphasis). No empirical evidence, no science.

NATURAL SELECTION AS THE GOD OF ATHEIST EVOLUTION

We saw in Chapter 2 that “natural selection” is, first and foremost, a figure of speech, and that the NAS writers define it three different ways. It is the “driving force” of evolution. They also describe it as a “process,” and as an outcome (“reproductive success”). Natural selection is a driving force, a process, and an end result.

In my faith, Jesus is the “way.” In evo-atheism, Natural Selection is the way, or process (I’m capitalizing the phrase for the rest of this chapter out of respect for their religion). In my faith, Jesus is the “Alpha and Omega,” the “First and the Last.” In the faith of evo-atheism, Natural Selection is the first and the last—the driving force and the outcome.

In the Hebrew Scriptures, Yahweh is one of the names of the Supreme Creator God. Pertaining to His mastery over all time, it means basically “Is-Becoming-Will Be.” Natural Selection in a sense imitates the meaning of Yahweh’s Name with its “driving force-processoutcome.” On page 6 of their book, the NAS writes that Natural Selection “can have radically different evolutionary effects over different timescales.” Natural Selection is a god of time who accounts for everything in nature.

The NAS’s made-up account of the beginning of life, cited at the beginning of this chapter, gives us even more insight into the imaginary “awesome power” of Natural Selection. Please read their fanciful paragraph again. As you do so, you will note that even after they force all the necessary, preposterous contingencies into place, still no life emerges. But then, Natural Selection shows up on the scene, “creating opportunities for protocells” to come alive. This is the evo-atheist version of God breathing life into Adam. Yea and verily, Natural Selection, that astonishing and worthy figure of speech, hath created life. From this point on, Natural Selection a “driving force” takes over, then Natural Selection a “process” moves in, and finally Natural Selection an outcome rules. Three Natural Selections in One Natural Selection. Natural Selection, that oh-so-venerable figure of speech, turns out to be very similar to the obtuse mystery of the Roman Catholic Trinity as Thomas Aquinas described it in his Summa Theologica.

We are enthusiastic Maryland Terrapin basketball fans around here. In the years around the team’s national championship season, they had a player who could make lay-ups, hit three-pointers, pass off, get rebounds, play defense, and fire up the team. We used to say that he was everywhere and could do it all. Some people used to say they saw him in the stands at halftime, hawking beer and peanuts to the fans.

The NAS writers claim that Natural Selection is everywhere and can do it all, too. But their pet notion is not at all like our favorite Terp basketball player—whose abilities were real. In truth, Natural Selection is nowhere and does nothing. It is just a figure of speech employed by atheists so that they don’t have to acknowledge or give thanks to their Creator.

NATURAL SELECTION AS A MYSTICAL, MIRACULOUS, SUPERNATURAL FORCE

The NAS writers acknowledge on page 54 of their book that “many religious beliefs involve entities or ideas that currently are not within the domain of science.” What they refuse to acknowledge is that their be-all and do-all, Natural Selection, is just such an entity or idea. The evo-atheists call it a “driving force”—a force that cannot be measured, and which appears to be without measure. If Jesus, Who has been given the Spirit of God without measure (John 3:34), possesses supernatural aspects, so then does Natural Selection in their religious scheme.

Natural Selection is omnipresent. It operates upon every flora population in South America, upon all the rat populations in Asia, and upon the tsetse fly populations in Africa—all at the same time. From the evo-atheist standpoint, without Natural Selection, there can be no life. Jesus said, “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life.” The evo-atheists of the NAS believe that Natural Selection is the way and the truth and the life. Without it, chaos reigns, and so it becomes, for the evo-atheists, the central organizing principle of all life, including human consciousness. The Scriptures teach that by God and through Christ, all things consist (Colossians 1:15-17). The evo-atheists believe that by evolution through Natural Selection, all living things consist.

Natural Selection’s reality is neither apparent to the senses nor obvious to the intelligence, and its character is profoundly inexplicable. This makes it mystical.

No law of Natural Selection has ever been formulated. According to the evo-atheists, it is a force, a process, and a result in the physical world deviating from the known laws of nature, actually transcending our knowledge of these laws. The NAS writers’ description of life coming into being through the “creative power” of Natural Selection is nothing less than the description of a miracle. We’ve seen in Chapter 4 that the NAS writers cannot intelligibly explain how Natural Selection accounts for irreducibly complex systems in nature, yet they still insist that in some unrevealed way, it can. This is mysticism, and perhaps, another miracle. Natural Selection, as the evo-atheists themselves describe it, is both miraculous and supernatural.

EVO-ATHEISTS URGE FAITH IN THEIR SCIENCE

According to Scripture, “faith is an assumption of what is being expected, a conviction concerning matters which are not being observed” (Hebrews 11:1). So it is also with the evolutionists. The spontaneous chemical generation of life from matter, the evolution of the sexes, and speciation never have been observed, yet evo-atheists have faith in all three. While Christians have faith in what God will do in the future, the evo-atheists put their faith in what science will do:

The history of science shows that even very difficult questions such as how life originated may become amenable to solution as a result of advances in theory, the development of new instrumentation and the discovery of new facts. (p. 22).

EVO-ATHEISTS ADMIT THE REALITY OF THEIR RELIGION

We’ve seen that some evo-atheists are very straightforward about what their evo-atheism really is. Richard Dawkins titled the first chapter of his book The God Delusion, “A Deeply Religious Believer in No God.” Sir Julian Huxley called evolution “religion without revelation.” Cornell University professor, Will Provine, wrote that one can have a religious view compatible with evolution “only if the religious view is indistinguishable from atheism.” Leading biologist and evolutionist, Lynn Margulis, disapproves of the uncritical belief by many of her colleagues in Natural Selection thus:

The Darwinian claim to explain all of evolution is a popular half-truth whose lack of explicative power is compensated for only by the religious ferocity of its rhetoric.₁

Indeed, the NAS hierarchy pushes its evo-atheistic religion in the classroom with “ferocity,” and with a zeal that’s hardly matched in Christianity. We can’t properly call them evangelical, however, because that word comes from the Greek eu-angellion, meaning literally, well-message, more commonly, good news. Teaching children or adults that they are descended from reptiles is never good news. We should call evo-atheists mal-angelical, because it accurately describes what they’re doing: spreading hopelessly bad religious news.

THE NAS VIOLATES THE ESTABLISHMENT CLAUSE OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT

The National Academy of Sciences has had a mandate from Congress since 1863 to advise the federal government on issues of science and technology, and that’s all. What are they doing coming into all of our elementary schools, all of our junior highs, and all of our high schools with a disguised demand that our children embrace their evoatheism? What are they doing teaching our children that they are descended from worms and reptiles? What are they doing imposing their atheistic religious faith on our children when we’re not around? What are they doing sowing atheism in our schools?

On page 52 of their book, the NAS writers say that “arguments that attempt to confuse students by suggesting that there are fundamental weaknesses in the science of evolution are unwarranted . . .” Unwarranted means unauthorized. Criticism of evo-atheism in the science classroom is currently unauthorized.

Could the U.S. Congress pass a constitutional law saying that, in the science classroom, only the evo-atheist religious viewpoint is acceptable? No way. It would be a violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment. Yet, based on the situation in our public school classrooms today, such a menacing law may as well have been passed already. The effect is the same, and that’s what matters. Evoatheists have imposed their own religious viewpoint, and established it as the only authorized one throughout all the public school science classrooms in America.

There is no question that belief in evolution requires a huge amount of religious faith, and that Natural Selection is their miraculous, mystical, and supernatural god. Sokrates worshipped Pan, the god of nature. The evo-atheists of the NAS worship that same god under the name, Natural Selection.

We’ve seen that the big wigs among the evo-atheists admit that their views constitute a religious outlook. Ironically, their own words on page 45 of their book condemn their adamant insistence that their religious dogma must dominate the minds of students in the science classroom:

. . . [A]s civil servants, public school teachers must be neutral with respect to religion, which means that they can neither promote nor inhibit its practice . . . Because the Constitution of the United States forbids a federal establishment of religion, it would be inappropriate to use public funds to teach the views of just one religion or one religious subgroup to all students.

But the atheistic hypocrites at the NAS won’t let that happen without a bitter fight. They realize that yielding on any point—the fact that they have no evidence for evolution, that they cannot honestly explain irreducible complexity, or that they have no business sowing atheism in the classroom—will lead to an opening of the flood gates, and that deluge will ultimately wash their evo-atheist religion and their phony “factual theory” down the sewer where it belongs.

While the NAS book promotes primarily its own evo-atheist religion in the science classroom, it also promotes as acceptable any other religion that accepts evo-science. This is a violation of the establishment of religion clause of the First Amendment as well. The twisted logic begins here as they write, “Attempts to pit science and religion against each other create controversy where none needs to exist” (p. 12). Then they define an acceptable religion, as noted in Chapter 5, as one that accepts evo-atheism. We find another disguised tautology here. What they are really saying is that there need be no controversy between evo-science and religious groups that accept evoscience. As soon as every religion accepts evo-science, no controversy at all will remain, because evo-science gets along so well with itself! Remember, the committee chairman of the NAS book project, Francisco J. Ayala, is a professor of (can you believe it?) logic.

In direct reply to the mastermind behind this transparent tautology and to the rest of the deceptions in his book, let me say, “Likewise, Professor Ayala, there need be no controversy between my belief in the absolute truth of the Scriptures and the beliefs of others—so long as they also believe in the absolute truth of the Scriptures.”

THE RELIGIOUS UNTOUCHABLES ACCORDING TO THE NAS

Speaking of the Scriptures, who are the religious groups that will not get on board the NAS peace train? The NAS book singles out essentially just one group:

Religious denominations that do not accept the occurrence of evolution tend to be those that believe in strictly literal interpretations of religious texts. (p. 12).

With a single sentence, they try to dismiss the tens of millions of us (it wouldn’t matter if it were only ten of us) who believe the claim the Bible makes of itself—that it is the true and inspired Word of the Creator God. But instead of dismissing us, their language lends credence to the creationist position. The primary meaning of “literal” is “true” or “truthful.” While I and many others believe in strictly true interpretations of religious texts, Zimmerman, Mr. X, and all the other evo-atheists must embrace strictly false interpretations of religious texts. Every true interpretation of Scripture—God’s Word—is like hot acid on the evo-atheist’s thin skin.

The writers of the NAS book cannot be honest and say what they mean: “We are atheists, and to us, by definition, the Bible is false. Do not take any of its passages literally; that is, do not take any of its passages ‘as truthful,’ if you expect to learn our brand of science and prosper in it.”

Who, specifically, is responsible for the NAS book? Eighteen committee members, under the direction of a committee chairman were charged with producing it, all credentialed academics. Where did academia itself originate? It began in ancient Athens, in about 387 BC, with the Academy of Plato. All of Plato’s Dialogues survive, and are taught throughout our colleges and universities.

An overlooked warning about Platonic philosophy appears in the Scriptures. In Matthew 7:13, Jesus said, “Enter through the cramped gate, for broad is the gate and spacious is the way which is leading away into destruction, and many are those entering through it” (my emphasis). The word “broad” in Greek is platu or plato. Plato’s real name was Aristokles which means “the glory of the best.” People called him Plato because of his broad shoulders or because of his broad forehead. “Plato is the gate . . . leading away into destruction . . .”

Plato’s mouthpiece was Sokrates. Plato’s Academy, and of course Sokrates himself, excluded the idea of a Creator, as do their “intellectual” spawn, modern academia. For Plato and Sokrates, it is all about the exaltation of the human mind above all. In Plato’s Dialogue, Crito, Sokrates affirms that he must be guided by reason only (46b). The Greek word for mind is nous. In Plato’s Dialogue, Cratylus, Sokrates refers to “The nous, the mind . . . the pure nous” as “the divine in us” (396b). In Plato’s Dialogue, Philebus, Sokrates said, “. . . since all philosophers assert with one voice that mind is the king of heaven and earth—in reality they are magnifying themselves. And perhaps they are right” (28c). Remember Zimmerman and Mr. X, in the last chapter, exalting the mind as the ultimate arbiter of all, above even the pronouncements of God in the Scriptures? They are simply harmonizing their own man-centered philosophies with the ancient Sokratic chorus.

Some people think of Platonic philosophy as an objective search for truth. It is no such thing. It involves presenting one’s soul to be charmed by the reigning philosophical authority. Sokrates’ adoring student, Charmides, says to his master, “I am certain that I greatly need the charm (Greek = epode) and nothing on my part will stand in the way of my being charmed by you every day until you say that it is enough” (Charmides, 176b). In order to become part of the great intellectual elite, Charmides offers himself “to be enchanted” by the words and authority of Sokrates.

Sokrates, the man who places human reason above all, becomes the savior of Charmides. The name, Sokrates, is a contraction of Soter, meaning “Savior,” and Krates, meaning “Mighty.” Sokrates is the mighty savior of all who submit to him and the primacy of autonomous human reason above all. The word “autonomous” has an interesting derivation. It comes from two Greek words meaning “self” and “law.” Sokrates, and all who follow his way, become laws unto themselves. The NAS hierarchy has become a law unto itself, answerable to no one. Their rule in the science classroom is a rule of self-proclaimed “experts.” That “the wisdom of this world is stupidity with God” (I Corinthians 3:19) eludes them.

THE NAS’ PHILOSOPHICAL SPELL

Just as Sokrates enchanted the youth, the NAS casts a spell to entrap the minds of its devotees. How does it work? It is not all that complicated, consisting as it does of three parts: a false promise, a taboo, and a threat. Let’s look at them one at a time.

THE FALSE PROMISE: If you submit to our philosophical paradigm, then, along with us, relying on your mind, and your mind only, you can figure out all things, and solve the riddle of existence, including the origins of all life.

The promise is a philosophical appeal to human pride. Evo-atheist Michael Ruse says essentially the same thing in his book, Darwinism Defended: A Guide to the Evolution Controversies:

Darwinism, especially as it extends into human sociobiology, reflects a strong ideology. Moreover, this is one to be proud of. ₁

Just as becharmed philosophical apprenticeship under Sokrates supposedly is the cause of intellectual progress, so is submission to the NAS philosophers and their promise. The NAS hierarchy seeks those special people who are willing to submit:

This booklet is also directed to the broader audience of high-quality school and college students as well as adults who wish to become more familiar with the many strands of evidence supporting evolution and to understand why evolution is both a fact and a process that accounts for the diversity of life on Earth. (p. xii).

Students who, out of a combination of innocence and vanity, see themselves as part of humanity’s elite—young princes and princesses of philosophy—yield their souls to the wisdom of the evo-atheist hierarchy, a prerequisite for the operation of the philosophical charm, or spell. The spirit behind the enchantment is beseeching, magical, and irrational. The entire NAS book is a rationalization of the enchantment, evoking the philosophical (seductive) power of the evo-atheist paradigm, making it seem so logical and so sensible that submissive scientists of imagined worm-descent will be able to unravel the mysteries of the universe. Thus, the NAS authorities successfully project their mere philosophical opinions into the minds of the enchanted as “facts.” If that’s not magic, what is it? Please don’t forget that, ultimately, they target our children in the public schools through their multi-faceted seductions.

The NAS’s false promise to its charmed ones is a variation of the ancient serpent’s promise, “You shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” Genesis 3:6 tells us specifically what lured Eve:

And seeing is the woman that the tree is good for food, and that it brings a yearning to the eyes, and is to be coveted as the tree to make one intelligent (Genesis 3:6).

Remember in Chapter 1, we quoted NAS book committee member Neil deGrasse Tyson referring to the members of the NAS as “the most brilliant minds the nation has.” That’s what it is all about for them, taking the serpent’s bait, and presuming themselves to be among the brilliant philosopher kings of science. Within their ivory towers, above their secluded and moated castles, they dispense the “wisdom” of human reptile-descent to the ignorant masses.

A voice from behind the idol-image of Apollo at Delphi called Sokrates “the wisest of men” (Apology 21a). Apollo took over Delphi from a python, and, as a result, Apollo’s prophetess was called the Pythia. From within the Pythia emanated a “python spirit” (Acts 16:16). Thus it was the voice of a serpent that proclaimed Sokrates “the wisest of men.” Whose idolatrous voice, I wonder, proclaims the NAS hierarchy to be the most brilliant of humans?

The Hebrew word for the serpent of Genesis comes from the primitive root, nâchash, meaning to hiss or whisper a magic spell. If you were to ask the evo-atheists if it is possible that they have been enchanted by the ancient serpent of Genesis, they would reply with a resounding “Never!” all the while insisting that they are descended from serpents.

The NAS writers use the word “overwhelming” over and over to support their empty presentation. It is my turn to use it: The overwhelming majority of today’s evo-scientists, in truth pseudoscientists, have fallen hook, line, and sinker for NAS’s false promise—a false promise that is not all that unfamiliar to those of us who take the Book of Genesis seriously and literally.

THE TABOO: You are forbidden to think of, or mention, a Supreme Creator; likewise, you are forbidden to consider any involvement by such a Being in any aspect of the world.

The NAS writers express the taboo in their book thus:

. . . arguments that attempt to confuse students by suggesting that there are fundamental weaknesses in the science of evolution are unwarranted . . . (p. 52).

If we take out the dependent clauses, leaving just the subject and predicate, we have “arguments are unwarranted.” The arguments to which they refer are coming from the creationists and those who espouse intelligent design. The NAS writers mean that creationist and intelligent design arguments are forbidden. That’s the taboo.

Consider this sentence: “Because the evidence supporting it is so strong, scientists no longer question whether biological evolution has occurred and is continuing to occur.” The key phrase: “scientists no longer question.” The taboo again.

Consider this sentence also: “Others have argued that science teachers should ‘teach the controversy’ surrounding evolution. But there is no controversy in the scientific community about whether evolution has occurred.” There can be no controversy so long as the taboo is not violated. Through this captivating taboo, the NAS hierarchy engraves its evo-atheistic viewpoint on the minds of the young and the eager, remaining immune to any criticism or debate. Submission to the philosophy of evo-atheism must be exclusive; thus the importance of blocking out the valid God hypothesis. The NAS hierarchy must be protected.

Last November, my friends, Mark Wadsworth, Mike Thompson, and I manned a booth at the Greek festival in Baltimore, Maryland. What a great time! On the third and final day, an evo-atheist from a college Classics department approached our display. He saw my books Athena and Eden, Athena and Kain, The Parthenon Code: Mankind’s History in Marble (with “A Startling Testament to the Validity of Scripture” on the cover), and Noah in Ancient Greek Art with six Greek images of Noah on the cover. We also had a 950-slide PowerPoint show running, along with computer-reconstructed sculptures from the Parthenon and the temple of Zeus at Olympia. I tried to engage him as he looked over our display. He would have none of it. He raised his hands, palms toward us, cried out, “No! No! No!,” backed up, turned, and walked away. It was the taboo in operation.

If he had been rational, he’d have approached us and asked more about the evidence supporting our interpretation of ancient art, but the taboo is irrational, demanding denial instead of further investigation.

In 2003, the Institute for Creation Research published a 104-page “coffee table book” compiled by Tom Vail, a veteran tour guide, entitled Grand Canyon: A Different View. Vail’s different view was a creationist one. The presidents of seven evo-science organizations cried in unison, “No! No! No!” urging the park superintendent to remove the book from Canyon bookstores because of its “religious” content. No one forced any gift shop visitors to buy Vail’s book. In the United States of America, it is not rational to demand that non-obscene, nondefamatory books be removed from bookstores. The taboo made these evo-atheists express such an irrational demand.

THE THREAT: Unless you accept the taboo against postulating a Creator, and believe that you are capable of solving the riddle of existence, along with us, without reference to such a Being, you cannot be a scientist.

The threat completes the spell and magnifies the coercion inherent in the taboo. Both evince contempt for open-minded thinking. The threat is necessary to overcome the inability of the evo-atheists to make their case logically. They must revert to force. Because of their intellectual insecurity, they must take refuge in the irrational. Their spell is an essential aspect of their “scientific method.”

Much of Ben Stein’s new movie, Expelled, is about honest scientists who have followed evidence where it leads, and as a result, have found themselves fired and ostracized by the ruling evo-atheist hierarchy. Veiled threats abound: “You’ll stay away from creationism and intelligent design if you know what’s good for you.” “Tenure is something we’re happy to see happen for our evolutionary biologists.” “Don’t forget who pays your salary.”

The spell has proven to be psychologically effective, destroying the spirit of discernment within those under it, and disabling their ability to independently and objectively evaluate evidence. Any objective scientist should be able to say without fear, “I can’t prove that life evolved by chance through natural selection; therefore, there may be a Creator,” but the evo-atheists cannot do this because of the philosophical enchantment which dominates their thinking.

The NAS’s entire book is nothing more than the narration of an enchanting myth designed to persuade readers to favorably accept what the authors of it (the NAS hierarchy) say should be believed. Their evo-atheism is their philosophy of life first, and their philosophy of science second.

SOKRATES AND THE NAS: ENEMIES OF THE FAMILY AND THE STATE

Let’s get back to Sokrates. Did he have anything of value to teach anyone? This is what Sarah Kofman, author of Socrates: Fictions of a Philosopher, has to say about him:

. . . [I]n fact Socrates did not teach seriously. He did not adopt an edifying manner, he did not take the place of fathers or take over their responsibilities out of concern for their sons’ welfare. With his disciples, his relationship was strictly negative: he did not communicate anything at all, nor did he satisfy, nor did he enrich. The corrupter of youth was a seducer, not only in the etymological sense of turning young people away from their families, but also in the modern sense which would make him first and foremost a tease . . . He gets young people excited when they are in contact with him, but he does not give them any strong, substantive nourishment. He abuses them, fascinates them, awakens nostalgic desires in them without satisfying them . . . ₂

A jury of Sokrates’ peers convicted him of the charge of being “a doer of evil and corrupter of youth,” and condemned him to death by drinking hemlock. The charge lay essentially in his encouragement of young people to disobey their parents. Today, this is exactly what the NAS hierarchy encourages within our public school science classrooms.

Sane and responsible parents do not teach their children that they are descended from reptiles. Nor do they tell their children not to look to the heavens for their Maker, but rather to look down at the slimy, creeping things of the earth to discern their origins. And they do not desire that their children be tutored by atheists like Neil Tyson who proclaim that life has no meaning or purpose. Sokrates, 2400 years ago, was an alien and uninvited third party who presumed greater competence in the teaching of youth than the parents and everyone else. The hierarchy of the NAS, today, right now, is an uninvited third party in our public school science classrooms, presuming greater competence in teaching our children than we, the parents, and everyone else.

Sokrates was also convicted of impiety against the gods, a charge which pertained to his contempt for the average man and his love for dictatorship. Sokrates’ jurors knew he didn’t believe in free speech or democracy, but they did believe in those things. In his book, The Trial of Socrates, I. F. Stone argued that Sokrates was a coldhearted elitist snob, who favored totalitarian rule by an intellectual elite which he referred to as the “philosopher kings.” Those who are a part of the hierarchy of the NAS imagine themselves as part of just such an elite. Like Sokrates, they lack respect for the family and the state.

THE CHIEF NAS PHILOSOPHER

The chilling enchantment of evo-atheist philosophy permeates the NAS to such a disturbing degree that you’d think the committee chair of the book project, Francisco J. Ayala, was a philosophy professor at a major university. He is, indeed, just such a professor.

Francisco Jose Ayala (born 1934) is Professor of Philosophy, (School of Humanities), and Professor of Logic and the Philosophy of Science (School of Social Sciences) at the University of California, Irvine. He is also Professor of Biological Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (School of Biological Sciences). Ayala moved to the United States in 1961 from his home-city of Madrid to attend Columbia University, where he studied for his doctorate under Theodosius Dobzhansky, graduating in 1964.

Ayala’s studies under Dobzhansky shed much light on the core philosophical problem at the National Academy of Sciences. Dobzhansky is the one who wrote “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” This is not an objective scientific statement, but rather a philosophical one. It defines Dobzhansky’s and Ayala’s philosophy of science—the same fallacious philosophy of science Ayala and the NAS are foisting on every public school student in America. You most likely had never heard of Dobzhansky or Ayala before reading this book, and yet your children must go along with their bogus philosophical presumptions or fail in science class.

The truth is that “Nothing in biology makes sense except in light of the evidence, the data, the facts!” Let me re-emphasize: “the evidence, the data, the facts!” That is what true science is based upon. And the facts do not point to humanity’s descent from reptiles.

Note that Ayala is a professor of logic. Fundamental errors in logic abound in the NAS book, the writing of which was overseen by Ayala. And did you read the previous chapter about the Clergy Letter Project? There are enough logical errors in that letter alone to fill a month of days in your diary, and yet Ayala touts it as something reasonable and good! Ayala and his 18-member committee that oversaw the writing of the NAS book are completely out of hand, their thinking disconnected from reality. The inmates are running the asylum. The following quotes are from Ayala’s book Darwin and Intelligent Design:

There is probably no other notion in any field of science that has been as extensively tested and as thoroughly corroborated as the evolutionary origin of living organisms. (p. 40).

It is now possible to assert that gaps of knowledge in the evolutionary history of living organisms no longer exist . . . The virtually unlimited evolutionary information encoded in the DNA sequence of living organisms allows evolutionists to reconstruct all evolutionary
relationships leading to present-day organisms, with as much detail as desired. (p. 41).

The missing link is no longer missing. Hundreds of fossil remains belonging to hundreds of intermediate human ancestors have been discovered since Darwin’s time and continue to be discovered at an accelerated rate. (p. 43).

All three quotes above are absolutely false. I have as much evidence for: “There are five-eyed chartreuse aliens on the dark side of the moon preparing to pelt us with sweet potatoes” as Ayala has for his statements. Ayala’s words are not those of a truth-seeking scientist, but rather the rantings of an evo-atheist lunatic. They show us that the more exalted the philosopher, the grander the delusion. Ayala’s words seem true only when they are artificially and arbitrarily glued to his bogus philosophy of science. These evo-atheists who run the NAS are not teachers of knowledge; they are rather, like Sokrates, antidemocratic reactionaries.

The men and women who put the NAS book together, and the rest of the NAS hierarchy, are unable to comprehend the enormous difference between saying something is true, and proving that it is true. While such a handicap has no bearing upon their respective abilities to philosophize, it categorically disqualifies them as competent scientists.

We began Chapter 3 by citing Colossians 2:8-9:

Beware that no one shall be despoiling you through philosophy and empty seduction, in accord with human tradition, in accord with the elements of the world, and not in accord with Christ, for in Him the entire complement of the Deity is dwelling bodily.

We’ve seen in this Chapter and in the three which preceded it, that what sustains the evo-atheists of the National Academy of Sciences is not evidence for their position, but rather “philosophy and empty seduction,” just as the scriptural passage maintains.

We’ll see in the next two chapters that the adamant reliance of the NAS members on philosophy and empty seduction necessitates their violation of our most cherished political principles.