Faith Versus Facts: A Review of 2010

Most Ghanaians practice one of the Judeo-Christian faiths, where a deity of Middle Eastern origin is presented as the omnipotent creator of the universe, and his subordinate human agencies are touted as the saviors of mankind, and messengers of the final fate of all humans upon death, as well as the final status of the universe itself when time and space are brought to a conclusion by this creator. However since the beginning of the modern era when humans invented the scientific method many doubts have been cast on the legitimacy of these religions, and in fact all religions, as they have been unable to stand up to scrutiny and testing. As of today humans have developed advanced technology, they have travelled to space, they have split the atom, they have unraveled the code of life (DNA), and they stand at the point where they may indeed understand the very nature of the universe itself, how it works, how it came into being, and how it will behave in the future. Each of the above advances has eliminated more items that humans formerly attributed to God and at the current rate of scientific advancement it can be seen that in the not too far future God will not be needed as the explanation of anything. This raises the worrying question, why did God not mention any of these scientific facts in any of the books attributed to his spoken word, or that of his representatives? How come God has nothing to say about any of these scientific issues, and how come he apparently does nothing to prevent them if they were not in his plan for humans to begin with? Does God not care that his creation story in Genesis has been proven to be false? It is becoming increasingly clear that what were once revered sacred writings may be no more than the uneducated speculation of elders of ancient tribes who became the fore fathers of some of the nations in existence today. This article briefly looks at some of the major advances made in the year 2010 alone, and demonstrates how religious claims are becoming even more irrelevant and archaic as humans probe, investigate and educate themselves even more.

In February a US space probe captured the first direct images of a sun spot. These are colder patches on the surface of the otherwise unimaginably hot sun. They are caused by convection of the fuel that keeps the sun burning, hydrogen. It has been known that sun spots are a precursor to increased solar activity. It was confirmed that the sun also undergoes seasonal variations. The problem is Genesis says God created two great lights, the sun and the moon. Is that true? The moon is like a planet and produces zero light, it simply reflects light from the sun. The sun is a ball of hydrogen gas that is burning. A time will come when the fuel will finish but the sun will still be there, scientists call this a white dwarf, and many have been identified in our galaxy. So is the sun a great light, like a torch light?

In March Russian archeologists found a human like finger bone in the Denisova cave. This is the same cave from which teeth of a human like creature were discovered in 2008. The remains were dated as 50,000 years old. However anatomical analysis showed they were not from what we call humans today. So what were they? The shocking answer was revealed in December and will be described later in this essay. But the question is how many human species did God create? Adam and Eve, and no more? Then how come the remains and bones of all these different human like species we are finding all over the world ? Homo Erectus, Neanderthal Man, Lucy, Australopithecus, etc etc, what are they and where are they from? How come the bible never mentions evolution? By the way who did Cain marry when he was exiled to the Land of Nod? A Neanderthal?

May 2010. One of the most important events in the history of science. Dr J. Craig Venter and his team in Maryland, removed the DNA of a bacterium and inserted DNA created by a computer program. As the whole science world watched, the bacterium divided, and divided and divided and keeps growing and multiplying to this day. The world’s first man made life form. So why does Yahweh boast only he can create life? As of this report this species is into its 64th generation and has had its first mutation. We are waiting to see what the mutants will evolve into. Very soon such life forms will be manufactured by Lever Brothers and sold on the market like cattle. How come God never says anything about DNA in the 66 books of the Bible? Dr Venter even went further and created a bacterium whose DNA allows it to absorb green houses, and another one that can synthesize some chemicals used in medicines.

Also in May geneticists presented the full genome of the Neanderthal. The Neanderthal were a hominid species that lived in Europe up to 40,000 years ago when they went extinct. The evidence shows that Neanderthal evolved from Homo Homo Rhodesiensis, another hominid that lived in Africa. Neanderthals looked very much like us but were not Homo Sapiens as previously believed, but a separate species that evolved from separate branch of our evolutionary family tree. Dr Svante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute in Germany compared the Neanderthal DNA to that of humans and the shocking news of the report was that it appears there was some interbreeding between humans and Neanderthals around 40,000 years ago. This DNA has been inherited down the generations by some humans. As a result, today, humans of European and Asian descent have 4 – 6% of their DNA from Neanderthal ancestors. This low percentage means the inter breeding was brief and may have involved just a few individuals. But the DNA testing did not stop there. Dr Paabo also revealed that the tests confirm earlier studies that all humans alive today share a common female ancestor who was an African woman who lived around 144,000 years ago. So again where was God in all this? Did he create Neanderthals also? So did he lie or intentionally hide the fact that he also created other hominids (if he actually did, and how, by evolution?)? So why did he not mention that some the ancestors mentioned in Chronicles were not human but Neanderthals (if Chronicles is even true)?

July 2010. Scientists working at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland announced they had gathered enough experimental data to begin searching for the Higgs boson, the final proof of the big bang theory. As of the announcement they had narrowed down to the last 25% of the possible candidate particles they had seen whiles they were smashing various atoms together at the speed of light, to see what the contents were. The data analysis and calculations will take several years.

In July also, astronomers announced they had detected the largest star on record so far in the universe. The star was given the designation R136a1. It is 22,000 light years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy to our own Milky Way galaxy. Sadly the bible says God created a firmament over the earth and set the stars in the firmament. This is like putting a glass bowl over a plate and then somehow embedding or sticking the star onto the glass bowl. That is how God described our universe. Pathetic and very sad. If that was true then all stars would be the same distance from the earth, but that is not the case. This deity needs a science lesson, what a flop.

August. It was Edwin Hubble who announced to the world in the 1920s that the universe was expanding. This was the first evidence for the big bang. It was later discovered that not all the normal matter in the known universe could account for the gravitational interactions we see in the cosmos. It was suggested that a dark matter also exists that makes up this deficit. In 2003 it was discovered that the universe is not only expanding but that the rate of expansion is increasing. Why? So far theory attributes this to the dark matter and its associated dark energy. So what then is the fate of the universe? Will the expansion stop at some point? If so then everything will collapse back towards the starting point, the so called big crunch? In August 2010, Dr Eric Jullo of the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab and Dr Priyamvada Natarajan of Yale University published a report to answer this question. They looked at how dark matter is distributed in the cosmos. They used gravitational lensing to calculate how much of the dark matter and dark energy are present in the different regions of the universe. Gravitational lensing is a phenomenon where massive objects are massive enough that their gravitational forces can bend light. The amount of bending can tell how much matter is there whether it is normal mass or dark matter. The results showed that the expansion of the universe will continue increasing and the universe will continue expanding forever. At some point in a few billion years from now, the galaxies will be so far apart , and the stars within the galaxies and their planets will be so far apart that the universe will be so called, and life as we know it will simply not survive. So it turns out the expansion of the universe is indeed the reason why the universe exists at all. No expansion no universe. I have been looking in Genesis for some insight on this from the guy who claims he created it all, and so far not a single sentence to help. Did Yahweh really create this thing but did not know it had to expand to be able to exist? Or he simply thought we don’t need to know?

September. Astronomers announced that a star called Gliese 581g lying 22,000 light years from earth, has a planet orbiting it at a safe but not too far distance, which has liquid water, and an atmosphere and could be a candidate to support and sustain life. The team had been studying the star and this object for 11 years. Once the methods they invented to make this identification were announced others followed, and as of this report approximately 500 such solar systems have been found in our galaxy alone. So where is God? Maybe he lives on one of those planets with Jesus, and the angels. Maybe Satan lives on another one. Again no information on any of this in the Bible, why?

In September the Pew Research Center, a public policy think tank in the US released survey results showing that the number of Americans not believing or worshipping any deity is roughly 15% of the population, almost double the amount it was when such a survey was conducted in the US in the 80s. The US however remains the only advanced nation where religion is widespread and practiced by the majority. The study showed clearly that the more educated an American the less they believed. In fact the highest educated areas such as the northeast and west coast had the highest numbers of non-believers whereas the Deep South and minority groups, particularly blacks, had the highest levels of belief . A subsequent international study showed that Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world today, and also that potential converts to Christianity had apparently maxed out. The study also showed that the more affluent the country the less importance religious belief. For example Japan respondents polled 70% no belief in any deities, Britain and Germany polled 85% non belief, whereas Burkina Faso and Guinea polled 99% belief in God. Wkileaks later exposed the double standards in Saudi Arabia, where the ruling elite living in vast private compounds routinely engage in western style parties, drinking, drugs ,sex parties, homosexuality, discos etc whiles in public they behave pious to appeal to the ordinary Saudis who are overwhelmingly religious.

October. Scientists announced they had eradicated the rinderpest virus from the earth just as they did smallpox back in the 70s. Rinderpest was the most deadly disease for cattle. The reason it took so long was because the virus had the ability to mutate overnight and evolve into strains resistant to current drugs. By studying this behavior scientists were able to time it and kill it at the right moment. But creationists say evolution is false. And since god did not intervene in over 8,000 years since humans have been rearing cattle, what happened.?

November. This month saw a major breakthrough for physics at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. For the first time scientists successfully produced and captured antimatter. Later in the month, another team at the Large Hadron Collider successfully created a mini-Big Bang by smashing together lead ions. The experiment generated temperatures a million times hotter than at the centre of the Sun in a bid to recreate the conditions in the Universe a millionth of a second after the Big Bang. Meanwhile, another experiment at the same facility , named Alpha, also reported trapping atoms of antimatter and sending them back and forth in time. So Einstein was right, time is indeed another dimension of space-time, and with the right technology we can travel back and forth in time just as we can move back and forth in space. So indeed it is theoretically possible for humans to travel to other galaxies and other regions of the universe, a thought that had been confined to science fiction. And what did God have to say about all this? Nothing. He claims he spoke the universe into existence, but no, not true, today we know how the universe came into existence and we have recreated the conditions in the lab. At this rate by same time next year we may know what caused the big bang to happen, and it is very likely no deities or phantoms were even necessary, just natural processes.

December was month full of drama in the scientific world. It all began when NASA astrobiologists announced they had discovered a bacterium that uses arsenic in the place of phosphorus in its DNA - one of six elements previously thought indispensable for all life forms. Arsenic on the other hand is deadly to all life forms. If confirmed this would mean that for the first time we have direct evidence that other systems to propagate life may be out there in the universe. However upon further scrutiny of the data it became clear this was not an original finding. This bacteria was known for some time by others and its peculiar DNA had been documented and explained due to the fact that it lived in an environment that later became arsenic rich and some of the arsenic was imbibed into the DNA. The DNA is not entirely arsenic in place of phosphorus as initially advertised. The bacterium has the normal DNA we know but at some locations on the DNA (less than 30%) the phosphorus is substituted with arsenic. This is an organism that evolved from one that has the normal DNA we are all familiar with. A truly alien life form would not be so similar to those here. In spite of this setback, this study however did successfully raise the plausibility that other life sustaining mechanisms different from our DNA may be out there in the universe. So for now the search is still on and we hope 2011 brings more insights.

As the year closed, scientists completed their testing of the DNA found in the finger bone of the said ancient humans dubbed Denisovans (found in March). Dr Svante Paabo again shocked the scientific world by announcing that this hominid was in fact a separate species from humans and also separate from Neanderthals. So in fact around up to 40,000 years ago there were more than humans and Neanderthals living in the world, there was in fact a third species which evolved separately from the two. The evolutionary history of this species is the next challenge for evolutionary biologists to unravel. But what was even more shocking was that when the DNA of this species was compared to humans, it demonstrated that one particular Asian population had some DNA in common with this species. It was the Melanesians – the people of Fiji, Papua New Guinea, and Australian Aborigines etc. It turns out this group at some point in their history had sexual contact with the Denisova species resulting in today up to 6% of Melanesians DNA comes from the Denisova hominid. But Denisova is in Northern Russia and Melanesians live in Indonesia, and Australia areas. So how can this be possible? The facts are after Africans, the oldest human lineages are the Melanesians. The Melanesians look almost like black Africans. After Africa, Melanesia is the next place we see sustained ancient human presence in the fossil record. The Melanesians are the descendants of the first Homo sapiens to leave Africa and spread out over the world. The first place they permanently settled was Melanesia/ Australia. According to Dr Spencer Wells, fossil evidence supports this theory. At some point in this migration possibly around the southern regions of what was the Soviet Union, they would have encountered the Denisovans, and this is how they may have mixed and interbred with them even if just briefly. This new finding has overturned current theories on the human origins and ancient migrations. The textbooks will soon be re-written.

So what did Yahweh mean when he claimed he created Adam and Eve and that all humans today are the descendants of that Hebrew speaking couple? This is false. The first humans were Africans. All humans living today are the descendants of a single African woman who lived around 144,00 years ago. Among the first lineages from this common ancestor to leave Africa are the ancestors of the dark-skinned people who live in east Asia, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Australian Aborigines, Negritos (indigenous people of Philippines and Thailand) collectively referred to as the Melanesian. It appears some of the migrants interbred with a non-human species called the Denisovans and inherited their DNA. The Denisovans went extinct around 40,000 years ago, just as did the Neanderthals. The reasons are under investigation. So, no, Genesis is not true, Adam and Eve is a fairy tale, not based on any testable evidence. What this means is that certain doctrines like original sin inherited from Adam, are also not true, they are false. Nobody inherits anything from Adam, let alone sin because Adam was not the original human, is a mythical character, not real, and also because sin is not a genetic trait that can be inherited from an ancestor.

So 2010 was indeed a bad year for God. More of his fairy tales were refuted, and it is becoming increasingly clear he is not the origin of anything and may indeed be totally imaginary after all. As for this author, like all others on this website, I have not seen any evidence for Yahweh, so I don’t worry about him, and neither do I take seriously any of the tales written in his book. The majority of citizens in the advanced world have done the same. We are waiting for Africans to follow, take off their mental chains and prioritize education to get rid of superstition. Let’s make 2011 another year when we get closer to the final eradication of mythical beings from the minds of Africans, so we can cleanse our brain cells and actually use them to build our countries and our future.

Happy New Year to all readers. And a special shout out to Ibn Katakpingi, Chrife Paa, Freethinker, Kwame ATL, Kweku Erzuah Siam, Anonymous Coward, Calamity Mills, Non-Aligned, Pannin-California, The African Patriot, Africabi, Voluntary Person, Sister Joyce, Opeibea Ma Kid, Obuorba Asante Taado, Mr Mister, Nyansasem and all the others. With great minds like you around, Ghana can also make it.

kwaku ba , December 2010