storytelling – Page 2 – Divine Council

Biology

Two Notable Evolutionary Biologists Dismiss the Reigning Theory of Darwinian Evolution

By Terence Gillespie November 16, 2017

In the process of introducing a new theory on how life began, two notable evolutionary biologists have just dismissed the reigning theory of Darwinian evolution, maintaining it would take many billions of years to accomplish and would extend beyond the very age of the universe, making the current understanding of evolution impossible.

The study of Darwinian evolution, the gradual assemblage of molecules that somehow were constructed and then began replicating themselves out of some imaginary “primordial soup” or “warm pond” as Charles Darwin once described it, has just taken a U-turn.

Today the vast majority of biologists maintain what they call RNA World existed on Earth before modern cells arose. For the past few decades the consensus of molecular biologists is that life originated from RNA — ribonucleic acid, which is a single strand of nucleotides (adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine) unlike DNA which is double-stranded, and is bonded with ribose sugars rather than deoxyribose sugars that comprise DNA.

However RNA is more unstable and prone to degradation than DNA and makes a less plausible platform for the origin of life say two eminent researchers. For the very reason of RNAs inherent instability, two researchers now say RNA couldn’t have endured the time it would have taken for evolutionary life forms to appear.

Scientific U-turn

The scientific U-turn is this. According to astrobiologist and (Honorary) professor Brig Klyce, “Virtually all biologists now agree bacterial cells cannot form from nonliving chemical in one step. If life arises from non-living chemicals, there must be intermediate forms. Among the various theories on the origin of life, biologists have reached consensus on the RNA theory (called RNA WORLD), which serves as a messenger to carry out instructions from DNA and initiate and control the synthesis of proteins. But now evolutionary thinkers say life’s first molecule was protein, not RNA.”

“Only one fact concerning the RNA World hypothesis can be established by direct observation: if it ever existed, it ended without leaving any unambiguous trace of itself,” say Peter R Wills and Charles W Carter Jr., authors of the new theory writing in the BioRxIV Beta journal.

Carter and Wills argue that RNA could not kick-start this process alone because it lacks a property they call “reflexivity.” It cannot enforce the rules by which it is made. RNA needed peptides to form the reflexive feedback loop necessary to eventually lead to life forms.

Bill Sardi continues with his thorough report . . .

Storytelling

Pagan Heroes or Demonic Parody?

By Zechariah May 12, 2017

One of the things I have seen among Christians who have been influenced by the Divine Council framework is the tendency to assume that every non-Christian religion springs fully formed from the minds of our Spiritual enemies. There is also an inclination to only glance at the surface of a particular mythology or religion, and as long as it contains enough of the tropes and motifs one expects, one doesn’t examine it any more deeply.

My goal in this article is to make people aware of some of the assumptions we can make when approaching other mythologies and religions.

So how does a deeper examination of mythology and religion help the Christian living today? I plan to use the very unique mythology of the ancient Norse to further explore this question and hopefully provide us window into the propaganda machine of the fallen Principalities and Powers.

Thor, Norse Mythology, and the Usual Suspects

Quite a lot of you have probably seen the new Thor movies by Marvel, and some of you may already know some of the basic story of Norse mythology. On the surface, it is a story with a lot of the familiar motifs. There is a single supreme god who, with his family, make up a council of gods.

Norse mythology has a classic demonic enemy. Their gods may not live at the top of a mountain, but they live at the top of the World Tree. It has a flood myth complete with evil giants. It even contains the classic Thunder-god, and his battle against the evil sea dragon of chaos. It seems like a straightforward story, not all that different from the mythologies we have seen before.

Why should anyone read any further? After all, we possess the Bible “the Myth that is true”, the story from which all the other myths originate. Well, if one does decide to take a closer look at the story, things start to get weird.

Death of the gods?

We find out that this is not the usual story of gods triumphing against all enemies but instead a tragedy in which all the gods die in a final battle against evil.

Unlike the triumphant stories we are used to reading, where the thunder-god defeats the dragon of chaos and brings new order, the thunder-god instead dies of his wounds almost immediately after slaying the dragon. We don’t get the traditional time-line of world creation, creation of humanity and then a flood. What one will observe instead is a combination of the flood and creation story, and the evil giants who are mostly wiped out by the flood. The surviving giants then become the demonic enemies of the gods long before humanity is created.

Troubling Questions

If this story was fabricated out of whole cloth by the Infernal Powers, then one is left with some troubling questions:

Why would the Powers of darkness create a mythology where they themselves die at the end?
Many of you are probably familiar with the Genesis 6 account, the Book of 1st Enoch, and the struggle against the Giant Nephilim clans throughout the Bible. If these are those same Giants, why would they write a story where their fictional representations are destroyed by the Giants?
Why the odd combination of flood and creation myth?

What if we take a different approach?

Historical Human Figures as ‘gods’

What if one assumes that these gods are partially based off of historical human figures?

If Odin and the Aesir were an actual tribe of humans living in a post-flood world instead of gods, then the whole story almost tells itself. We see the Aesir tribe’s brief struggle with the neighboring Vanir tribe and their long conflict with a tribe of Giants. We see the chief and patriarch Odin adopt the orphaned child of one of the giants that he has just killed. Loki is raised as Odin’s son, and he returns the favor by murdering his adoptive brother, Baldur, for his own twisted amusement. Loki then returns to his giant kin and leads them to exterminate the Aesir in a final battle nearly wiping out the Aesir leaving only enough survivors to pass the story down to their children.

History becomes Legend, then Myth

The ancient dead heroes are honored by their descendants, and as oral history is passed down through the generations, all the older pre-flood myths are blended into the story. To quote the Lord of the Rings movie, “History became legend. Legend became myth. And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost.” …as the corrupt gods whisper and guide from the shadows.

The tragic struggle of the Aesir against overwhelming evil that captures our imaginations to this very day is partially obscured under the false mantle of godhood. Their nobility and humanity are perverted as men are strangled and hung from yew trees as sacrifices to the Hanged god. This is one possible explanation for this particular story that better explains the oddities present in its narrative.

So how would a closer examination of non-Christian religion and mythology aid the believer living today?

A Culture Starving for Supernatural Content

One can use what one learns about how our enemies have influenced the cultures of the distant past to see how they might be manipulating our modern culture through Hollywood, literature, and religion. And such an examination can also provide one with powerful apologetics and polemics against the examined religions, still here, or those resurfacing in a modern culture starved of supernatural content.

Demonic Subversion of the Truth

For example, one walks up to a modern neo-pagan, who worships the Norse pantheon, and if all one tells him is that the story and people he has based his faith on are only a demonic parody of the true faith, how will he respond?

Or instead, one could show him how his religion ties into the Christian narrative, and how the story and heroes of his people have been subverted and used as a mask by the fallen Powers of the Bible …

Assumptions only take us so far. When we actually start to think and examine more deeply, we are able to move forward.

Storytelling

Fairy Tales & Mythology

By Terence Gillespie April 11, 2016

Words are how the truth comes to us. They’re also how it can be taken away. Seen only as symbols and grammar, truth and lies are made from the same raw material. Your only hope is discernment. Your life depends on it.

Tolkien and Lewis regarded the fairy tale as a perfectly suited literary vehicle for expressing eternal truth. Lewis credits Tolkien and a mutual friend with helping him see that his love of myth and fairy tale blinded him to, yet prepared him for, the Gospels. He reluctantly came to believe the Gospels were eyewitness accounts of a “true myth”.¹

“I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books. As a result you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”²

Mythology or History?

Another term used as a pejorative is mythology.

All mythology is presumed myth as the victors decide what is official history. The history of the defeated is, by definition, written by outlaws. A generation later the history of the defeated is mythology or conspiracy if it’s remembered, at all.

It’s helpful to think of mythology as collections of potential truths inconvenient to the succession of political power. Likewise, “History” is as likely to be the glorification of bureaucrats and technocrats as an accurate re-telling of the facts.

A series of time-related truths, thoroughly vetted and discerned, is not mythology or conspiracy; it’s history.

Trivium & Quadrivium

The subjects of history and philosophy were considered to be so demanding, yet so important, that they weren’t even presented to the student until after they’d studied the subjects of the trivium (Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric) and, ideally, those of the quadrivium (Arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy).³

“These seven heads were supposed to include universal knowledge. He who was master of these was thought to have no need of a preceptor to explain any books or to solve any questions which lay within the compass of human reason, the knowledge of the trivium having furnished him with the key to all language, and that of the quadrivium having opened to him the secret laws of nature.”⁴

“… When a few were instructed in the trivium, and very few studied the quadrivium, to be master of both was sufficient to complete the character of a philosopher … The candidate, having reached this point, is now supposed to have accomplish the task upon which he had entered – he has reached the last step, and is now ready to receive the full fruition of human learning.”⁵

“Some day you’ll be old enough”

The ability to grasp eternal truths and history and bring them to bear on decisions is a high achievement of a classical education. Only philosophy, by attempting to comprehend meaning, imposes greater demands for greater rewards.

“Some day you’ll be old enough” to start reading fairy tales again to glean eternal truths. Someday you’ll be educated enough to distinguish real history from stories convenient to political power.

Words are how the truth comes to us. They’re also how it can be taken away. Seen only as symbols and grammar, truth and lies are made from the same raw material. Your only hope is discernment. Your life depends on it.

A 1931 letter to childhood friend Arthur Greeves, Lewis credits Tolkien (and mutual friend Hugo Dyson). Paragraph reworded and reordered from an article written by Bruce Edwards (https://erlc.com/article/c-s-lewis-051101). ↩
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis ↩
Cathedral Schools of the early Middle Ages (527) on which the curriculum of Medieval universities were based (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_school) ↩
Hist. of Philos. Vol ii. P. 337 ↩
The symbolism of Freemasonry: Illustrating and Explaining its Science and Philosophy, it’s Legends, Myths, and Symbols. By Albert Gallatin Mackey, M.D., 1869. ↩