A Non- Linear Social Imagination of the History of the Earth and Man

In the recent issue of National Geographic ~ Jan. 2015 ~ the cover has as an illustration that of  an aboriginal youth. This issue is titled - "the First American." Of course, as you read the articles and look at their maps of man's immigration from Africa to the Caucus Mountains and beyond, you wonder whether that was even possible. I mean, just because we have found bones and check the DNA of people who lived and died in the many areas/regions of the world, does not mean that they immigrated. It could mean that they were always in those places. It could be that their diaspora was over a lot longer time than we imagine.

In our social imagination, we think too linear. In the social imagination, we think that who we are today is a better form of man, a better or evolved form, and more evolved in terms of civilization (s) than were ever present before and or prior to anything in the past.

Just because we dig up bones here and there and see similarities does not mean that they represent a 'bone trail or even DNA trail in context of movement over vast landscapes. Not that people did not move, they did. They had to take with them women and children and seniors who did not move at a pace that would get them to a desired destination. We could imagine that it took generations to get from point A to point B. What I doubt though is the time allotted for this. As people moved north out of Africa, they had less and less exposure to harsh sun light and their diets changed along with their movement.

Their social hierarchies would also have to change with environmental conditions that required bigger and stronger men and women working in order to prepare for the winter. Hence, we often see more egalitarian societies in northern climates.

Let us imagine that though people moved about, it is not in the connect the dot movement we imagine today. Let us imagine that the people we find in certain geographies throughout the world today were actually in those places before the dinosaurs, before and after Noah built the Ark. We might imagine that before the Ark, they were very much the same at one time in a larger continent with a different but more even climate. In that place, they developed wonderful cities and technology and created fantastic creatures for their pleasure.  What happened to that ... Atlantis? Perhaps, a catastrophe.

And, there was one. After the Flood, they were separated from each other as in few an far between. Yet, they managed to reconnect, some groups retaining the technology they had before the Flood. And, that there was a natural leader who appeared and brought everyone back into a kind of 'noosphere' and in that place they built a tower into the sky.

The Bible talks of wonderful creatures that God created; such as dinosaurs; just read Job 40-42 ~ "Look at the behemoth, which I made along with you and which feeds on grass like an ox. What strength he has in his loins, what power in the muscles of his belly! His tail sways like a cedar; the sinews of this thighs are close knit. His bones are tubes of bronze, his limbs like rods of iron... another - his back has rows of shields".

These creatures appear to be at the same time as Job. Or is the story of Job given to us in non-linear order. After all, it is squeezed between Esther and Psalms. And, it is even a more non-linear account of man in that the tower of Babel which was an incredible place with cities where people lived and understood each other speaking one language... this was after the Flood. Before the Flood, we read that daughter's of man were taken by Fallen angels and from them were born the Nephilim, corrupt in the genetic material. 

Does that mean that the Bible is wrong as a source of understanding the creation of the earth and man's presence? No. Just as linear mapping and supposing that everyone is related because of similar genetic material through one female and immigration caused man to be in many places is right.

The Bible is non-linear, the Social imagination is non-linear. It is so because it is representative of all man's imagination (s) which is ultimately God's.

The Outcome of a 'Fallen' Social Imagination

The War of social imaginations has always been doing battle. It is very interesting to me that so many 'scientists' imagine that a dot 'singularity' started the whole thing. Who do they imagine created that ..the dot? 

The blog post you see and can read below is not my own. It is taken from the blog by Rob Skiba "Seed the Series" ~  Rob Skiba ~ http://skibaministry.com/

http://www.babylonrisingblog.com/Godvsgod1.html

I suggest reading this here and then check out the blog address for further fascinating reading which may very well truly enlighten your social imagination.

Genesis tells us that man was wicked and that every imagination of his heart was evil. This seems to imply that man imagined to corrupt the earth and all that lived on it - and he apparently did all that he imagined to do. We can remember ~ from our 5th Grade class and asking the teacher, "If we came from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?" I have never received a good answer to that question, even to this day. In fact, we can find it astonishing that otherwise brilliant individuals can actually believe the total non-sense that is Evolution. None of it makes any logical sense if you stop to actually think about it.

Evolutionists say that billions of years ago an infinitely small, highly condensed dot called the "singularity" exploded and everything that exists came out of it. Seriously? Who created the dot?? And since when does an explosion create anything so orderly and complex as this amazing universe - or one single strand of DNA?

DNA? Oh, well that happened when lightning struck some slime in a primordial ocean and fused amino acids together. Really!?? Wow. So, if the earth was a molten blob of plasma that began to cool, where did the water come from? That kind of heat should have prevented any moisture from ever developing into OCEANS! It would have all evaporated (which implies that it existed to begin with!). And where did the amino acids that supposedly were the foundation of life come from?

How do we get life from non-living material? Frankenstein-style Electricity is the answer? OK, so since DNA contains the "information" - the genetic codes - that make life develop into whatever form it takes, then after lighting turned that acid into DNA, that one strand would had to have had the genetic blue-print to create ALL life - plant, fish, reptile, bird, animal, man, etc... the information has to come from somewhere. And since all of life supposedly evolved out of this incident, the information to do so had to have been present in that first DNA molecule. That's a serious miracle! Oops! That's a religious word. Sorry.

A theory should be testable. So, go to your local GNC store, buy some complex amino acid and start zapping it with electricity. See what happens. And even if by some miracle you do create a strand of DNA from your experiment, you have to remember that you went to a store and bought the building blocks to do so! You just can not escape the "God Component" of the equation. Anyway...

According to the Theory of Evolution, lightning activated amino-slime became DNA that turned into a single-cell organism. That ONE organism floated to the bottom of the primordial ocean floor. What did it eat? We are led to think that eventually, it got sick of sitting there so it jumped up and evolved into a fish! I Wow SUCH a MIRACLE that one lighting bolt created life from non-living material in the first place, now you're going to tell me that the same thing happened again so that these creatures can eat? But once it eats, then what? You only had one! Just go back and start asking yourself these types of questions anytime you hear or read anything about evolution, and you will quickly realize how ridiculous the whole thing really is. But let's continue...So that fish supposedly swam around for millions of years. How did it live that long? It didn't? It mated and produced offspring? Mated with who? Oh, wow, more miracles needed! OK. Go on. Then one day it decided to see what land was like. Do fish really think like that? So, it evolved legs out of fins and walked onto the land! How did it breath? Oh the gills magically disappeared and the fish went from breathing water to breathing air. Hmmmm. OK. Go on.

Once on land, over millions of years it grew from a tiny lizard-like creature into the giant T-Rex! Wow! Cool! Then as a result of comets and climate change, T-Rex eventually evolved into a bird. What!??? A bird??? Yep. A bird.

So let me get this straight. A fish got tired of water and climbed out on land and grew into a dinosaur. Then those massive land reptiles got sick of the land and shed their scales for feathers, jumped up and started to fly, turning themselves into tiny birds? And that's science???

No matter how you look at it, I can't believe this sort of thing is even taken seriously. But this is college level "education" folks!! Scary. And what's worse is people pay tens of thousands of dollars to get a piece of paper that authorizes them to pass this crap along to the next generation!

People actually believe this stuff, because in essence, it truly is a religion. And the god of this religion is called, "Science." Thus, we have another god at war with the One True God. It is a Theory of Chaos and Chance vs Intelligent Design. And because there is so much evidence for Intelligent Design, many Evolutionists have adopted the idea of Panspermia: the theory that life here must have been "seeded" by life that came from elsewhere. Great. All that does is push the problem further out into space... The idea of Evolution is absolutely absurd. To them, Creationist theories and Biblical explanations are equally absurd. So, while we are all speculating and being absurd, let me throw in another theory concerning T-Rex and other bipedal dinos like him. As I mentioned above, I believe God did create the large, plant eating dinosaurs. * Read in the Bible ~ Job 40: 15 up to Job 42.
God called it the "chief of all He created." Next to man, it was the champion - the most impressive creature walking the planet. God was proud of it! So, what did the Devil do? True to form, I believe he created - or I should say, genetically engineered - a counterfeit. A T-Rex - the King Dinosaur - master of the terrible lizards.

God is Not Dead

The film God is not Dead hit a nerve with many people. Those who choose to believe and those who don't.
In a previous blog, I stated that people believe what they want to. I apply this principle to all ideas/information including whatever 'science' says about who we are. People believe what they think will give them security, they believe in someone because they think they have some greater knowledge say that they can consume; better to say people believe what they hunger for. 
Some people's appetite for the Creator is less than others or non existent. The best thing about Christianity is that no one is force feeding anyone to eat. You have to choose. What is so amazing for me as a scholarly Christian is that God gave us free will. We can choose Him or not. After all, who wants to be chosen just because they were programmed that way or felt they had to conform to someone else's will. This is where most people go wrong when they hear the name "God". They think he is the one who wants us to conform to him. The Lord God our Father may ask but he does not insist... we don't have to believe. He wants us to believe, but we don't have to belive.

Some ask, well then what kind of God is He if just anyone can choose Him. He is an all loving and merciful God. If you believe, then He is yours completely. He is ours and is not just by faith. How? Faith alone does save. It saves us from continuing to sin, continuing down the wrong path of self destruction. In that respect, it is not just faith 'believing' because, having faith 'believing' moves us to act. How? It grows our hunger. It brings us closer to the Creator of Heaven and Earth, the Creator of all things seen and unseen.

As for the film, I think that the writers and directors did a great job using the time they had. In a short visual venue, they captured the relationship that a person can choose to have with the Creator and how to defend that choice.

Kevin Sorbo who is a Christian played his role very convincingly. His character was the selfish prideful intellectual who was full of himself and wanted everyone to know it and jump on board with his ideas about life and happiness.  Ironically, most atheists don't want people to believe in God, they want people to believe in them... what for? Why believe in someone who believes only in him/herself? Because, they put themselves on a pedestal as if they are the creator of all things. They are the ones force feeding people which was the Keven Sorbo character in the film did.

The end of man ... is man. The beginning of man as a never ending man is through Jesus Christ. "No gets to the Father except by me".. John 14:6 Why? Because, Christ came to save us from this sinful fallen world, a program corrupted by bad information which will someday be put into the 'anti virus vault' for eternity, so that the true program can run free of corruption.  It is only through death that we can escape this corrupt program, Jesus came to show us that ... if He could, we can.

"I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me"  John 14:6.

The Legitmacy of the Bible ~ The Word of God!

Ever since man thought of himself first, the Bible 'as the Word of God' has come in second or not at all. In recent news, there again is the ongoing discussion among scholars, scientists, and lay men about whether or not the Bible is the Word of God.  I can tell you without a doubt that men believe what they want. In fact, God designed it to be that way.  I blogged about choice. You have to choose to believe in the Creator of Heaven and Lord, of all things and unseen.

Speaking as a sociologist and social psychologist, people all over the world believe in something or that something is good vs. bad, in a certain man/woman, or in a system, in a location over another location, in a kind of diet over another kind... they will believe what they read if the choose to believe it.

I can also tell you as a scholar of social thought/behavior, that when we write, we make sure we write about what we know to be true and what we know to be true is only what we agree to be true and that is even a matter of belief, believing that what we know is true. We also don't write things down unless we have a passion to do so, a motivation, a will to do it. Even with 'science', there is a will to do it. A will or desire to know the truth about who we are and a means to justify what we believe in. Freedom and justice for all, if not because we believe in that, then what for.


The powerful and wealthy would and could just take over. We usually don't write things to scare people or cause harm. We usually write about lofty ideas about who we are and where we came from. Our ideas don't just pop up out of thin air. Ideas are socially constructed based on what a group believes to be true, or what is likely a best practice regarding the long term. Overall, we write what we believe to be true; good, bad and or ugly.

If there were a Creator, and I absolutely believe there is, our ideas would come from Him and from nowhere else. We would write them down, and they would be ours. I don't think that people would write a book as the Word of God if there were no Creator to put the idea in them. People believe in what makes sense to them. For Christians, the Bible is the Word of God and this makes perfect sense.

Some argue that where you are born determines what you believe. But, what still remains is that people choose to believe in their life in that place as true for them; and in this instance, the question of God or not as part of that equation is not necessary. That principle is that people believe what they either experience or are told by their peers within their social hierarchy.  Just because people live in different places does not negate believing in a Creator. Such a belief does not go away even if we say science tells us this and that.What is funny for me about science is that people including scientists will believe that the sun is a star, not because it is. But, because either they organized methodically a theory, or that someone they esteem told them and or they simply choose to believe it when ironically they themselves did not or could not do the 'science' they applaud out of choice and nothing more.

In order to really know that the sun is a star, one would have to be able to reach up and touch the sun in order to know that it is a star.  Everyone even scholars have to use the word believe because that is what we do as humans. No other creature as far as I know believes in anything like we do. We believe that our President is a good man, that the sun will come up in the morning and that everything will work out, it always does.Why? Because, we believe it will even when the odds are against us.

A Christian View on the Creation of the State of Man

Today's message is a Christian view on the creation of the 'State of Man'. What does that mean? It means that man is falling into a state of decay; as such ...the 'State of Man' in this world has an end and there are means out there which are attempting to prevent that end which began the moment sin entered the world and corrupted it. Ironically, the end of man is man; because, he is not the absolute. The means that started long ago are the same. Today, one can hear and read about the 'War on Women'. It is rather the 'War on Family and Motherhood'. The social imagination of family and the role of mother is being devalued. Why? Because it is the means to prevent the end of this corrupt program, this fallen world. What is being imagined as in engineered toward a 'State of Man'? Man - Woman be made as in seen equal. How?

By announcing that each is his/her own savior, he/she or she/he if you prefer is the not the end but the beginning of something greater ~ The State of Man. In order for that to be true for all women and men, a top down engineered system of structured privileges needs to be orchestrated. Why? ...Why would such an engineered system become necessary? Because privileges are gained through obedience, who is with us is for us kind of thinking. What we are for? We are for ourselves, for every man, woman. Yet, in saying that, there is the realization that not everyone can share the top because everyone has their own savior and so everyone has a right because of that. Thus, one has to receive privilege to get there in order to override what is deemed sarcastically as their God given right. In such a system, where everyone is right, how does one get recognition or some sort of position for being right with the group? It is through 'right thinking' based on the corrupt idea that we are each our own savior. Men and women each have their own 'God'.

Now, is this problematic for Christians who say that there is one God and He has a social hierarchy to follow which puts women in second position. Why is this a problem for the secular engineered system that we see developing today? To fully set in motion this system, women have to be brought out of the Godly system, also men but since women have been so called subjected to men, they must be elevated higher or at least to the same level. In such a system the, privileges are a necessary aspect of the scenario. You can get on board the self salvation train as each one of us has privilege to as long as our privilege does not interfere with someone else's. In that mode of imagination, there is a desired path whereby the privileged group usurps the individual. 

How? The path is really the denial of what you are and who you are as a creation of an absolute being ~ the Creator of the universe who knows that the program is corrupted and how it got that way. The denial of the absolute truth shows up in the newly imagined 'God' identified as 'The State of Man' as he projected who you you are and thus you are 'you'  and no one else; therefore, you are a super star. With everyone now made a super star what is the purpose of aspiring to anything but the path of self righteousness. No one is a sinner because we have usurped the absolute path.  Jesus said " if any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me." Matthew 16:24

Don't be confused. We are being preached from the top by those who see themselves as already there.... privileged in that they denied themselves in order to join the privileged top - the group 'man/woman' ~ The State' that is a denial the absolute one. We do not have to take up our cross for the absolute one but for the State of Man. There can be no salvation or eternal life in that pursuit. Because, if we imagine that, then the end is already here, we are dead in our social imagination. Salvation can never be provided by the State. The path to having a relationship with the absolute one ~ the Creator of heaven and earth, is to accept the self as a creation of the Creator who is absolute. In that pursuit, we are in the process the social process of imagination of getting to know Him. Hence, the role of mother and father = family is necessary in this process.

Mother has the most important role in the beginning as she is the first in this corrupt world to show the importance of submission to the idea of the absolute, the one who shows submission to the one who is greater, then the father as he too shows himself in submission to the Creator = The Father.
The 'war on women' is the way to create the 'State of Man', it is the way to denounce this social hierarchy the family structure and replace it with the corrupt program of selfish relativism which ultimately has no creator and thus cannot save as it has no means nor will to save.

Where East Meets West in the Social Imagination

The Social imagination in the West is different from the East. The West is about doing and the East is about being. Not that there isn't any idea of being in a place in the West; there is but, it is more fluid more like a free flowing river hopeful and eager to change. This sounds good to Western ears, hope and change. For others, it sounds unrealistic, not practical and not reasonable given their long time cultural heritage. The West has a problem accepting that people who live outside the West see life different when it comes to change especially. Hence, we see people supporting authority that we Westerners see as tyrants/obstacles to change.
Being in a place is different from doing in a place. Westerners cannot imagine that there are groups of people who have been in the same place or felt connected to a place (as in homeland) for thousands of years. The Western mind is open, free and mobile. Westerners don't have a problem with change or changing places. For them doing is their destiny. The Western mind is geared toward doing in a place. He/she thinks about what he/she can do and how to improve life which includes how to move about in a place, or even move from place to place, taking their doing with them. You see, you can't take being from place to place. Of course, one can be in a place, but that is not the same as being in place. I can be at the bus top. However, being in a place requires years, generations. For Western minds, being sounds and seems to be unproductive, not progressive, not forward thinking. They are engaged in doing, not being. They race around the world doing things. They can feel unappreciated for their doings, they often don't understand being in a place. They think that those who live 'being' in a place are without enthusiasm or hope. They usually don't understand that maybe those 'being' people hope that they can just keep 'being' where they are. That their comfort and future is in being not doing. Such thinking is not in the Western social imagination.

*this sociological insight is based on years of participant observations and participated research projects.

I would also like to point to a recent Hollywood film that can help to illustrate being vs. doing. In the film, "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes" the main characters Cesar and the human leading role reflect these two mindsets. The 'intelligent' ape stresses being and their future is in being in a place ~ their home. The human stresses doing, and that their doing is not harmful because doing is good, better than just being. Of course, conflict breaks out and it is realized by the characters in the film that there is some doing in regards to being in a place. That doing includes fighting for being in a place. What the audience can see though is that the Ape would have always been happy with being if someone of the doing mindset had not come along.