COSMOLOGY AND THE PRECEPTS OF
FREEMASONRY
CHAPTER XXXXV
part IV - Freemasonry, Science and Mankind
THE SQUARE AND COMPASSES
W.
M. Don Falconer PM, PDGDC
Cosmology and all of the
associated sciences have not been able to discover the source and
ultimate purpose of life, which strongly suggests that there must be
some hidden purpose in the creation that is beyond the present scope
of human knowledge and comprehension.
The foundation of
Freemasonry
When a petition for membership
of the fraternity of freemasons is considered, an indispensable
requirement of the applicant is his acknowledged belief in God. This
vital precept is the foundation of Freemasonry and central to its
rituals, which inspire a belief in the Divine Creator and faith in
an indissoluble union between the Divine spirit and the human soul.
In Freemasonry the universe is perceived as a reflection of God’s
glory and an example of His omniscience, omnificence and
omnipotence. The prodigious advances made in science have prompted
theories to be advanced in an attempt to explain the origin and
evolution of the universe and of life on earth. No satisfactory
solutions have been found, but it would be appropriate to review
current theories in the spheres of cosmology and evolution, to see
if they invalidate any of the long established precepts of
freemasonry.
Change has always been part of
man's life and thoughts. A famous Greek scholar, Anaximander
(611-547 BCE), is said to have taught that life arose from mud
warmed in the sun and that the sequence of development was plants,
then animals, then humans. Anaximander's teachings were studied and
extended by another famous Greek philosopher, Heraclitus
(544-483 BCE), who constantly reflected on life and death and
on changes in the lands and seas and indeed the whole universe. He
presaged the remarkable discoveries of modern science in his book On Nature, in
which he said “All is change; only change is
changeless”. In all countries subject to the dictates of the
Church of Rome from the fifth to the fifteenth centuries, during the
Dark and Medieval Ages, scientific thought was so severely
suppressed that all views expressed about creation were considered
to be heretical except the strictest literal interpretation of the
scriptural account.
During the three hundred years
following the Renaissance, a concept called the fixity of the species
grew out of the ideas implanted during the preceding period of
religious suppression. It was thought that each species had its own
individual ancestor from the beginning of time and that natural
conditions and events like the environment, birth, growth and death
do not produce changes in the species, only being part of an
endlessly repeating pattern. It was not until late in the eighteenth
century that a British poet, physician and naturalist Erasmus Darwin
(1731-1802), the grandfather of Charles Darwin (1809-1882),
questioned the widely accepted concept of the fixity of the species.
Jean Baptiste de Lamarck (1744-1829), a French naturalist, also
disputed the validity of the fixity of the species.
He coined the term biology and
said that all forms of life are subject to evolution,
advancing the theory that all species, including man, are descended
from other species. He believed new structures appear in living
species in response to deficiencies or an inner want and that when
acquired they are inherited, whilst little used structures disappear
in later generations. Biological Science: the web of
life, prepared under the auspices of the Australian Academy
of Science is a good reference.
Charles Darwin’s life of
enquiry, documentation and learned writing began when he joined the
Royal Navy's survey ship Beagle as its naturalist
in 1831. On the 1st July 1858 papers that had
been prepared independently by Charles Darwin and another English
naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913), were presented in
London the Linnaean Society. Each paper put forward a different
theory to explain how evolution could occur. In the following year
Darwin published his first book entitled The Origin of the Species by
Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the
Struggle for Life, which was a condensation of a much longer
book he was then writing. After another twelve years he published The Descent of Man, a
sequel that extended his theory of evolution to include mankind.
Darwin did not consider his views impious, because he believed that
there was:
"a grandeur in this view of life with its
several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into
a few forms or into one; and that . . . from so simple a beginning
endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are
being involved".
Since then scientists in
a wide range of disciplines have continued the research begun by
Lamarck, Wallace and Darwin and their published works are popular
reading. Most people now understand the fundamentals of
evolution.
Investigations into the
evolution of the universe rely upon comprehensive studies of the
galaxies and stars. These studies are based upon detailed analyses
of the light spectra of the visible galaxies and stars, from which
it is possible to determine their physical composition, as well as
their movements relative to the earth. The familiar increase in the
apparent pitch of an approaching sound source, which reaches a
crescendo as it passes the listener and then rapidly dies away as it
departs, has a useful counterpart in the spectrum of a moving light
source. This phenomenon is a function of the velocity of approach or
departure of a source of sound or light and is called the Doppler Shift. Light
waves from an approaching source exhibit an apparent shortening of
the wavelength, so that the spectral lines are shifted towards the
blue end of the spectrum. Conversely, light waves from a departing
light source exhibit an apparent increase in wavelength, so that the
spectral lines are shifted towards the red end of the spectrum,
commonly called the red shift. The observed
red shift is greater as
the velocity of departure increases. Vesto Melvin Slipher
(1875-1969), an American astronomer and pioneer of spectroscopy,
studied the light emitted from galaxies and was the first to obtain
the spectrum of a distant galaxy, Andromeda, in 1912. Slipher had
determined the spectra of fourteen galaxies by 1914, in the course
of which he discovered evidence of interstellar dust clouds. In 1920
Slipher announced that twelve spectra of the galaxies he had studied
exhibited significant red shifts, from which he concluded that most
galaxies within our range of observation are moving away from our
galaxy at tremendous speeds.
The German-born American
physicist, Albert Einstein (1879-1955), published his special theory
of relativity in 1905. His special theory relates the energy E and the mass m of a moving particle
to the velocity of light c, which is expressed by
the equation E = mc². After Einstein
had presented his general theory of relativity in 1915, he attempted
to apply it to cosmological theories, as a result of which he
proposed a solution for a static universe in 1917. To achieve this
solution Einstein introduced a cosmological constant
into his equation, related to the radius and density of the
universe. He believed that he had derived a unique model, but the
Dutch astronomer Willem de Sitter (1872-1934) found an alternative
solution which showed that the universe could be static only if
empty of matter, but that it would expand with increasing velocity
if any matter were introduced. In 1922 Alexander Alexandrovich
Friedmann (1888-1925), a Russian mathematician, studied these
theories and carried out further investigations of the relativity
equations without assuming a static universe, when he found that
different models of the universe could be derived if different
values were assigned to Einstein's cosmological
constant.
On the basis of comprehensive
observations he had conducted on the spectra of many galaxies Edwin
Powell Hubble (1889-1953), an American astronomer, concluded that
the red shifts observed in those spectra are a result of the Doppler effect. Hubble's
proposition has been tested repeatedly and is generally accepted.
His reasoning was consummated in 1929 when he put forward the theory
now called Hubble's Law, based on
observations which show that the recessional velocity of a galaxy
increases with increasing distance, from which may be derived the
rate at which the universe is expanding. A comprehensive range of
observations made to determine the red shifts of all the
observable galaxies up to distances of 2,000 million light years,
consistently indicate that the recessional velocity increases at the
rate of 32 kilometres per second per million light years. Based on
this rate of increase it can be shown that a recessional velocity
equal to the speed of light, which is about 300,000 kilometres per
second, will be reached over a distance of 10,000 million light
years, which is about 10²³ kilometres.
Assuming that the observed
recessional velocity is equal to the initial outward velocity of
matter that has only been retarded by gravity since time began, it
can be shown that all matter in the present galaxies would have
begun to move outwards from a central point in space approximately
15,000 million years ago. This is the beginning of time according to
the big bang or evolutionary theory of
the universe that a Belgian priest, Georges Edouard Lemaître
(1894-1966), was the first to propose in 1927. His hypothesis was
that all material now in the universe came into existence at the
instant of a big bang, before which
it had been an accumulation of fundamental particles subjected to
such extremely high pressures and temperatures that atoms as we know
them could not exist. Rapid expansion would have begun immediately
after the big bang, accompanied by
sudden and extreme cooling, which would have been ideal for the
formation of atoms. John Gribbin gives details of the concept of
time on a cosmological scale in The Birth of Time,
subtitled How We Measured the Age of the
Universe. He examines the science of time in an historical
context and discusses related aspects like the warping of space and
time, which is of vital importance in the theory of relativity in
his book In Search of the Edge of
Time. Kitty Ferguson explores the closely associated concept
of cosmological space in her very readable book Measuring the Universe,
subtitled The Historical Quest to Quantify
Space.
In 1965 Arno Allan Penzias
(1933- ) a German-born American and another American, Robert Woodrow
Wilson (1936- ), were the first physicists to observe that microwave
radiations of 3.2 centimetres wavelength are arriving on earth from
all directions, after having passed through cosmic space as
concentric ripples. These radiations appear to be a remnant of a
primeval explosion and indicate that cosmic space now has a
temperature of about 3º above absolute zero. Although the
temperature would have been extremely high immediately after the
initial explosion, probably in the order of
1022 degrees centigrade, the very rapid cooling
accompanying universal expansion would have allowed atoms to form
quickly, then gases, followed over immense periods of time by the
evolution of galaxies, stars and planets. Within this process, it is
estimated that the earth would have come into existence about 4,500
million years ago. The concept of the big bang suggests that
the universe has a finite life. Many books explain theories for the
evolution of the universe, but some of the most interesting are God and the New Physics
and The Mind of God by
Professor Paul Davies and The Matter Myth by
Professor Paul Davies and John Gribbin.
A modification of the big bang concept, known
as the oscillating or cyclic theory, suggests
that the universe would not continue to expend indefinitely, but
that after a period of some 25,000 million to 60,000 million years
the cycle would reverse, until all material is again concentrated at
a single point as it was immediately before the primeval explosion.
This hypothesis suggests that such cycles could be repeated
indefinitely, allowing the universe to exist forever in an
oscillating state, but the period of oscillation appears to be
arbitrary. The available evidence indicates that the average density
of material in the universe would too low to arrest expansion and
initiate contraction, so it seems most unlikely that the whole
universe would oscillate in this fashion. However the collapsing of
heavy stars during the formation of black holes might be
analogous phenomena taking place on smaller scales within individual
galaxies.
In 1948 Hermann Bondi (1919- )
a Viennese-born British cosmologist, in conjunction with Frederick
Hoyle (1915- ) and Thomas Gold (1920- ), two British astronomers,
proposed a concept they called the steady state theory.
Their hypothesis was that as old galaxies disappear from the observable universe, new
ones evolve from material created spontaneously where nothing had
existed previously. The proponents of the concept gave no reasons
for ignoring the old galaxies, apparently assuming that the disappearing galaxies
would cease to exist, because otherwise the mass of the universe
would progressively increase, which is contrary to the observed laws
relating to the conservation of energy. Although the steady state theory was
popular for a number of years, the concept has been abandoned
because it has not been possible to answer several serious
objections that were raised.
The most recent scientific
investigations that have been carried out on the expansion of the
universe are interesting, because they appear to exclude any
possibility that either an oscillating or a
steady state universe, similar to those envisaged
in the theories outlined above, could exist. Two independent
projects have found evidence that the universe is expanding at an
accelerating rate. One project was carried out by Dr Brian Schmidt
working with other astronomers of the Australian National
University’s Mount Stromlo Observatory and the other by Dr Matthew
Colless of the Australian National University working with
scientists of the University of New South Wales, the
Anglo-Australian Observatory near Coonabarabran and British
scientists led by Professor George Afstathiou. In 1995 Dr Schmidt
and his team began a study of supernovas, which are stars suffering
an explosive death. During several years of observation they
discovered that the more distant stars were fainter and therefore
further away than their distances would be if calculated on the
basis of standard parameters. In 1998 they reached the conclusion
that the only explanation for the observed phenomenon is that the
rate of expansion of the universe must be accelerating. In the other
project five years were spent mapping the positions and velocities
of 220,000 galaxies. The team then compared their results with
microwave data that others had used to prepare a map of the universe
150,000 years after the big bang. When they had
made the comparison Dr Colless announced early in 2002 that the
universe could only have reached its present size if its rate of
expansion has been accelerating. Thus an accelerating rate of
expansion of the universe has been confirmed by two independent
studies using completely different methods.
Commenting on these recent
discoveries, Dr Colless remarked that as recently as 1998
astrophysicists were debating whether gravity could slow down the
rate of expansion sufficiently to satisfy the requirements of the
oscillating theory and cause the universe to collapse,
or to satisfy the requirements of the
steady state theory. The Australian and British
scientists said they have not yet discovered the processes that are
accelerating the expansion of the universe, which began with the
big bang about 15,000 million years ago and apparently
defies the known forces of gravity. Could this phenomenon be the
result of dark forces related to the dark
matter that is essential to make up the difference between
the mass of the visible elements of the universe and the assessed
total mass of the universe? Whatever the underlying causes may be,
Dr Colless said that eventually the rate of acceleration will cause
the more distant galaxies we can see now to move away faster than
the speed of light, so that they will “disappear over the horizon”.
He also said that most galaxies would vanish from our view in the
long term, although the Milky Way and its nearest neighbours would
continue to be held together by gravity and would seem to travel on
alone. This new concept, that the rate of expansion of the universe
will ultimately exceed the speed of light, has interesting
connotations in relation to the conservation of energy and also in
the context of Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity
discussed earlier and expressed by the equation E = mc²
where c is
the velocity of light.
A new era of space exploration
was initiated when the Hubble space telescope was launched into
orbit on the space shuttle Discovery in April 1990. The Hubble
telescope orbits the earth at an altitude of 610 kilometres, where
the light from distant galaxies is not obscured by the earth’s
atmosphere, ensuring that its optical performance is many times
better than can be achieved by any earth based instrument. Many
important space projects require several years, often many years of
observations and careful calculations to achieve results, but
already the Hubble telescope has provided valuable data to assist
our search into the origin and development of our universe. We
cannot envisage what discoveries will be made in the future using
this and other instruments not yet invented, but some details of a
few of the recent discoveries will indicate the potential. In 1994
astronomers of Rice University in Texas were observing 110 young
stars in the Orion Nebula, a cloud of interstellar gas about 1,500
light years from earth. The Hubble telescope produced pictures of
amazing clarity, enabling astronomers to study how planets form from
the huge discs of dust, the proto-planetary discs, surrounding at
least half the stars being studied. Eventually that dust coagulates
into the planets, moons and asteroids of a solar system.
During December 1995 the
Hubble telescope was focused for ten consecutive days on a narrow
sector of the sky, taking long-exposure photographs deeper into
space than had ever before been possible. As a result, scientists
have revised their estimates of the total galactic population to
about 50 million, five times their previous estimate. Putting this
into perspective, our sun is one of the estimated 50 billion to
100 billion stars in the Milky Way, which is considered to be an
ordinary galaxy. While the Hubble telescope was focused on the
centre of the Milky Way in 1997 it photographed a galactic giant
called the Pistol Star, possibly once the biggest star in the
universe. Estimated to have been 10 million times more powerful than
our sun, the Pistol Star is still large enough to engulf our solar
system beyond the orbit of the earth. Scientists estimate that it
releases as much energy in six seconds as our sun does in a year.
Sirius is the brightest star seen from earth, about 23 times
brighter than the sun. The Pistol Star is 10 million times brighter
than the sun, but cannot be seen with the naked eye because of
interstellar dust.
Another mystery of the
universe was revealed by the Hubble telescope in 2002, when it
photographed what is called Hoag’s Object, which appears as a circle
about 120,000 light years in diameter, compared to our ragged and
roughly oval shaped Milky Way with a major axis of about 100,000
light years. The huge yellowish core of Hoag’s Object is about
30,000 light years in diameter and comprised of old yellow stars.
The core is surrounded by an annulus that is about 20,000 light
years wide, which astronomers believe is populated with clusters of
stars fainter than even the Hubble telescope can detect. The core
and annulus are surrounded by a brilliant corona about 35,000 light
years wide, comprised of young hot blue stars. Scientists at the
California Institute of Technology found a new body in the outer
reaches of the Kuiper belt in June 2002 called Quaoar. It is about
1,250 kilometres in diameter, roughly half the size of Pluto and a
third the size of our moon, the largest body discovered in the solar
system since Pluto in 1930. It orbits the sun every 288 years, but
little else is yet known about it.
The period from when the earth
came into existence about 4,500 million years ago until about 600
million years ago is the Cryptozoic Eon on the geological time
scale, from the Greek words krupte and zoe meaning hidden life. Previously
called Precambrian, it is equivalent to the period covered by the
Biblical phrase "in the beginning".
During this period the earth solidified and the first primitive life
emerged. The geologically stable regions underlying the continents
are called the Precambrian shields. Their formation began during the
Archaeozoic Era from about 3,500 million years to 2,500 million
years ago and continued into the Proterozoic Era that ended about
600 million years ago. These Eras are named from the Greek words arkhaois, proteros and zoe, which respectively
mean ancient, former and life. The recent
biological tests on prochloron cells which co-exist in the sea
squirt, indicate that they contain all forms of chlorophyll and are
descended from primeval photo-synthetic bacteria, possibly the
earth's oldest living organism and dating from the beginning of the
Archaeozoic Era.
On the geological time scale
the 600 million years since the Proterozoic Era constitutes the
Phanerozoic Eon, from the Greek words phaneros and zoe meaning visible life. The
Phanerozoic Eon is subdivided into three eras. The oldest, lasting
about 370 million years, was the Paleozoic Era, from the Greek word
palaios meaning ancient. During the
first 190 million years of the Paleozoic Era, called the Early Period, abundant
marine life developed and ranged from worms, trilobites, sponges and
coral to shellfish and primitive vertebrate fish. During the last
180 million years of the Paleozoic Era, called the Late Period, primitive
plant life proliferated and vertebrate fish developed extensively.
Some fish adapted to become amphibians, from which land-based
reptiles evolved, including both the sail-back and mammal-like
species. Then followed the intermediate or Mesozoic Era, from the
Greek word mesos meaning middle,
lasting about 170 million years. The Mesozoic Era was notable for
the development of vast forests; flowering plants and a multitude of
insect species; for herbivorous and carnivorous dinosaurs; for
marine reptiles; for birds; and for the first primitive mammals
about 190 million years ago. The Paleozoic and Mesozoic Eras both
closed with episodes of massive extinctions, including the dinosaurs
and many other groups of marine and terrestrial reptiles.
The youngest or Cainozoic Era,
in which we live, began about 60 million years ago and is named from
the Greek word koinos meaning common. This is the
period of recent life known as the "age of mammals", during
which most modern birds and all of the marine and terrestrial
animals that we know have evolved. The earliest primates began to
evolve about the beginning of the present era and the earliest
primitive anthropoids about 35 million years ago. However the
greatest of all events in the present or Cainozoic Era was the
emergence of modern humans, Homo sapiens sapiens,
who most probably are descended from Homo erectus. The oldest
known fossils of Homo sapiens in Africa
date from 150,000 to 100,000 years ago and in Australia from 100,000
to 50,000 years ago. An interesting and informative coverage of the
evolution of the earth is available in Harold Levin’s book entitled
The Earth Through Time
first issued in 1929, but updated editions include recent
information on such aspects as tectonic plates, the origin of the
continents and continental drift.
Fossils of early anthropoids,
monkeys and ape-like animals that were mostly tree dwellers, date
from about 20 million years ago and have been found in Africa, Asia,
Europe and South America. Skull fragments found in India in 1932 and
comparable fragments discovered later in Kenya were named Ramapithecus. Because of
their jaw and tooth structures they were thought to be an immediate
ancestor of humans or possibly an early type of hominid, originally
believed to have evolved at least 15 million and possibly 30 million
years ago. However, genetic measurements that were made in the 1970s
and 1980s, some using proteins and others using various forms of
nucleic acid, all indicate that any divergence from apes to humans
must have been about 5 million years ago, excluding Ramapithecus from the
direct line of descent of modern humans. In 2002 a team led by
Michel Brunet of the University of Poitiers announced the discovery
of a 7 million years old skull, called Toumai, in the
Djurab desert of northern Chad, which they claim is hominid, but
experts around the world have disputed the claim for a variety of
reasons so its origin has not been settled.
The earliest known hominids,
the Australopithecines who
had a more or less erect posture, lived from about 1,700,000 to
700,000 years ago. Their skeletal remains were first discovered in
1924 in limestone cliffs in Botswana, but since then many have been
discovered in southern Africa, Ethiopia and Tanganyika. Although
their brain was relatively small and their jaws ape-like, their
pelvis and lower extremities closely resembled those of modern
humans. "Lucy" is one of the
well-known examples of the Australopithecines,
found in the Afar Desert of Ethiopia in 1974. Donald Johanson, the
American anthropologist who found the fossilised remains, maintains
that "Lucy" was a true
ancestor of modern humans, but this is hotly contested by Richard
Leakey who, like his parents, is an expert on early humanity and has
spent his life seeking and studying fossils in Africa.
Many of the fossil fragments
unearthed by the Leakey family and their associates in the Olduvai
Gorge in Tanzania during the 1960s are very similar to Australopithecus, but
they have a larger brain and their face and teeth are more
human-like, so they have been classified as members of a parallel
branch called Homo habilis, meaning handy man. Many fossils
since unearthed in Ethiopia and Kenya indicate that Homo habilis existed
from about 2.5 million years ago until as recently as 1.5 million
years ago. Because excavations at several of the fossil sites in
Africa prove that members of the Homo habilis branch and
the more recent Homo erectus branch
co-existed, it is believed that Homo erectus may have
evolved from Homo habilis. The first
hominid to use fire and to migrate from Africa was Homo erectus,
who lived in several areas in eastern and southern Africa from about
1.5 million years ago until as recently as about 500,000 years ago.
Remains of Homo erectus found in
caves near Beijing in China are accompanied by evidence of cooking
fires and stone tools. After them were Homo sapiens, or wise man, who lived
between 250,000 and 200,000 years ago, based on the ages of the
oldest fossil found in the Thames Valley in England and the youngest
fossil found at Steinheim in Germany. After that period there is a
break in the fossil record until about 70,000 years ago.
Next to appear was Homo sapiens
neanderthalenis, or Neanderthal man, who is
known to have lived from at least 70,000 years ago until 40,000
years ago. The name Neanderthal combines
Greek and German words literally meaning Newman's Valley, which
is near Dusseldorf in Germany, where workers digging limestone in
1856 found bones of Neanderthals in one of
the caves. They walked erect, lived in caves and closely resembled
modern humans, but were shorter and stockier. They had heavy brow
ridges, but their brain was as large as that of modern humans.
Remains of Neanderthals have been
found in various parts of Europe and also in northern Africa, as
well as in western and central Asia.
The branches called Homo habilis, Homo erectus and Homo sapiens are
considered to be either the direct ancestors of Homo sapiens sapiens,
the modern humans, or to be very closely related. The earliest human
remains identical with modern humans were found in Borneo and are
40,000 years old, while others 30,000 years old were found in New
South Wales and 20,000 years old were found in France. However, it
is believed that some of the very recent discoveries in New South
Wales may be as old as 60,000 years. There is evidence of human
occupation from 20,000 years ago in the Andes Mountains in South
America, but as yet no human fossils of that age have been
discovered there. The foregoing summary includes the well-known
links in the chain of human evolution, but there are many more
species that have appeared for longer or shorter periods, either as
adaptations of or in parallel with them. Interesting books on human
origins and evolution include The Making of Mankind by
Richard Leakey and its sequel Origins Reconsidered by
Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin prepared after another ten years
work. Others are The Wisdom of Bones by
Alan Walker and Pat Shipman and The Neanderthal Enigma
by James Shreeve.
The foregoing summary of the
evolution of human beings begins with the early anthropoids about 20
million years ago and continues through to the oldest known fossil
remains that are similar to modern humans, which possibly are about
60,000 years old. This summary may give the impression that the
chain of human evolution has been positively established, but it has
not. In fact the known fossil records of modern humans are
comparatively rare except in relation to the last 10,000 years or
so. Whilst there are many similarities between humans and other
anthropoids and there is clear evidence of human evolution, there is
no conclusive proof that humans are descended from any other branch
of anthropoids. The so-called "missing link" has never
been found, if indeed there is one. An American scientist, Dr
Richard Thompson, spent nine years investigating the orthodox theory
that humans are descended from apes and has assembled a great deal
of contrary evidence in his book entitled Forbidden Archaeology,
written in collaboration with Michael Cremo.
Darwin's theory of evolution
presupposes that known species have evolved from earlier species,
adapting to suit changing conditions and the need to survive. In
fact the available evidence indicates that most life in the animal
kingdom burst into existence during the Cambrian Explosion about
500 million years ago, when the body structures and shapes of the
various species were established. Species seem to have come into
existence suddenly, then to have existed sometimes briefly and
sometimes for millions of years without change. Some species have
abruptly passed into extinction while others still exist. The fossil
records show very little structural change in any given species,
even when it has continued in existence for tens of millions of
years. Many closely similar species have existed concurrently
throughout the fossil record, so why should humans be any different?
It seems most likely that humans also have existed concurrently with
other anthropoids since they came into existence, as they do
now.
There is no apparent or
logical reason why humans should have evolved from apes. Fossil and
archaeological evidence indicates that the evolutionary changes that
have taken place in human beings have not been paralleled in the
apes, from which humans supposedly descended in order to survive. A
good example is the fact that the size of an ape's brain has
remained unchanged for millions of years, whereas the human brain
has progressively grown larger. Humans have developed speech, but
apes have not. The structure and operation of the windpipe and
gullet of a human being are not like those of an ape, but are
similar to those of an aquatic mammal! Although few human bones have
been found in the fossil evidence, this does not necessarily
indicate that human beings have not existed for many millions of
years. The archaeological evidence indicates that even in
prehistoric times humans have buried their dead, which suggests that
their fossilised bones would seldom if ever be found with other
fossilised remains.
Notwithstanding the foregoing
comments, bones judged to be human have been found embedded in coal
that is estimated to be more than 280 million years old. Several
artefacts considered to be of undoubted human origin have been found
in various localities embedded in rock and in coal ranging in age
from 260 million to 387 million years. Fossilised footprints,
identical to those of modern humans, have been found among dinosaur
footprints in strata that are between 110 million and 250 million
years old at several sites in America and in strata about 4 million
years old in Tanzania. Michael Baigent reviews these discoveries in
Ancient Mysteries,
sub-titled A History through Evolution and
Magic, indicating that humans have existed for tens of
millions of years longer than is generally believed. The evidence
presented in Forbidden Archaeology
and Ancient Mysteries
supports the hypothesis that humans have always coexisted with other
anthropoids.
A belief in the Divine Creator
is the foundation of freemasonry, in which the universe is
considered to be the visible superstructure of the Divine Creator’s
domain. Astronomy, historical geology, palaeontology and the
associated sciences have found conclusive evidence of evolution in
the inanimate universe and in all forms of life inhabiting the
earth. Modern estimates show the universe to be about 15,000 million
years old and the earth about 4,500 million years old. The primeval
bacteria-like cell, prochloron, appeared on
earth about 3,500 million years ago and vertebrates have been
evolving over the last 500 million years, but modern humans only
have a proven existence of less than 100,000 years. Nevertheless,
scientific studies have shown that humans are linked by structural
similarities and body chemistry to the primeval lungfish, to the
prosimian shrews that were the precursors of the primate order and
also to the ice-age hunter-gatherers. The evolution of the universe
and of life on earth has been traced in some detail, but the
creation of matter has not yet be explained in rational terms and is
still as great mystery as ever.
Acceptance of the evolutionary
theory of the universe does not obviate the fundamental requirement
that matter must have been created as a catalyst for the primeval
explosion referred to as the big bang, because it is
not rational to assume that matter materialised spontaneously from
empty space. Both time and space must also have been created in
which matter could exist. These factors all support the concept of a
Divine Creator. The complexities involved in creating the big bang and the
subsequent processes of evolution require at least as much
omniscience and omnificence of a Divine Creator as would the
creation of all things their final form. These factors and our
continuing inability to discover the source and ultimate purpose of
life, strongly suggest that there must be some hidden purpose in the
creation, beyond the present scope of human knowledge and
comprehension. All of these aspects sustain a belief that there is
an intimate union between the Divine spirit and the human soul. Thus
cosmology is seen to uphold rather than to extinguish the precepts
of freemasonry.
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