Mother Earth

I was not sure I wanted to tile this chapter Mother Earth. Too many people and groups that seem to worship the earth, rather than just respect it, use this term. Many of these people and groups are the ones that believe that we should go backward hundreds of years in the progress of mankind. They believe that the earth is sacred and any progress than mankind makes is detrimental to it. However, I could not think of a better term to use for this big ball on which we rush through space. After all, it is the basis for everything else it contains, so in that respect it is mother earth. This chapter will look basically at the air, water and all of the inorganic matter that comprises this globe. We will leave the animate objects to be discussed at much more length later.

One of the first things we have to look at is the age of the earth itself. As I mentioned in chapter one, there is a lot of difference of opinion on this matter. Creationists who take the Holy Bible as the literal word of God, consider the earth to be between seven and eight thousand years old. They base this belief on the seven days mentioned in Genesis as being seven twenty-four hour days. Using that as their basis and following the time lines in the bible they arrive at this number. On the other hand, scientists who believe in the big bang or other theories about how the universe was formed, believe that the earth is millions or even billions of years old. They come up with these numbers by various scientific methods of dating fossils and other things. The problem for this group is that many times, when a new discovery is made, it throws the theory they held all asunder. The third belief is the creationists who believe that the seven days mentioned in the bible were seven indeterminate time periods. If God had not yet created light, how could the measurement be made? God is timeless, so to Him time is unimportant. the people who believe this feel that the word day was used in the bible to give the people of old testament time an understanding. how else could you explain to the uneducated people of that time period the meaning of millions of years? I personally am a creationist and believe in the seven twenty-four hour days, but leave my mind open for the indeterminate time periods. As you read this you can decide for yourself which one is correct. I have tried not to be too inflexible and yet not go against my belief.

First we are going to take a trip back in time. For this example we are going to use the scientific way of looking at it and go back about a million years. In the evolutionist's theory most life other than mankind had appeared on the earth by this time. The order of appearance, according to evolutionists, went something like this: protozoa, metazoa, invertebrates, seaweed, fish, land plants, amphibians, reptiles, apes and monkeys and finally the precursor of mankind, the early hominids. I hope I have that in the right order because not having lived in that era I have to take other people's word for it. Actually, God said "Let there be" and there was. But getting back to evolutionist thinking, during the time, prior to one million B.C. vast changes were taking both on and within the earth. Layers of earth were being formed, mountains were being formed, eliminated and reformed. Continents were being formed, covered by oceans and reappearing in a different shape. Seas, lakes, rivers and oceans were being moved from one location to another. Land masses that were under the oceans became high and dry. Another thing that was happening during this time was that a lot of plants and animals were dying, decaying and being turned into various things such as topsoil. As the upheavals such as volcanoes, earth quakes and other earth changing occurrences continued, as oceans continued to shift locations, this decaying plant and animal life became embedded deeper and deeper in the earth. These are the things that, due to the earth's pressure and time, have become our fossil fuels. They became the coal, the oil, the natural gas and even the diamonds we have today.

Now let us take a look at how it might have been under the seven days of creation. After God created the earth and everything on it, we do not really know what it looked like. The continents may well have been different than they are now. After a few thousand years there was a flood over the entire earth. There are now many scientific signs pointing to the fact that there was in fact a worldwide flood. When the flood waters receded, that is when the continents became what they are today. After that there would only be minor changes due to earth quakes, volcanoes, etc. The oil and coal and other fossil fuels, as they are called, were part of the earth and are probably being replenished continually. We may be using them a little faster than they can replenish themselves. If they are not replenishing themselves, how come every time the scientists tell us we are going to run out of oil by a certain date, we never do?

Back to the starting time of one million B.C. During the past million years, according to many scientists, we find several glacial periods. The first glacier came at the beginning of this million year period. The second glacier came at about five hundred thousand B.C., the third at about two hundred thousand B.C. and the forth and final one at about one hundred thousand B.C. Between each of these glacial periods there was a warming period. The period between the second and third glaciers was so warm that Europe supposedly had what could be considered a tropical. All of this without humans being there to muck everything. No pcb's, no smog, no pollution, no man made carbon dioxide, just nature. Remember this when we get to the chapter on global warming. Just nature caused all of the warming then, "How can that be?"

Until nest time remember I have two other blogs:
http://www.therealamericanpolitics.blogspot.com
http://www.sasl.blogspot.com