First, Muslims insist that who/whatever that was on the Cross, it/he died for good and it wasn’t Jesus. Other stories conflate Noah, Moses, and the Pharaoh as though they were contemporaries. I could be wrong on the fine print, but it was a major Biblical figure a thousand years or more away from Moses/Pharaoh on the time line.

GOD of the Old Testament, and the New, can get upset and nasty, but it takes handfuls of generations before HE boils over and sends a neighboring power, Assyria, to take Israel to the salt mines – they never came back and the Book of Mormon claims that they crossed the Bering Strait and became / blended with Native Americans. Side note: Take a look through a hilarious movie called Blazing Saddles; there you may notice an Indian chief, cameo’d by Mel Brooks himself, speaking Yiddish. Mel, it seems, was having a funny at their expense. End side note.

Israel lost for good around 730 to 720 BCE – Jerusalem, or Judah from which we get Judaism and Jew, fell to Babylon around 565 BCE but was restored roughly 70 years later when Babylon got overrun by the Persians, and the new king rubbed their noses in it by sending the Jews back with a big letter of credit and instructions to rebuild the wall. None of this is hinted at in the Muslim Scripture.

GOD in the Muslim Scripture acquired the name Allah around 630 CE, or half way through their prophet’s tenure. Prior to that the name belonged to the pagan Arab Moon Goddess. Thus when Muslim texts allege that Moses et al were Muslims, the got GOD’s name wrong, to say nothing of the fact that their GOD was utterly unlike the Muslim version.

The Christian Trinity is latent in dozens of so-clear-you-can’t-miss them passages all through the Gospel of John, alone. Jesus for instance allowed a Samaritan woman to worship Him – and a couple of dozen different times Jesus uses, in the original Greek text scribed by John himself, a term for I AM than can only refer to GOD’s name as HE gives it in the Pentateuch. The prize of these is during His trial in the temple court just prior to being crucified, when what he says (“Moses was glad to see my day,” hinting that Moses the identity outlasted Moses the physical body) “and before Moses was, I AM.” John’s gospel in its first two verses connects the WORD with GOD, and states that the WORD took human flesh as Jesus. He lived here to endure the privations and insults of a human life, to among other things offer His human body unto death on the cross such that all sins of all humans who ever have lived / do live / will live are ‘paid’ – the wages of sin are death.

So to say that a Trinity is a polytheism is a distinction without a difference. Can a worm decide that ten toes make ten people vs just ONE? In the same vein, how can a created being employing three pounds of wet chemical computer contrive a definitive answer to the nature and makeup of his Creator? This is just one of the panoply of confusions and errors which Islam today treats as ultimate truth, not because they make any sense whatsoever, but because Authority is revered in their culture while logic is belittled – – – – the three pound computer idea from their perspective.

I feel like the ad pitch man on late nite TV, “Only $19.95, but wait, there’s more!”

A lot more.

I think it’s context. Folks whose immediate family, friends, and so on may tend to disbelieve earth science because they read Genesis 1 as both history and science, when it’s certain to be liturgy, a Deed of Title, and nothing more than that. They wind up experiencing enormous “cognitive dissonance” with climate scientists whose work helps in any way to establish that this third rock from the sun isn’t really new, hence can have “climates” going back millions of years.

It’s also a truism that people tend to “vote their wallet,” and find rationalizations after the fact to support their choices. This includes those who dispute the proven truth that man has changed and continues to wreck the climate. Carbon producing industries, beginning with coal and oil but going well beyond that constitute a powerful lobby. Opportunistic lobbyists and politicians pay attention; the cynical adage that “Money talks” is actually a truism.

If you’re not from there, I doubt you have any problems with science at all.

Those who feel committed to the idea that the gigatons of CO2 we put into the atmosphere annually have nothing to do with changing earth’s climate are the ones who value politicians’ understanding of science highly, and accuse scientists of having a poor grasp of politics. No one likes science with they find inconvenient.

With regard to Genesis 1 (and bearing in mind that Genesis 2 posits an alternate Creation account) I believe that GOD said “Let there be light” as in Genesis 1:3. The Word expressed it, as of the opening verses of the Gospel of John. But that happened 13-odd billion years ago as we know it. Who on earth am I to second-guess GOD’s timing, technique, or means of revealing Himself? Especially when GOD did say, “Look into the heavens to see my signs and wonders,” but did not say “. . but don’t look too close, lest you become confused.”

Looking into the heavens has, in the past century-plus, shown us signs and wonders that paint a far far more vivid picture of Creation. So it’s also 13.8 billion years old? Who am I to second-guess GOD’s timing and methods? – Especially when ‘vast’ turns out to mean two hundred sextillion stars in the visible universe?

A bit long-winded; I’ll try to be brief. And will the right kind of scientist happen by and correct the inevitable mistakes, ‘cuz I read a lot, but don’t have the degree.

MYA = Million Years Ago

5MYA a common simian ancestor speciated.

What’s that? Multiple populations lost touch with each other and drifted genetically to the point they could no longer interbreed.

One descendant led to the chimpanzee. Don’t ask me about bonobos, apes, great apes, monkeys, etc. Suffice it to say that homo sapiens and pan troglodytes have a common ancestor from about then.

Well established as a forest species, homo sapiens’ progenitor found a mix of trees and savannah such that going to the ground worked pretty well. Due to circumstances, the forest faded away but the population stayed put, and adapted to ground life.

During this period changes to feet and pelvis made walking upright much easier.

Around 2MYA the climate went through several rough patches, where the modus operandi wired into the genome stopped being advantageous, and the ability to suss out new ways to find food, water, and shelter turned out to be a real advantage.

From then until relatively recently, about every .2MY (200,000 years) the weather would do another jump-shift. That’s on the order of ten different times when having a more reactive brain paid off. That’s where a relatively small number of DNA changes led to brains that develop in a much more organized 3D matrix, and a bigger-deeper matrix, resulting eventually in today’s brain case size.

In fact the neanderthal variety was capable of interbreeding but apparently incapable of generating sophisticated speech. A risky change that lets a human choke on his own vomit also facilitated much more sophisticated vocalizations. This in turn allowed the development of complex speech, hence complex culture.

Homo neanderthal had somewhat bigger brain cases than we did then or do today. But without the gift of gab, they “got voted off the island” for being too poorly organized to resist homo sapiens’ much greater ability to coordinate and scheme.

.250 to .225 MYA a single female line of mitochondrial DNA survived a really really harsh weather period. We have the right to call her Eve. Most large mammal species in Africa have DNA that traces back to farthest-possible single ancestors that are also about that recent. We can tell by the relatively small degree of dissimilarity in non-critical DNA stretches.

About .075 MYA a single male line of Y chromosomes wiped out all the others. All men today carry a Y chromosome that differs from any other Y on the planet by only about 75K years of accumulated genetic drift. So he’s Adam. He’s also African. I am going out on a limb and guessing that some other DNA advantage is what made that progenitor the ultimate winner in the race to reproduce. All of that individual’s progeny outcompeted all other progeny.

For what it’s worth, this is a layman’s account.

The request specifies a sonnet. I prefer the 4–4–4–2 format: three grammatically complete four-line stanzas plus a closing couplet that packs either a pithy summary or a surprise ending.

And I choose an acrostic sonnet just because that’s my sense of humor. So, 14 letters concerning the environment. Hmmm – the oceans will cover up most areas currently situated less than 25 feet above current sea level because we’ve already put enough CO2 into the skies today to get us there. Why is that? Because the effect is cumulative, and each new thumpty-thousand tons of the stuff adds, and adds, and adds, until there’s a new stable state. So if we see an effect now, – – it hasn’t reached its stable state. Even if our carbon footprint goes to zero, global weather will continue to warm up – – – it will be a rough ride. We don’t need to cut back on our carbon footprint, we need to go negative and in a BIG way. Like, in the next 20 years, undo the prior 200 or so.

How? Fusion power will supply the energy needed to scavenge CO2 from the atmosphere. Convert it into humpty-thumpty-billions of tons of carbon fiber and carbon sheet materials. That should make a futurist’s eyes bug out.

’Scuse me but 14 letters is 14, and carbon footprint is 15.

Come listen now and hear the tale of smoke
And air and trapping heat. The blanket sits
Real high up there; it takes a science bloke,
Beset to ‘splain it to us layman shits.
On come the usu’l suspects, claiming cash
Negates the pointy-headed science guys;
“Forgive me dearie, but it’s plain their mash-
Up factoids aren’t unanimous: get wise!
Two whole percent of scientists now say
“Poo-poo to you, their proof is less-than-tight,”
Refreshing those who need a way to slay
In toto what the ninety-eight call right.
No doubt about it, boys and girls, forsooth,
Too many fools mix short-term bliss with ‘truth’.

Me!  Me!

FIRST: Genesis 1 just has to be liturgy. This is easy to establish if you look at the repetition and poetic expression.

SECOND: Genesis 2 contains a retelling with fewer days and a different sequence. Hence, Genesis 1 is ritual, not recorded history.

THIRD: Trying to hamstring the way GOD reveals Himself is childish and arrogant. Read that again – childish, and arrogant. Side note – we are bidden to come to Jesus “after the manner of a child,” but not at the cost of an adult understanding of what He has made. “In the fulness of time” regards the annunciation to Mary that she would bear the Son of Man; a 13.8 billion year old universe is 3.2 million times “six thousand years” so “in the fulness of time” is 3.2 million times more impressive. Given a GOD beyond our understanding, who is it that wants to quibble time and methods with GOD? I don’t think it worked for Job – who could want to be the next Job? End note

FOUR: God said, “Let there be light.” All things that were made were made by the Word. Putting Genesis 1:3 and the first few verses of John 1 together, it becomes clear that while the Bible is many things, it is spiritually true: GOD tells us in terms that don’t need a background in science that HE made the universe, and left a hint for scientists.

FIVE: It’s astronomers’ current best guess that there are two hundred sextillion stars in the visible universe. That’s a 2 followed by 23 zeroes or 2E23. Please try not to hamstring God’s timing and methods by insisting that GOD’s WORD is science. Science didn’t exist until the Renaissance, and GOD’s WORD was perfect for pre-scientific peoples. Can you try to second-guess GOD (Job did, and failed, so tread lightly) in sharing a more thorough explanation of e.g. the Big Bang with pre-scientfic people?

From another angle, did GOD ever say, “Look into the heavens to see my signs and wonders, but don’t look too close?” We did look, closer and closer: GOD’s wonders have vast grandeur, on a scale that takes modern science to even glimpse.

I believe in Christ as my savior and Lord. I won’t find it necessary to look, once I reach heaven, for the two folks (Adam and Eve) without navels. Look at what Jesus said about marriage partners in heaven – “There is neither marrying nor giving in marriage.” So do we have any idea whether a perfect body will have a navel or genitalia?

Christians possess a Truth and a GOD whose dimensions, love, and capacity to forgive beggar any description a three-pound wet computer (a.k.a. human brain) can ever hope to construct.

And, since forever, we are to turn to GOD with broken and repentant hearts, accept Jesus’ blood as our cleansing, and try gently to draw others to a similar understanding. According to Paul, this is the important center of faith. All other matters may have different understandings among Christians. For these command is to show gentle acceptance and peace to fellow Believers without pointless quibbles over differing interpretations. So if a 6,000 year old Universe is important to you, I bless your faith in GOD. Since it makes no sense to me, I hope that you will also bless my faith in GOD and Christ Jesus my Savior.

“Arabic” numerals as found in Arabic script aren’t likely to look like the western script digits 0, 1, .. .. , 9.

This is top-of-the-head, but I’d guess that an ‘Arabic’ numeral would ltend to resemble Arabic script, while the Western numeric digits look a great deal like the Western alphabetic characters. The kinship should become obvious when putting the two alphabets and number sets side by side.

Instead, we use ‘Arabic’ notation. Romans gave numeric meanings to letters of their alphabet. I is 1, V is five, X is ten, L is fifty, C is one hundred, D is five hundred and M is one thousand. Doing math with letters got fairly complicated, so dividing 1113 by 3 to get 371 really means dividing MCXIII by III to et CCCLXXI. Roman notation could express whole numbers, but had no tools to add subtract multiply or divide.

The idea that zero could deserve its own symbol shocked set-in-their ways Europeans until, somewhere around 1,000 or 1,100 CE, Arabic notation, i.e. using base ten and just ten symbols to express any size number, finally broke through tradition.

“If God had meant man to fly, He’d have given him wings” vs “If God had know his children would adopt heathen arithmetic, He’d have started a second Flood.” – That kind of resistance took a while to overcome.

Can you imagine the inventor of the logarithm, and the early astronomers who calculated the orbits of the planets, doing that with letters and without a decimal point?

The question seems to include a “you can’t get there from here” premise. The real answer is fairly simple, and only requires that the questioner slide a step or so away from deeply rigid ideas of God, Sin and “change”.

Without the fine print, God said (Genesis 1:3) “Let there be light” but that was 13.8 billion years ago. John 1:1–2 names Jesus as the Word who made all things that were made, so if you take the Spirit part of the Trinity as breath and ’said’ as releasing the Word  as second part of the Trinity, we wind up with a span of time, 13.8 billion years, and scope, two hundred sextillion stars in the viewable universe, or 2 followed by twenty-three 0’s. Neither number is of major consequence to an infinite God, and evolution of homo sapiens on OUR planet revolving around OUR star collapses to “an inconvenient truth.”

In short, choosing to inhibit GOD from revealing Himself more than via one brief liturgy, i.e. Genesis 1, looking the other way when we find a different telling with fewer days and a different sequence in Genesis 2, we commit a grave mistake. Never quibble with the Infinite over purpose, methods, or timing. Recall what happened when Job tried that. (Job withdrew his objections, and GOD redoubled his material riches.)

Should we try that, with the 13.8 billion and 2E23 numbers? Nowhere will you find GOD telling His children, “Look into the skies to see my many signs and wonders, but don’t look too close, lest you become confused.” Rather, God reveals Himself in full detail when we peer into the vastness of space. We count galaxies, and draw the inescapable conclusion that  the original Israelites wouldn’t have known what to do with things He discloses now via the overwhelming beauty of His complex Creation. If you thought “in the fulness of time” related to six thousand years, try thirteen point eight – you need to multiply by three point two million.

We wound up being created with free will and emotions and a degree of intelligence. Taking those together, we were created imperfect and sinful. Yes a perfect and loving God made us; ask HIM why He did it this way, but don’t expect any better answer that Job got when decided to question God.

Greater love hath no man than to lay down his life for another – and greater love hath no God than to crowd himself into a human shell, endure its pains and problems for 30-plus years (my nickel says born in June of 2 BCE, visited by Wise Men on 25 December of that year, precisely in “the fullness of time” and with a loving chuckle from the Creator, and accepted the most humiliating and painful form of human death, laying down His life so that we may be washed clean and enabled to enter into Heaven.

Change? That’s the nature of free will and intelligence, both of which we presume allow us to think of ourselves as made in God’s image.

Of course, there is the distinct possibility that God’s Creation is so subtle (ask any first-level particle physicist about the mysteries facing his or her cadre) that mankind has a VERY long way to go before reaching the bottom of that deep well of questions.

As to God seeking to remain hidden, I find revelations of God in Genesis, but in the form of liturgy; see how repetitive the verses are. Look closely and you will find, buried in the fine print of the second chapter, an alternative liturgy that gives only four days and slightly alters the sequence. So “liturgy” looks a far likelier choice than ‘history’ or, ahem, science.

Genesis 1:3 God said, “Let there be light.”

John 1:1,2 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things that were made were made by the Word.

The link looks deliberate – God said and the Word (did.)

But that was 13.8 billion years ago. Now consider “the fullness of time” — there is strong evidence to accept the Jewish New Year of 3 BCE as the date of the annunciation; nine months later there is strong evidence that Jesus was born. The kicker is that further strong evidence puts the Wise Men in Bethlehem on 25 December of 2 BCE. Can you hear a Loving God’s chuckle?

For one star out of, at current best count, two hundred sextillion (2 followed by twenty-three 0’s) should have planet earth orbiting around it, and situated such that humans would have Scriptures that predicted where and when to look, and what in the skies to look for, coincident with that “fullness of time” as described above? Truth in advertising, these aren’t my ideas. Rather, take a look at the DVD “Star of Bethlehem,” which makes a complex, detailed case for the above.

After viewing that DVD, the idea that God has remained deliberately hidden gets a lot weaker. We may be in our own “fullness of time” with respect to the Second Coming – but Christians have waited two thousand years so far. Can we quibble with the Infinite over billion year time scales, or methods e.g. evolution?

I think not. And I think it beneath merely silly to attempt to hog-tie the Infinite’s self-revelation to a bronze-age liturgy. God has so much to show us!

Turn it upside down.

FIRST collect the necessary cash, a tall order, by making a legal ‘grab’ of all medical insurance monies paid by employers. A clever lawyer and his brother, a clever ad man, can figure that one out.

SECOND keep all of the medical care / insurance establishment businesses going. HOW ON EARTH? It’s simple – just make their front line staff, people I’d like to call Deniers of First Resort, into Facilitators of First Resort. You’ll understand why once we get to the bottom:

THIRD Pool the actuaries of all the insurers (they figure odds of loss per demographic etc.) and get them to develop a universal table of risk. Everyone’s prior health history, life habits, DNA, race, income, parents’ income, hobbies, occupation, – – and a hundred fifty more details yada yada – to derive a table which has as many discrete buckets as the actuaries need to cover all of the corner cases.

FOURTH Assign, by choice or by lottery, assign a provider company to every person – including the under-the-table “guest” workers and their families, plus, as a favor to Europe, all of their citizens who visit the US. That company has a very important reason to remain your choice because your premium, which is pre-funded by the employer and employee Medicare tax payments all rolled together into a fifteen trillion dollar pie. And yes, that’s what we spend on medical care in this country, so the dollars DO exist. (And by the bye, we have better care, except for the fact that medical emergencies tend to bankrupt people, and lots of people aren’t in any of our systems.)

FIFTH Your premium, pulled from the table, reflects your real risk.

SIXTH Funding: Your medicare tax is graduated to your income. Today low wage workers can’t possibly afford good care, but now that worry is gone.

SEVENTH The sicker folks, end-of-life people whose medical bills in the last two years of life exceed all prior medical bills for years 0 to whatever, bring in huge bucks as premiums, and the providers know that if they fight hard to retain your loyalty today, they’ll get to manage those funds that go along with your annual risk.

EIGHTH You get to fire your provider at will. And every year on your birthday you need to re-up, so the provider will do whatever it can to make that happen.

NINTH Are we there yet? Europe does this in a much more pedestrian way, with some great differences. Holland’s government writes one medical care contract, and its insurers abide by it. In France every little country doctor is part of the whole medical complex.

T R Reid wrote a great book on how the rest of the world handles medical care, and it is great reading.

VERSUS Nowhere else does a medical emergency pose the rest of bankruptcy.

VERSUS Nowhere else does a homeless person pray to be delivered to the ER entrance of a Charity hospital – and most big cities do have those.

VERSUS Nowhere else do you have to choose between a low cost insurer who provides shoddy care, vs a great insurer who costs a lot.

ARE WE THERE YET?