Noah's Flood: Did It Really Happen
An essay by Dahn Batchelor

According to the Bible, Noah’s Flood was both universal and catastrophic, resulting in the wholesale destruction of both human and animal life on the earth. But is it possible that it really happened?

“In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened.”

Many Christians take this account of the flood as described in Genesis as the gospel truth. Others, however, wonder if the story of Noah isn't rooted in some more local and less globally catastrophic event --- one memorable enough, however, to spawn a series of flood legends. Besides the Biblical story of the flood, other civilizations in the Eastern Mediterranean area also had significant flood legends, including the Greeks (who has Zeus creating a flood to punish the wicked), and the Sumerians and Babylonians, whose flood legends also include a righteous family, and an ark filled with creatures (the Sumerian version even had the ark's owner, a fellow named Utnapishtim, who released birds to find land.

The Epic of Gilgamesh is, perhaps, the oldest surviving written story on Earth. It comes to us from Ancient Sumeria, and was originally written on 12 clay tablets in cunieform script. It is about the adventures of the historical King of Uruk (somewhere between 2,750 and 2,500 BCE--meaning ‘before the common era’ as an alternative to ‘Before Christ’).

This story took place several thousand years after Noah appeared on earth. One of the stories included in the epic relates to the deluge. The essential story revolves around the relationship between Gilgamesh, a king who has become distracted and disheartened by his rule, and a friend, Enkidu, who is half-wild and who undertakes dangerous quests with Gilgamesh. Much of the epic focuses on Gilgamesh's feelings of loss following Enkidu's death however the eleventh (XI) tablet contains the flood myth that was mostly copied from the Epic of Atrahasis. Some aspects of the epic also seem to be similar to the story of Noah's ark in the Bible, and also parallel flood stories in many other cultures around the world, although it is a complicated matter to say what is the original inspiration for any of these, on which modern commentators have always been divided. The epic doesn’t go into much detail as to the depth of the deluge but it is suffice to say that when the rivers in that area overflowed, it is conceivable that the writer of the epic thought of the flooding of the plains as a deluge.

In 1999, two Columbia University researchers named William Ryan and Walter Pitman put out a book called Noah's Flood, which offered a tantalizing suggestion. According to them, the flood in question happened near the Black Sea around 7,000 years ago. At this time, their theory goes, glaciers left on the European continent from the last ice age melted, sending their runoff into the Mediterranean Sea. As the Mediterranean Sea swelled, it breached the land at the Bosporus Strait, near where Istanbul stands. This breach released a flood of water into a freshwater lake that sat where the Black Sea is today. This freshwater lake was quickly inundated with salty Mediterranean water (at the rate of six inches per day) and grew to the present size of the Black Sea within a couple of years --- bad news for the humans whose homes and villages were situated on the shores of the former freshwater lake, and certainly memorable enough to be the basis for many a flood story.

Ryan and Pittman's flood theory appeared to get a major boost in 2000, when famed underwater explorer Robert Ballard discovered the remnants of human habitation in 300 feet of water, 12 miles into the Black Sea, off the coast of northern Turkey. Ballard also found evidence of the Black Sea changing from fresh water to salt water: Sets of freshwater shells that dated back 7,000 years, followed by saltwater shells that dated back 6,500 years. Somewhere between those times, it seemed, the Black Sea was born out of a freshwater lake and it was sometime during that period of time that Noah and his ark allegedly appeared on the scene. The catastrophic flood in the general area of the Black Sea doesn't live up, perhaps to the flood in Genesis, which says it extended across the entire Earth, until "all the high mountains on the whole heaven were covered." But a deluge of the scope and depth documented by the new study may well have seemed to its survivors in the ancient Middle East as though the waters had covered the whole of the Earth.

The enormous glaciers of the Pleistocene ice age began to retreat approximately 10,000 years ago, and the melting took several millennia. Researchers think that some of the largest continental-scale glaciers, as they retreated, created "ice dams" that held back vast seas of melt water. When these dams broke, there would have been unimaginable inundations covering hundreds of miles. To those who were there when these dams broke, would think of the inundations as deluges that covered the entire world. Remember, they didn’t have any real idea as to just how large the world was. Their world would probably have covered no more than a hundred square miles in their minds. If there were ice-dam floods at the end of the last ice age, they would have occurred all over the world, and thus many faiths and cultures might have accounts of an ancient horrible deluge.

According to the Genesis account, it indicates that much of the water came from inside the earth. Even today large underground reservoirs of water and a surprising number of underground streams exist throughout the earth. But in the pre-flood world of Noah, these were likely even more common.

In the book, “In the Beginning” written by Walt Brown, he refers to reservoirs of water under the surface of Earth prior to Noah’s time. He wrote about a time when the earth was very young. He said;

“The earth had a large amount of salty, subterranean water ---- about half of what is now in the oceans. This subterrtanean water was contained in interconnected chambers that collectively formed a thin, spherical shell. It averaged about 5/8 of a mile in thickness and was located 10 miles below the earth’s surface.” unquote Most of our planet’s surface is covered with sedimentary rocks—those that are often deposited under water or associated with water. In some areas, sedimentary deposits cover the earth to a depth of some five miles.

Now we all know that mountains are continually growing and what are high mountains today used to be small hills millions of years ago. So in effect, millions of years ago, the surface of earth was a series of hills interspaced with plains and oceans. It has been said that if you could reduce earth to the size of a billiard ball as representing present-day earth, the ball would be as smooth as a billiard ball. And if you then enlarged it to the size of a softball, as representing millions of years ago with its hills and no mountains, the ball would still be as smooth as a billiard ball.

What this means is that if a flood occurred millions of years ago, the surface of earth would be covered by water because there were no mountains on earth at that time ( only low lying hills) and as such, the amount of water needed to cover the surface of earth would be much smaller than if the flood took place in Noah’s time.

Walt Brown has suggested in his book that the original flood that took place millions of years ago occurred as a result of the following;

“Increasing pressure in the subterranean water stretched the overlying crust, just as a balloon stretches when the pressure inside increases. Eventually the shell of rock reached its failure point. At the time of its rupture, the strain energy in the crust (in any area of the crust) would have been about 20 X 10 (10 followed by 29 zeros). Multply that figure by 20 to get the total amount of ergs. When the volcano Krakatoa exploded in 1883 and the entire island vanished, the energy released from that explosion was only 8.4 x 10 (10 followed by 26 zeros) Multiply that figure by 8.4 to get the total amount of ergs

Failure began with a microscopic crack. Stress concentrations at both ends of the crack resulted in its rapid propagation at about 2 miles per second. ( 3.21 kilometers a second. Using 6,371 kilometers as the mean radius of earth, two ends of the crack moving in opposite directions would meet at the other side of earth in 2.13 hours. ) As the crack raced around earth, the ten mile ( 16 kilometer ) thick roof of overlying rock opened up like a rip in a tightly stetched cloth. The pressure in the subterranean chamber immediately beneath the rupture suddenly dropped to almost atmosphere pressure. Water (then) exploded with great violence out of the ten-mile deep silt which wrapped around the earth like a seam of a baseball. Along this globe-circling rupture, a fountain of water jetted supersonically into and above the atmosphere. The water fragmented into an ‘ocean’ of droplets that fell to the earth great distances away. This produced torrential rains such as the earth had never seen before.” unquote

It must be remembered that this occurred millions of years ago, long before Man ever appeared on earth and certainly long before Noah arrived.

Eventually, all that subterranean water that shot out of the water chambers beneath the surface of the earth had to land somewhere on earth. Most of it landed in the oceans which in terms of both lateral space and volume, exceeds the land size and mass at the surface of earth. Brown went on to say;

“The rising flood waters eventually blanketed the water jetting out of the rupture although water still surged out of the rupture. Global flooding occurred over the earth’s relatively smooth topography since today’s major mountains had not yet been formed.” unquote

This would be the first and only flood that covered the entire earth and it occurred millions of years before Noah was born. As to how the writers of the Old Testament concluded that the flood that was supposed to happen in Noah’s time took place on the 17th day of the second month in his six hundredth year is beyond my understanding. I think we call that poetic licence. Certainly, that aspect of Genesis doesn’t need to be elaborated on with respect to it being considered part of a larger fantasy.

If there was a second flood which took place in Noah’s time, did it cover Mount Everest which lies between Tibet and Nepal in southern Asia? That mountain is nine kilometers high. The waters from the worldwide flood of Noah's time would cover earth to a height of about three kilometers if it ever went that high. That being so, it follows that the so-called flood in Noah’s time didn’t cover the entire earth.


Mount Everest was formed prior to Noah’s time. We know this because its higher parts contain fossils of sea creatures and seashells, showing that it is made of rock that was once under water when Mount Everest was merely a hill after the first flood millions of years ago. As the hill grew in height, the fossils in the rock that gradually was created was slowly thrust upwards also.

Verses 19 and 20 of chapter seven of Genesis says; “And the waters prevailed so mightily upon the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered; the waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep.” unquote

A cubit was the length of one’s forearm. There was no way in which Noah could have measured the depth of the flood in the Himalayas, the Andes, the Rockies or the Alps since his ark didn’t float that far from where he first built it and that being as it is, whatever depth he concluded was fifteen cubits above solid rock, had to be somewhere in the Middle East. At the time the Noachian passages were composed, no one even knew other continents and their high mountains even existed.

The Taurus Mountain Range is a rugged chain that extends across southern Turkey to its borders with Iraq and Iran. The highest point (Mt. Ararat) is located in the Eastern Taurus range. This extinct volcano is 16,583 ft. (5,137m) high. It is believed by biblical historians that Noah's Ark landed there. For his ark to have settled on that mountain, it means that the water had begun to recede and there has been no conclusions by biblical scholars that it landed on the peak of Mt. Ararat. They believe that it landed on the side of the mountain. This means that if it landed on the side of the mountain while the water of the flood was receding, and if Noah took a sounding (a method used from time past to determine how deep the water was) it had to be somewhere in the vicinity of the side of the mountain. This being as it is, he couldn’t have rightly concluded that the world was covered by at least fifteen cubits of water since the peak of Ararat had to have loomed above him when he took the sounding unless he took the sounding when the peak of the mountain was immediately below him by fifteen cubits and that seems unlikely. If that was so, the writers of Genesis were wrong with reference to the depth of the water encompassing earth since there were a great many mountains far exceeding Ararat that were south, west and north of Noah while he took his sounding from the side of his ark.

This is clear proof that the world was not entirely under water when Noah and his family were floating about on the waters of the so-called flood and the writers of Genesis were wrong in concluding that the entire earth was covered by water to a depth of 15 cubits (20 feet) above any land beneath the surface of the water.

Now one of the most perplexing questions often being asked about Noah’s flood is, ‘where did the water of the flood go after it reached its zeneth?’

It has been said that the water on earth today, if placed in square cubes that are one cubic mile in volume and piled so high that the pile would reach the moon, that amount of water would equal what is on earth at this present time. In other words, if that water could pour down onto the earth from space, it would fill all the cracks, nooks and crannies, streams rivers, lakes, seas and oceans and what we would have is what we have today.

However, if all the water that allegedly rose to the highest peak in Noah’s time were poured back onto earth, where would it sink to? It would simply rise to the level of Everest and remain forever at that depth. That is because it would have nowhere else to go. But Everest is over 29 thousand feet above sea level so it is not conceivable that there was a flood that rose above Everest or any other high mountain including Ararat. The water simply would have nowhere else to go. It would remain at that level and Mankind simply would no longer exist beyond the lifetimes of Noah and his family.

Of course, scripture tells of many past events for which there is little or no firm evidence, and correspondences between scientific evidence and scripture might just be coincidence. Writers of scripture may have used as a starting point real events they personally witnessed or heard about, then created a supernatural gloss onto them and as the stories were passed from generation to generation and from millennium to millennium, the story of Noah’s flood grew in size and depth until it finally stopped growing when Genesis was finally put to print. In other words, what started out as a bad rainfall, ended up with a planet that was entirely covered with water at a minimum of 29 thousand feet. It didn’t happen.

It is great stuff for a movie but only if the movie is classified and recognized as pure fiction.

Was the world populated before the arrival of Adam and Eve?
An essay by Dahn Batchelor

The King James version of the Holy Bible says this about the creation of Adam and Eve in verses 26, 27 and 28 of chapter one of Genesis; “Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them; Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”

A question that has been asked by millions of Christians, Jews and Moslems alike is; was the world populated before Adam and Eve arrived.


In chapter two, the Bible says in verse 7; “then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” In verse 19 of Chapter 3 of Genesis, God says to Adam and Eve after they ate the forbidden fruit; “ In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Truly it would be a miracle for any living thing to be suddenly created from a non-living entity, such as dust. Living things, such as humans, animals and even trees must have the following major elements within them for them to be living things. I am speaking of, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and proteins --- long chains of amino acids. Without these four main elements, especially proteins, a living entity, be it a tree, bird, fish, insect or a human being, wouldn’t exist.


A fundamentalist will argue that God (if there is a God) was capable of creating a man from dust and that by itself is the miracle. If that happened, it truly would be a miracle. However, how would a fundalmentalist define a miracle? According to fundalmentalists of many religions, a miracle is an intervention by God in the universe --- a marvellous event manifesting a supernatural act of God. In one sense, most people would conclude that if they can't adequately explain a phenomenon according to their ideas of how the world works, it's must be supernatural.

For many centuries after the birth of Jesus, no-one ever believed that Man would fly above the trees and yet if they saw such an event, they would believe that it was a miracle when in fact, in reality, there is a logical explanation for the possibilty of seeing a human being flying above them in some form of craft as the so-called miracle unfolds before them. It is a logical event that takes the event out of the realm of the supernatural. No-one believed that it was possible for humans to create diamonds and yet, in the last century, scientists were able to create diamonds from the bones of deceased human beings. That is not a miracle brought about by God but instead it is brought about by Man through the efforts of scientists. The early Christians believed that after the birth of Jesus, a star shone directly over the manger he was born in and guided the three wise men from the east. They say that that was a miracle. In actual fact, what the three wise men (who were not kings but astrologers from Babylon) saw overhead far away in space was the conjunction of two planets (Saturn and Jupiter) which even then they knew was not a star. To them, Saturn represented a king and Jupiter represented Jerusalem and that’s why they went to Jerusalem to search for the new king. They knew that if a king was born in Jerusalem at that time, their predictions after seeing the bright light (reflections of the sun bouncing off the surfaces of the two planets) would have come true. The brightness of the two planets was not a supernatural event. It was extraordinary but not miraculous and certainly not a star.


What I am trying to say is that whatever the people who populated the Earth after the onset of human beings believed were miracles, there was a logical explanation for the occurances or alternatively, many were myths that were told over and over again by the early human beings for many centuries even when the myths had no possibility of reality to them. It is far too easy for fundalmentalists to simply say that if the event cannot be explained, it must be a miracle brought about by God. In other words, if the first human being was created by dust, (and that event can’t be explained) that it must be a miracle, in other words, a supernatural act of God.


Without attempting to be disrespectful to fundalmentalists who honestly believe that the words of the Holy Bible should be interpreted literally, the possiblity of a human being (homo sapien ---- thinking man) being created from dust is pure undulterated nonsence ---- it is a physical and scientific impossiblity that defies logic.


The natural world is all-inclusive, and even if our world and the universe includes elves, spirits, honest politicians and space beings, then all those things are natural. It's just that our conception of what's natural is what is often eroniously referred to as miraculous.


'Adam' is very often understood simply as the proper name of the first human being. But 'Adam' is identical with the Hebrew word for human being (adam = 'human being') The Hebrew definition in the collective sense means ‘humanity’ or ‘mankind’. The Old Testament uses the Hebrew term ‘adam’ many times in the sense of ‘man’ or ‘mankind’. Most recent translations of the Bible, such as the New Revised Standard Version, makes the point that the ‘man’ in this verse was meant to encompass all humanity, rather than a single individual.


From verse 7, one is being asked to consider that Adam was the first human being that lived on earth because the authors of the Bible used the word ‘man’ which is singular rather than use the words, ‘a man’ which could imply that he chose one of several or one of many men to form a human man in his own image.


This could mean that the correct interpretation of the word ‘Adam’ is ‘mankind’ and that the verse 7 in chapter two of Genesis is to be read as; “....then the LORD God formed mankind out of dust from the ground, and breathed into their nostrils the breath of life; and mankind became living beings.” The word ‘Adam” is a derivative of the word, ‘adamah’ which means ‘ground’ or ‘earth’ which may have been the clay that would have to be used to mold a body of a human man since a figure couldn’t be molded from dust. The words, ‘breathed into their nostrils the breath of life’;could simply means the air which God made earlier for mankind and the animal kingdom to breathe.


I refer you to chapter one, verse 26 of Genesis. "Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.”


The use of the word, ‘our’ is an august or regal term used by kings, emperors and the papacy so the authors of the Bible wrote of God in august or regal terms. But we are forced to ask ourselves, did he form human beings after his or her or it’s own image and likeness? If we are willing the accept that proposal, then we have to presume that God is both a man and a woman or is one or the other.


I will quote from the Concise Revised Bible Dictionary which has an answer to that question. It says in part; "The creation of Adam in God’s image and likeness is best understood as creation with all those qualities which make a being truly a person as God is a person ---- with spiritual, aesthetic, rational, emotional and moral capacities." This implies that, according to the authors of 'The Abingdon Bible Commentary' “its is more probable that the expression ‘in the image of God’ has no physical implications but is meant to suggest that man differs from all the rest of creation in the possession of self-conscious personality, in which he alone of all creatures resembles God.” unquote


It’s ironic when one thinks about it. According to the Old Testament, God made man in his own image. But mankind believing that it is supreme over all living things (which mankind is) makes the presumption that God is made in the image of a man since the early writers never saw God and therefore believed that God must be like a human male. God’s image in paintings is as an old man. In the paintings, he was never pictured as a female because in verse 25 of chapter 2 of Genesis, God said that he would make ‘man’ in his own image. Could he have meant ‘mankind’? If so, why didn’t he choose to make the angels in his own image since they existed prior to him making mankind? Angels are painted as human beings with large wings. That really adds to the confusion.


Kenneth C. Davis in his book Don’t Know Much About the Bible, on page 50, said; "The universe was created by some force ---- call it the Big Bang or God or Allah or Vishnu or simply Energy ----- that set in motion the cataclysmic string of events that brought the earth into existence 4.5 billion years ago. So began the long line of events that brought the chemical chain reactions that created the spark of life on earth. That incredible process resulted in the appearance, a brief moment in time, a two-legged creature that walked upright. This creature (eventually) held tools in hand and his hands were no longer needed for moving through the trees. He built fires and eventually held a short, pointed stick that made intricate symbols in pieces of hardening mud, It was the beginning of the (written) word."


Somewhere in that early stage of evolution, Adam was supposibly created. According to The Bab,(the holy book of the Bahai faith) Adam lived about 10,500 B.C. When looking at the Christian Bible and then extrapolate back from the date of the exodus of the Jews from Egypt, (1446 B.C.) and calculate the ages of the main characters in the Bible prior to that time, Adam came into existence approximately 4000 B.C. That premise conflicts with the conclusions of scientists world-wide who agree amongst themselves that the first species of the genus Homo (humans), evolved in South and East Africa in the late Pliocene or early Pleistocene period.(1.81 million to 11,550 years before the birth of Jesus.


Man began walking on his legs about 1.8 million years ago. Homo sapiens (Latin for humans with intelligence) has lived from 200,000 years B.C. to the present. It follows then that human beings existed almost two million years before the biblical Adam came into existence. It also follows that human beings in that period of time had a self-concious personality long before the biblical Adam arrived.


There is another way to look at the question of Adam and Eve being the first human beings on earth but was Eve the first woman on earth? In strictly biblical terms, Eve was the first woman on earth and as such, was Adam’s wife. But Hebrew legend has another story about his first wife. As recorded in the medieval Alphebet of of Ben Sira, Lilith was Adam’s first wife who preceded Eve. In this version, Lilith was created from the earth, just as Adam was.

I point this out to illustrate that it is conceivable that the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis is simply another story that has been passed from one person to another for thousands of years.


Cain, the first born was a farmer and his younger brother, Abel was a shepperd. But were they really human beings?


In Peake’s Commentary on the Bible, S.H. Hooke writes on page 181; "Cain and Abel represents two different types of community, the agricultural and the pastoral, each carrying out its regular ritual of sacrifice. In the story, one ritual is successful and the other is not.; that is what is implied when it says that Yahweh (Hebrew word for God) accepted Abel’s offering but rejected Cain’s.”

It is the belief of many (and myself included) that the two sons of Adam and Eve as depicted in the Bible were in fact two groups of people ( planters of plants etc and shepperds ) living side by side in one gathering of human beings. At some period in time, someone in the agricultural community killed someone in the pastoral community which resulted in the killer or perhaps his clan being evicted from the community."


Genesis 5:4 tells us that Adam and Eve had many sons and daughters. Jewish tradition has it that they had 56 children altogether. They base that figure on the writings of the Jewish historian Josephus who wrote;(in the time of Christ) "The number of Adam’s children, as says the old tradition, was thirty-three sons and twenty-three daughters.” According to the Old Testament, Adam lived for 930 years (Genesis 5:5) although I don’t think that any scientist or most Christians, Jews and Moslems alike nowadays really believes that any human being could live that many years. Justification for this doubt is the fact that the Old Testament also states that God created the heavens and earth in six days. No right-thinking person believes that either.

If Adam and Eve were the first humans, and all people have descended from them (Acts 17:26) ‘And hath made of one blood all nations of men . . .’), then somewhere on earth, brothers had to marry sisters. Many people believe that after Cain killed his brother Abel and was ordered out of the garden of Eden, he married one of his sisters. I don’t believe this is what happened considering the fact that there were already over a million human beings on earth at that time.

If you look at verse 14 in chapter 4 in the book of Genesis, you will see the first hint that there were other human beings on earth before the death of Abel at the hands of Cain. After Cain murdered his brother, God told him that he had to leave the garden of Eden, Cain then said to God; "Behold, thou hast driven me this day away from the ground; and from thy face I shall be hidden; and I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will slay me." Who was he speaking about when he used the words, ‘whoever’ during his communication with God? Since there is no mention in the Old Testament that Adam and Eve and any of their children (other than Cain) that were born after Cain, was ordered out of the garden of Eden at that time, then who was Cain afraid of? Obviously he was afraid of being slain by other human beings who were not in the garden of Eden after he left but rather, were outside the garden.


Verses 16 and 17 of chapter 4 of Genesis says; "Then Cain went away from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, east of Eden." Cain knew his wife, (meaning he had intercourse with her) and she conceived and bore Enoch; and he built a city, and called the name of the city after the name of his son, Enoch."


Who did Cain marry? Were there not other people on the earth before he met his wife? Who lived in the land of Nod that was east of Eden when he met his wife? We don’t even know her name and yet she is the most talked about wife in the entire world. Many people believe that for Cain to find a wife, there must have been other ‘races’ of people on the earth who were not descendants of Adam and Eve.


To many people, this question is a stumbling block that obstructs their acceptance of the Biblical account that states that Adam and Eve were the first human beings on earth.


Defenders of the words in the Old Testament must be able to show that all human beings are descendants of one man and one woman. (Adam and Eve) Thus, believers need to be able to account for Cain’s wife and show clearly that she too was a descendant of Adam and Eve. That is not possible.

I realize that a lot of people say that Cain's wife was his sister, but that is impossible. Why? Because if you know anything about Anthropology, you will know that in all primitive societies, it was a general rule that brothers did not marry their sisters. The strictest of taboos were applied to this particular form of incest. They were aware of the physical and mental problems that were inherent when brought about by incest. Secondly, if you read the story carefully, Seth (Adam’s 3rd son) was not born until after Cain was banished, and thus after he spoke of whoever (Genesis 4:14) would slay him, who was Cain speaking about?

After Seth was born, Adam (according to the Old Testament) lived another 800 years, producing more sons and daughters. This obviously shows that there was Cain, Abel, Seth, and THEN other daughters and sons followed. Thus the explanation that Cain's wife was his sister cannot be correct, because females (other than Eve) did not enter the current population until after Seth was born, and by that time, Cain was already banished.

God planted a garden in Eden according to the scriptures. Note: the entire earth was NOT Eden, only a very small portion of the earth was Eden. What does the Bible say was outside of Eden? It doesn’t say anything about what was outside of Eden at the time Cain was banished from Eden.


But there was desert and wilderness in that area if we believe that the land of Nod was in the middle east. And WHO lived in this wilderness? It was Australopithecus, Homo-Erectus, Neanderthal man, and Cro-Magnon man, who roamed the wilderness outside of Eden. Remember that this all occurred over a million years ago.

These beings were very tall, broad-faced, had retreating foreheads (indicating a small brain - unlike humans today) with massive brow ridges, and their bodies were covered in very course dense hair. This means that Cain was fearful to leave the place of his birth, because he knew there were other people out there who would kill him.

That is very strange considering that God marked him as the "first murderer?" If that is so, how did he know that others would kill him? The reason is because this type of very violent behaviour was typical throughout the species of Australopithecus, Homo-Erectus, Neanderthal man, and Cro-Magnon man, hence, Cain was not the first murderer amongst these beings.

Where did Cain get his wife from? She was one of these very primitive "creatures" roaming the wilderness. As a result of this successive hybrid inbreeding over thousands of generations, we get what we call the "other races." ie. Negroes, Orientals, Caucasians, etc. I refer you again to Verse 17 of chapter 4 of Genesis which says; “Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch; and he built a city, and called the name of the city after the name of his son, Enoch.”


From this, we are to understand that after Cain’s first son (Enoch) was born, Cain built a city which he named after his son. The word, ‘city’ is defined in The Revell Concise Bible Dictionary to mean; “a large or important population center, usually (especially in the Old Testament) walled or fortified.” Somehow, for Cain to build a large and important city that was fortified against the enemies of its inhabitants, there would not only have to be a great many people building the city, but also a great many enemies of the inhabitants outside of the city that necessitated the need for the inhabitants to build walls to protect them from their enemies. We are not talking about a few hundred people but perhaps thousands of people both inside the city and outside the city.

It follows that Cain had every reason to build a city of that size considering that there was approximately a million people on earth at that time and many of them in the area where he lived.


Now true believers of everything that is said in the Bible is to be accepted as absolutely true, may argue that Cain lived a long time, just as Adam did. Unfortunately, there is no record in the Old Testament with respect to the age of Cain before he died. This being as it is, there is no way that we can conclude that the city comprised of a great many of his sons and daughters. In fact, the only mention of his offspring is found in verse 17 of chapter 4 in which it says; "Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch." That is the last time Cain is spoke of so we have no way of ever knowing whether or not Cain had other children.


If this is so, then this means that his city was not populated by his children other than Enoch and it hardly makes sense that he would build a city just for himself, his wife and his son. He would however build a city for other humans in Nod (with their assistance) and name it after his son and this means that there were many human beings in Nod when he arrived thereor at least, after Enoch was born. And if that is so, then Adam and Eve could no thave been the first humans on earth.

Pictures of Adam and Eve are painted as if they are human beings like we are so we are led to believe that Adam and Eve looked just like we do. Unfortunately, the first appearance of man did not look like us.


It seems beyond doubt that primitive man had religious beliefs. For instance, the Neanderthal man, who lived 50,000 years ago, is known to have buried his dead with ceremonies that clearly suggest a belief in a life after death.

There existed at that time the pre-historic custom of dusting corpses with red ocher (a mixture of clay and iron oxide) which is found throughout the prehistoric world. It is thought that the red pigment was a ritual substitute for blood, hence a symbol of life. Belief in survival after death would seem to be confirmed a fortiori by burial, since nothing else could explain the effort involved instead of simply abandoning the corpses of their loved ones.

The Neanderthal (Homo neanderthalensis) or Neandertal was a species of the Homo genus that inhabited Europe and parts of western Asia. They walked and their bone structures and skulls were almost identical to that of modern man. The first proto-Neanderthal traits appeared in Europe as early as 350,000 years ago and by 130,000 years ago, full blown Neanderthal characteristics had appeared and by 50,000 years ago, Neanderthals disappeared from Europe, although they continued in Asia up to 30,000 years ago. As I mentioned earlier, if you extrapolate back from the time of the exodus of the Jews, according to the Bible, Adam was allegedly created only 4000 B.C. That is far too late in history for Adam to have been created as the first human being.


Mankind (at the Neanderthal stage in history) would not have the ability to build a city such as the city built by Cain, the son of Adam and Eve. That being as it is, mankind did not begin with Adam and Eve.


The difficulty we have finding the truth in Genesis is trying to discover where the source originated from. It was not God since it is written in the third person, not the first person. In a book written by Kenneth C. Davis called 'Don’t Know Much About the Bible', he gives a good explanation on page 16 when he wrote; "...researchers have learned that some of what appears to the most ancient sections of the Bible, including some of the stories in Genesis, was probably ‘borrowed’ from other more ancient civilizations, particularily those of Egypt and Babylon."


For example, various aspects of the ‘Laws of God’ given to Moses in Exodus are similar to Babylonian laws known as the ‘Code of Mammurabi’, which is a few centuries older than when the Old Testament was first written.

In Peake’s Commentary on the Bible, that has 62 authors, S. H. Hoke, one of the contributors wrote on page 177; "What we have called as origin-stories represents a type of literature which is not peculiar to the Hebrew people. In the earlier literature of Egypt, Babylon, and Caanan, and indeed most so-called primitive peoples, similar stories are to be found, purporting to give an account of the beginning of things." unquote


What this means is that before opinions and stories were put to writing on hardened mud and later on tablets, they were passed oraly from person to person and anyone familiar with the popular game in which people sit in a circle and one says something to another and the second person passes that information to the one sitting next to him or her, they will realize that as the story is passed on from person to person, the more it will be changed. I believe that this is how Genesis came about; various stories passed about from one person to another until the original stories were vastly altered.

Although the purpose of the Book of Genesis is to give us some idea as to how the earth as we know it came about, it is not historically, scientifically or chronologically correct.


The story of Genesis was handed down by word of mouth for thousands of years before the coming of Jesus and obviously, during the retelling of the story, it got twisted about until finally in the time of King James of England, the body of scholars he appointed to revise the Bible,( The King James Bible ) printed it into what it is today.


When I was a child, I accepted the writings of the Bible as being literally true. But as I got older and more knowledgeable about life, history and science, (just like many millions of other people around the world) I realized that not everything written in the Bible is to be taken as fact. And one of the things I am truly convinced of, is that Adam and Eve were not the first human beings on earth. It’s a great story but like many stories, the creationist view of the first people on earth is in fact, a myth. Although myths have some basis of truth in them for the most part, I find it difficult to really believe that the myth with respect to the origins of mankind, as defined in Genesis, has any semblance of truth in it at all.

UNDETECTED PEDOPHILES AMONGST US
Will a ‘Sexual Predator Risk Initiative’ help
By Dahn Batchelor

It is estimated that there are over 2 million pedophiles living in the United States in any given year. Each one of them can victimize as many as 50 children during the lifetime of each of these pedophiles. This means that a staggering 100 million children have been molested by these pedophiles. And what is really frightening is that out of every thousand of them, only 1% are found out and arrested.


Pedophilia doesn’t appear to be restricted to the so-called ‘dirty old man down the street’. Many priests, doctors, police officers, school teachers and even Sunday school teachers are just a few of the kinds of trusted people who have been convicted of molesting children and the ages of their victims appears to have no bounds. Some victims as young as six months have been molested. It has been estimated that one out of every five children, be they boys or girls, are being molested by both male and female adults or older teenagers in any given year. This means that of the many millions of adults currently living in the United States and Canada, one in five have at one time or another (and possibly many more times) been molested by an adult or older teenager when they were children.



Attempts are being made in the United States and Canada to minimize this scourge but it isn’t working. Admittedly, there have been some successes in reforming pedophiles but for the most part, they simply re-offend and the abuses of children simply continues.


Both countries have taken steps to fight this war with pedophiles and one way this is done is to register them with the federal, state and provincial governments.


In the United States, there is a law which is referred to as ‘Meagan’s Law’. It was the brutal 1994 rape and murder of seven-year-old Megan Kanka in New Jersey that prompted the public demand for broad based community notification. It is applied in all 50 states. Some of the states have the particulars of the registrees on the Internet.



For example, in Delaware, the Sex Offender Central Registry shows the picture of the offender, his or her date of birth, the offender’s current address and a description of the particular sex law that was broken. In Louisiana, the released sexual offender must distribute throughout the area where he intends to live; post cards delivered to every door, giving his name, address and a description of the crime he was convicted of.


There was one community in the United States that required the offender to post a sign on his lawn as to who he was and to state that he was a convicted child molester. One convicted pedophile had to walk the streets with a sandwich board stating his name and offence he was convicted of. It should be pointed out however that 20 states have been constitutionally challenged for these kinds of steps made by the American authorities who are using these means as an attempt to cut down recidivism of convicted sex offenders.



Publication of the names, addresses and particulars of their crimes of convicted pedophiles on the Internet in the United States has resulted in some disastrous results; such as some of them being victims of vigilantes who have committed arson and murder to repunish the offenders. For example, two men who were listed on a sex registry in the State of Maine in which anyone having access to the Internet could peruse, were shot to death by a vigilante who hated pedophiles. He looked up their names on the Registry and then drove to their homes and when they opened their doors, he shot them. He went to the homes of other convicted pedophiles but they were spared simply because they weren’t home when he arrived.



In Ontario, Canada, there is a law referred to as ‘Christopher’s Law’ which was named after 10-year-old Christopher Stephenson who was raped and murdered in 1988 by a sex-offender who was on statutory release from prison at the time. The sex offender was convicted of the murder and later murdered while in prison.


On December 11, 2002, Federal Solicitor General Wayne Easter and Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, Martin Cauchon introduced similar legislation to implement a national sex offender registration system. It is called the Sex Offenders Registration Information Act. The backbone of the sex offender registration system is a special new Sex Offender Database on the Canadian Police Information Centre (CPIC) system. The sex offender database will allow police to conduct a search according to a full or partial address and the offence of a sex offender or both. Offence information and registration information will be included, as well as other pertinent identification information such as tattoos, other distinguishing marks and DNA information. These names in both of the federal and provincial data bases are not published on the Internet nor do members of the public have access to them for obvious reasons.



At first blush, the words, ‘Sex-Offender Registry of Ontario’ gives us a feeling of security and well-being until we look into its purpose with a jaundice eye. It’s purpose is to compel convicted sex offenders to register every year with the police so that wherever the sex offenders reside, the police will always know. The current registry has thousands of names in it. That being as it is, it will be easier for the police to track down convicted sexual predators if they are suspected of re-offending. Mandatory registration applies to those individuals living in Ontario who were convicted of a sex offence in Canada and who were (a) serving a sentence on the day the law was proclaimed or (b) convicted of a sex offence on or after the day the legislation came into force. Other individuals required by law to register are those who have been found not criminally responsible on account of a mental disorder, and who have received an absolute or conditional discharge, on or after the day the legislation came into effect. It should be noted however that if they later apply for a pardon and their application is approved, their names will be removed from the Registry. Also, the names are removed after ten years has passed from the date of the convictions of the pedophiles even if they haven’t applied for a pardon.


Unfortunately, the data base only includes the names of sex offenders who committed their crimes after the Act came into force so it is conceivable that there are pedophiles who were convicted of child molestation prior to the law coming into force and are still committing the same crimes while being undetected and unlisted on the registries.



Some police forces in Canada have publicly published the whereabouts of violent sex-offenders after they were released from prison.


Manitoba and Alberta even publish on the Internet, the names, last known addresses and particulars of the sexual offences committed by these released prisoners along with their photographs. Manitoba has only published four violent sex offenders on their website.


The state of Colorado has approached this concept in a different way. They publish the names, photographs and descriptions of the offences of those convicted sex offenders who have not registered as they are required to do. This surely is a good way to ensure that sex offenders register with the local police. It would seem more acceptable to restrict the publishing of the offender’s names and pictures on the Internet to only those who refuse to register with the police. That would amount to about 5 percent of all convicted sexual offenders.



Although statistics show that 65 percent of these offenders will not re-offend, the remaining 35 percent will and for this reason, these Acts have been created. There are unfortunately, failings in sexual offender registration systems that don’t make public the whereabouts of sex offenders that have been released from prison.


The public reaction upon the published disclosure of the names and addresses of convicted pedophiles has been so negative, most of the released sex-offenders exposed thusly have been forced to move time and time again, which makes it more difficult for them to re-enter the community, that which is conducive to rehabilitation. Generally, only the police know where they are. Sometimes, the sex-offenders go into hiding so that their neighbours won’t discover who they are and shun them. What the police don’t know is what the these ex-offenders and even those whom they know wehere they live are up to after their release from prison.


For this reason, there is nothing in these systems that makes it possible for potential victims or their families to be warned in advance that a sexual predator is amongst them.



An example of this failing in these kinds of systems occurred in 2002 and it occurred right in my own home.



A close friend of mine, a 55-year-old man whom I had known for twenty years, was a regular visitor to our home and in November 2002, I observed that he was becoming all too familiar with my five and a half-year-old granddaughter. I spoke to my daughter and asked her to speak to her daughter to see if my friend was doing anything to her that she considered was improper. She spoke to her daughter and concluded that nothing was amiss. It could be because at that time, nothing was amiss or it could have been because my granddaughter being none the wiser, didn’t think anything was amiss.



A week later my former friend sexually assaulted my granddaughter and left his semen behind in her. Within a day, he was arrested and charged and was in custody awaiting trial for eleven months. The police investigators told my daughter that this particular man was a bad one but I learned prior to his trial that his one redeeming feature was that he intended to plead guilty to that charge and two other charges relating to two similar incidents that occurred in Toronto thereby sparing the children he abused; the trauma of having to testify in court.



He pleaded guilty with respect to the molestation of my granddaughter and two other similar charges relating to other children and was given probation for three years with a further order that he was to seek psychiatric help. The court took into consideration that he spent a year in jail prior to his trial and was beat up by some of the prisoners and was not permitted to attend his father’s funeral. In Canada, a year in pretrial custody is considered by the courts as equivelent to two years in prison.



As it turned out, other than some brief pain, my granddaughter was not savagely ravaged. She is her normal self again, even laughing at her own pranks. As time moves on, the experience will hopefully disappear in her mind rather than crop up once in a while to haunt her in her later years.



Before I go on any further, let me add that if the man was a mere acquaintance of mine, I wouldn’t have let him be that familiar with my granddaughter. But the man had been a close friend for twenty years and I knew his wife had left him, his children were grown up and he was lonely. Of course, I didn’t want to believe that he might be a sexual predator. I was obviously too close to my friend to see his behaviour for what it was. As an interesting aspect in all this, both my daughter and I studied criminal law, deviant behaviour, and abnormal psychology for years at the University of Toronto and generally, we can spot conduct like this, and yet we somehow let this one slide by us.



I spoke to a close friend of mine who is a police officer in Toronto where the sexual predator resided in and asked him for some background on his criminal record. My friend apologized and said that he couldn’t give me that information because it was against police policy. When I spoke to the investigating officer in Mississauga where the sexual assault against my granddaughter took place, she too said that she couldn’t give me that information. It’s ironic when you think of it. Both I and my daughter could only learn of this man’s criminal record when he was convicted and it was brought out during his sentencing.



I asked the investigating officer if she would have given me that information before the sexual offence took place if I told her that I was suspicious that he might be a sex offender molesting my granddaughter. She said that she still couldn’t give me that information even under those circumstances. Further, she also didn’t tell me that this man was on bail for two counts of similar charges prior to him sexually assaulting my granddaughter.



Had my granddaughter suffered terribly and been seriously injured as a result of this man’s sexual assault on her, and it was because the police in the community in which we live had previously refused to give me or my daughter information about this man’s other current charges for the same kind of crime and that he had been convicted in the past of child molestation, my daughter may very well have sued the police for their failure to look into the matter and warn us of the existence of this sexual predator in our midst.



In the famous ‘Jane Doe’ case in Toronto in which she was victimized by a serial rapist, the police refused to warn the public of his presence in their midst. She sued them. The court said in part, “In spite of the knowledge that the police had about this sexual rapist and their decision not to warn, they took no steps to protect Ms. Doe or any other women from this known danger. In the circumstances of this case, the police failed utterly in the duty of care they owed Ms. Doe.” unquote.



I think that same principle applies in cases where a potential victim or the family of such a potential victim makes enquiries to the police about someone whom they suspect may be a sexual predator and who is visiting their home on an ongoing basis and may appear to be acting in an improper manner towards a child.




On October 5, 1999, Citizenship, Culture and Recreation Minister Helen Johns launched the $1.2 million Ontario Screening Initiative (OSI) to safeguard community groups, a program to protect children in sports from sexual abuse or the elderly being subjected to some other form of abuse. She said, "We all want our loved ones to be safe in community programs --- whether it's a child playing soccer or an elderly parent receiving home care." unquote. The program is funded by the Ontario Government and operated by various community groups such as sports organizations, summer camps and church groups etc. The OSI promotes the adoption of safety practices for community groups to use to screen people in positions of trust, such as reference checks, job orientation, training, supervision and monitoring.
Perhaps a similar program might be implemented in Ontario that would protect children at home from sexual predators who come to visit.



I envision a group of volunteers in each community, comprising of retired police officers experienced in sexual abuse crimes and retired social workers who have the same kind of experience, who could send a member of their group to interview a potential victim and his or her family and if the volunteer concludes that there may very well be a risk to the child, the volunteer ( who has been approved by the police ) can obtain from the police, information as to whether or not the person being enquired about has a criminal record for sexual crimes or has similar charges pending. Armed with that information, the volunteer could then advise the family that it would not be in the child’s best interests to permit the suspected offender having any contact with the child at any time. This program could be called the ‘Sexual Predator’s Risk Initiative’.( SPRI )



Single mothers whose boyfriends have shown an unusual interest in their children, parents whose children appear to spend a lot of time in single adult’s homes, parents who feel that their children’s friends of the same sex are far too old for their children to be playing with, parents who have suspicions about the conduct of their babysitters or wives who have suspicions about their husbands molesting their children or visa versa; would be the kind of people who would be in need of SPRI’s services.



The reasons for any parent being suspicious could be that the adult or older child is spending too much time roughhousing with the younger child or is constantly inviting the younger child to sit on his lap, is constantly telling jokes or stories of a sexual nature, is always wanting to be the one to bathe the child in the bathtub, or an adult is constantly giving money or gifts to the child or permitting the child to drink alcohol in the presence of the adult or wants to take the child on overnight camping all the time during the warm months of the year or for sleepovers at his or her house or the child is afraid to be near a particular adult.



The Toronto Sun published a story in its May 27th 2003 edition about a woman who accidentally stumbled on her husband's kiddie porn collection, including pictures of himself naked in the couple's bedroom with a six-year old girl they knew from the neighbourhood. He later admitted to improper touching by the child from September 1998 to June 1999.



She said that looking back at it, she was able to piece together the hints her husband dropped about his secret. She's just sorry she didn't pick up on them sooner. "He knew all the kids in the neighbourhood and I thought at the time it was really cute. I looked at it like practice parenting because we were starting a family." unquote.



If professionals like my daughter and I can be fooled as to the real intentions of a sexual predator in our midst as we were, what about those who are untrained in recognizing sexual deviance in others? Unless something like SPRI is brought about, victims such as my granddaughter and her mother and many thousands more like them, the parents of such children will only learn of the sexual predator’s intentions after the sexual attacks have been committed on their children and then only learn during the sentencing aspect of the predator’s trials, when it is too late, about their children’s sexual predators’ previous sexual criminal history.

President George W. Bush
White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington, D.C.
U.S.A.

3217 Monica Drive
Mississauga, Ontario
Canada

November 20, 2004


Sir:

When I learned in February 2003, that our disgraced member of parliament, Carolyn Parrish, made headlines across Canada and elbowed her comments onto U.S. networks with her now infamous televised aside: "Damn Americans, I hate the bastards." I was dismayed. Obviously she doesn’t know the American people very well.

I and my Japanese-born wife have traveled quite extensively throughout the United States over the years and when my mother moved to the US in 1953 and lived there for fifty years before she died, I visited her a number of times and stayed at her homes in California and Hawaii for many months at a time.

As far as I am concerned, the American people are no different than Canadians. Both our nations have the bad with the good but I and my family and I think I speak for most if not all Canadians, consider ourselves very lucky to have such fine neighbors.

Every president always has detractors and you will find them up here also but they don’t speak for the Canadian people. When you visit our country and see the detractors with their placards, try to remember that the rest of us recognize you as the president of a neighboring country we love and that we appreciate the difficulty you are experiencing trying to do what has got to be one of the hardest tasks given to a human being ---- helping to bring peace and justice to our other neighbors world-wide.

Unfortunately, my wife and I don’t live in Ottawa so we won’t be able to cheer you when your motorcade drives by but our hearts will be with you. We hope that you and your wife enjoy yourselves while you visit Canada and that your visit will be a productive one for both Canada and the United States.

I remain,
Respectively Yours


Dahn (Dan) Batchelor