Alethia Eleutheroo

Genesis and Biology

I had the pleasure recently of reading a book by a biologist, Dr. Shiv Chopra, regarding the relationship between the account of creation in Genesis and what biology currently understands about conception and gestation, or embryology. In addition, Dr. Chopra has discovered a connection between Genesis and the unfolding of animal classes over time. It is indeed refreshing to meet a modern scientist who is also prepared to look at things in a true Baconian manner. However, Dr. Chopra notes that when he was studying cultural anthropology (humanities) later in life, and became interested in the interpretation of scripture, he experienced a negative and generally dismissive reaction on the part of his professors at university. He had been able to undertake a study involving ancient Indian texts, the Ramayana and Mahabarata, and discovered that these reflected “a most detailed and intimate knowledge of the reproductive processes and genetics.” However, attempting to study the same issue with respect to Genesis, Dr. Chopra met with responses from his professors which “ranged between polite evasions to hostile refusals.” He discovered what happens when a scientist crosses the line between material natural science and anything to do with the supersensible and/or religion, a great divide within Western thought and development for over 500 years.

I could never understand why such a biased indifference should prevail at academic institutions. Had it been justified with a scientific rationale or on the basis of religious sentiment I could appreciate, but to find that a scholarly investigation of one of the most eminent literary marvels was inhibited bothered me,

On the second issue, Dr. Chopra points out in his book, Four-Five, that these numerals are found in the male-to-total chromosome index, the brain-to-body weight index, as well as the “time periods at which the most primitive chemical molecules to the most intellectually advanced human beings emerged” which “were observed to have followed a historically descending, logarithmic scale, between: 4.5 x 10 [power of 9] to 4.5 x 10 [power of 3].”

… the earth and first life forms at 4.5 billion years; chordate species at 450-million years; mammals at 45-million years; hominid primates at 4.5 million years; anthrpoid man at 450,000 years; intellect ridden man at 45-thousand years; and noetically realized man at 4.5-thousand years.

It is held by modern science that the ratio of 1:45, has “been constant during the entire 4.5 million years of human existence.” Finally, the beginning of human development in terms of modern man, Australopithecine sapiens, took place 450,000 years ago, which happens to be the same figure arrived at by taking the dimensions of the Ark – 30x50x500 cubits.

According to anthropologists, the cultural aspects of human evolution trace back to the following three hereditary stages when:

1. out of the culturally oriented Australopithecine family of the great apes arose a typically human species, called: A. sapiens, at approximately 450,000 years ago;

2. out of the A. sapiens species emerged a culturally mature and artistic people called A. sapiens sapiens, at approximately 45,000 years ago;

3. out of the artistic A. sapiens sapiens arose a highly noetic humanity, called: A. sapiens spaiens sapiens, or “A. noeticus“, at approximately 4,500 years ago.

In essence, Dr. Chopra found through analysis that Genesis 1-5 provides an account of the development of life on earth, and that Genesis 6-9 provides the embryological account, both in accord with the discoveries and understandings of modern material science.Through this process of discovery, he also reached a conclusion regarding the story of the Flood, Noah and the Ark that is breathtaking in its justification of ancient texts on a timeless basis.

Let’s focus on the embryological account. In essence, the story of the coming flood is one of the development of the zygote formed from the union of egg and sperm. In the first six days, this zygote “must grow into a boat shaped, multicellular, embryonic, “ark.”  Further, when Noah was to make the ark with “reeds” and line it with “pitch inside and out” this refers to the massive population of reedy looking cells, which are called “woody epithelial cells” and that “the resultant structure will be lined both ‘inside and out’ with an impervious mucoid material.”

Noah was further ordered to build an ark with three decks, linking to the “actual structural evolution of the initial, unicellular, zygote into a triple-layered, multicellular, body, called: blastocele.” It is the blastocle that is generic to all placental species and man, applying to the six-day initial period of creation of a new life, and which is then implanted in the womb on the sixth day, previously having floated freely. The blastocele is made up of three germ layers: endoderm, ectoderm and a polarized mesoderm in the middle. All subsequent organs and tissues are derived from these three germ layers. On the seventh day of pregnancy, the blastocele sends out a network of blood vessels into the uterus (placenta). This phase for humans, in contrast to other mammals, lasts for another 7 days.

At this point, the story of the flood “waters” that would erase the previous creation and initiate a new phase in man’s evolution is compared to the “massive secretion of human-specific maternal hormones” (waters), which have the effect of “washing away” and causing to perish all “animal-related physical (‘flesh’) traces in the human offspring” allowing a new life to emerge, but one that still carries the influences of the past, now in the form of the recessive genes.

This is found in the command for Noah to include every kind of bird, reptile, animal, with two of each, male (dominant gene) and female (recessive gene).

At this point, Noah is to start to lay up stores and feed the animals in the ark and himself and his family, the human component. This refers to the yolk sac which nourishes the embryo for the first three weeks from conception.

Dr. Chopra further relates how the reference to seven “clean animals” and two “unclean animals” refers in the former, to the pervious seven stages of animal life, which had been fully “genetically cleansed” and the latter to the “yet to be cleaned, constituents of the current male and female gametes, so that a new, genetically fit, human offspring could be founded.”

YHWH then states that He will make it rain in seven days time for 40 days and nights. During this seven days there is the development of an extensive network of blood vessels connected to the mother’s vascular system, for nourishment and the carrying away of waste. The “rain” relates to the forty days of hormonal bursts after the initial and then second set of 7 days, that is after 14 days. There is also a reference to this event commencing in the 600th year, second month and seventeenth day. This is the day when in humans, “the ovarian corpus luteum, hypoathalamus, pituitary gland, and indeed the uterus itself” starts jointly to produced hormones necessary for fetal development. These secretions start to flow between the 15th and 17th day of the second month of the missed menstrual cycle.

… the ‘seventeenth day’ or ‘the second month’ as ‘the very day’ when the next menstruation stopped due to pregnancy and which coincided with the previous month’s shedding and fertilization of the ovum was of a great empirical significance according to Genesis.

As for a scientific signification of the above statement…This indeed was ‘the very day’ on which, if pregnancy occurred, an entirely new play of endocrinology would start to operate in the mother.

There is also a polarity between the hypothalamus-pituitary complex and the corpeus luteum-uterine complex, which Genesis refers to as “the springs of the deep” and “the sluices of heaven.”

By now we have reached day 54 of pregnancy, and when the rains/hormones cease, we have the developmetn of the human embryo with its gonadal development to the point of external sex characteristics.

Virtually complete on this ‘very day’ would be the inception of all the basics of the embryo’s future sexuality, including all the germ cells from which it will produce spermatozoa or ova as an adult human being. Within these germ cells will be contained a complete genetic memory of all the heritable information from all the previous ancestors.

Now the waters, after 40 days of rain, begin to rise and Genesis tells us they rose 15 cubits.

From the reported corporeal proportion which occurred between the one-day old and fifty-four old human embryo modern science informed that it was approximately 1:15.

Then the rising waters washed away “all things of flesh,” in contrast to the emphasis on saving animal life noted prior to the Flood.

… due to a selective gathering and saving aboard the ark of ‘one pair’ of the required genes from ‘every kind of animals”, the human embryo obtained a personal and first hand knowledge of both its human and animal ancestries.

However…there was no evidence in the womb for the actual presence of any kind of animals…Eventually, the ‘only’ information which would be ‘left’ aboard the embryonic ark, after the due process of ‘The Flod’, would be the anamnestic information which it received via the ancestral genes.

And the waters rose for 150 days, appearing to refer to the “total duration which the human embryo required for its sexual differentiation into a fully equipped male or female fetus.” Then Genesis refers to the waters falling “in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of that month” when the Ark came to rest on Mount Ararat.

The reason why Genesis strung together all of this information was that after seven and a half months the due hormonal requirements of the remainder period of human pregnancy must come to ‘rest’ on those of the placenta. It indicated that … the human placenta differed, in this regard, from that of all the other mammals…

Earlier Dr. Chopra notes that the ‘organ-like function of the placenta was only found in the human.”

Then the waters dried up, which relates to the completion of the pregnancy, the bursting of the waters and then the re-establishment of the menstrual cycle on the 27th day of the following month – “In the second month and on the twenty-seventh day of the month the earth was dry.”

Thus, as Dr. Chopra notes, we have a very precise understanding of human development as recapitulated in each new creation from conception to birth. That the language is written, or at least translated, in the form of images and symbols that are hidden from normal consciousness, makes this ancient knowledge seem somehow mystical, figurative at best, and not at all related to scientific knowledge. It is thanks to Dr. Chopra’s Baconian “forethoughtful inquiry” that we have a better understanding of the hologramatic nature of the rich symbolic language of Biblical Hebrew. The nature of symbols is that they exist in time, but are also timeless, coming from a source beyond man’s earthly knowledge and existence. Thus, the very nature of creation “in the beginning” and that of creation taking place in the present in the conception, gestation and birth of each individual are reciprocal and functionally identical. What was, is, and what is, was. This creation is the ever-present predicate tense of Biblical Hebrew, which is a present that has already taken place in the past, being viewed from the future of the creative imagination of the mind of the Divine Source.

August 18, 2010 - Posted by pleromic | Genesis, The Science of Scripture