A news item on the BBC reports the discovery of Neanderthal remains on Gibraltar as recently as 24,000 years ago. Perhaps they were guarding the "sea gate" till the Ephraimites turned up and planted the Union Jack.
Our proto-human cousins used to be referred to as "Neanderthal Man." In these gender-sensitive times that obviously is a thing of the past. Neanderthal persons anyone? A quick check through the BBC article reveals that the acceptable terms are now Neanderthals and Neanderthal people. I think we can all breathe a little easier knowing that.
Enter Dennis Diehl (no, that's not him in the picture.) As most AW readers know, Den is a former pastor in the WCG, and a rare individual who has emerged from that vocation with a keen insight into the perils of Biblicism. An excerpt from his most recent article:
"There are no Neanderthals on the earth today, but there are Neander-thoughts. A Neander-thought is an idea, way of thinking or being, that no longer works. Just as Neanderthals seemed incapable of insight and foresight, creative solutions and critical thinking, Neander-thoughts today are holding humans back from making any real progress and actually expose us all to being consigned to some trash heap of history for not recognizing it."
As always, Dennis aims true. If you read nothing else even faintly paleoanthropological this month, you owe it to yourself to check out Neander Thoughts.
6 comments:
I had a look at Diehl's Neander Thoughts and what he does is neatly factor God out of the equation and then misstate and satirize valid Biblical principles.
In doing this, he has aligned himself with the prehistoric neanderthals that he is using in his satiric comparison.
The neanderthals apparently had no spiritual dimension in their lives, no knowledge of God and worked only with the secular knowledge and instinct that they innately possessed.
Neo
DNA evidence seems to indicate that Neanderthal isn't completely dead: The Europeans seem to have strands of DNA from the Neanderthal. This would explain a lot.
The picture of the spiritual dimension in their lives is unclear. Some evidence exists that they had simple weddings a funerals of a type. This is not to say that they had splendiferous trappings of a million dollar+ wedding. They also probably didn't have million dollar+ divorces either. It might not have been for a lack of lawyers. Maybe they had better morals, or maybe raw survival was challenge enough. Obviously, it had to be, since none of them seemed to have survived. Homo whatever seemed to have killed them off.
That the DNA may exist in Europeans is bad news for them, but since the DNA evidence seems to point to the fact that the Jews do not have a common father with the Europeans, it may be good news for the Jews: No Neanderthal DNA may [or may not] make them of a higher order than the Europeans.
Certainly, that little factoid may very well be terrible news for the proponents of British Israelism, since the DNA doesn't support any idea that the British are in any way related to the Israelites. The identity theft should stop right there. It's insulting, particularly when you are part Neanderthal. Also inbreeding of the royals may be a rather spectacular problem as well. One suspects that Neanderthal is reinforced in such individuals.
Ah, but to the matter at hand: Neanderthal thinking.
It just seems so unfair, particularly in light of the Churches of God, replete with their lies, deceptions, misscarriage of justice, lack of accountability and lack of any kind of humanity promoted by a belief in a Satanic implacable god who is so very interested in empty rituals devoid of faith and meaning and irrelevant in a Twenty-First Century world. Besides, its all about narcissism and greed anyway. After the knuckle dragging ministry finishes with perfectly innocent people who have been ruined from their humanity, there isn't much left of worth at the shallow end of the religious gene pool. Frankly, the Neanderthals probably did a better job.
However, the Neanderthals seem to have been replaced by something worse: Radical Islamic Arabs. They don't seem related to the rest of humanity in any meaningful way. And we shouldn't insult the unfortunate Neanderthal by claiming that those particular Moslems are bound by Neanderthal thinking. Neanderthals seemed to be a lot better than that.
This begs the question.
What will replace Homo Sapiens.
My bet at this point would be radical Arab Islam. And we would then become the new Neanderthal, replete with all the insulting association with the worst of all that is base in humanity, supplanted by the freedom loving peaceful Moslems -- a fate not unlike the one envisioned by the Churches of God in their projection of a world ruled by them alone.
What I factored out of the equation in all the "Neander-Thoughts" given was the foolishness that taking them literally engenders in the lives of real people. Could "God" stop the earth from rotating? Sure! Did "He", no. Is any god one can come up with easy to understand and anyone can see it leads to a coherent belief that all can agree upon? No. Is the Bible a seamless whole and without contradiction within? No. Did the Apostle Paul, who write most of the NT ever meet the earthly Jesus? No. Did the 12 who are said to have ate, slept, seen, heard and followed write much of anything about the experience? No. Did Paul ever hear of Jesus miraculous birth or that he taught us to pray? No. And so on. It was not an article about Neanderthals having simple weddings either! But while we are at it, did Neanderthals have simple weddings? No. A great place to start on the current history of Neanderthals is Paul Jordan's NEANDERTHAL. A good place to find Neander-thoughts is in sacred texts that promote the chosen over the unchosen, the called over the uncalled the special ones over the not so special and then say that the reason the text, story or truth is absolutely true is because right there in the text it says it is. Take Fundamentalist Neander-thoughts in any form, Christian, Islamic or Jewish out of the news and you'd only have ads for Walmart and the want ads but a lot less misery and lives ruined or destroyed.
PS Gavin...Great Neanderthal Picture!!!
But while we are at it, did Neanderthals have simple weddings? No.
Now Dennis, I wasn't taking a stab at you. If you notice, I was going with the flow of your presentation and extending it to make it so much worse for the Neaderthal thinking of the xcg ministry. Well, not just the xcg, all of them, really.
Anyway, I will bow to your superior knowledge, but I ask you, did they have complex weddings, then?
Hi Doug, Yeah, after I wrote that I thought, "you know what Doug means" and wished I had not made that point. Sorry bout that. Neanderthal Elders were known to come from the Levant for weddings amongst the Neanderthals of Southern France on only rare occasions. They were simple ceremonies where everyone forget what was said almost immediately as Neanderthals weren't the most conscious beings and in a day or two the woman was dropped for another, at which time they had to check what the book, what book?, said about "But if a Neanderthal Leave his wife...but it ended right there as they forgot what the question was...hehe. After the Neanderthal COG's broke up, even forgetting why, they were called Meander-Thal's wandering around until overcome about 35,000 years ago by a more fussy meateater called Fillet Mignons.
At any rate, don't mind me. I had a simple wedding in a complex situation going from student, to husband to mini-ass all in the same week! ....then 25 years later, I grew up. :)
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