By Roger Marshall*
Between 3.5 million to 250,000 years ago, deep in the humid jungles of south to central Africa, black people were the first humans to evolve from ape-like creatures classified by today’s paleoanthropologists as the Australopithecines (i.e.” Southern apes”) such as Australopithecus afarensis (a.k.a. “Lucy”), Australopithecus robustus, Australopithecus africanus etc.
After close and constant observations of his awe-inspiring and often fear-inducing natural surroundings, the black man, being the first human type in existence, was the first to conceptualise the ideas and notions of higher supernatural powers, spirits, gods and godesses, good and evil forces which over time eventually evolved into the idea and notion of one God in battle with the devil
Being the first man, the black man didn’t only invent religion but also art and science long before the white man came on the scene. In fact, the white man only appeared on the earth thousands of years after black people had already dominated the then known world. Further more, white people really evolved from black people who ventured off the African continent and settled in the cold northern regions of what is now known as Europe. After many years of mutations (genetic mistakes) their black skins paled into white skins, tightly coiled hair became frayed and straightened, and their warm humane temperaments soon degraded into cold, blood-thirsty savagery; a direct result of the harsh icy conditions of the northern regions.
Back in Africa, the great African achievements of science, art and religion continued to be developed by those Africans who remained on the mother continent. These achievements reached their apex in Egyptian culture and religion and served as the greatest contributors to world civilization and world religions including Christianity.
Christianity is therefore considered to be nothing more than a Jewish-European mythological religion based on earlier African Egyptian concepts.
For centuries the truth of Africa’s overwhelming contribution to world civilization and the Christian religion has been suppressed by Europeans, who not only stole their scientific, political, moral and religious ideas from Egypt, but also sought and still presently seek to forever impose their Eurocentric ideology upon black people. This was accomplished primarily through the European colonization of many African countries and the holocaust of the transatlantic slave trade.
Through their many propaganda agencies, including the church, the conquering European masters were able to systematically reduce black people psychologically from the great accomplishers they were, to mere chattel slaves and underdogs. But at last, today after many years of black struggle and resistance, the real truth about Africa and its people is now coming out.
Today the clarion call to all blacks everywhere is to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery and all that it entails, including mental slavery to the white man’s “God” and his Christian religion.
So goes the Afrocentric worldview of a growing number of intellectuals, influential leaders and their adherents throughout the African Diaspora. A few quotes from these intellectuals will illustrate what I mean.
In a 1996 interview with the Barbados Sunday Sun historian professor Hillary Beckles (now Principal) of the University of the West Indies said: “Christianity, though a religion of the West, was not a Western religion. It emerged out of ancient Judaism, which has its origins in African religions.” 1
Six years earlier, in a similar article which also appeared in the Barbados Sunday Sun, Professor Beckles said: “the characteristics attributed to Jesus were already clearly defined in the Egyptian God Osiris: son of God; gave his life for man; rose from the dead … all these were clearly defined in ‘The Book of The Dead’.” He added “One God, monotheism, was not a white, European or Jewish concept but has its origins in Africa. Before 3,000 years BC the concept of one God was already established in African religions” 2
Bishop Antarrah Gilkes of the Gnostic Catholic Church said: “The idea of the resurrection is a [pre]-Christian African-Egyptian doctrine… and originally concerned the risen glorified spiritual body of Heru or Horus from Amenta at the time of the Spring Equinox” 3
Beatrice Lumpkin, associate professor of mathematics at Malcolm X College in Chicago said: “Western literature architecture, religion and ethics were also greatly influenced by those of Egypt. In religion, the story of Moses and a baby in the bulrushes is a close analogue of the earlier Egyptian Horus story (Isis hid Horus in a basket among the reeds of the Niles). The Christian trinity was a later import from Egypt and is not found in the Old Testament.” 4
The works of the 19th century British Egyptologist, Gerald Massey, are foundational too much of today’s Afrocentric claims about the origins of the Judaeo-Christian faith. Massey was both an evolutionist and a spiritualist who participated in many séances. He said: “the starting point of the human family has now to be sought for in Africa, the birth place o the black race, the land of the oldest known human types and of those which preceded and most nearly approached the human … Aethiopia and Egypt produced the earliest civilization in the world and it was indigenous.” 5
Massey was convinced that the Bible’s five books of Moses represented Egyptian astronomical allegorises, which has been literalised, historicized, and humanized. In other words the Bible does not represent true history. As he stated: “The Hebrew books of the Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Joshua, and Judges are invaluable as a virgin mine of mythology; they are of the utmost importance as an aid in recovering the primeval types of Egyptian thought … For the Hebrews, who collected and preserved so much, have explained nothing … There is evidence enough to prove the types are Egyptian and the people who brought them out of Egypt must have been more or less Egyptian in race, and of a religion that was Egyptian of the earliest and oldest kind. Undoubtedly there is some very slight historic nucleus in the Hebrew narrative, but it has been so mixed with myth that it is far easier to recover the celestial allegory with the aid of its correlatives than it is to restore the human history” 6
Afrocentrist, Charles S. Finch, M.D., Assistant Professor of community Medicine and Family Practice at Morehouse School of Medicine, in commenting on Massey’s works said: “Massey wrote that his earlier books ‘were met in England with the truly orthodox conspiracy of silence’. Considering that his writings completely overturned the accepted theories on the birth of civilization as well as the very foundations of orthodox Christianity, it isn’t any wonder.
“He asserted that the Gospels, like certain Old Testament accounts already alluded to, were just the humanized and historicized astronomical mythology of Egypt, instituted by the early Christian canonizers and confirmed at the council of Nicea… As an example of Christianity’s astronomical antecedents, the birthday of Christ, originally celebrated in early January, was purposefully moved back to December 25 to coincide with the birthday of the sun-god Horus (and all the sun gods of antiquity) at which time the constellation Virgo was on the eastern horizon; the sun as son, then…, was truly born of the virgin. Gospel episodes appear to have actually been lifted from the Egyptian originals and given a Palestinian dressing… Massey listed more than 200 direct parallels between the Jesus legend and the Osiris-Horus cycle. The early Jesus is equivalent to Horus; Jesus the Christ corresponds to Osiris, the resurrected god” 7
In light of all these Afrocentric claims to the origins of mankind, religion and civilization, Dr. Neville Duncan, Political scientist at the University of the West Indies said: “We in the Caribbean do not know or history. We don’t know who our heroes are … The history of slavery is one of shame and triumph; the triumph of breaking out of slavery. But we need to go further back, to when Africa was great” 8
While there is a legitimate side to Black Studies in as much as it seeks to educate people about the injustices done to black people, as well as correct the many distortions about Africans and their contribution to world civilization, the blatant attacks upon biblical truth as advocated by several Afrocentrists must not be allowed to go unchallenged.
In the Beginning
To put Black Studies in proper perspective we need to do more than what Dr. Neville Duncan suggested (i.e. to go back in time to “when Africa was great.”); we need to go back to the very dawn of human history, long before there was even a continent know as Africa!
As noted in the opening statements of this article, many Afrocentrists hold to the neo-Darwinian worldview that humans descended (through long evolutionary processes) from ape-like creatures, hence they scoff at the Biblical account of origins recorded in Genesis deeming it to be unscientific and nothing more than mythology. Of course, the evolutionary worldview of the origin of mankind and religion is the position of atheistic naturalism. In the words of the late professor Sir Julian Huxley: “In the evolutionary pattern of thought there is no longer need or room for the supernatural. The earth was not created, it evolved. So did all the animals and plants that inhabit it, including our human selves, mind and soul as well as brain and body. So did religion.” 9
Interestingly enough, while Afrocentrists are embracing Darwinism, it is Darwinism which gave a perfect rationale for white on black racism and white superiority claims (claims advocated long before Darwin was born). This fact is bourn out even in the title of Darwin’s seminal work The Origin of Species which was fully entitled: The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (emphasis mine). In Darwin’s subsequent book, The Decent of Man, he espoused his belief that different races of people evolved at different levels and that some were closer to ape-like creatures than others. In fact Darwin believed that the Australian Aborigines (identified by Afrocentrists as “Africoid”) were the most primitive and the most closely related to our supposed ape-like ancestors.
It was Darwinism, which gave Hitler the “scientific” rationale to carry out his atrocities against the Jews and other “lower races.” As Robert Clark observed, Adolf Hitler “…was captivated by evolutionary teaching – probably since the time he was a boy. Evolutionary ideas – quite undisguised – lie at the basis of all that is worst in Mein Kampf – and in his public speeches…Hitler reasoned…that a higher race would always conquer a lower.”10 In his own words at the 1933 Nuremberg party rally, Hitler said that a “higher race subjects to itself a lower race…a right which we see in nature and which can be regarded as the sole conceivable right” 11
Thus Darwinism – the hub of Afrocentric philosophy, which proudly proclaims that the Black man was the first man to evolve from the apes in Africa – is in itself an inherently racist philosophy favouring any subsequent “race” (in this case the “white” race) that would later subjugate the preceding dominant race (the “black” race) all in the name of survival of the fittest. Drawn to its logical conclusion, Darwinian evolutionary philosophy was epitomised by the transatlantic slave trade, when the white man subjugated the black man; the effects of which are still being felt today in many varied ways. So why the protests by Afrocentrists? After all, what has transpired over the past 500 years is simply evolution in action.
The true origin of man
Thankfully, Darwinism is not true, as the scientific (observable) evidence shows. For example, if humans really evolved from ape-like creatures such as the australopithecines, then we should not expect to find very modern-looking human fossils showing up in the times of the australopithecines. But this is exactly what we do find, which is most embarrassing to the whole idea of human evolution. One example is a fossil found at Kanopoi, South West of Lake Rudolf in northern Kenya. Known as KP271, it is the lower end of a left upper arm bone (distal end of the humerus). It was found in 1965 by Bryan Patterson of Harvard University and is believed to be 4.5 million years old (according to evolutionary time scales, which are not accepted by young earth creationists or this author) making it the oldest hominid fossil ever found.
William Howells, also of Havard, and Patterson examined KP271 via computer discriminate analysis. They compared it with the distal ends of the humeri of a modern human, a chimpanzee, and a similar fossil: Australopithecus rebustus. They published the results of their study in Science Magazine, April 7, 1967. They said: “In these diagnostic measurements, Kanapoi Hominoid 1 is strikingly close to the means of the human”. After several more years of testing and examination, Henry McHenry of the University of California wrote: “The results show that the Kanopoi specimen, which is 4 to 4.5 million years old, is indistinguishable from modern Homo Sapiens…”12
In commenting on this fossil find, anthropologist and creationist Professor Marvin Lubenow said: “…the oldest human fossil ever found – Skimpy as it is – reveals that man was virtually the same 4.5 million years ago (on the evolutionary time scale) as he is today and suggests that humans appeared on the scene suddenly and without evolutionary ancestors”13
Then there are the Laetoli footprint trails discovered in northern Tanzania dated again, according to the evolutionary time scale, at 3.6 million years old but yet as Russell H. Tuttle of the University of Chicago has observed these footprint trails “In discernible features … are indistinguishable from those of habitually barefoot Homo sapiens”14
Again, as Professor Marvin Lubenow says: “The fact that humans appeared in the fossil record before the australopithecines and lived as contemporaries with the australopithecines throughout all of australopithecine history reveals that the australopithecines had nothing to do with human origins”15
To the unbiased mind such evidence in the fossil record strongly supports the Biblical account of human origins as recorded in Genesis. That account indicates that humans did indeed appear on the scene suddenly without any evolutionary ancestors. In short, man was created by God; he didn’t evolve from lower animals.
As for the Afrocentrists’ claim that Africa is the “mother land” on which the first humans appeared (after evolving from apes of course, in their view) many creationist scientists (as opposed to evolutionists) point out that the early earth, on which Adam and Eve lived, was one giant landmass known to us today as Pangaea. In fact, the concept of Pangaea, which is widely accepted by evolutionary geologists (howbeit on an evolutionary time scale which places its existence and subsequent break up long before man appeared on the scene) was originally conceived and championed by the French creationist geographer Antonio Snider in 1859. The statements in Genesis 1:9-10 about the gathering together of the seas in one place (which seems to imply that there was one landmass) influenced his thinking. He believed Pangaea was broken up by Noah’s flood.16 Since all the continents were joined together as one landmass when Adam walked the earth, technically speaking, it means that all the continents have a collective claim to the first man, not just Africa alone. To put it bluntly, Adam was not an African, a European or an Asian, rather he was a citizen of the whole earth, a Pangaean, if you will.
The origin of religion
As pointed out earlier, many Afrocentrists, due to their foundational belief in the biological evolution of man in the jungles of Africa, also subscribe to the view that the concept of God and spirituality evolved and developed out of earlier African animistic and polytheistic concepts, concepts that they claim over time eventually gave rise to monotheism of which Judaism, Christianity and Islam are, relatively speaking, the latest versions.
However, just like the notion of human evolution, that view of the origin of religion is also false. In attestation to this fact, Dr. Stephen M. Langdon, professor of Assyriology at Oxford University, noted: “Monotheism in the Old Testament, [was] not the result of a direct evolution from polytheism. It was a false concept of the history of religion to suppose that polytheism was necessarily connected with low types of culture. In fact polytheism grew out of monotheism and was only a theological interpretation of primitive monotheism… the earliest religious concepts of man… pointed unmistakably to an original monotheism… the totemistic origin of Hebrew and other Semitic religions is now entirely discredited” 17
Another researcher, Wilhelm Schmidt, a Jesuit professor at the University of Vienna, spent over forty years (1912-1955) documenting and compiling evidence for what he called ‘primitive monotheism’. In 1931, Schmidt published his findings as ‘The Origin and Growth of Religion’, a book that revolutionized the study of religious anthropology. His findings revealed that ancient man’s religion was originally monotheistic but eventually degenerated into magic, animism, ancestor worship, spiritism, polytheism, pantheism etc. This of course is the Biblical position (See Rom. 1: 18-25) and is once again supported by the evidence. In fact, by 1958 Schmidt had published over 4,000 pages of evidence in 12 large volumes 18
Additionally, contrary to Beatrice Lumpkin’s claim (mentioned earlier) that “The Christian trinity was a later import from Egypt and is not found in the Old Testament”, the evidence shows otherwise. From a Biblical perspective the doctrine of the Trinity actually predates Egyptian civilisation and reaches way back to the very dawn of human existence, in the Garden of Eden, when God (Elohim) said: “Let us make man in our image and after our likeness…” (Gen.1: 26). If Adam (the first man) understood God to be more than one person in nature, then one would expect to find glimpses or traces of this understanding among several diverse cultures of people (both Jew and Gentile) who are all Adam’s descendants, this is exactly what we do find in both biblical and extra-biblical material.
For example, the most famous Jewish prayer, the Shema, says: “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One” (Deut. 6: 4). The Hebrew word for “One” in this verse is echad. Rev. Dr. Clinton Chisholm, in commenting on the use of this word in scripture says: “Echad…means one in a complex or compound sense, this word suggests the unity that results from combining plural entities. Interestingly, the Old Testament writers never use yachid [a word which means one in a solitary, digital sense] to describe God! That fact would, on the surface, suggest that they did not believe in God as a solitary, digital…person. What we do find is that echad is used to describe God, which would be expected if the writers believed in a multi-personal God…Indeed it is not simply the multi-personality of God that is suggested in the Old Testament but there are passages that hint at the trinity (see Is. 48: 16; 61: 1; 63: 9 – 10).” 19
Extra-biblical evidence of the knowledge of the triune or multi-personal nature of God, among several of Adam’s descendants who apostatised into paganism, also abounds. For example, as antiquarian the late Alexander Hislop observed: “The ancient Babylonians…recognised in words the unity of the Godhead; and, while worshipping innumerable minor deities, as possessed of certain influence on human affairs, they distinctly acknowledged that there was ONE infinite and almighty Creator, supreme over all. Most other nations did the same” 20
Hislop further noted: “In the unity of that one Only God of the Babylonians, there were three persons, and to symbolise that doctrine of the Trinity, they employed, as the discoveries of Layard [the famed 19th century archaeologist] prove, the equilateral triangle…the Egyptians also used the triangle as a symbol of their ‘triform divinity’.” 21
Layard also noted in his work Nineveh and Babylon that the ancient Assyrians and Persians also worshipped a triune god as their supreme deity, represented with three heads on one body. The ancient pagans of Siberia did the same, so did the Celts. Similarly, in one of the most ancient cave temples at Elephanta, India, there is a triform image of the supreme deity of the Indians represented with three heads on one body under the name “Eko Deva Trimurtti” which when translated means “One God, three forms.” 22
This kind of archaeological evidence corroborates the biblical teaching which says that all men have some knowledge of the true and living God, as the apostle Paul wrote: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse… Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things.” (Rom.1: 18-20, 22, 23, NKJ). Rev. Hislop sums it up this way: “While overlaid with idolatry, the recognition of a Trinity was universal in all the ancient nations of the world, proving how deep-rooted in the human race was the primeval doctrine on this subject, which comes out so distinctly in Genesis.” 23
The origin of Christianity
When we turn our attention to the claim that Christianity borrowed its teachings of a virgin born saviour who died for the sins of the world, and rose again from the dead, from earlier mythological African Egyptian sources, we find that the charges don’t stand up to careful scrutiny. In refutation of the said charges, first it must be observed that the doctrine of the virgin birth, death and resurrection of the world saviour, like the doctrine of the Trinity, is also pre-African/Egyptian. This doctrine goes all the way back to the dawn of human history in the Garden of Eden (see Gen. 3: 15) long before the continent now know as Africa and the country known as Egypt even existed.
It is the God given promise in Genesis of a virgin born saviour (“the seed of the woman” as opposed to the seed of the man) who dies and recovers/resurrects (symbolised by the bruised heel of the seed of the woman) which is the true origin and source of the Christian doctrine of the virgin birth, death, burial and resurrection of Christ. Indeed, it is probably, for the most part, the source and origin of any traces of the same doctrine in pagan religions. However, just as the pagans (in light of Romans 1: 18 – 25) perverted their knowledge of the true and living God, similarly they also corrupted their knowledge of the coming saviour. Only by the advent of Jesus Christ was the ancient promise of a world saviour truly fulfilled (Gal. 4: 4-5).
Additionally, there is also historic evidence that suggest that some of the striking similarities between Christianity and other pagan “saviour-god” religions, is the result of the pagans syncretising their beliefs with Christianity. Concerning this fact, Josh McDowell writes: “Attis is supposed to have come back to life four days after his death, one account has Osiris being reanimated two or three days after his death and it is even suggested that Adonis may have been resurrected three days after his death. In the case of all three, there is no evidence earlier than the second century A.D. for the supposed “resurrection” of these mystery gods…” 24
In fact, before the second century A.D. the original Egyptian teaching about Osiris returning from the dead was via his reincarnation (not resurrection) in his son Horus. 25 The doctrines of reincarnation or “transmigration of souls” and resurrection are mutually exclusive and can not be equated as one and the same.
Norman Anderson in his book Christianity and World Religions writes: “…if borrowing there was by one religion from another, it seems clear which way it went. There is no evidence whatever, that I know of, that the mystery religion had any influence in Palestine in the early decades of the first century. And the difference between the mythological experiences of these nebulous figures and the crucifixion “under Pontius Pilate” of one of whom eye witnesses bore testimony to both his death and resurrection is again obvious.” 26
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is historical fact and not fiction as the Afrocentrists claim.
Truth: the true weapon to deal with injustices
Afrocentrism has its roots in Pan Africanism and the Black Consciousness Movement which arose as ideological responses among Blacks to counter the persistent negative portrayals of black people and the many injustices they suffered in society and unfortunately even in church circles.
For example, some churches taught (and unfortunately still do teach) that black skin was the sign of a curse. It was said that it was the mark which God placed on Cain after he killed Abel (Gen. 4: 9-15). However, it should be noted that the mark (whatever it was) was only placed on Cain and not his entire family. Furthermore, Cain’s descendants did not survive the flood.
Some churches also taught that people with black skin are under the curse which Noah supposedly placed on his son Ham (Gen. 9: 22-25). Since several of Ham’s descendants were blacks who settled in Africa, it meant that Africans were also under the curse and were fit only for servitude and slavery. However, it should again be noted that the curse pronounced by Noah was not on Ham at all but rather it was pronounced on his son Canaan. Canaan was the progenitor of the non-negroid inhabitants of Palestine such as the Jebrusites, the Amorites, the Hivites, etc. (Gen. 10: 15-19).
The Mormons teach that all people pre-existed in heaven before they were born on earth. During the war in heaven, when the sons of God fought against Lucifer and his angels, they were some of those pre-existent souls who did not engage in the war one way or the other, but rather tried to be neutral. Those who fought for Christ were born with white skins, a sign of their bravery and loyalty to Christ. Conversely, those who refused to get involve were born with black skins.
This kind of teaching is insulting and demeaning to black people and has gendered much prejudice and racism over the years, including black on white racism that has led to some very extreme claims and statements made by blacks about whites.
For example, the followers of Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam (NOI) claim that all white people are devils while black people are gods/divine. Ratafarians have also claimed that white men are devils and that God, Jesus, the Israelites and God, Jesus, the Israelites and the early Christians were all black.
While it is important for us to dispel the many myths about the origin and status of the black “race”, it is even more important that Afrocentrists be not guilty of correcting white distortions of race and history with black distortions. There is a saying “extremes promote extremes but the point of balance is the true opposite of all extremes”.
A proper understanding of the Biblical view of “race” is key to maintaining any balance in the area of black consciousness.
First, the Bible declares that all men regardless of “race” are created equal (Acts 17: 24-26). Furthermore the Bible speaks of nations or ethnic groups, not of races. There is really only one race – the human race – but many nations/ethnicities.
Secondly, the Bible declares that all men, regardless of nation or ethnicity, are sinners (Rom. 3: 23).
Thirdly, the Bible reveals that there is only one-way of salvation for all peoples, viz, the blood of Jesus shed for the remission or forgiveness of our sins, skin colour has nothing to do with it (see Luke22: 20, Heb. 9: 11-22).
It is also important to have an understanding about what the Bible teaches concerning the origin of the various ethnic groups. While many Afrocentrists claim that Adam and Eve were black, as opposed to being white, the Bible seems to suggest that early man was neither black or white but was probably some where in the middle with a reddish brown complexion, as indicated by the Hebrew word for Adam. As Dr. Spiros Zodhiates points out in the Lexical Aids of the Hebrew Greek Key Study Bible “Âdam; this root is translated as ‘ruddy,’ ‘dyed red,’ and ‘red’ in the K.J.V. in its ten occurances. It means reddish brown, turning red, to be erubescent…” In regard to the noun form he said: “Âdâm; this noun usually refers to mankind in the collective sense. It is also a proper noun, the first man whom God created…There is probably some original connection to the ruddiness of men’s complexion; see âdam” 27
If Adam’s skin colour was somewhere in the middle, with built-in genetic ability to adjust or variate to either the lighter or darker sides of the spectrum, based on (but not solely on) environmental demands, that would easily account for the extensive variety in skin colour we see today.
In addressing this issue the website of the creationist organisation, Answers in Genesis, says the following:
“In any group of ‘white’ people today the ability to tan or produce brownness varies. Some just can’t do it and pay the price-sunburn. Others produce Hollywood brown without too much trouble. We are even familiar with the person whose skin is just ‘naturally’ dark. In a group of ‘black’ people, such minor variations also exist, producing shades of blackness.
“The Bible refers to genetic variations, such as the height of man, before the flood. It is therefore very probable that both before and after the flood variations in skin coloration also existed-even in Noah’s family.
“Up to the time of Babel, since there was only one language, all of mankind formed only one culture or ‘marriage group’. Any variations would tend to be minimized since ‘darkish’ could marry a ‘lightish’, and the average color of the population would stay the same. However, the coming of new languages changed all that. The large group was split into many smaller groups. It is unlikely that each group would have contained a representative of all shades of skin color. So if a census had been taken of average skin color of each group, some would have averaged towards the darker end, and some to the lighter end. The same sort of difference would no doubt have occurred for any body characteristic-straight hair, wavy hair, eye shape, etc.
“The world environment had been dramatically changed by the flood. As the groups dispersed, then, they were going to areas which offered them new and different climates and diets. Studies on the relationship between skin color and health in a given environment, suggest the following origin of racial colors. After Babel, those who went to colder climates who had darker skin, would probably suffer Vitamin D deficiencies, such as rickets. The skin produces Vitamin D from sunlight. The person with darker skin is worse off in a cold region since there is less sunlight, and since he is more sunlight resistant, he can produce less Vitamin D. “The colder environment, both through sunlight and the available diet, would tend to favor those with fairer skins. Dark skinned people would be therefore less healthy and tend to have fewer children. Gradually the number of black people in any group that went to a cold region would dwindle. From that point on the remaining population was a ‘white’ race.
“Likewise, those who went to brighter, hotter regions, and had darker skins would survive more easily (i.e. get less skin cancer, etc.) and hence be selected for. In this case, the whiter persons would dwindle from the population and a ‘black’ race would result. It is interesting to note that if a pure white European is married to a pure black Negro, the offspring are an intermediate brown called mulatto. If two mulattos are married, the offspring can be any of 9 colors, from pure white to pure black.
“The simplest conclusion that it may be possible to draw from this observation is that Noah and his family possessed genes for both dark and light. Dark enough to protect them, and light enough to ensure sufficient Vitamin D. In the world before the flood it is unlikely that there would have been extremes of heat or cold, so that a balanced skin color was the most suitable. After Babel the extremes of environment sorted these color factors into groups which contained different numbers of light and dark genes. The final ratio of dark to light genes in any one group would be the most useful balance for that environment. This process of gaining a light or dark skin is not an adaptation in the evolutionary sense of the organism developing something new to cope with a new environment. All basic factors in skin color were present in the first created man. Adam was designed to ‘cope’.” 28
Conclusion
Yes, black people have built great empires, white people, yellow people and brown people have also done the same. Whites have done evil things to his fellowman, blacks have done the same. Freedom from “mental slavery” will not be truly accomplished by subscribing to a faulty worldview (a mental construct about the origin and purpose of the world) which rejects the truth of the Bible (which speaks to our true origins and purpose) and its central figure; Jesus Christ. After all, true freedom begins with faith in Jesus. As the Scripture says: “To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, ‘If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’” (John 8: 31-32, emphasis mine).
The freedom Jesus gives is ultimate freedom which is freedom from the penalty and dominion of sin. This is the kind of freedom truly needed since it is sin that produces the evils of racism and its many spin-offs and side effects, such as reverse racism, which in their quest to correct the evils of racism, many Afrocentrists (like the followers of the NOI mentioned earlier) are often times guilty of producing. As some one rightfully said: “man’s problem isn’t SKIN but SIN. The solution isn’t RACE but GRACE through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
________________________________________________________________________
*Roger Marshall is executive director of Project PROBE Ministries, a Barbadian Christian apologetics organisation.
©2008
1. Focus on African heritage, Barbados Sunday Sun, Jan. 7 1996, p. 10A
2. Africa’s contribution has been distorted, Sunday Sun, March 18, 1990, p. 31).
3. Daily Nation, April 22, 1996, p. 10A
4. Ivan Van Sertima, Egypt revisited, Second edition, (New Brunswick, Transaction Publishers, 1986), p. 416
5. Ibid, p. 402
6. Ibid, p. 405
7. Ibid 409-410
8. The B’dos Sunday Sun , Jan 7, 1996, p. 10A
9. Sir Julian Huxley, Issues in Evolution, University of Chicago Press, 1960
10. Robert Clark, Darwin: Before and After, p. 115
11. J. Tenenbaum, Race and Reich, p. 211
12. Science, Oct. 31, 1975
13. Marvin Lubenow, Bones of Contention (Grand Rapids, Baker Book House, 1992), p. 58
14. Russell H. Tuttle and D.M. Webb, The Pattern of Little Feet, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Feb. 1989
15. Marvin Lubenow Bones of Contention (Grand Rapids, Baker Book House, 1992)
16. Antonio Snider, Le Création et ses Mystéres Devoilés, Franck and Dentu, Paris, 1859. See also Andrew Snelling, A Scientific Look at Catastrophic Plate Tectonics, posted at: http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v2/n2/A-catastrophic-breakup#fnList_1_5
17. John Raymond Hand, Why I Accept the Genesis Record, pp 43-44, emphasis added.
18. Cited in SCP Journal, vol. 20: 3-4, 1996, p. 59
19. Rev. Clinton Chisholm, article: Christ For Today, Topic: The Trinity, pp. 2-3, May 30, 1999 (emphasis mine)
20. Alexander Hislop, The Two Babylons, p.14, pub. 1858
21. Ibid, p.16
22. Ibid, p.18
23. Ibid, p.18
24. Josh McDowell, Evidence for the Historical Jesus, p. 166
25. Isis, posted at: http://www.themystica.com
/mythical-folk/articles/isis.html
26.Josh McDowell, Evidence for the Historical Jesus, p. 166
27. Spiros Zodhiates, TH.D, Hebrew Greek Key Study Bible,
Lexicon to the Old and New Testaments, p. 1575, Nos. 119, and120
28. The Origin of the human races, posted at:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v3/i3/human_race.asp
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