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Newsletter from Anne Habermehl No. 2 October 2015
Greetings from Cortland, New York, where there are reminders that summer is over. The geese are flying around in preparation for heading south, and the trees are turning their colors. We are reminded of what God said in his heart in Gen. 8:22: "While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease."
The Creation Research Society conference in Dallas took place in early August. Talk about heat! It is a mystery to me (probably because I am a northerner) why it is that the hottest places in this country run the most frigid air conditioning. I caught Mike Oard sitting in the main reception area of the hotel holding a warm sweater in his lap. He said it was in case of extreme air conditioning in the church where we were headed for that evening, to hear John Morris speak. I knew exactly what Mike meant.
The conference was very successful. Danny Faulkner announced that they had a total of 128 registrations, the highest they had ever had. As always, there was an interesting group of people from a wide variety of disciplines. We had a very nice visit to the ICR (Institute of Creation Research) headquarters, and now I will be able to picture where they are located whenever I hear of them. ICR puts out a monthly publication by email called Acts and Facts to anyone who requests it. The October one is out: it is at http://www.icr.org/aaf . They invite you to this page to sign up for it: http://www.icr.org/icr-magazines . ICR were joint hosts of the conference with CRS.
One interesting person that I met at the conference was Trey Smith, who makes videos for YouTube (if you google up "Trey Smith YouTube" you will see a list of his videos). Bob Enyart had suggested that Trey talk to me because Trey is planning to do a video on the Exodus, and Enyart had read my own comments on Patterns of Evidence in my first newsletter. Trey wound up interviewing me over a long lunch; he also telephoned me after the conference. One subject that he raised was where the crossing of the Red Sea had taken place, because there are those who suggest varying possibilities, including the Gulf of Aqaba on the east side of the Sinai Peninsula. Although I had seen this latter idea on some web sites, I had not considered that it could be taken seriously. But I realized that this was one area that I had not really researched, and this sent me off to delve into this subject. My conclusion: the Children of Israel had to have crossed somewhere north of the present head of the Gulf of Suez, near Egypt. My reasons for this are briefly laid out here. Some time in the future this may be turned into a proper paper. (So many papers, so little time!)
I presented "Dating the Ipuwer Papyrus on the Biblical Versus Secular Timelines" at the Dallas conference. The abstract for this topic (also to be turned into a future paper) is here. My thesis is that the turmoil in Egypt described in this manuscript has to refer to the time of the plagues and Exodus. But only timeline revision makes it possible to date this manuscript to the right time.
Homo naledi. A topic that has rather been in the news recently is the finding of some fossils named H. naledi in a cave in South Africa. The evolutionists have gotten all excited (they get excited easily), and are now going to determine where in our family tree these new fossils will perch. This is what evolutionists do, and this is quite understandable. What is more difficult to understand is why some creationists claim that these maybe are or maybe are not human. E.g., see http://creation.com/homo-naledi where Marc Ambler says in the second-last paragraph, "Whatever the final response to these announcements, the fossil remains are either those of an ape ‘kind’, or of mankind, and if the latter, descendants of the historical Adam and Eve."
It seems fairly obvious that H. naledi are upright-walking apes, but smaller than the H. erectus (which Jack Cuozzo, author of Buried Alive, believes are apes). The description of H. naledi given by secular scientists is described in Wikipedia here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_naledi . Note that this "new" species seems to be a cross between australopithecus and what they call "genus Homo" in its characteristics. One surprise for me was that they are certain that other humans had visited this cave some decades ago. This means that the distribution of the bones could have well been disturbed. Whatever, there are plenty of opinions stated. And if the secular scientists don't consider these to be Homo sapiens, why should we?
Bouke Bokma, a dentist in South Africa, lives near the area where these fossils have been found. In 2011, while on a creationist speaking tour organized by Dr. Bokma, I visited the Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg. A scientist by the name of Bernard Zipfel (that Bouke knew) showed us around the fossil laboratories. Zipfel is the last scientist listed as an author on the paper "Homo naledi: a new species of the genus Homo from the Dinaledi Chamber, South Africa" (that entire paper is online here: http://elifesciences.org/content/4/e09560 ). Forty-seven authors are listed on this paper, a trend that I've been seeing in recent years for these papers on evolutionary biology. Where do they get all these people? I start to wonder whether they accidentally included the janitorial staff...
Finding Noah: An Adventure of Faith. Answers in Genesis have published a review of the movie/documentary, Finding Noah: An Adventure of Faith that has just come out. You can read their review here: https://answersingenesis.org/reviews/movies/finding-noah-adventure-faith/ . The review gives its producers credit for promoting belief that the story of Noah in the Bible is true, and that there actually was an Ark. This is welcome! But there are some misgivings on the part of AiG, because of a number of things, which they list. First, they point out that the Ark cannot have landed on Mount Ararat because this mountain is a volcano that erupted during the Ice Age and right into recent history. AiG also object to the interview with an evolutionary geologist who teaches against a global flood. There are other problems that they find. Therefore, AiG will not promote this film.
Creation Ministries also reviewed this film here: http://creation.com/finding-noah-film-review . They look at it from a somewhat different angle, and give different details. Their assessment? It's "frankly not a very good film." They would rather that Christians spend their time sharing the Gospel and not waste their time looking for the Ark on some remote mountaintop. Although this review was skeptical that the Ark could have landed on Mount Ararat (good for them!), I did wonder about their research because they did not mention Mount Cudi as an alternative site, only the far less likely Zagros Mountains.
There was a one-night-only showing of this movie in theaters on Oct. 8, 2015; release date of the DVD has not been announced.
Heading for Turkey: My visit to Gobekli Tepe and Sanliurfa, and the archaeoacoustic conference in Istanbul (where I will present a paper on dating ancient musical instruments on the secular and biblical timelines), is now rapidly approaching. Next time I'll tell you about that. I would appreciate prayers for safety, and for the creationist message in my presentation to be well received.
So that's about it for this time. I will be happy to hear from any of you, and will welcome comments on any of my writings.
With God's blessings to you,
Anne Habermehl
Creationist researcher, author and speaker
Cortland, New York, USA
The title of this newsletter, creationsixdays.net, is also the name of my web site. If you go to www.creationsixdays.net you will see links to papers I've published, reports on conferences, and other material.
Here is a link to my first newsletter, published July, 2015.
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