Who is Man
The most crucial philosophical and religious questions of our time is ‘Who is Man’ where did he come from and where is he going. One of the world’s most illustrious and influential theologian Abraham J. Heschel in his book “Who is Man”, says “We have never been as open-mouthed and inquisitive, never as astonished and embarrassed at our ignorance about man. We know what he makes, but we do not know what he is or what to expect of him. Is it not conceivable that our entire civilization is built upon a misinterpretation of man? Or that the tragedy of man is due to the fact that he is a being who has forgotten the question, who is Man? The failure to identify himself, to know his authentic human existence, leads him to assume a false identity, to pretending to be what he is, unable to be or to not accepting what is at the very root of his being. Ignorance about man is not lack of knowledge, but false knowledge”.
Some theories say MAN evolved from Apes, other theories only leads man around dark corners and into empty basements. Like a constant itch in our mind, we search to find the mysteries that plague our minds. There are many unanswered questions surrounding strange events from the bemusing Bermuda Triangle to the bizarre UFO encounters, to the surreal illuminate and The world Order. Mans existence continually remains a mystery. Many questions have remained unanswered by mainstream academicians, philosophers and theologians.
Many of these theories are altogether hazy, with mirages making assumptions to look like the real thing. Were there ancient civilizations that existed before us? Who really know? One thing is for certain, without hard evidence of a lost civilization, scientists, Historians and Theologians will never accept such theories. Were there some terrestrial visitors from space that helped to build the great pyramids of Egypt and Central America? Is there an advanced technology from an alien civilization needed to explain how ancient man could move huge stones, build monumental structures, create intricate artwork and organize complex cultures considering the belief that man was “primitive”. The typical ‘cave man’ is portrayed as hairy dim-witted, brutish creature. However many cave paintings reveal a skill equivalent to that of some of the greatest artists of modern times.
Recently, Scientist was surprised to find ‘Stone age’ musical instruments, revealing a high level of understanding and musical ability. The known history of mankind does not suggest evolution from a primitive ‘ape man’ creature through to today’s intelligent human. Rather the evidence from the past shows that people have always been intelligent, using their ingenuity to make the best out of the various situations in which they find themselves.
Today the predominant axis of man’s knowledge of things, his science is earthly and terrestrial. Man learned the laws of the physics of the earth from celestial physics and astronomy. The laws of motion of Newton were based on the laws of planetary motion established by a Pythagorian kepler who significantly enough spoke of these laws specially the third law, in a work entitled ‘Harmonice mundi’. And once these heavenly laws were relegated to the level of terrestrial physics, this physics itself became the model of other forms of knowledge.
Man feels himself as the possessor of all things, as the unquestionable conqueror and master of all of nature. Modern science may enable man to know how he is constituted chemically or biologically or where he is in galactic space. But this form of science cannot tell man who he is, where he was before his earthly existence and where he will be after it. In the teachings of different religions, man can discovered different elements of his own universal nature. Dr Albert Chuhward, a distinguished scholar, anthropologist and archaeologist theorizes that the earliest human species appeared about two million years ago in the great lakes region of central Africa and later spread over the entire continent. The African ancestry of the human race is now generally accepted as a fact.
Another scholar Dr Eric Higgs, of Cambridge University has also made a study of the migration of ancient man, and claim that the first man of Europe came to the continent from central and east Africa about 200,000 years ago.
Man’s evolution started many years ago, century after century they evolutionized. The concept of evolution is now dead. The foundation of the theory of evolution was natural selection and it is clear today in all the literature that this foundation has been swept away. There are other theories of the origin of man that lacks substance because there are no definitive facts to back them up. However the Bible which is the only Book that gives a clue to the origin of man teaches that man is the image of God, according to the gospel of John, it open’s up with the phrase “In the beginning was the word and the word was God. I n Genesis 1:26, says that man was made in the image of God and was given dominion over all the earth.
We live in an age where ‘once upon a time’, the scientific knowledge destroyed the validity of the Bible but now it is validating it. 100 years ago, the French Academy of Science published 51 facts to prove that the Bible was wrong, yet today every one of these “51 facts” has been disproven. The Bible, attacked by every generation of mankind, continues to survive as the next generation show that these attacks were without credibility. Man is unique but with all his wonder and uniqueness, unless his spiritual dimension and the spiritual laws in the arena of human activity are recognized and applied, he can only get deeper in his ignorance about who he is.
By Hilda Oti
