Temple Topples Evolutionist Version of Religious History

Oldest Temple Topples Evolutionists' History of Religion [Excerpts]

"Anthropologists have assumed that organized religion began as a way of salving the tensions that inevitably arose when hunter-gatherers settled down, became farmers, and developed large societies," according to a National Geographic feature in June 2011.¹ But the exquisitely carved pillars of the world's oldest known temple, Gobekli Tepe, contradict that evolutionary version of ancient human history.²

Standard evolutionary anthropology—the study of ancient man—insists that humans invented religious worship as they emerged from an ape-like ancestry. Religion supposedly emerged after the development of agriculture provided people with enough free time and close proximity to bicker, thus also providing them with an incentive to invent God and religion.

Evolutionary storytellers such as H. G. Wells provided possible reasons why early humans developed religion.³

Similarly speculative, the National Geographic's report on Gobekli Tepe asserted that "those who rose to power were seen as having a special connection with the gods."²

But the idea that agricultural amenities spawned religion is making an about-face in light of the fully constructed temple complexes discovered at Gobekli Tepe (pronounced Guh-behk-lee Teh-peh and roughly translated "potbelly hill") in southern Turkey. The remarkable findings there show that mankind was able to worship from the beginning of the human race.

Many mysteries surround the temple site. Nobody knows why the pillars at the complex were buried on purpose, perhaps centuries after their careful construction, or why they depict stylized ornamental patterns, as well as images of birds, snakes, a scorpion, bulls, foxes, reptiles, a man, and even possibly dinosaurs. And no one knows why the pillars were arranged in the four stone circles that excavators have uncovered so far, or why they were built at all. "In fact, nobody really knows how Neolithic man managed to hew these pillars," according to Elif Batuman, who described his visit to Gobekli Tepe in the December 2011 issue ofThe New Yorker.⁴

These general questions may never find answers, but these fascinating ruins have clearly rebutted certain evolution-inspired claims about ancient humans. Batuman wrote, "The idea of a religious monument built by hunter-gatherers contradicts most of what we thought we knew about religious monuments and about hunter-gatherers."⁴

Archaeologist Klaus Schmidt, lead researcher of the excavations, has suggested that perhaps religious worship evolved first, and this development triggered the need for agriculture. But this reversal of the standard evolutionary story only shows that man-made histories are subjective, plastic, and unreliable.

http://www.icr.org/article/6582/