Thou art wearied in the multitude of thy counsels. Let now the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand up, and save thee from these things that shall come upon thee. Behold, they shall be as stubble; the fire shall burn them; they shall not deliver themselves from the power of the flame: there shall not be a coal to warm at, nor fire to sit before it.
(Isaiah 47:13-14) KJV
People will instinctively mock at the mention of Immanuel Velikovsky but, sadly, he was the last halfway decent scholar of our time. He made an objective evaluation of evidence and asked a lot of hard questions.
He was determined to discount the divine nature of the Bible but yet he still managed to prove it scientifically. Imagine that, Velikovsky harmonized the Bible with science as an atheist. Let that sink in. That’s why his work was rejected: not because it was wrong, but because the scientific community didn’t want to hear it.
Peer review is the gate keeper to the scientific establishment and it has the power to allow or deny whoever and whatever it wants. Peer review has allowed popular science (SciPop) to construct a false narrative of godless existence while ignoring the normal rules of scientific investigation.
Velikovsky’s work is a treasure trove of information and this is precisely why the Peer Review propaganda machine discredited him. Peer Review wants Velikovsky pegged as irrelevant so that no one will take his work seriously.
That’s because Peer Review knew that he was the most serious threat that had ever risen up against the popular science narrative of godless existence (SciPop). The fact that Velikovsky was an atheist didn’t matter. His work was such a threat to all of the major fields of academic endeavor that it had to be snuffed out. He had an odd combination of determinations:
- he’s determined to show the historical accuracy of the Bible but,
- he’s determined to show that there was no supernatural cause necessary to account for any of the phenomenon it describes.
Wow. That’s a tough assignment. Regardless Velikovsky goes at it with the voracity of a champion. Someone who is absolutely convinced of his own greatness. Someone who is so convinced of his own greatness that he had his wife carve a bust of him and cast it in bronze. Someone who was so convinced of his own greatness that when the scientific community didn’t acknowledge it he was humiliated and crushed. Poor old Veli.
Velikovsky’s motivation was, like a good scientist, the denial of God. Like a good scientist he believed that everything had an explanation which lay within the knowable. In his mind there was no supernatural cause for the events in the Bible. He had a vast knowledge of human history, cultural artifacts, relics and writing. He had unprecedented access to some of the worlds great collections. He personally knew some of the great figures of academics and learning. What he lacked was understanding.
For instance, he knew that all the evidence points at very recent cataclysmic evolution. Unfortunately he was an evolutionist, so he was hampered by the excessively long lime scale which waters down the impact of the evidence. Fortunately he was objective, and so he was able to evaluate material from cultures all around the world which describe the deluge (Noah’s flood) and the mountains being turned upside down (Peleg’s tectonics). Sadly he was determined to prove the historical accuracy of the Bible while denying the existence of God. As such, he had to account for all the evidence with just the Exodus and a couple more recent phenomena in the Bible. He had two blind spots:
- He couldn’t acknowledge the reality of Noah’s flood,
- that would destroy the evolution time scale.
- It doesn’t appear that Peleg’s tectonics even occurred to him.
Velikovsky used an unmatched knowledge of many branches of science: astronomy, anthropology, history, geology etc. to show that the Bible is historically accurate while he denyed the existence of God. He reconciled science and the Bible as an atheist. It remains an outstanding accomplishment which the establishment had to suppress.
Velikovsky’s name is universally scorned but not because he was wrong, because no one wanted to hear what he had to say. Peer Review wants to bury a lot of inconvenient truths which have no place in the SciPop narrative, like this one, for example:
The history of China is commonly supposed to extend back to gray antiquity. But in reality the sources of the ancient period of the Chinese past are very scanty, for they were destroyed by the Emperor Tsin-chi-hoang (246-209 before the present era).
– Immanuel Velikovsky, Ages in Chaos
We’re showing how the Bible and science are perfectly aligned by choosing to believe that God cannot lie, and using deduction to reconcile the evidence with scripture. For us God is absolutely real and is the source of all truth.