Well, not if you ask most Christians, but if you ask pretty much anybody else, the answer is pretty obvious: we are born here & we die here, right? Taking into account, of course, the fact that we are spirit beings having a biological experience, it's not really that simple! Humanly speaking, since we ARE born here & we DO die here, this is without doubt our home. Exploration has been made & is still being advanced in search of other habitable planets, in the likely case that the Earth will again become uninhabitable as it once was, according to the Bible, 'without form and void'!
The ancient Sumerians, the forerunners of the Babylonians, so to speak, left behind a wealth of information for us to decipher ( if one believes that sort of thing ), telling us, among other things, that the human race was 'created', not by the Almighty, as the Scriptures tell us, but by an alien race of gods called the Annunaki. The Annunaki, according to these tales, were scientists who fashioned ( 'formed'? ) human beings in their own image to serve their own purposes on Earth; sound familiar? The planet that they called 'Home' is '
Nibiru', lately called 'Planet X'. Planet X is not native to our own solar system, but, as the story goes, invades it every 3600 years in a clock-wise ( apparently, everything else rotates in a counter-clockwise pattern ), elliptical orbit.
NASA, among other researchers, has noted seeming 'evidence' of claims that at one point, many millions of years ago, this 'Planet X', on one of its intrusions, struck one of the planets in our solar system, a planet called 'Tiamat'. Now, 'Tiamat' no longer exists, as such, anyway; now, she is known as 'Earth'! According to this tale, when 'Nibiru' struck, 'Tiamat' was cloven, forming what we now know as the asteroid belt ( between Mars & Jupiter ) and the planet that human beings now call 'home'. Looking at Earth from space ( ? ), one can see that most of her land mass is gathered on one side of the planet, in & around the Atlantic basin. Much of the landmass in the Pacific region is evidence of volcanic activity. Not only was this planet cloven in two, so to speak, but the impact moved it into a different course, somewhat closer to our Sun, a relatively small star as stars go!
If one believes this sort of thing, there was a time long ago that the landmass which is contained in the Atlantic basin was gathered together into one large 'super-continent' named 'Pangaea'. At some point, over a hundred million years ago, as the story goes, this 'super-continent' began to drift apart, forming the continents as we now know them.Again, looking at the relative shapes of the continents, both in the Atlantic basin as well as those few in the Pacific region, one can see that the various shapes do fit together, almost like a simple jig-saw puzzle. Though much of this information makes some sense, it goes against the grain of most Christians, as it seems to be in contradiction to the biblical Story of Creation!
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
The earth was without form, and void; and darkness [ was[a] ] on the face of the deep.
And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
Genesis 1:1 & 2
Okay' there's 'proof' that everything you just read above is based on a bunch of hogwash! Right? Well, not necessarily, for a couple reasons. The most obvious, maybe, to those who know me & have read my 'blather', it should be clear that I, along with a relative host of others, believe that these words, including the rest of the Genesis Creation Account, speak, not of the Creation of the material universe, but of a more complex Covenant Creation. We do not deny that this same Creator God did call the Universe into existence, but as the Scriptures are the Story of Israel, it begins & ends, not with the physical creation, but with the institution & final revelation of the Israel of God!
Secondly & maybe not quite so clearly, the Creator uses means to accomplish His Purpose! This is not to say that He could not or did not speak the worlds into existence or create the material universe & everything it contains ( including human beings ) with the appearance of age ( as many Christians will tell you ), but who is to say that He/She/It did not use these lesser gods ( angels? ) to accomplish His Purposes? A famous writer of almost a century ago, J.R.R. Tolkien, in his 'Silmarilllian', advances much the same notion! If the Creator God did indeed use these Annunaki to engineer the human race, it would explain a lot, would it not?
There is some question, in recent times, though it IS based on an ancient notion, whether Earth actually IS a globe! A flat Earth might destroy much of what I've written about here, rendering much of it moot, but if indeed, as the story goes, a planet from outside our solar system, with a contrary rotation, divided Tiamat & birthed the asteroid belt, Earth & her Moon, then much of what Science has revealed to us about, not only our origins ( human beings ) but the origins of Biology itself would make a lot of sense; as well, we might better understand the apparent retreat of Life from other planets, Mars, for instance!
One might should take these 'ancient' accounts with the proverbial grain of salt! As ancient writings go, there is a likelihood, even a probability that they were, to whatever extent, embellished & relayed in such a way as to conform to a certain type of literature; as we all know, even myths have a basis, however strong, in truth!
Truth be told, however, does it really matter whether human beings were spoken into existence, along with the rest of Creation, with age or not, or whether the supremely wise Creator God divided His forces, so to speak, much as Moses did in the Wilderness, at the behest of his father-in-law & delegated responsibility to other beings? If Scripture does not tell the Story of Creation, but simply that of Israel, then what is so unbelievable or reprehensible about the notion that humans may have been formed in test-tubes by scientists that were set to the task by an Almighty but Wise Creator? The term 'alien' is used many times in the Hebrew Scriptures & simply refers to foreigners, whether those from other nations or to the Israelites themselves, so who is to say that the Annunaki were from another planet? Maybe they were from another realm, or dimension entirely!
While most Christians would immediately discredit such a notion, even vehemently deny such an explanation, in the grand scheme of things, one might note, it doesn't really amount to a hill of beans! 'What the hell......?', some might exclaim! How dare I suggest that what one purports to believe about the Origin of Life doesn't really matter all that much! But, don't get me wrong; I'm not saying it doesn't matter where we came from, or who we are, but when it comes down to brass tacks, where the rubber meets the road, so to speak, what really matters is how we live in this human experience: we may claim, even if it borders on nonsense, to believe everything that orthodoxy tells us, blindly accepting it as truth, but if we do not love our ( human ) neighbor as ourselves & treat them as we want to be treated, then our profession is suspect, to say the least!
Charles Haddon Shank
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