The Alpha Lithos Theory by the Modern-Day Mountain Man

A Model of Perfection!

Chapter 1: The Great Model Railroader

As I begin this new writing project nearly four years after ending Thoughts of a Modern-Day Mountain Man, I truly believe this will be a labor of love, and hopefully bring a smile to a few people’s faces. As I have gotten older, I have realized the one thing the world could use an infinite amount more of is love. I will warn you ahead of time, parts of this may be the incoherent ramblings of a Mountain Mad Man. This is not intended to be an in-depth scholarly peer-reviewed paper, but rather a thought-provoking series of personal essays. I intended the Thoughts of a Modern-Day Mountain Man to be between a five and ten minute read per chapter. This project will have slightly longer chapters, but I am intentionally keeping them as light surface level reading, as this is meant to be enjoyable.  

For the past twenty years I have lived, worked and observed nature in the great outdoors. I strive to be the consummate Natural Historian, always observing and analyzing. I love every second and minute of it. I have learned through experience, being fully immersed in a given environment is the best way to truly learn about it. I would consider myself well-immersed in all things outdoors. Having attended both Christian (private) and secular (public) schools during my formative years as a student I have been taught, instructed, and some might say indoctrinated in both versions of how the universe came to exist in its present state. These explanations from both sides of the argument include how everything we observe today came to be, including both you and I and everything around us. These all-inclusive “scientific” topics also included the origin and age of the universe. The secular educational model also included the all-important concept of natural selection to arrive at the present moment of observation and existence. Both sides of the argument have metaphorical and actual mountains of evidence to back up their claims. Throughout the years, I have personally gone from one side of the continuum to the other regarding the origins and beginning of the universe and the very existence of mankind, matter and nature in general. I have been what could be described as a fundamental, Bible-Thumping Evangelical Christian at one end of this spectrum all the way to a committed years-long attempt at being an atheist. Neither view stuck with me. Way too much hypocrisy on the modern-day Christian end of things, and even I wasn’t arrogant enough to stay with atheism and be the self-indulgent a-hole that religion requires, and that is saying a lot as I may very well be the most arrogant, self-centered person in the known universe.  I now sit comfortably in-between and can look at myself in the mirror with a seriously reduced amount of self-loathing. 

Looking for a Reference to Get Started.

Even during the times that I was taking a proverbial journey down the paths of mental self-discovery on both ends of the continuum, I have always held some fairly bizarre beliefs about mankind’s relation to and place in the universe. I am a student of history and philosophy and always will be. I like to ask big questions that may not always have an answer, and I am OK with that. On the other hand, I am also very logically minded and have always viewed and used mathematics as our grounding place in the universe for our logic. To me, if I can’t see it on a number line or Cartesian plane, it might be make-believe. I am also a student in the area of the use and implementation of forensics. This is where my formal education training lies, originally to help prevent and solve crimes, but now to help make sense of the mountains of evidence to paint a picture of our existence. Am I always right? Of course not, but a large majority of the time I am not wrong (remember, I AM very arrogant). I am really just trying to work some of these thoughts and beliefs in my head out on paper, entertain my readers, and maybe, just maybe answer a few of those questions that have not had a definitive answer that both sides of the argument can agree upon. Remember, there is a fundamental difference between truth and fact. Fact, in and of itself, is logic demonstrated and in some respects personified. It cannot be argued with or disputed, it must be acknowledged by both sides as being the one and only final solution to a particular given question. 

During this project I will not make any promises of sticking purely to logic, but I will share the truth, or at least my version of the truth, which may or may not contain fact. I will leave that up to the reader to decide by using their viewpoints on what I am presenting.  I may dip my toe into the make-believe, mythical or magical world, I may dip another toe in the world of hypotheticals, heck I may take a full swim in the absurd, but why not, we only get one shot at this thing and we might as well explore it and enjoy the journey to the fullest. That is what it means to me to live and to try to answer the Ancient Greek question and ideal of “What it Means to Live the Good Life.”

In this writing expedition (a trip with a defined purpose), I will aim to shed some light on both sides of the argument, while introducing some of my own original thoughts and theories. I am calling this project the Alpha Lithos Theory. The very wording of this is intentional; Alpha in Greek meaning first, Lithos in Greek meaning stone and Theory (Theoria) in Greek meaning contemplation.  When all three letters are assembled, they form an acronym that spells ALT, which is the German word for old, in a subtle nod to my Germanic heritage. How old exactly? That is one of my goals, to define a possible timeline for the age of the universe based on my own observations and experimentations. Of course, secular science puts this date somewhere over thirteen billion years old, while Young Earth Creation (Christian, usually Evangelical, hereafter referred to as YEC) puts the age at just over six thousand years old. How can this possibly be the case? They both have the exact same physical evidence in the exact same physical space, while using the exact same tools, yet they arrive at completely different solutions worlds apart. Perhaps that is one of the most profound and magical things about the creation of the universe, is that it can appear to be what it needs to be to so many varied audiences and observers.

There is no set timeline or expectations for how often or how many chapters I will include in this project. Thoughts of a Modern-Day Mountain had a weekly publishing timeline over a year to total fifty-two chapters. That will not be the case with this project.  I will simply add new chapters and information as new research and information comes to light or as I discover new information on my own, or if I just feel like writing to get something out of my mind. Writing has always been very cathartic to me, and it helps me to rationalize an irrational world. Also, I love trying to solve a great mystery, just like Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot!

Chapter one of this project is titled The Great Model Railroader. This is the basis for where I want to start with this project. I have always been fascinated and intrigued by trains, railroads, and the men who work in this noble field. The great iron beasts that were created and utilized during the golden age of the steam era truly shine a light on just how brilliant and inventive mankind can be. Not only do I enjoy full sized trains and railroad infrastructure, but I also enjoy model railroading. I have always been intrigued by the level of detail, thought and precision that model railroaders put into their creations. In fact, if a person were to be magically shrunk and dropped into one of these worlds created by these model masters, they would never know that it wasn’t real in the way that we view full-sized trains and the environment they operate in as real. The mountains that are created out of foam and wood show erosion patterns that are exactly like what one would find in the real (natural world). There are layers of earth that show-up in cutbanks or in the canyons that these model trains speed through, that look and give the same observational feedback as layers of rock and soil in the real world. Appearing to be possibly millions to billions of years old, or six-thousand years depending on who is making the observation and what their belief (religion) system is. How can this be? If you look at the photos included in this chapter you will see a level of detail and love created by the model railroader in their scale model world that would be difficult to differentiate from the real world, even when zoomed in on. When I asked the model railroaders how old their creations were, the answers were all over the place. Everything from yesterday to thirty years ago, which in a scale- model world is about the difference between millions and billions of years to thousands of years ago. To an untrained eye, there would be no way to know how old each model diorama is. Even to a trained eye, the evidence could be intentionally or even unintentionally formulated to make something look much older or newer. How could a person possibly know without firsthand information being given? They can’t! Sure, something like carbon dating or oxidation of certain elements or pieces could be used, but what if the guy who built his yesterday just happened to use a piece from a model that is thirty years old? Does that imply that we can paint with a wide brush stroke and say the entire scale model world we are observing is that old? It is as though it is a giant puzzle for us to assemble. Speaking of giant puzzles, just take a look at something like the Pangea Theory. For all appearances sake it sure looks like everything fits together so perfectly, perhaps too perfectly? The entirety of the earth, and of the universe sure appear to me to be a perfectly designed and assembled puzzle, or at least the pieces of a puzzle that we haven’t been able to assemble yet. Another one of my favorite examples of one of these puzzle pieces is the Coelacanth. Appearing in the so-called fossil record hundreds of millions of years ago and believed to be long since extinct, this fascinating ugly fish still is swimming around today. It is as if the hobby store where the Great Model Railroader shops ran out of new things to include in the model, so it had to be used for two things.

The Handiwork of a Master Modeler.

If the model railroader can assemble an entire world in short time, but it has the appearance of being millions or billions or years old by comparing it to the real world time frames of what we believe in regards to stratigraphy of rocks, erosion patterns and to some respects even the use and distribution of “fossil fuels,” why couldn’t a Creator (God) do the exact same thing. You see, this is my biggest issue with both sides of the argument, neither side takes a theory like mine into account. The secular world lays out a timeframe starting from something (really nothing) like the big bang and working forwards on a linear time scale to the present day. This would include the abiotic development of life, which eventually leads to the complexity of human life. Grand time scales are required to make this work as none of these so-called major transformations that have led to modern humans has ever been observed or recorded in a timeframe that is relevant to Homo Sapiens (Humans). The argument that is commonly given is “look at microevolution,” or “check out Darwin’s Finches,” see, evolution happens. They say given enough time the micro will add up to macro, then eventually a complete and total change. Adaptation is not Darwinian evolution! In a million, or even a billion years Darwin’s Finches will still be birds, assuming they don’t go outright extinct. It is essentially an echo chamber of cyclical reasoning that has nonsense as its starting point. The one animal that is essential in this process is the parrot, because if their words and thoughts are repeated back to them, they begin to question their self-worth and gasp, they may actually start to think for themselves. The Christian (YEC) tells the same story, but with only a six-thousand-year time frame.  

From Micro.....

.....To Macro. A True Monument of Greatness.

The YEC, or really most Christian and organized religions’ arguments have the same fallacy in that any time something cannot be explained or argued in a coherent “scientific” way, the canned response is “the Bible says so.” This is just as flawed as the cyclical reasoning and arguments the secular side uses. I am not calling the Bible a nonsensical place to start, but the Bible cannot be used in cyclical fashion to prove its truth. If that was allowed to stand in the secular world, a science book would be used to prove the very same science book true. It simply doesn’t hold water or stand up to logical scrutiny. This may seem heretical to some, but that is not my goal or intention. I can hear some of the readers now saying; “But the entire Bible is the inerrant Word of God, useful for rebuking and teaching purposes.” I am not here to argue with that premise, but I will add that it is a relatively new development in mankind's history and connection to the Bible. I do not believe that the Biblical scholars of yesteryear viewed it that way. I think they made the connection that parts of the Bible were factual historical stories, and parts of the Bible were meant to be metaphorical or allegorical to try to explain something the writer may not have fully understood. In fact, in a future chapter I am going to make the case that if we read and decode the Bible with a certain perspective, we will see complex mathematical codes that should not exist in the time and place where they were written. I am not referencing gematria when I am making these claims. I do believe our Creator imbued us with logic and reasoning skills, and if we don’t fully follow the argument where it leads, we are doing a disservice to our Creator to truly and fully admire and appreciate His modeling handiwork.  The physical world (God’s works) must be used to back up the Bible (God’s word), and in many cases this can be a very challenging process when put under logical “scientific” scrutiny.

The very idea of saying something is “scientific” or not, or making a statement like “follow the science,” is another proverbial bone or fight I would like to pick during this project. The word science itself is rooted in the Latin word Scientia, which simply means knowledge. Science isn’t an actual “thing” to be followed, although I could make an argument that it is a religion that could be adhered to. I choose not to do that as I prefer to do my own observations, thinking and arriving at my own conclusions. Sure, sometimes that aligns with what mainstream science says, but oftentimes I don’t have enough money, prestige or arrogance to be a proper “scientist”. With that being said, I do have a great deal of knowledge, so does that make me a “scientist”? Once again we find ourselves at a cyclical method of thinking with a falsehood at the inception. I guess one benefit of following the “science” is at least you will arrive at a pot of gold. See, I told you I would dabble in the make-believe world. What if “scientists” are nothing more than leprechauns? Follow the “science” to find the gold (money).  Remember the giant mess we all got into in 2020 when we tried to “follow the science”? What a disaster! I do try to find the silver linings in things though, so here are two great things that did happen because the sheeple “followed the science” in 2020. First, it all but ensured that a progressive Democrat will never hold a major political office in this country again. Second, I didn’t mind seeing a few people's faces covered most of the time; it is a real shame they are not still covering their faces (although I guess some wackos still are). I know they can’t help the way they look, but they could stay home. (said a woman once to Abraham Lincoln).

Back to the point of this chapter. If we go with the assumption that God the Creator is all-powerful, why wouldn’t He, or why couldn't He, simply create the universe in a completed state without a restriction of time, or needing grand time scales to create the appearance of great ages. I do get that modern Christian are always trying to limit God’s power, but that is not necessary. If He can build a “model railroad” the likes of which we all live in, He can do way more and has an infinite amount of power that we cannot possibly comprehend. Seriously, listen to a prayer from a modern Christian sometime, it’s always “God, we just ask you this,” or “God, if you could only do this,” etc. It’s really quite embarrassing. I am not sure that these people know that the word “just” means only. As though asking God for only one thing at a time will make it seem as though we are not asking too much, or that if He grants an answer to more than one request at a time that He might overtax His limitless power.  And if that pastor wants to make that prayer really special, he will change his voice to a whisper so you know he means it emotionally, but at least it will take the focus off of his skinny jeans with holes in the knees. Then to top it all off, he will have the guy or gal sitting at the keyboard who “just” cannot seem to get a date play some notes to really bring out the emotion and seriousness of their one request. Whoops, lost my train of thought again (see what I did there? Train). A model railroad set will eventually degrade and break down from time, but even when it was new, it was made to look very old. 

How Old are the Rocks on this Model?

I have met a few serious students of the various natural sciences over the years that fall somewhere in-between the old universe (secular) and the young universe (Christian). Though to be fair and not leave anyone out, there are also a group that claim to be Christian (religious?) that believe in a very old universe but think the Creator used the very processes that the secular folks describe in detail. I believe these folks refer to themselves as “Theistic Evolutionists.” In other words, they are still leprechauns, but they wear a cross around their neck. These folks are the worst; not only are they participating in the same nonsensical circular reasoning, but they are too cowardly to have a thought of their own and are too afraid “serious scientists” won’t like them. The group in the middle believe that the universe isn’t and doesn’t need to be billions of years old to get to the current state of affairs, and that six thousand years old is way too young to even be a serious possibility. I am more in-line with this middle-of-the-road timeframe and mindset, but for different reasons. I am of the firm belief that we have substantial modern-day recordings of human activity to go back at least thirteen thousand years plus, but maybe not much farther than that. When I say modern-day recording, what I am specifically looking for or referencing is a direct link and connection with an ancient man-made structure, first (or maybe a second) hand account stories written down (looking at you, Gilgamesh) and artwork (or writing) that can be directly observed and interpreted by me or someone like me today. I am not looking for fossils, radioisotopes, or carbon dating.  While these things are fun and interesting, there has been enough deviations demonstrated from both sides of the argument that I am very skeptical of accepting the dates and information given as indisputable fact. I once asked a “real scientist” once what happens with an item that was found on an archeological dig. What happens if an item that is carbon dated isn’t found to match up with dates given by other evidence or layering of the dig. The answer was, we would just have to assume some time of anomaly or contamination and we would leave that off of the final summary. In other words, if it doesn’t fit into “our” circle of thinking, we will throw it out of the circle. 

Digging for a Timeline.

Here is a great example of this deviation from my own personal experience; I have in my possession a piece of lava rock that I directly picked up from the Mt. Saint Helens eruption in 1980. Similar rocks from the same area where I picked up mine have been dated using “modern” scientific methods to be millions of years old. Unless I am millions of years old, this simply cannot be the case, as I have some direct remembrance of those rocks coming into existence forty-four years ago. Maybe the argument could be, well the atoms that make up the rock are millions of years old, but are they? That seems a bit suspect; how did they spontaneously come together millions of years ago? I understand the periodic table, elements, and how half-life’s work, and this explanation to me is found wanting.  I am always looking for the model builder to give me direct information via human-to-human communication.  The solution the “scientists” give to these problems that cannot be explained is simply to ascribe great timelines to them. How can you argue with that? What are you going to do, go back millions of years and check for yourself? Of course not, I am not a leprechaun that can travel effortlessly through time and space.

Why am I discounting fossils and other evidence found deep in the ground? What if ancient fossils are just a decoration put there by the Great Model Railroader for nothing more than our amusement today? Am I suggesting that dinosaurs never lived? I don’t believe that is what I am saying, but I don’t have a clear answer to that. Giant reptiles still live today, I have seen them and taken pictures of them. Could they possibly die and be buried in such a way that ten million years from now a human might find their fossilized remains and interpret it in the exact same way that we look at T-Rex or Stegosaurus fossils? Of course that’s possible, but it remains to be seen how that can possibly happen given our direct observations in modern-day human history. The processes for creating fossils are a very delicate and intricate process that takes many ingredients lining up in just the right order in quantity. A great flood perhaps? I don’t think so. The Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004 had waves that were by some observation one-hundred feet tall and wiped out everything in the path of this super calamity. When the waters receded, there was only a tiny amount of deposition that was left behind, as small as ten centimeters by some observations. Hardly a fossil making event for anything larger than a very small organism, if any fossils were made at all. 

Is Everything We Know a Scale Model?

A firsthand example I have is the great Mississippi flood of 1993. My area of the Midwest was one of the hardest hit by this slow-moving disaster. At the height of this flood, there was water as far as the eye could see. But when it finally receded, it did leave evidence behind, but hardly a fossil-making event. In fact, there probably weren’t very many animals killed by the floodwaters. Sure, it could be argued that the flood that is described in the Bible talks of water covering the earth, which would leave no high ground for the animals to go to, but I have yet to have anyone show me evidence of this. Bits and pieces of this evidence, perhaps? Maybe the continents were lower, which might have required less water, maybe water sprung up from below the crust which would give enough water to cover the available land. We could spend days pointing out all of these discrepancies and correlations, but it will just eventually end up in cyclical thinking where one conjecture or guess is used to prove a different one. Remember, this was supposed to have happened only five-thousand years ago. There is verifiable, direct evidence that I (and others like me have seen) that is older than that, possibly much older. This is something I think YEC creation gets completely wrong. They will look at fossilized remains of creatures that are no longer living (maybe never did?) or the layers of the Grand Canyon and say, “See, a global flood five thousand years ago did this.” The problem is it doesn’t work. I really enjoy how both sides of the argument use the Grand Canyon as an example for their particular argument. The secular view says; “look at all those layers laid down over hundreds of millions of years,” and the YEC crew says; “that was made by all the water rushing off the continental shelf after Noah’s flood.” I think this is a prime example of the Great Model Railroader leaving behind something for us to debate. The secular view does not explain where all of the water comes from for extended periods of time. They might even throw out something like “snowball earth,” but again this is just using great periods of time to explain something that doesn’t make any sense to a logical mind. The YEC solution doesn’t work either. If the water truly rushed off of the continental shelf on its return to the ocean following Noah’s flood, the Grand Canyon would be linear, and not meander (even turn back on itself at some points) like a slow moving process would indicate.  If we can make a leap of faith to say that God the Creator has the power to bring an entire universe into existence by simply speaking, why couldn’t God create a model with all of the pieces and evidence already in place? Simple answer, He can, and I believe He did. 

Is This "Real" or Part of a Model?

If we use the secular view of the creation, progression and timeline of the universe, which by the way, makes a great deal of sense, except for the timeline part, that the earth was once a molten ball of rock (igneous), then cooled and allowed for the processes of erosion, sedimentation and deposition to get us to even being able to have the possibility of having sedimentary rocks, which is an essential ingredient in the fossilization process, the YEC views would have to agree that something along those lines did in fact happen. Again, the idea of a global flood burying every living thing on earth to create the complete fossil record we have today, has to first start with the possibility of having sediments for this process. So, what exactly would the argument be here for YEC? That God made all forms of rocks, including vast amounts of sand and the ingredients for limestone, then allowed those sediments to bury living animals? That argument almost gets us to the same ending that I am proposing, minus the fossils. 

When I was younger, I firmly believed in a global flood in the not-too-distant past, call it Noah’s flood if you will. The problem is that we have a direct human to human record that shows that cannot possibly be the case. Don't even get me started on Noah’s ark, I will address that mathematical concept in a later chapter. The breaking point for me in this argument is something as simple as the mineral Feldspar. The Great Pyramids of Giza are built out of sedimentary rock, especially limestone rock that contains Feldspar. The only way to get Feldspar inside of sedimentary rocks is for Granite and other igneous rocks to decompose, then have sedimentation in a precise way that would create limestone. The Granite that would have eroded to leave behind isolated Feldspar would be one of those Igneous rocks from long-long ago (according to leprechauns, I mean scientists). At a bare minimum the Great Pyramids of Giza date back to about the time that the flood of Noah was supposed to have occurred. I personally believe that the Great Pyramid of Giza is even older than what we are taught in school. Where did Feldspar come from? Was it possibly included in the model from the very beginning? That is certainly the way I am leaning. And what about the layers upon layers of limestone? This sedimentary rock is made of formerly living sea creatures. Given the layers that are in some places being thousands of feet thick (I have pictures), there simply isn’t enough surface area on the earth for that many sea creature to have existed at one specific time and place to be wiped out at one time by a global flood to create the layers I have seen today with my own eyes. As for the millions and billions of years, that doesn’t work either. The layers are too perfect, and uniformity laid down for this to have happened over millions or billions of years. I have examined rock layers in great detail and there is zero evidence that most layers deep down were ever a surface layer or exposed to erosion, as there is no erosion visibly between these perfectly stacked layers. Which poses yet another question, when has deposition ever trumped erosion, or vice-versa for extended periods of time to even allow for these layers (especially sandstone and dolomite) to be this thick?  I have seen a few instances where some erosion was visible between layers which could suggest long periods of time exposed to erosion, but that could be from water seeping in after the layers were formed, or again, maybe it was made to look that way to get us to ask questions about our natural world. I can envision one of the leprechauns (I mean scientists) pushing their horn-rimmed glasses back up on their nose and saying “aaaactually these layers are perfect layers because they were laid down over millions of years on the bottom of the ocean.” Oh really Poindexter O’Malley? Then how do you explain all of the LAND animal fossils in these so-called underwater layers or the fossils of single trees that go through layers that are supposed to show millions of years passing from layer to layer? You make me want to smack you with me Shillelagh. Sure, some of the layers contain fossils of sea creatures and undoubtedly take on the appearance of being formed under ancient seas. I have many fossils of ancient Crinoids in my personal collection, but I have no definitive way to say whether or not that particular creature ever actually existed, and I can refute any argument one way or the other. That’s the point of this whole project, to get people to think and ask questions. 

I know what you must be thinking as the reader, that I am asking more questions than giving answers or theories. That is my point, we do not know as much as we think we do. My goal over this writing project will be to lay bare the evidence that both sides use in their arguments and examine them through a different lens. 

Another form I am writing that I sincerely enjoy is poetry. I am not a very good poet, as I am one of those simpletons that think the words should rhyme, but going through the process does help me think. To close out this chapter I want to leave you with a poem I wrote titled On God’s Watch. I am not sure why we as humans, that in the grand scheme of the universe, are actually quite fragile, always try to ascribe our timelines to a model maker that  would have to exist outside of our time and space in order to make the model railroad we all live in. I also thought this poem was appropriate for the inseparable connection between railroads, trains, clocks and time observation and measurement. 

Thank you for reading and being part of this journey!

On God’s Watch

On God’s watch there are no hands,

excepting those which created man.

When His words were spoken creation began.

All the elements in the universe obeyed His plan

“Let there be Light” wound the clock,

Eternally running until He says STOP!

The date and time no man can know

the gears are wound His time the hands show.

Mankind will try to change His plan,

but try as we might, we cannot understand.

On God’s watch His Son was sent,

a second chance is what that meant.

A case for His watch is sealed in His book,

to be read and used by all who look.

-MDMM