The Rise and Fall of the Nephilim

by Scott Alan Roberts

  What science and its practitioners have demonstrated is that fossils exist that provide incontrovertible evidence that various hominid species walked the earth in our primordial past. What they have hypothesized is that they are all linked to human evolution. Even the DNA findings at best are interpolated from what scientists think maybe appears to be sort of connected to human DNA. They make the stretch to linkage based solely on the educated “hope” that it is “probably so,” despite not having evidence to make it so without a shadow of a doubt. And isn’t that the very same way religious believers cling to their particular version of God?

  Science has a love affair with itself. It loves to puff out its chest and declare for itself (as do many religions), yet with the last 150 years of research since Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859), their accumulated facts have still not gotten them past their original leaping-off point—their educated guess that all these finds are somehow linked, demonstrating an unbroken chain of evolutionary mutation resulting in modern man.

  Although science has made great advances in the quest for the identification of linkages in the line of human evolution, science has also been forced to make quantum leaps of faith in order to adhere to pre-established hypotheses. Of course, members of the scientific community wouldn’t call it faith, but that is the practical outcome.

  In a very real sense, science (and I use the term science here as representative of the accumulated collective of thought, hypotheses, research, and conclusion embodied in a single entity/word) rose up to find and identify fact, and has established its own “truth” in a sometimes-overt, sometimes-unwitting desire to do an “end run” around spiritual and religious belief. Spirituality existed long before established science, but somewhere at the very roots of understanding, science kicked in as soon as someone raised his or her head and said, “Hmmm. I know the stars are the placental remains of the Great Goddess in the sky birthing the sun and moon. But…is that just a story, or is there something more…?”

  The Great Conflict: Science vs. Religion vs. Science vs. Faith

  A conflict has existed between science and spirituality—reason versus faith—since the beginning of recorded history, and it seems as if that fight will continue until time itself ends. For many in the scientific fields, there is a need to eradicate all that is not fact, including faith-based spirituality or its organized religious practices, as well as a denial—at least on an intellectual level—that there is some powerful, divine creative force at play in the universe.

  According to evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, scientists never need to rely on faith, at least “not in the sense of faith as meaning belief in something for which there is no evidence.”2 Dawkins, being a self-acclaimed atheist, says that any expression of “faith,” on his part, is based upon his confidence in the scientific method alone. In agreement with Dawkins is pop cultural skeptical icon James Randi, who by trade is a stage magician and scientific skeptic. He has made a notable name for himself out of debunking the paranormal and the pseudo-scientific—which is not in and of itself a bad thing. Randi says, when hailing to his experience of being tossed out of Sunday school as a kid, “I am an atheist, tried and true.”3 Since then he has dedicated his life and career to finding ways to prove that science is the end-all and be-all when it comes to the great controversies surrounding the big questions of faith, religion, and the great mysterious unknowns of life and the universe.

  Carl Sagan’s credo, which has become the broadly adopted Skeptic’s Credo, states that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”4 In that mantra, agenda-driven skeptical scientists have eradicated the need for any sort of faith-based belief, save that of their own exponential leaps of faith in science and the scientific method, as earlier demonstrated with the inability to find and establish the “missing link.” These very same skeptics will on one hand revile faith, religion, and spirituality as outmoded and lacking in reason, while on the other hand accept as fact the presuppositions and as-of-yet unproven theories of things such as evolutionary ascendancy. In a very real sense, the scientist and dyed-in-the-wool atheistic skeptic have, in decrying faith, established Scientific Skepticism as the new surrogate for faith, and in its own rationale unwittingly declared itself the New Religion.

  The definition of religion is:

  1. A set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a code governing the conduct of human affairs with a strong emphasis on practice.

  2. A specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons, sects or collectives.

  3. The body of persons adhering to a particular set of beliefs and practices: a world council of religions.

  4. The life or state of a monk, nun, etc.: to enter religion.

  5. The practice of religious beliefs; ritual observance of faith.

  6. Something one believes in and follows devotedly; a point or matter of ethics or conscience: to make a religion of fighting prejudice.

  7. Archaic. Religious rites.

  8. Archaic. Strict faithfulness; devotion: a religion to one’s vow.5

  There is cause and nature recognized by the scientific community, and a devoutly strict adherence to its “religious” practice, but they seem to collectively come up short when it comes to acknowledging a spiritual point-of-view, and they collide in epic proportions with spirituality and religion altogether. The true skeptical and scientific mindset should more appropriately recognize the “unknown” quantity underlying religion as an undiscovered country, and rather than eliminate it altogether from discourse and acceptance, place it more aptly in the category of “things we don’t know for sure.” The scientific community, in aggressively attempting to eliminate—or at the very least diminish—the role of spirituality and religion from the playing field, have in a very real sense established themselves as the authority on all things unverifiable. Dawkins, again, labels religion as “trash,” and in so doing, elevates himself and his scientific colleagues to the status of “secular gods.” When religion is deposed by a conflicting mindset, that mindset then promotes itself to the lofty echelon of God’s Surrogate.

  The Church of Skeptic

  I have a friend who is a Skeptic, a true believer in science and skepticism; a Michael Shermer devotee. I have seen this friend during the last 20 years evolve (or “devolve,” depending on how you see things) from a Roman Catholic to a die-hard skeptical atheist, so much so that I now, amicably, refer to him as a “reverend in the Church of Skeptic.” He bristles at this moniker, yet takes it in the lighthearted fashion in which it is delivered; at the same time, he is also representative of the brand of skeptic who has less true questioning than he does unwitting cynicism. And let it be said for the record that I, too, have a skeptical mind, but my skepticism has not crossed over the boundary into arrogant adherence to only the things I can prove by means of the scientific method. Science and Skepticism, too, need to be tempered by an attitude of wanting to discover, learn, grow, and know, not a leaping-off point of absolute denial of anything outside the realm of provable science.

  “The threats to human dignity and integrity are being ramped up to extraordinary levels of stress, when what we most need is wisdom,” says Yale computer guru David Gelernter,6 decrying the dangerous trend of know-it-all scientists promulgating the idea that “religion and spirituality are trash.” What we are seeing trended more and more is that wisdom, moral seriousness, and adherence to religion and spirituality are coming under grave and perpetual attack, and more often by the people who are prominent figures in the scientific community. Crusading atheism combined with an aggressive desire to secularize the world through the funnel of science and skeptical thought has become a major hurdle to accepting the fact that not all things are measurable by the scientific method.

  The first step needed in orde
r to help science and faith find common ground is a starting point of admitting our absolute ignorance. We know nothing. None of us, with all our glorified sciences and metaphysical mumbo-jumbos, really know anything at all. We have experienced only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the physical workings of our universe, and we need to constantly question and test and discover, then question and test to discover more. This process is what separates those who would remain in self-imposed make-believe worlds, from those who would be seekers of fact and truth.

  Eugenie Scott, the director for the National Center of Science Education, was asked a question about whether science could ever prove or disprove God’s existence. With a wry smile, she said, “Well, we don’t exactly have a ‘God-ometer,’ do we?” And she went on to express that she was highly skeptical that such a device could ever be conceived, let alone manufactured. We don’t, and probably never will have a test or device that could measure that sort of information.7

  Some things are simply unquantifiable. This doesn’t mean such things don’t exist; it just means that there are some things that we may never know for sure. As appealing as it would be to assert with 100-percent certainly that God exists, we simply cannot. The existence of God is something that can only be accepted by faith—not blind faith, but a faith that recognizes there are some veils that cannot be pierced. The scientific method can only take us so far, and that explanation will only ever leave us dissatisfied. But, then again, we can never be satisfied until we reach that unknown point.

  So, to debase belief in the divine and the unexplained mysteries that surround us simply because they are not definable by science, is to display utter arrogance at best and total stupidity at worst. Science, without the understanding of how everything loops together with faith and spirituality, is only half the picture.

  And then there’s the other side of the equation. Pope John Paul II, in an address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in Rome, declared on October 27, 1996, his acceptance of evolution as a fact of nature, noting that he believed there was no real war between science and religion. He said, in part, “Consideration of the method used in diverse orders of knowledge allows for the concordance of two points of view which seem irreconcilable. The sciences of observation describe and measure with ever greater precision the multiple manifestations of life…while theology extracts…the final meaning according to the Creator’s design.”8 Christians and the Religious Right reacted angrily to the Pope’s statements, and Henry Morris, president emeritus of the Institute for Creation Research responded, “The pope is just an influential person; he’s not a scientist. There is no scientific evidence for evolution. All the real solid evidence supports creation.”9

  And so the battle wages on between mindsets, ideologies, science, and religious points of view.

  But what about myth and legend? The human race bears the scars of ancient interruption. Science observes the details, but does little to recognize the random elements that lie outside the realm of the observable and testable. Spirituality opens the door to usher in any whacked-out theory or belief, as long as the person expressing the theory is sincere about his or her faith. One allows for the possibilities, while the other closes the door to anything that is unquantifiable or improbable by the scientific method.

  True science is nothing more than us catching up to what we already naturally know and understand on a spiritual level. That level of understanding is not outside our grasp. We simply have to be unafraid to reach for it.

  In his book The Demon Haunted World, Carl Sagan spoke of the two things instilled in him from a very early age: “My parents … in introducing me simultaneously to skepticism and wonder … taught me the two uneasily cohabitating modes of thought that are central to the scientific method.”10

  Be scientific. Be skeptical. Be religious. Be spiritual. But never lose touch with the wonder that is beyond our finite ability to quantify that which is unquantifiable.

  The Sons of God descended from the heavens and intermingled with the daughters of humans, taking whomever they chose, and the women conceived and bore children. Myth? Superstition? Religious folly? Scientific fact? Let’s move on to see how all of these blend in the stew pot of ancient history, contemporary experience, and the application of scientific methodology.

  “A knowledge of the existence of something we

  cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the

  profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty—it

  is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute

  the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this

  alone, I am a deeply religious man.”

  —Albert Einstein

  “Enlightenment is not imagining figures of light,

  but making the darkness conscious.”

  —Carl Jung

  chapter 2

  Who’s Your Daddy? From Elohim to Nephilim

  “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

  —William Shakespeare

  “Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness, so they may rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move on the earth.’”

  —Genesis 1:26

  The Nephilim (Hebrew: ) have spawned myriad cultural mythologies, appearing in variant forms and by various names throughout the annals of ancient historical and religious texts, from the offspring of the Sons of God to the bright, shining Tuatha de Danaan of the ancient Celts, from Gilgamesh of Uruk to the Bigfoot of Native American lore. Ranging from the religious to the ufological, the Nephilim seem to defy reasonable explanation except within two basic trains of thought: the metaphysical, which is open to many various forms of spirituality and religious explanations, and the scientific, which may not wholly deny the existence of the spiritual, but will most likely not allow for the incorporation of such wondrous folly in making a determination of veracity.

  On the spiritual/metaphysical track it is easy to accept non-scientific accounts of spirit beings, angelics, and demonics when attempting to comprehend the existence of a race that “descended from the heavens” and cohabited with human women. It’s even easier to believe when you consider the many accounts of demonically intrusive sexual encounters, not to mention similar tales of alien abductions and impregnations. But these sorts of explanations describe interactions that comprise a speculative mix of religion, spirituality, and meta-science—and many times a sort of parapsychology—that is open to the possibilities of things beyond veils that are seemingly impossible to pierce by the finite mind and the study of science. Yet, even a more scientific approach, when it is not wholly dismissive of the entire notion of the Nephilim, while seeking out non-religious facts, sometimes yields just as fantastical an understanding.

  No matter which path you allow to dictate your train of thought, it is simple historical fact that the Nephilim, in their various forms, permeate the writings of ancient civilizations on a nearly pan-cultural basis. And no matter whether you follow a spiritual, metaphysical, parapsychological, or scientific track, one fact stands firm: The very name of these mythical beings finds its source in the Old Testament faith writings of the Book of Genesis, with the Hebrew word Nephilim. In that source book, the Nephilim themselves are said to be the hybrid offspring of the “Sons of God,” or, as the Hebrew calls them, the bene haElohim—the Watchers of the apocryphal book of Enoch, whose pages include accounts of the Nephilim that parallel and even amplify the scant details that appear in the Book of Genesis, leading many to believe that the two accounts were based in the same source. These so-called Sons of God were, in turn, bequeathed/birthed/created by Elohim, the Hebrew name given to God so many thousands of times in the Jewish books of faith and law. So, in seeking out this mythical race, the big question is this: Do we define the Nephilim by spiritual texts and a faith-based understanding, or are there explanations that fall outside the realm of spirituality, despite find
ing the name source-point only within the scriptures of Jewish spiritual literature? Larger yet, is this question: Are the two trains of thought actually one in the same? Either the religious definitions are accurate, or the ancients simply defined these mythic beings in the only terms they could understand: those that fell within their finite realm of spiritual comprehension of how the universe worked, while at the same time upholding a monotheistic belief in God and his created caste of spirit beings.

  Now, I am not going to suggest that the Book of Genesis is not factual. Nor will I suggest that the God of the Bible is not who the writers of those books say He is. I will, however, state emphatically that the Bible is a book of faith, governed by the dictates of a faith-based spirituality, thus rendering its facts the products of not only a faith-based culture, but a theocratic one.

  For the purposes of scholarly integrity, I have chosen—as a leaping-off point—to examine first, the Hebrew source of the word Nephilim——and to do that, we have to take the whole thing back a notch further to the headwaters of the source point: the Hebrew scriptures. If the Nephilim are the mythical offspring of the Sons of God—the bene haElohim—then who is the Father? Who is this Elohim that bequeathed them?