Invite eSignature Presentation Later

There’s quite a lot out there, depending on what you’re looking for :)Some free online tools (in no particular order):Dropbox. Save and share everything.Evernote. Best note app ever.FreePik. Find thousands of free images.SurveyMonkey. Create surveys to gauge customer feedback.Rapportive. Useful tool for Gmail that allows you to see other people’s social media profiles.Trello. Project management made simple.Slack. Work communication simplified.AdCat. Allows you to use a single picture to get perfect-sized, up-to-date ad images for Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Free.Easel.ly. Great infographic generator for creating attractive content. Engaging content is vital for attracting audiences.Google Analytics. See who’s coming to your site and from where, among many many other awesome functions.Sidekick. Awesome email tool that tracks when emails are opened — super useful for proper follow-ups.Hotjar. Recordings of users on your website. Amazing to understand user behavior, which drives marketing strategies.Hootsuite. For social media management in one easy to use dashboard.Leadin by Hubspot. For lead management.Ahrefs. Powerful SEO tool.Later. Instagram consistently shows amazing engagement with users. This tool manages scheduling for you.Crowdfire. Great tool to figure out who to follow on social media for optimal engagement.BuzzSumo. Analyze what content performs best.Social Rank. Allows you to see which are your most valuable followers.UberSuggest. Free keyword suggesting tool.LinkMiner. Free tool for the link building strategy.JustsignNowOut. Finds journalists interested in covering you.Keyword.io. Free keyword research tool for SEO.MailChimp. To run automated email campaigns.Optimizely. A/B testing to optimize your website.Google Trends. Shows how often a particular search-term is entered.TweetDeck. Owned by Twitter, it makes discovering content easily digestible and allows you to find the topics and people you want.Title Maker. Content idea generator.Explore. Get to know what’s trending.Engage Master. Convert visitors to customers.Startup Bootstrap. Website building templates.Submit.co. Get press for your startup.SumoMe. Tool set to grow your website traffic.Quip. View documents on any device.Atomic Squirrel. Startup checklist.There’s tons more out there depending on what you are looking for specifically. I’m happy to update and reorganize if you need more :)Disclosure: I’m working on AdCat.

Shades of Nero Wolfe! I am not and never have been a criminal defense attorney, but in my articles I have occasionally been assigned issues of criminal law or procedure, so have isolated bits of knowledge. I do believe, however, that criminal defense lawyers are in the front lines of those who defend democracy since their constant job is to see that every defendant receives a fair trial before an impartial adjudicator and that the result is supported by the trial evidence properly admitted. Plus they seem to always have the best stories.I once did have a witness, not mine, who more or less “broke” during a trial. This was a state court matter. My client owned a business selling cell phones and leasing service for them. The future defendant came in and purchased a cell phone and service, and for some reason signed the related documents over the course of two days instead of all at once. I don’t remember why and it didn’t matter to the trial. He paid the phone fee on the second day, but refused to pay for service over the course of nearly three months. His reason for not paying, he said, was that he was “testing” the service. My client had records of the numbers he called and the length of time for each call. I had taken his deposition, and he had admitted he signed each document I showed him concerning the purchase. The only real issue was whether his claim of testing the phone service was going to stand up.For our trial judge, we drew an older man who probably presided at God’s case against Cain, but was one of my favorites because he was experienced, didn’t like having his time wasted but would listen politely, and knew contract law. It was an excellent draw for us since I wouldn’t have to spend time explaining how contracts worked.The defendant showed up for trial with another fellow he introduced as his cousin and said he had been with him on the second day when he signed the rest of the documents and picked up his phone. I assumed the cousin was there to try to bolster the defendant’s claim of testing. But if they hadn’t already discussed the case, I was going to deny them the opportunity to coordinate further, so I invoked the “Rule” at the start, meaning the exclusionary rule that said anyone not a party had to wait outside in the hall until called.I started with the defendant. I put him on the stand and we began the basic stuff - the contract and its terms. I asked him the same stuff I had in the defendant’s deposition - “do you recognize this exhibit? what is it? is that your signature on page #?” Usually these are pretty routine, but the defense hadn’t wanted to stipulate admissibility, so I was just laying the groundwork. Needless to say, there was nothing in the documents about a period for testing, but there were warranties. So I am just loping along doing something I had done lots of times before and then …For some reason never made clear, the defendant decided to deny he had signed the second day’s paperwork. This really was the less important stuff, but it had warranty language in it, so one would think he would want it in. I suspect he just lost track or panicked. I am standing there with the transcript of his deposition in plain sight in front of me. It even had little paper tabs in it. I was careful not to react in any way to his denials - just a bit about being sure he looked in the right place and knew he’d seen them before. I took him through the rest of the paperwork and he insisted he hadn’t signed anything on day 2. No one seemed to catch it except my client. But what I did next got the judge’s attention because it was unusual.I asked the judge if I could suspend the defendant’s testimony for a bit, subject to recalling him later, while I called another witness out of order to “clarify” a point. Still no penny dropped with the defendant or, as far as I could tell, with his attorney, although I noticed the trial judge changed his posture so I figured he knew something was up and it had to do with the signatures. The judge let me call the cousin in from the hall, and now looked alert, waiting to see what was going on.The defendant went back to his seat beside his attorney and there was a lot of whispering until the judge shushed them. I called the cousin in from the hall, telling him only that we were going to be there for a while yet, and were taking him early so he wouldn’t have to stand around in the hall any longer than necessary. Now he is not my witness, so I designated him as hostile before I called him in so I could lead him some, but there really wasn’t much need.He obligingly recognized his cousin’s signatures on all of the documents, even correcting me when he thought I missed one, and explaining that he was present when the paperwork was all signed. He was pleasant, cheerful, and completely oblivious to the implications, so I knew they hadn’t discussed denying the signature beforehand - plus I still had the deposition statements to whack the defendant with if necessary. But it wasn’t.After the cousin finished and was excused, subject to later recall by the other side, the judge invited counsel up to the bench. And here is where experience mattered. The judge caught on that I wouldn’t have done what I did if the defendant hadn’t lied about signing some of the documents.I don’t use profanity, so I will use *** instead. The judge was annoyed by the defendant’s obvious lies. In whispers, the judge asked me if I had any further evidence regarding the question of the defendant’s signatures on the documents we’d been discussing and this was when the defendant’s lawyer woke up. He tried to object to the question, but the judge burnt him with a look that was better than a ruling. I just said I had a transcript of his deposition during which his memory was different, and that was all I said. The judge gestured to the defendant’s lawyer to come a bit closer (he’d backed up some during the burning) to the bench and the judge said words to the effect that his “G**D*** client had better settle with me before he was judicially determined to be a ***** perjurer and maybe recommended for prosecution for wasting the court’s time on a ****show like this case, and he was giving us a recess to resolve it without his [the judge] having to listen to any more **** from the *********** defendant.So we went outside, the defendant’s attorney “conferred” with his client, and we did just what the judge ordered. I never did find out why the defendant thought three months of free testing was appropriate.

Selling online: an overview of the rulesThis is an edited version of a guide for businesses.E-commerce TMT & Sourcing TMT Retail Education UKThere has been a steady growth in the variety and volume of goods and services which are available on-line to both businesses and consumers, and on-line selling is increasingly seen as a major way for all businesses to save costs. Almost inevitably, as the practice of on-line selling proliferates so does the amount of legislation governing it. This article provides an overview of the law governing on-line sales in the UK and an analysis of the issues that a business should consider before setting up an on-line sales process.The law governing online salesThere are two distinct types of legislation that affect on-line retailers. Firstly, traditional consumer protection regulations apply to all consumer sales made on-line. These regulations are well established, but it is important to remember that they apply to on-line retailers as much as they do to traditional ones. Secondly, there are regulations designed specifically to deal with problems and issues facing retailers on-line.Traditional consumer protection regulationsThese protect purchasers and consumers whether they are buying the goods over the counter of a shop or over the internet. For instance the Sale of Goods Act gives certain rights to purchasers about the quality of the goods they receive, and their rights if the goods fail to live up to these standards. The Consumer Credit Act protects consumers' rights when they enter into an agreement for someone to provide them with loans or credit facilities including circumstances where they buy goods or services using a credit card. The Unfair Terms in Consumer Contract Regulations protect consumers' rights where they enter into agreements with retailers who try to impose unfair terms in the agreement. There are also numerous other pieces of legislation, many of which will apply to different contract and product types.Online regulationsThese regulations are new, and were brought into force largely to protect consumers' rights when they buy products either over the internet or by telephone. They largely derive from EU Directives, and include the E-commerce Regulations , the Distance Selling Regulations and the Electronic Signatures Regulations . These are the regulations that control the actual on-line sales process and they provide the starting block from which we can consider the practical business requirements of on-line retailers.Although the traditional consumer regulations are important for all sales processes, this article focuses on the on-line regulations and how they affect the various stages of the on-line sales process. The next five sections take you through what the regulations require including information that must be provided to a purchaser, the use of electronic signatures, contract formation issues and ensuring your contract is legal.Information that must be suppliedThe various regulations share a central theme: companies should not hide themselves from purchasers, and should provide as much information to purchasers as possible.Company information that must be supplied under the E-Commerce RegulationsThe E-Commerce Regulations require that all commercial web sites make the following information directly and permanently available to consumers via the website:the company's name, postal address (and registered office address if this is different) and email address;the company's registration number;any Trade or Professional Association memberships;the company's VAT number.All of this applies regardlessof whether the site sells on-line. In addition, any commercial communication – that is any email or even SMS text message – used in providing an "Information Society Service" must display this information.The E-Commerce Regulations also require that all prices must be clear and unambiguous, and web sites must state whether the prices are inclusive of taxes and delivery costs.Contractual information that must be supplied under the E-Commerce RegulationsWhen it comes to actually going through the contractual process the requirements for information increase once again and the consumers must be told:the steps involved in completing the contract on-line;whether the contract will be stored by the retailer and/or permanently accessible;the technical means the site uses to allow consumers to spot and correct errors made while inputting their details prior to the order being placed;the languages offered to conclude the contract;The website must also provide links to any relevant Codes of Conduct to which the retailer subscribes and set out the retailer's Terms and Conditions, in a way which allows users to save and print them.All of this information must be provided before the purchaser selects the product and starts the contractual process and it is possible to convey it early on in the sale, without deterring users with an unwieldy sales process. The most common route is to bundle as many of these details into the terms and conditions as possible, and ensure that consumers are appropriately directed to read them.Information that must be supplied under the Distance Selling RegulationsThese Regulations set out the information which must be provided to a consumer prior to the conclusion of the contract.The information must be provided in a clear and comprehensible manner which is appropriate to the means of distance communication used. This means that the information can be set out on a web page, provided that the information is brought to the attention of the consumers before the contract is entered into. The information to be provided includes all of the information which a supplier should, in any event, wish to provide in relation to:the identity of the supplier;the main characteristics of the goods or services;their price;arrangements for payment and delivery; andthe existence of the right of cancellation created under the Distance Selling Regulations.Information that should be set out in the terms and conditionsThe terms and conditions should:make it clear who is selling the product, together with the geographical and email address;describe clearly what the customer is getting and what it will cost, including all taxes and delivery costs; andidentify the arrangements for delivery of the product.The terms and conditions of the site are very important, and will vary for every retailer. It is important that the terms and conditions are properly drafted, as poorly drafted terms and conditions will expose the retailer to unnecessary risk.Electronic signaturesThe Electronic Signature Regulations apply to any contract and not just those entered into with consumers. In order for there to be a binding contract the following essential elements of a contract must be present:an unconditional offer;an unconditional acceptance of that offer;consideration passing from both parties other than in Scotland where consideration is not a requirement; andan intention to create legal relations, i.e. the parties must intend to enter into a legally binding contract.There must also be certainty as to the terms, parties and subject matter of the contract. For the majority of contracts there is no legal requirement for a signature.Whenever a person buys or sells something he or she is entering into a contract, no matter how small the purchase. In the newsagents, when a person buys a newspaper he or she contracts with the newsagent for the purchase. The newsagent makes an 'Invitation to Treat' by placing the publication on sale. The person offers to purchase it from the newsagent, proffering money, and the offer is accepted (concluding the contract) by taking the money. This is still a contract, although not a word needs to be said, and nothing is written down. However, the essentials of a contract have been formed: an offer (to buy, or sell), an acceptance of that offer, and (everywhere except Scotland) consideration (whether money being paid, or some other form of consideration) for the sale. The various stages of the contractual process will be discussed in more detail later, as it is important to distinguish between who is making the offer and who is accepting it.Signatures are not actually necessary for the conclusion of every contract (your visit to the paper shop could become a chore), but they can have three essential functions when we consider on-line contracts:To identify the person who has bought the product;To indicate a personal involvement, or trustworthiness; andTo indicate an intention to be bound to the contract.The principal, and simple effect of the Electronic Signature Regulations is to make electronic signatures legally valid. Most of the discussion, and further interpretation of electronic signatures actually comes from a report published in December 2001 by the Law Commission entitled "Electronic Commerce: Formal requirements in Commercial Transactions", and in subsequent guidance from the DTI.Depending on exactly what is being sold the method of collecting the electronic signature will vary. In most cases, the function required of the electronic signature is the third one listed above – indicating that the purchaser is making an offer to contract. However, for more complex products being sold on-line, for instance financial services products, the role of the signature may become more important for one or both of the first two reasons.Depending on the value and/or importance of the transaction the parties may want a greater degree of certainty as to reliability of the signature. This may involve the use of public key infrastructure, for example.Contract formation issuesThe main issues considered in this section are how, when and where the contract is formed. This involves an analysis of the contract formation procedure based on the principle of offer and acceptance and the significance of the "country of origin" principle.The offer and acceptance procedure onlineStep 1: Establishing the offer and acceptance procedureThis is where the E-commerce Regulations can be used to the seller's advantage. It is possible to sell on-line and take payment by credit card without concluding the contract on-line. The solution is to provide that the customer is making an offer on the site and that the contract will be formed only if the customer's order is accepted – and that taking payment from the customer's credit card does not indicate cceptance.On-line merchant accounts provide for making refunds to a customer's credit card. Therefore, the terms should explain that, while the customer's card may be debited before the contract is formed, if the customer's order is ultimately rejected, a refund will be made immediately.Step 2: Completing the order formThe customer is taken to the order form where he completes the quantity of goods and his delivery details. It would be good practice to offer three buttons: submit, clear and cancel. The "clear" button is needed because the E-Commerce Regulations require a means for the customer to correct any errors.Step 3: Incorporating the terms and conditionsAt the bottom of the terms and conditions page the purchaser should, ideally, be required to check a box to indicate that he or she has read, understood and accepted the terms and conditions, before clicking the "Accept" button. The "Accept" button should not work until the box has been checked. Equally the page should be designed in such a way that the consumer cannot check the box and click "Accept" until the page has fully loaded onto the screen. By doing this, you improve your position in the event that a purchaser claims there was no opportunity to read your terms.While there is no responsibility on the retailer to ensure that the consumer has in fact read them, following this procedure will demonstrate that reasonable efforts have been made to bring them to purchasers' attention. The terms and conditions should be in a format that can be printed or saved – therefore avoid pop-up windows and ensure that they fit within the width of the page and are presented in a way that they will print properly.It is wise to also include a term like the following:"By clicking the 'Accept' button you agree to these terms and conditions. By completing and submitting the following electronic order form you are making an offer to purchase goods which, if accepted by us, will result in a binding contract."The words, "if accepted by us," are very important.This approach is the suggested 'best practice' approach for relaying the terms and conditions, and ensuring that the consumer has read them. However, it is not the most consumer friendly approach to present the purchaser with a screen of 'small print' in the middle of what, to the consumer, was an otherwise normal shopping experience. Therefore a number of on-line retailers adopt a second-best approach, which is to include a link to the terms and conditions, and make the consumer tick a box to confirm that they have read and accepted the terms and conditions, before they click the main button to buy the product. This approach, while not as legally secure, is probably acceptable in a number of purchasing models.Step 4: Taking the consumer's credit card details on-lineAt this stage, the user should be taken to the page on a secure server where his credit card details are taken. This page should state: "Your card will be debited with the sum of £X when you click the Submit button. This will be refunded if your offer is refused." Repeat the choice of submit, clear and cancel.Step 5: Acknowledging receipt of the orderWhen the card details are validated, the E-Commerce Regulations require that you give the customer an acknowledgement page and send an acknowledgement email. This should not confirm a contract; it should instead confirm that the order has been received and that the order is being "processed". It is helpful to give the customer an order number at this stage so that he or she can chase-up any problems. It is good practice, though not legally required, to ask the user to click a button on a confirmation page to indicate that he has read the confirmation – e.g. a "Continue" button, linking to the homepage of the site.Step 6: Providing confirmation of the information provided and the right to cancelThe Distance Selling Regulations now require the supplier to provide the consumer in writing or in another durable medium confirmation of the information provided prior to the conclusion of the contract and details of the right of cancellation. Generally a consumer has a period of seven working days within which to cancel the contract and return the goods to the supplier. The only cost to a consumer will be the cost of returning any goods received by it to the supplier.A consumer will not be entitled to cancel a contract after it has been entered into, where the supplier has commenced the provision of services with the consumer's agreement prior to the end of the cancellation period then the consumer will not have the right to cancel the contract for the provisional services. However, in order to benefit from this exception, the supplier must have advised the consumer that the consumer will not be able to cancel the contract once the performance of the services has begun with the consumer's agreement.It is not possible to contract out of the Distance Selling Regulations. Any term which attempts to do this will be void to the extent that it is inconsistent with the provisions of the distance Selling Regulations.Step 7: DeliveryFinally, dispatch the goods. If a typo mislabelled an item costing £200 at £2 and someone ordered 500 of them, the site could politely – and legally – refuse the order. This is because by following the procedure set out above the dispatch of goods is in effect the acceptance of the offer made by the consumer at the start of the process. Until this point there has been no acceptance and only an acknowledgement.The "country of origin" principleThe E-commerce Regulations apply a "country of origin" principle. In its simplest form, this means that as long as a UK business complies with UK laws, it can "ignore" the laws of other Member States. In general terms this is a definite bonus for on-line retailers. However, recognising that such an approach would be bad news for consumers, this basic rule is qualified.The E-Commerce Regulations do not apply the country of origin principle to the terms of consumer contracts. In practical terms, this means that a UK-based e-commerce site's terms and conditions should meet the laws of every Member State in which consumers can buy its products, not just UK laws.As a result of the consumer contract exception, any site selling to French consumers must provide its terms and conditions in French – otherwise they may be considered invalid. If selling into Denmark, consumers must be given a 14 working day cooling-off period during which the consumer can change his or her mind about the purchase and return the goods for a refund. In the UK, the cooling-off period is only seven working days. These are only examples, of course there are many other differences.Despite this signNow qualification, there are still advantages in the Regulations' country of origin principle that can benefit a UK-based business. For example, the UK's retail laws are among the most relaxed in Europe. This can give UK businesses advantages over, say, German competitors. A German e-tailer must comply with any German restrictions on promotional offers; its UK rival escapes such restrictions, even when selling to German consumers.Ensuring your contract is legalIt is important for e-commerce retailers to ensure that the contract which is formed with the consumer under the process described above is both legally correct and also affords the retailer the maximum protection. There are various ways in which the contracting process can be structured to be legally correct, and it is important to balance absolute best practice, and a more commercial approach which is still legally correct. Equally, it is surprisingly easy to structure the process in a way which is legally incorrect, and which exposes the company to more risk than is necessary.

Great question!There are several ways that you can promote your website. Here are a few of my favorites:Schedule social media posts (blog articles, quotes, bit size content from your website) via Hootsuite to post on multiple channels such to get maximum signNow.Channels such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TwitterLook up hashtags specific to your business on Twitter and engage with others or even better yet provide them a free resource that you’re giving away (preferably one that leads back to your site).Engage with people on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram by asking questions, answering questions, and starting new conversations.Pin new content on Pinterest a couple of times a week.There are many ways you can promote your website and it’s hard to not to get overwhelmed–so pick a few and give them a try. Once you’re ready you can always do more to promote.

If you want traffic that lasts, use something like SEMRush to see the rankings for some of your (very) closely related competitors keywords. Mix these in with your own until you have between 10 and 20 thousands keywords overall.Next, take rankings for that entire set for yourself and your top two 'most relevant' competitors. Include all your own keywords, too. Still with me? Good. Now get regional search volume data for all those thousands of keywords and divide the search volume by the ranking position to get a basic, pure mathematical visibility figure for each keyword across your sit...

For starters I don't know QNET's stand on it but as far as I know the IRs(Independent Representatives) of QNET always claim to be partners of QNET rather than IRs which is a face off lie they say to you on the meeting/ Plan.Then  they lure you with money and the complete story behind the plan and how its done let me explain below. This is what happened with me and as far as I know till now the same has happened with many others as well. Satyaranjan Dash and his wife Swapna Sagarika Dash met me first and said they have started a big project and are running short of bandwidth so we would disc...

Only one? That’s an awfully narrow limited request. Okay fine. How about if we address those mysteries that others have claimed are impossible? And I’ll promise to stick to one.The story of Adam and Eve is historically, biologically and physically impossible. Walter Uber.So, all I have to do is show how the story of Adam and Eve could be historically, biologically and physically possible in order to illuminate this mystery. Cool.The biblical calendar begins with Adam, and marks time by the generations since Adam, giving a total of about 6,000 years. (We’ll come back to that toward the end of this.) For now, what’s important is that there are six days (actually the biblical text gives 5 and a half days) from the creation of the universe to the creation of the first human with the soul of a human (not the first hominid) that are separate from, and not included in, this Adamic calendar: the six days of creation.Science states that our universe is ~14 billion years old, so for Adam and Eve to be considered historically, biologically and physically possible, it’s necessary to reconcile the 6 days of creation with almost 14 billion years.The passage of each of the six days of creation is described with the phrase “evening and morning”—but there is no sun until the fourth day—so this ‘cosmic time’ is an abstract concept. After Adam and Eve’s children arrive, (Genesis 5), time switches to an earthly time frame and stays there.This is no modern rationalization. The Talmud discussed this 1600 years ago.Einstein, in the laws of relativity, taught the world that time passes at different rates in different environments—that absolute time does not exist in our universe. In regions of high velocity or high gravity time passes more slowly relative to regions of lower gravity or lower velocity. Time stretches and bends. Where ever you are, time is normal for you because your biology is part of that local system, but if you left and traveled in space, that would no longer be the case.That’s because, like time, space also stretches. This stretching produces the effect of telescoping time as we look back. If we had been at the Big bang, in deep space, far from our galaxy, when the universe first began, we would have observed that, as the light from those events traveled through space, the timing of the sequence of events stretched out. What that means is that, if we had sent a message when we were there at the beginning, to our universe here in the Milky Way saying, “I’m sending you a message every second,” the interval between those messages would no longer be a second upon arrival here. As space stretched, the time between receiving the first and second message on earth would have stretched to something like a billion years.We now have quantified data and know the relationship of the stretching of space between the era of proton/anti-proton formation, (when the first stable matter formed), and time today. The expansion ratio is gotten by calculating the averaged ratio of the temperature of space now (2.76 K) relative to the threshold temperature of proton/anti-proton pair production.However, the rate of universal expansion is increasing. Had the expansion been constant (and not super-linear resulting from the increased expansion rate,) the temperature of space would be, not the currently observed 2.76 K, but 3.03 K. This increase in the rate of universal expansion is about 10%; using the expansion factor (the ratio of the energy or temperature of space at the threshold energy of protons [10.9 x 10 to the [math]12th[/math]K ] to the “AZUSA” corrected current energy or temperature of space [3.03 K ]), gives us five and a half days, times ~900 billion, then dividing the result by 365 days in a year, comes out to the universe, as viewed from earth, as approximately 13.9 billon years old. This is in close agreement with the NASA number of 13.7 billion years.The five and a half days of Genesis would not have been of equal duration. Each time the universe doubles in size, the perception of time halves as we project that time back toward the beginning of the universe. The rate of doubling, that is the fractional rate of change, is very rapid at the beginning and decreases with time simply because as the universe gets larger and larger, even though the actual expansion rate is approximately constant, it takes longer and longer for the overall size to double. Because of this, the five and a half days of Genesis were ‘front loaded’ with the earliest days taking the majority of the 14 billion years.The universe begins with light in Genesis 1:1, which we now know to be the case, while Genesis 1:2 tells us “The earth was unformed (tohu) and void (bohu)…” Unformed or chaotic is a fair translation of tohu, but bohu does not only mean void but also carries the idea of being filled with the components of matter that were not yet assembled.The first day of Genesis encompasses the entire universe and probably about 8 billion years, but by the third day, only the earth is discussed. After day Six, only the one line of humanity that leads to Abraham is. Each successive Genesis day exponentially represents fewer years as it focuses down from a cosmic perspective to our earthly perspective.In Genesis, we are told, “In the beginning God created” with the term bara. This is a creative process of formation where God makes something from nothing in an instant such as the big bang. Genesis uses it until it gets to Adam—then the text changes terms. It uses “making”: “let us make man in our image…” (Gen. 1:26) This is the word asah, and its definition has a much broader sense: such as in making a meal, making art for the Temple, making the Temple itself, making Abraham into a great nation, and so on. Asah requires raw materials and takes place over an extended period of time.Genesis 1:26 refers to the making of Adam’s body using adamah meaning soil, or red, for the color of that soil. This making was a long, slow process using the elements of the earth. Some time between one and two million years ago, a creature related to apes walked upright on the earth, and by 150,000 years ago, Neanderthal appeared. They were similar to modern humans, but for reasons we don’t really know, by 40,000 years ago, they disappeared. They were replaced by Cro-Magnon man—though the two did co-exist for thousands of years—and they were our ancestors. The early hominids, then, were ‘made’ over thousands of years.But the “creation” of Adam is something essentially different altogether. This is when God “…breathed into his (Adam’s) nostrils the neshama (breath, soul) of life and the adam became a living soul.” The neshama (the soul) was implanted instantly and only after the physical vessel was completed and considered ready. (Interestingly enough, Exodus speaks of the ‘making’ of the universe after its creation—the reverse of Adam’s process.)The making of Adam’s body was not instantaneous, it took time. It evolved according to the laws of nature as established by God and preceded Adam being ‘created’ as a conscious self-aware soul. That is what produced the final form of humanity as we are today.According to the second biblical clock, that happened about 6000 years ago. Theology refers to the time of Adam as the beginning of humanity even though there were others before him. Archaeology refers to the invention of writing as the beginning of history, though there was history before that as well—we call it pre-history.The soul leaves no material remains, but like gravity, its effects are observable. Archaeology has provided us with an impressive record of the qualitative leap that took place in humanity about 6,000 years ago.Visit any natural history museum anywhere. The division between prehistory and history is placed at the invention of writing in cuneiform in Mesopotamia about 6 thousand years ago.About 6,000 years ago, people started moving into cities and invented writing so they could keep records of what they did. Humanity had for thousands of years lived in isolated and suspicious family groups and tribes. What changed?The neshama provided the knowledge that it was possible to transcend the individual. The neshama provided the potential for other goals beyond the here and now. The neshama showed us we can be about more than simple physical gratification and survival.“The vital element that sets humanity apart is our immanent spirituality and our ability to share that with others. “ Dr. Gerald SchroederAnimals want and then act; they feel; they learn, they use tools and have primitive communication, they even “reason” and figure out things. They have first-order desires and drives. Hominids were intelligent animals, but modern humans also have second-order desires; we have the capacity for introspection and self-examination—we have “fabric of life” views and goals about who we can become even when we have not achieved or perhaps even seen them. We’re different.Archaeological evidence can never find a soul—yet it seems archaeological evidence can see the shadows on the wall.“And the Eternal God formed the adam dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the adam became a “communicating spirit.” It is this spiritual aspect of human nature that drives us to leave written records of our lives behind us.Astronomy, mathematics and archaeology show that— historically, biologically and physically — the story of Adam and Eve is entirely possible.[1]Postscript/Edit: Thank you for the quality feedback on this. You guys have been fun and interesting, and I apologize to anyone I upset. I found Schroeder’s idea intriguing and thought you would too.Wayne Urton asked, what about the snake? Since I did not examine the details of the creation story of Genesis 2, but only Genesis 1, and I did not address that question, it seems fair to ask it. The creation story after Adam takes place in the Garden, and my answer here is outside the Garden and prior to it. When Adam and Eve were given a soul and created as truly ‘human’ they would have been taken into the Garden to do that—and jeez—the snake had to come from somewhere, right? So maybe he’d been trying to figure out a way in for awhile and Adam and Eve being taken in was his main chance. I’m making that up since none of us know, we can only accept or not accept. The snake is as likely to be as literal or as metaphorical as anything else.Tabitha Deeks objected to the idea that death existed before Adam—which is also a good objection. Death would have existed outside the Garden and before Adam in this theory. The Garden was the place of immortality—which is why after the fall the young rebels were evicted—so that seems to indicate the world outside the Garden was already not immortal when they got thrown out—maybe.Others immediately swung to the God-is-not good-if-evil-is-real scenario which I have answered more than once in other places such as Jenny Hawkins's answer to If God exists, why is there suffering and/or evil? Why does he allow tragedies? How does one rationalize that? If free will explains human disasters, what explains natural disasters? so I won’t bother to do so here.Jenny Hawkins's answer to How do theists respond to this argument by Stephen Fry?Jenny Hawkins's answer to As a Christian, why is my God letting me suffer insurmountable anxiety over bad things?Jenny Hawkins's answer to How is it justified by Christians that God allows children to be raped, beaten, molested, or murdered?Whatever your responses have been, I am genuinely grateful for readers who think about what is said and take precious time out of their individual days to write me and let me know what they think. Thank you all.Footnotes[1] The Science of God