Goodman is most notable for his controversial ideas about modern humans originating in California 500,000 years ago, which are widely dismissed as unsupported by evidence.
In his book American Genesis Goodman maintains that the conventional scenario is backwards, and that modern human beings originated not in Africa, but in California, where he cites the proverbial Garden of Eden, half a million years ago.
He also attributes to these early humans many discoveries considered to be much later, from pottery to insulin to "the applied understanding of the physics behind Einstein's gravity waves".
[8] Goodman’s next book was The Genesis Mystery: the Sudden Appearance of Man and according to Paul Dean of the Los Angeles Times it is “something of an academic brush with scientific creationism, the belief that a divine surge, without explicit adherence to the Bible, created modern man… 250,000 years ago.”.
[10] In the 1979 dig season Dr. Alan Bryan of the University of Alberta and his team excavated at the site, and they found an engraved stone at 23 feet that is called the “Flagstaff Stone.” The “Flagstaff Stone” is thought by Goodman to be approximately one hundred thousand years old and according to Goodman, possibly “one of the most important artifacts ever found in the whole world”, citing in the last instance Alexander Marshack of Harvard’s Peabody Museum.
[15] According to Michael Anthony Corey: Goodman "appeals to an intervening supernatural force, which would have manifested itself entirely through a "natural" series of evolutionary processes".
Julia Ann Charpentier of ForeWord Reviews writes: “Past events in the bible often have a verifiable historical or archeological basis.
Though Christian fundamentalists may recoil from scientific exploration of what they believe to be unfathomable, sacred words, some experts have presented convincing theories for reinterpretation of biblical occurrences and predictions.