@swamidass
I don’t see how she is ever going to get from 500,000 years ago to 10,000 years…
[ Click on the image to increase the font size… the text in the inset image is a paraphrase of what she said about the bottleneck of two:
( [Evolutionist have said] From 6 million years to the present … [a population of] 10,000, never a bottleneck of 2… vs. (the recent finding from a BioLogos debate) … 500,000 years ago, a possible bottleneck of two …)
I understand that. My concern is that this effort will be counterproductive and only provide evolution deniers with more propaganda tools. “Science said Adam and Eve didn’t exist. Now science has been proven wrong. Just like science was proven wrong when it said the earth was older than 6000 years.” You don’t think that’s what will happen?
I don’t think the GAE includes the idea that the being responsible is being “very careful to ensure that no one is able to discern that these humans have been created”. So the GAE is not in the same category as “Leprechauns use my house when I’m asleep”.
GAE is a post-hoc assertion designed to not be falsified by any extant scientific evidence. So the distinction is at best moot.
@Faizal_Ali, I have urged @swamidass that sentences like “science was proven wrong” will be counter-productive.
But any exposure to Genealogical Adam scenarios will make it obvious to all parties that Science will never be equipped to detect select “small scale” miraculous events.
I do not see how that is the case. If God decided to regrow someone’s amputated limb in a university teaching hospital, that would be a small scale miracle that would easily be demonstrable thru science. That such miracles are not demonstrable is due to one of two things:
God does not want them to be demonstrable.
They do not happen.
What is the emoji for “eye rolling”?
Look… my use of the term “small scale miraculous events” was not intended as some sort of trojan horse to sneak a controversy into the discussion without you realizing it.
There is obviously a difference between the proposal that God used special creation to create Adam and Eve 6000 years ago… vs. the ability to miraculously replace arms and legs on humans living today!
It would also be obvious that if the miraculous event was just replacing a missing arm on Adam’s body or a missing leg on Eve 6000 years ago… again, science would not be able to examine the event.
Your solution for the Creationism problem is obvious (“become an atheist!”)… and it is obviously not an effective way to embrace those Creationists who really want to be able to embrace the millions of years of evolutionary evidence … as long as it doesn’t end up nullifying how that camp of Creationists perceives how Christianity works.
I don’t believe that doing science badly is going to persuade creationists to accept science. I suspect it will have just the opposite effect. @swamidass seems to feel otherwise. I guess we’ll find out.
The Atheists have had their time in the Sun on the issue of Creationists.
Even BioLogos was hesitant to hint or suggest that God was involved in Evolution. And so, BioLogos missed the boat on how to reach an important subset of Creationists.
You say that Geneal.Adam scenarios are “doing science badly”… but that is a pretty bad exaggeration.
Actually, Geneal.Adam scenarios provide a comfortable resting place which does not endanger the practice of science… while at the same time it does not endanger a Christian’s view of his Faith.
See, I think that reflects a misconception of why creationists reject science. It is not primarily because they understand science and see that it conflicts with their religious views. Rather, they reject science as a source of knowledge that supersedes anything that they believe to be true based on their reading of scripture. This is explicitly stated in, for example, the Answers in Genesis “Statement of Faith”.
What GAE does is tacitly condone this attitude, by taking as facts things that are supported by nothing other than Scripture, and which are devoid of any scientific evidential support. The creationists will then be emboldened to interpret the scientific evidence in whatever way necessary to preserve their favoured interpretation of Scripture, even if that includes a 6000 year old earth, since they have seen a respectable scientist like @swamidass do that very thing.
Basically, I fear Joshua is giving creationists credit for being much smarter than they actually are. That almost never ends well.
Whenever you think to say: “this is why Creationists do what they do”… or “this is how Creationists think”… or anything that would suggest that you, a ridge-running-zealot-Atheist, you should re-consider the point you think you are going to make. It comes out as pretty hilarious! You simply have no viable idea of what is going on in the mind of Christians.
It would appear there is nothing you can write on the topic (based on what you have written here at PeacefulScience.Org so far) that I find credible.
I got it - - you don’t like the program. Good for you.
So go do your own thing, or get out of the way.
Nobody asks the rabbi about the quality of the bacon served in sandwiches.
