Sorry that is completely unbelievable.
This doesn’t address what I wrote. I’m talking about what science has said, not what it can’t say. I don’t find any science which actually disagrees with your PSCF article. If you have it, I would love to see it. This is pretty important if you are going to take the stance publicly that your PSCF article contradicts the science.
Absolutely. It just looks like a sleight of hand.
But one of your three scenarios is sole genetic descent, which requires creation of the first couple with no subsequent interbreeding with any other population. Why propose that scenario?
And, while we wait for the book, could you briefly define the term “sole-genealogical progenitorship”?
My PSCF article is correct that it “appears our ancestors” never dip to a single couple. This however, does not mean “we have strong evidence that humans do not go down to a single couple.” The two claims are not equivalent.
Nope. Just theological precision, and rejection of Venema’s concordism. Here, by concordism, I mean eseigesis, which is never correct.
Monogenesis is defined as: all “humans” (by some theologically precise definition) in history are genealogical descendents of Adam and Eve by some definition of “human.” Sole-genealogical progenitorship, or just sole progenitorship, is just another word for monogenesis.
The definition of “human” I argue for in the book, based on Scripture, is “textual humans,” defined by the text as “Adam, Eve, and their descendents” who must extend to include all Homo sapiens to the “ends of the earth” by AD 1. It should be self evident that textual humans, by definition, arise by monogenesis from Adam and Eve. This is a “relational” defintion of “human”, that does not make any suppositions about the substance of Adam and Eve’s lineage. Theological details can be filled in different ways by different people, and the people outside the garden are fully biologically human. Instead, Scripture is just concerned with textual humans, and these humans do, in fact, arise by monogenesis from a single couple.
That was in reference to the conversation with Venema and Buggs. I propose that scenario because some people were pursuing it. However, I should add, that most have abandoned it to look at the GAE in more detail. WLC may be an exception, but I think he is still feeling out his response.
As you describe it, not exactly. Monogenesis, as I understand it, would also generally suppose that ancient Tasmanians were human. I hope you never use the word “human” in your sense without qualifying it, or it will be even more confusing. And I still consider it insulting to all those ancient folks.
How do textual humans differ from textual non-humans in any way whatsoeer except descent from A&E?
Not necessarlity in any way at all. They might be entirely the same, except for this one detail of their past.
I always qualify it, except in very rare cases (e.g. what does it mean to be human?). What I say, for example, is that textual “humans” arise by monogenesis from a single couple, even though the people outside the garden are biological “humans.”
One of the central points of the book is that “human” is a multivalent term, with multiple definitions, and we need to be precise which definition we are using for each claim we make. Moreeover, theology has legitimate autonomy to define “human” for itself as it pleases, without concording with a scientific taxonomy. So of course I qualify it carefully. That is the whole friggen point of the book.
If that’s true, why should it matter? Doesn’t original sin disappear as a legacy of A&E along with everything else?
It matters for the docrine of monogenesis, and doctrine of infallibility and inerrancy.
Also, we can start filling in theological details, perhaps, making use of Geneaological descent. Others have done this, and the might make distinctions that I do not. Kemp and @Andrew_Loke go one way, and I suggest another in my book. @jongarvey takes another way forward in his book too.
Depends what original sin is, right? Maybe not.
As far as insulting, keep the context in mind. There is nothing insulting to Neandethals to note that Scripture doesn’t mention them. There is nothing insulting to Homo sapiens 50,000 years ago to note that Scripture does not mention them. It is just a fact that Scripture doesn’t consider people in the distant past. This isn’t insulting in any way I can see.
But it does consider people who aren’t textual-human, right? Cain’s wife, all those non-textual-human people Cain was afraid of, who knows how many folks at the time of the flood. I feel for those poor folks who weren’t considered human.
They are biological humans. I also make a case they have human dignity and worth, and are loved by God. They just are not the focus of Scripture. This makes sense because by the time Scripture is recieved their theological class doesn’t exist any more. There is no reason for them to appear as more than just the backstory and peripheral vision.
They are fully human, just not the subject of Scripture. No need to feel sorry for them for this reason. Cain’s wife, for example, appears in peripheral vision. That serves to make the point, not trouble it.
Even the earliest books? When do you think the books of Moses were written, in order to make this work? Job?
Depends when Adam and Eve live right?
The key claims of “ends of the Earth” don’t arise till acts and Romans. So that is why the AD 1 date becomes important. If someone wants to make a case for an earlier date it will be very difficult.
I don’t think people will read your article and think “What he’s saying is that it appears our ancestors never dip down to a single couple, but they don’t really”. You said “This conclusion is robust, based on several independent signals”, and you represented this conclusion as “the findings of science”, not “What science thinks is maybe the case, but might just be a false appearance”.
The message throughout your article is very consistent.
It appears that our ancestors share common ancestors with the great apes and arise as a large population, never dipping in size to a single couple.
It appears that population sizes never dipped to a single couple in the last several hundred thousand years, during the time in which Homo sapiens arises. This conclusion is robust, based on several independent signals: our ancestors arose as a large population, not as a single couple.
Nonetheless, it still appears that Homo sapiens (1) shares ancestry with the great apes and (2) arose from a larger population that never dipped in size to a single couple.
These theological questions aside, more care is needed in stating the findings of science. Our ancestors arise as a population, not as a single couple, and they share ancestry with the great apes.
The whole point of your article is to find a way to reconcile these facts with Scripture and theology. If you really didn’t think the science was “robust”, then there would be absolutely no need for the article at all. Your article would be a solution looking for a problem.
Regardless, I think you’re in a bind here. Either the PSCF article is incorrect, and you’ve known for months it is in correct, and you’ve been meaning to correct it publicly for a longtime, or the PSCF article is correct, and it doesn’t need to be corrected. I really think you’re tying yourself in knots by trying to make the science fit everyone’s theological views.
I don’t think Scripture differentiates between “biological humans” and “textual humans”, and I don’t think science does either. This is theology, and ad hoc theology at that. I think your PSCF article was right on the money when it said “There are many theological defi nitions of “human,” but none of them clearly map to science”.
And apparently they may have lived 500,000 years ago, right? When humans had language, agriculture, and domestication?
I agree, which is why it is written differently in the GAE book. Did not you forget already that this was written before the exchange with Buggs? I overstated the evidence here. This was in error. I made a mistake.
Yup, it appears that way, but that doesn’t mean it is true in the distant past.
Yup, it appears that way, and TMR4A gives some strong evidence to support that claim, and HLA’s give weak evidence. However all of Venema’s evidence became irrelevant.
Yes it appears that way.
This is distinct from saying that “humans” arise as a larger population. “our ancestors” is not “human.”
That is not true. If you think that, you really haven’t understood the main point.
A genetic bottleneck is a red herring. I can’t find a way to justify it from Scripture. There are a few theologians that disagree, but since my work it seems that the view has shifted to genealogical ancestry. Several people even before my work objected to Adam and the Genome for focusing on genetic bottlenecks, this is a concordist error.
Of course, for the few people who still want a genetic bottleneck, it might (with many caveats) be possible that it appears there was no bottleneck, but there was in fact a bottleneck. That is an alternate way to resolve it, entirely independently of the GAE. I’m not sure how to justify this, but WLC is trying. Let’s see how far he gets.
I’ve already explained the situation. Note, I state “appears” at all those points. Given that I have already apologized for the errors I did make, I’m not sure what your complaint is.
That is WLC and @vjtorley’s and @Agauger’s case (without agriculture and domestication, but with language). I don’t understand how that can be justified theologically, but that is up to them. Feel free to argue against their hermeneutics, but be truthful about the scientific evidence.
That is exactly the point of my book. Which is what gives me leeway to make a textual definition of “human,” which resolves several theological problems in one swoop.
So, I have a question. You make a reasonable case that one can understand “human” in Scripture as referring only to the descendants of Adam and Eve (DAE). Yet here, we seem to want to tweak our model just so that it covers all Homo sapiens by AD 1, perhaps based on passages like Acts 17:26. But why? At what point did the biological human become relevant at all to our interpretation of Scripture? It seems as if we’re saying that Genesis refers to DAE when it talks about humans, while Paul is referring to biological humans.
Sure, there is the lingering shadow of accusations of polygenesis that we so eagerly want to extinguish. And it is indeed very uncomfortable if it turns out that there is indeed some isolated population of Homo sapiens on some remote island somewhere which have never interbred with DAE. (Yes, I understand that it’s basically impossible to scientifically prove or disprove this scenario.) But what this shows is that even if we understand Scripture as speaking to some narrower definition of “textual human”, our understanding of what it means to be human is ultimately also tied to some biological, possibly structuralist notions. I think you try to talk about this within the idea of a “multivalent” definition of “human”. But how can we do this in such a way that avoids accusations of inconsistency, or changing our definitions whenever it’s convenient?
Well I am not changing definitions willy nilly, nor am I inconsistent. I’m 100% sure the accusations will come no matter what I do. It helps that they are false accusations.
What I can say is that structuralists such as Kemp have no problem with this, even though WLC is still working out his position.
You have to read the new version of the book. I don’t build it from Acts 17:26, but from Acts 1:8. “To the ends of the earth.” The reason this is important is because of the theological tradition of monogenesis, and because universal descent is implicated in Paul and Jesus’s teaching, not merely incident. So it becomes a matter of inerrancy and infallibility.
So, I don’t know how you make that case exactly in the new version of the book. But I can imagine arguing that based on Acts 1:8, we are called to spread the gospel to the ends of the Earth, which implies that by AD 1, every human we encounter at the ends of the Earth are those that are relevant for spreading the gospel to, i.e., DAE. Does that look at all similar to how you actually argue it?