Comments on The BioLogos Statement on Adam and Eve

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To me that requires actually finding out what’s true. So I don’t see why you think your role us not to find out what’s true.

No one is suggesting you do this.

You don’t, but you’re entirely willing for others to do so. You actually encourage them to do it.

Basic morality should tell them this is wrong.

I don’t believe theology gives us a blank cheque to make up whatever we want, and claim it’s true.

But I wasn’t talking about GAE, I was talking about the page on which you presented three different interpretations, and represented them as all equally valid, actively encouraging people to just pick the one they liked, even though they can’t all be true, and even though none of them were arrived at through science. They’re ad hoc harmonizations.

How much reading of the historical theology on this subject have you done? People have known for a long time there’s no evidence against de novo creation of Adam and Eve, as long as they’re not understood as the genetic progenitors of all humans. This is one of the first alternative views I encountered even when I still rejected evolution, and that was nearly 20 years ago. Sometimes looking at what American Christians are doing is really like looking back in time. This is one of those moments.

If you haven’t already done it, I would strongly suggest you look into historical views which are virtually the same as yours, and incorporate them into your marketing. It might help some people to know that you weren’t the first person to make a suggestion like this.

The core genealogical fact on which you’re making a case, has been known for a very long time. It was discussed in the nineteenth century. Terms such as “natural heirship” were used, and although they didn’t talk about DNA, they talked about “blood”. Henry Kendall, a Presbyterian, made much of this.

Try these for example.

  1. Henry Kendall, “Natural Heirship: Or, All the World Akin,” Popular Science Monthly 28.19 (1886).

  2. Henry Kendall, The Kinship of Men an Argument from Pedigrees; or, Genealogy Viewed as a Science. (Boston: Cupples and Hurd, 1888).

But you haven’t made a scientific case for GAE. It’s a matter of faith. In my view at least GAE has explicit textual support, insofar as it is well known that Cain’s fear of other people, and Cain’s wife, indicate that there were already other humans on the earth at the time of Adam and Eve. So it has Scriptural support, which is what moved me to this position years ago, but there’s no actual scientific evidence that Adam and Eve were created de novo.

What you did was write an accessible explanation of something which other people had already thought of.

But you’re changing the subject. I’m talking about the law of non-contradiction. If on the other hand you really want to argue that everyone can have their own truth, and that something can be P and not-P simultaneously, then why even bother with science, you can just make everything up as you go along.

By the way, your GAE page (written before your PSCF article was published), has some statements in it which you seem to be backing away from now, like this.

Genetic science still stands. It still appears that most our ancestors arise as a population, not a single couple, and we share ancestry with the great apes. This is not an argument against evolutionary science in any way. Evolution is a valid description of the history of those “outside the garden.” They appear to have evolved from a common ancestor with the great apes.

I’m not sure if you still want to stand by that.

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Helpful Quotes by Burke on Genealogical Science
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The problem with that is that it gets into the notion of empirical evidence, and the beauty of GAE is that there is no empirical evidence against it. If we start demanding that the origins of agriculture and who knows what be traced to them, it starts to break down. If they start agriculture and their son founds the first city, that constrains cities to arise when agriculture does, which we know is not the case, and it constrains agriculture to spread from a single source, which we know is not the case. I do wonder if @swamidass and others subscribe to this linkage.

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I do not. I don’t think it makes sense to think of AE as the first farmers or Cain building the first city. They “first” is not even mentioned in the text.

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I certainly agree with this. Of course this is not what Venema argued, as I’m sure you know.

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@Jonathan_Burke that just isn’t true. It is strange that you would think this.

You are seem unaware of my work. Interesting.

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What evidence do you have that no one else had thought of this before you wrote about it? How do you explain the evidence that people had already written about this before you did? For example, you know that this idea was written about in an article by David Opendeck, published on Biologos. You’ve even linked to this article in this thread.

What about Dick Fischer’s article in PSCF 45 (December 1993), in which he argues Adam and Eve were created de novo, and that their children interbred with existing humans? This is not at all a new idea, and he was not the first to write about it.

I am unaware of any work you have done which provides scientific evidence that Adam and Eve were created de novo and that their children then interbred with existing humans who were the product of evolution. If you have this evidence, I would be very interested in it. Is it DNA evidence? Fossil evidence? A diary entry written by Adam? Previously you said “Of course, the hypothesis of Adam and Eve is a theological hypothesis”. Are you now saying it is a scientific hypothesis?

So do you now mean “appears” in the sense of “It still appears that most of our ancestors arise as a population, but in fact there’s no evidence that this is actually true”?

How about this statement?

Venema accurately recounts human origins, as most scientists understand it, with clear explanations of genomes and the mathematical models that make sense of them. Anatomically modern humans arose as a group that never dipped in size to a single couple. Correctly, he explains that science cannot tell us about the “historicity” of Adam and Eve, cautioning that Y-Chromosome Adam and Mitochondrial Eve are not the founding couple of humans.

That was what you wrote in 2017.

Venema argued that our ancestors arose as a population, not a single couple, and we share ancestry with the great apes.

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@Jonathan_Burke

When BioLogos offers four (4) different figurative interpretations of Genesis 1 to Genesis 2, there was no uproar that 3 of the scenarios must be a lie.

I think you are confusing research in metaphysics with research in science!

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@Jonathan_Burke

Ahhhh… so that’s part of the problem?!

You think this is a science site about Theological matters.

But in fact, it is a theological site on scientific matters.

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@Jonathan_Burke and @swamidass

Joshua, we need a nod of thanks to Jonathan for the link above!

One: the article mentions Venema’s work way back in 2010.

Two: but more importantly, there is a fine quote from Opendeck about his approach not being Concordist.

But three: there is a specific sentence where it is clear that Opendeck is not fully familiar with the Genealogical ramifications of his position!:

“It is true that the sort of idea I’m floating isn’t strictly biologically monogenetic. However, it seems to me that it could preserve Paul’s federal theology and provides a plausible, even Augustinian, mechanism for the propagation of original sin.”

“I want to be clear that this isn’t a “concordist” scenario of the sort that suggests the Bible contains “science” that was ahead of its time.”

"I think it’s obviously right that we can’t hang on to literalism about “Adam” and the “fall” in the classical sense of Milton’s “Paradise Lost.”

“However, like many evangelical Christians, my theological presuppositions compel me to look for some “literalism” about the “fall” in the sense of it being a real ontological “event” in space and time.”

“And I don’t see any reason not to say that Genesis 2-4 is at least a highly stylized literary portrayal of “real” events. Science is helping us understand the form of the Bible’s “fall” narratives, but not eliding their essential content.”

“In short, Biblical genealogy is in some sense about biological relationships, but it primarily concerns spiritual-representative relationships. Biblical genealogy knows nothing of genomics or population genetics.”

“The Bible itself , in its discussion of Abraham, demonstrates that descent from “one man” cannot be a reference to genetic science. If we move the search for a “literal” Adam away from genetics and into the spiritual and relational aspects of human nature, then, we act in a way that is more faithful to the text.”

“And science cannot comment one way or the other on whether there is a spiritual-representative “Adam” ultimately connected to everyone’s family tree.”

This last sentence has been addressed and corrected by @swamidass!

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There was from some people. I don’t believe it’s valid to lay out three different interpretations and say “Pick whichever one you like, they’re all correct!”, and I don’t think theology gives us a free hand to make whatever statements we like and claim they are factual.

No, I am pointing out that making things up and calling them true simply because you want them to be true, isn’t good research.

No. I am saying I am unaware of any work Joshua have done which provides scientific evidence that Adam and Eve were created de novo and that their children then interbred with existing humans who were the product of evolution.

No we don’t. As I pointed out, Joshua already posted that link here.

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@Jonathan_Burke

Joshua is not proposing four different sets of human DNA.

He is proposing ways of fitting the scientific truth of primate evolution with the various configurations of metaphysics bound up in rival schools of Evangelical metaphysics.

There is no single metaphysical truth universally agreeed upon. You certainly know this to be true!

If he even TRIED to proclaim a single metaphysical truth… he would be immediately savaged by those he contradicted in his proclamation.

@swamidass’ stance is to demonstrate maximum creativity to how Christians can embrace evolution.

You seem to take great offence to such a notion… and would prefer that he stick to one approach, so that you can join in the attacks on him for not picking YOUR version.

Because i am completely opposed to Original Sin as a biblical notion, i suppose i should argue that Joshua should ALSO nullify original sin in all his GAE scenarios.

But, in fact, it is the special feature of GAE that it makes room for Original Sin… while still making Evolution possible!

This is the high water mark of all the pre-Adamite scenarios, both old and new!!!

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I know he isn’t.

I know he is. What I have objected to is that is the implication that we don’t need to check which one of them is true, we can just pick whichever one we like, because they are all true.

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@Jonathan_Burke

I agree with you: if he has written “they are all true”… he should amend that declaration!

He should say something more like this:

“Some of these scenarios exclude others; it is between your faith and God’s Bible to determine which speaks God’s truth best.”

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Sure, there are several people who have suggested the idea of the GAE way before Josh did, but Josh is, as far as I know, the first one to think and explain carefully about how it meshes with the scientific evidence, as opposed to simply throwing the idea around and giving broad arguments why it’s reasonable. For example, his PSCF article, as you surely know, interacts with Rohde’s 2004 Nature paper. Josh quantifies the amount of time you have to go back before everyone living who left descendants are the ancestors of all of humanity at AD 1. This is not simply reexplaining an old idea to the masses; it’s taking a previously suggested conjecture and carefully thinking about its theological and scientific implications.

Has anyone before Josh expounded on the GAE to this extent? I would be interested to know as well.

It seems to me in this thread that you come to the table bringing a set of epistemological presuppositions and methodology to determine what is “true”. (And it seems that that epistemology privileges mainstream science as the main arbiter of whether we have evidence that something is true or not.) There’s nothing inherently wrong with this. However, you also have to realize that not everyone holds to your epistemology. Instead of pushing his own preferred epistemology and model, like what you (and most other people) are doing, Josh, as I understand it, is trying to build bridges by exploring the consequences of adopting different epistemologies and different starting presuppositions.

This is not blind relativism, but simply opening channels of dialogue between different camps. To take a different analogy, if you want to engage in interfaith dialogue, sometimes the most productive way forward is not to debate on which of the different faiths are “true” or not, but instead let everyone share how they arrive at their conception of what is true or false.

For example, a YEC can hold that God created the world with the appearance of age. Such a view would be consistent with the evidence, in the sense that there is no way to scientifically prove him wrong, just as there is no way to scientifically prove that Last Thursdayism is wrong. Of course, such an epistemology would blatantly conflict with the epistemology held by the majority of scientists and most non-YECs. But maybe that’s an acceptable compromise for YECs who prioritize other things. It’s certainly a step forward compared to the YEC who denies that there is strong scientific evidence for the old age of the universe.

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Yes I am aware of Rhode’s paper. Rhode already did all the relevant scientific modeling in great detail all the way back in 2003. This is the introduction to Rhode’s article.

This study introduces a large-scale, detailed computer model of recent human history which suggests that the common ancestor of everyone alive today very likely lived between 2,000 and 5,000 years ago. Furthermore, the model indicates that nearly everyone living a few thousand years prior to that time is either the ancestor of no one or of all living human.

His 28 page article is exhaustive, covering not only the relevant population models but also the geographical distribution. You can also find people tackling the math all the way back into the nineteenth century; I provided a couple of citations previously.

But that’s just looking at one detail of work already done. Josh didn’t come up with the original ideal (that dates to at least the nineteenth century), or do the math which proved it (people started doing the math in the nineteenth century, and Rohdes did it exhaustively).

But previously it wasn’t merely a conjecture. Kendall did the basic math to demonstrate it was plausible, back in the nineteenth century. The theological and scientific implications were being discussed over 100 years ago.

Joshua’s big reveal is this.

Reframing the Adam Debate

For a very long time, the received wisdom has understood “traditional” understandings of Adam and Eve to be in direct conflict with evolutionary science. We faced an either-or choice, between two mutually exclusive options. Now, however, we can see that there is a both-and option available, which keeps the story almost entirely intact. Although the genetic story seems in total conflict with “traditional” account, the genealogical story is consistent with the genetics and evolutionary story, but looks almost identical to the “traditional” account.

Note the language; “For a very long time”, “Now, however, we can see that there is a both-and option available”. And then he describes an idea which is over 100 years old. It will probably look new to his audience, at least. This is what happens when people live in a bubble; anything outside the bubble looks amazingly new.

Amazing as it may seem, this has occurred to me.

First of all I am not pushing “my preferred epistemology and model”. It’s extremely concerning to hear the suggestion that an epistemology is simply a matter of choice, which we can change from one day to the next. An epistemology should not be a preference. It should be based on objective facts.

Secondly I don’t care who has their own epistemology and model. They certainly don’t need to have mine. What I am saying is that whatever people’s epistemology and model, they don’t get to say “I believe this is true, therefore it is true”. They don’t get to dream up ideas and require other people treat them as factual without evidence, and they don’t get to say “This makes sense to me theologically, therefore it is true”. That’s not good epistemology, or good theology, and certainly not good science.

We should be encouraging people to base their beliefs on facts, not invent ideas which conform reality to their theology. I’ve observed before that this is the fundamental difference between Biologos and Peaceful Science, and you’re confirming this.

This is not in dispute. This is not the topic under discussion. I am not talking about what facilitates interfaith dialogue. I am talking about whether or not it’s ok to tell people they can make up whatever they like, insist that it’s true, and then respond with “It’s theology, stupid!”, when asked for evidence. This is intellectually anemic, to put it politely.

I wouldn’t say “There’s no way to scientifically prove you wrong”. I would say “Given your complete lack of evidence, there is no rational reason to assume you are correct”. I would also say “Given the fact that your view has no explanatory power and makes no accurate predictions, whereas an alternative model has considerable explanatory power and consistently makes accurate predictions, I consider your view completely falsified”. But regardless, even saying “Well, I can’t say you’re wrong” is still not the same as saying “Yes, you’re right to think this”.

Of course. But what I am saying is I don’t believe we should tell the that this is valid. YEC beliefs are demonstrably toxic, and corrosive to good theology, personal faith, and rational thinking. They correlate reliably with a host of bad behaviors, irrational thinking, rejection of scientific facts, and specific forms of bigotry. They also correlate strongly with Christians losing their faith, and Christians discrediting Christianity. I see no reason to encourage these beliefs.

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Helpful Quotes by Burke on Genealogical Science
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@Jonathan_Burke you are mistaken. Not sure how to help you make sense of this. Good luck.

Please show me where genetic ghosts are mentioned 100 years ago? Or even 10 years ago?

@Jonathan_Burke you seem unaware of my work here. No wonder you think there is not a contribution. I encourage you to catch up on it. There is a lot to learn about!

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That’s right. I’m trying to make space for difference, recognizing that we disagree and our disagreements are not likely to go away.

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@jonathan_burke

So you are still in the business of distorting a hypothesis to the point nobody recognizes it any more?

If you havent noticed, the various Evangelical camps ALREADY have their epistemologies… their traditional metaphysical stances!!!

The GAE scenarios built here are built to match the specifics of their immutable positions.

Your objections ring hollow… seemingly based on the unbending zeal you seem to have for your own “camp”.

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@Jonathan_Burke

Hey, its hard enough to get an evangelical to accept millions of years of hard evolutionary evidence…even with the fairly dramatic concession of a de novo human pair!

It would seem we accept Baby Steps…versus Zero Steps.

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Easy, just tell me what the mistake is. I’m willing to be corrected.

Yes I’m familiar with your “genetic ghosts” thing, and it’s perfectly reasonable. Just so we’re clear, is it the term “genetic ghosts” that you’re identifying as your unique contribution, as opposed to the entire genealogical Adam/Eve idea, and as opposed to the idea that there were already other humans before Adam and Eve, and that Adam and Eve’s children intermarried with them?

Feel free to quote or link to anything you think I haven’t read, thanks.

Yes I have.

Thank you, that is exactly what I am saying. Each scenario is tailored to the theological needs of different positions.

I don’t think encouraging YECs to believe in a young earth is even a baby step.