Author of:
And with a blog with 1.5 million hits per month. Are we going viral?
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Two days after Dreher posted his article, there are 206 Disqus comments. Some of them are quite extensive and show a very high level of interest. I think this is a good sign that your book is going to get a lot of free publicity all over the Internet. Yes, it may go viral.
With the book’s release still weeks away, we shall see if the timing works out. In any case, The American Conservative is a great place to get such prominent mention through Rod Dreher.
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I was also checking out comments, but probably skimming a bit more than Allen, when a post from our friend @vjtorley caught my attention.
Hi Rod,
Professor Swamidass’s hypothesis is consistent with the scientific evidence, but highly idiosyncratic.
For starters, Professor Swamidass doesn’t maintain that the Adam and Eve couple whom God created 10,000 years ago were the first human beings. On the contrary, he freely grants that there were earlier human beings who were made in the image and likeness of God, and who evolved, sharing a common ancestor with chimpanzees and gorillas. Swamidass is not a materialist, so I presume he believes that at some point in the past (possibly around 320,000 years ago, when Homo sapiens emerged, or possibly about 600,000 years ago, when Heidelberg man, the alleged common ancestor of Homo sapiens , Neanderthal man and Denisovan man appeared), any biologically human individuals living on the planet at that time were endowed by God with rational souls, but it would have been en masse , which means that tend of thousands of individuals became rational human beings at the same time.
@swamidass, would you say this summary is accurate?
Whoops… looks like I missed a lot when I didn’t first see the “read more” button. As might be expected (
), Vincent does have a lot more to say. He also left a link to PS there!
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Nope, that is not accurate @vjtorley! I show how AE could be the first humans by at least one valid definition.
Ironic how some people dismiss it as banal and common, others dismiss it as discredited pseudoscience, and others dismiss it is as idiosyncratic. They all can’t be right!
But thanks for putting it out there, along with the link. 
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No matter how skillfully you explain your position, I think many people will misread what you are saying. On such a complex topic—yet in some ways a remarkably simple one—I suppose this cannot be avoided. And many will mistakenly assume that you are advocating one particular view of Adam & Eve (and Genesis 1 & 2) despite your carefully describing what the scientific evidence allows.
No doubt many of us in our various venues will have to be diligent in correcting those misunderstandings as we see them.
Nevertheless, online debate about what your book does and does not say can help create more and more buzz. We all know how controversy can help something go viral.
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You must expect quite a bit of misunderstanding when you use such an odd and personal definition of “human”. I’m not sure there could be any adequate explanation accompanying the term that would prevent confusion. Some terms are inherently confusing.
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Well, it isn’t a personal definition, it is well established in theology. But I do grant it is surprising and non-intuitive.
Could you give an example?
Published authors? Kenneth Kemp, Andrew Loke, Antoine Suarez, Gregg Davidson. Three of them are on this forum.
I meant a text example. Can you quote one of these authors defining the term?
Agh… Rod Dreher is the “Chicken Little” of American Conservative Magazine.