Yes. Agreed. Based on the original question, you were pretty much required to throw a grenade into the room.
In contrast, while I have other models, I offered one that might actually attract YECs.
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To each his --or her ā own. Happy to oblige!
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@Guy_Coeās model can certainly attract YECs. There is no harm in diversity. The way this works, usually, is to begin with other peopleās starting points, and explain to them how to make sense of within mainstream science. Different people have different non-negotiables.
@swamidass and @gbrooks9 Joshua will have to do the math but I think what is most helpful for GA is that Adam is further back than 6 KYA because you have to factor in the flood. Since a flood which wiped out all of humanity is refuted by the genetic evidence, and also by the scriptural evidence in the Christ-Centered model of early Genesis, the only plausible target of the flood was Adamās line. This āresetsā the rate at which the line of Adam spreads through the world. IOW you donāt need a date for Adam at least 6K ago, you need a date for Noah at least 6K ago.
The Christ-Centered model does that. And it has the further advantage of treating the genealogies as literally true with no gaps in time while also providing a coherent explanation as to why we find occasional gaps in generations in other OT genealogies. That is, they were meant to be a calendar system using the lives of exceptionally long-lived patriarchs as reference points. Unless the text made clear that the subsequent name on the list was a direct son of the previous one (usually the first and last names on the list) then the rule was to use the entire lifespan of the patriarch.
Doodad lived 87 years and beget Hobab and Doodad lived 500 years after he begat Hobab so that all the days of Doodad were 587 years.
Unless the text elsewhere makes clear that Hobab was a direct son of Doodad what it is saying is that the line which led to Hobab came about in the 87th year of Doodadās life. Hobab himself was not actually born until the year of Doodadās death. At this point he became the new person used for tracking time in that family. Each family doing their own genealogy would have a different place where they plugged in. Maybe they were from a son of Doodad that had a different start, so their family story would list a different guy.
I go over the evidence supporting this view in my book. Basically they way the text varies when Abraham and Terah come along show this system breaking down.
So, the text is literally true when understood correctly, and the genealogies have no gaps in time. The gaps in genealogies is limited and follows consistent and understandable rules as hinted at elsewhere in the text. There is plenty of time for GA, even if you factor in the flood doing a reset.
And you have a ready made solution from within the YEC worldā¦
Read the article, and you can see the date can go up to 20 kya. It might be valuable @anon46279830 to look up the references in that article and have them on hand.
Oh I read it. And its basically what I am saying. Only they are just saying āthe gaps could be thereā. I am saying āhere is why they are there, the limits on them, and how you can use the genealogies to get dates which is what they were made forā. And those dates line up very well with certain historical events.
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IOW words those YEC who give you that wiggle-room are virtue-signaled by the rest of them (the Usshurian crowd) because they donāt have a consistent framework for why the bible would have genealogies that have random gaps for unknown amounts of time. The way I am describing it there is no question of āone side believes its accurate and the other side believes it is riddled with holesā. It is just two ways to look at the same verses both of which are accurate for what they are trying to say.
I am utterly amazed at the lack of precision AIG has. They lock down on 6000 years ago by using Usher but then they donāt go to precisely the year of creation week, the year of the flood, and so forth based on any data. They do studies on the error bar of radiometric dating and miss the fact that we can count tree rings, and ice cores back to earlier than 6000 years. We have precision in the age of the universe to plus or minus 21 million years out 13.8 billion years and AIG canāt pin down the global flood that supposedly happened 4350 years ago. Science has the dinosaur extinction pretty much nailed down at 66 million years ago, but canāt give even a range of dates when the koala bears got to Australia after coming off the Ark after the flood. And now there is DNA results on every species. As more an more people and ancient fossils are sequenced AIGās hyperevolution has to get faster and faster. Pretty soon they will need to call it warp drive evolution as the generations are getting shorter and mutation rates getting enormous. The only thing that will stop AIG is when operating expenses exceed visitors. As long as white senior citizens continue to go to the Ark, AIG can still be able to pump out pseudoscience nonsense.
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There is actually a method to their madness. A priori, they are committed to ensuring that the Bible is in conflict with evolution. That is what is driving their reading. For them, it is not about precision on the dates as much as the rhetorical position of opposing evolution.
When I talk to exegetes and theologians, they often object to reading evolution into Genesis. I respond that I agree we should not read evolution into Scripture, but I entirely oppose reading anti-evolution into Scripture too.I entirely oppose reading YEC into Scripture, where it cannot properly be found. I tell them I have no problem with Scripture, but with intentionally anti-evolution interpretations of Scripture. This, you may be surprised, is well received.
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Yes, AIG pretends that every single piece of evidenceāwhether from ice cores, varves, dendrochronology, radiometrics, and many more INDEPENDENT methodologiesāis meaningless. Their arguments against such evidence have changed little since I first read them in THE GENESIS FLOOD (1962, Henry Morris & John Whitcomb Jr.) They were poor arguments a half century ago. Today they are just plain ridiculously sad. Would the Creator be that deceptive so as to give us a universe full of evidence which canāt be trusted, a false chronology of the worldās history?
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They have to do this. It is in their belief statement:
By definition, no apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts [the AIG understanding of] the scriptural record.
Statement of Faith | Answers in Genesis
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So, whatās missing from a positive, 15-13 kya Adam and Eve scenario, regardless of its current state of lack of acceptance because itās relatively novel? As Iāve noted before, we all know how this gets organizations like AIG and RTB worrying about their donorsā wallets, but itās a much better model than the current fuzziness Faz promotes.
So much of this topic segment (read āindustryā) depends on promoting a false dichotomy between creation and evolution, when itās obvious that both are at work. This is the dawning truth that some two hundred years of heated debates is arriving at, and people have to want to bring the debate to a peaceful resolution for God to be fully glorified. Iāll see what I can do regarding Faz, but frankly, hold out more hope that Hugh will be convinced by the paleoclimatology. I think heās given Faz free reins for so long, heās beginning to realize heās being dragged in the direction of an indefensible model thereby. I donāt see them as standing solidly together, yet, in a highly coherent model. The dates and arguments keep changing, and more and more, Fazās apologetics depend upon categorical negations, rather than positive, substantive model-building. My two cents.
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I see Hugh staying away from Fazās model as he see it falling apart from ancient genetic sequencing. Hugh will just stay with the universe and fall into a really bushy God guided evolution of humans over millions of years.
In the past Faz was always worried about Neanderthal genome sequencing, he thought (and hoped) that it was impossible to do. Never anticipated Neanderthals, Denosivan sequencing and other archaic āhumansā and so much recent mixing at 40KYA. Faz keeps pushing back at Neanderthalās behaving like Sapiens. I asked him about this recent paper linking autism in Neanderthals as a cold weather evolution adaption. Afraid to comment because it boxes him in again. Autism has to be just us, as Neanderthals with a spectrum of autism makes them very human behaviorable. He is also reluctant to comment as Neanderthals and archiac humanās behavior is being shown to be very gradually getting modern over most of the last million years. So he has to wait until the Neanderthals are extinct to start a homo Sapiansā behavioral leap. After 40KYA, he has full license to say that God guided us to argriculture, then language and culture as we were the most exceptional beings on the planet destined for great technological accomplishments. Before 40KYA heās got these other animals that humans keep successfully mating with.
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Excellent analysis, Patrick. Yes, I see him as being gradually boxed in, tooā¦ and without a truly positive direction to go in. Thatās why I hope to get him to consider this model more closely, and get past the categoricalism. I donāt see human exceptionalism depending upon one gigantic, instantaneous leap in every direction. Human exceptionalism is established on the basis of the āimago Deiā being built into ALL humans, regardless of their physical differences. For me, the question of the humanness of Neanderthals is merely one of degree, not of kind, given the record of their implements of culture. He and I have butted heads on this before.
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I can see the logic, once youāve established the viewpoint of your scenario. I just donāt see much logic for your scenario. Iāll walk through some of what I mean.
The most coherent fit for a flood event with the @swamidass scenarios would be, as you say, a Regional Flood. While I have already established that Iām trying to fit as much YEC details into a composite scenario, the conventional āGlobal Flood less than 6000 years agoā is pretty much contravened by the first 10 dynasties of Egyptian history. [[ Iāll have to spend some time thinking about what be the simplest way to fit a global flood into any of Swamidassā scenarios - - if it was absolutely necessary that we fit one in! ]]
So, a regional flood could target Adamās lineage less than 6000 years ago without much problem, thus explaining why Egypt was unmolested (because the flood wasnāt global).
The problem with putting Noah significantly earlier than 6000 years ago (let alone 4,500 years ago) is once you get to the generations of Noahās children and grandchildren, it becomes increasingly difficult to challenge the genealogical timeline suggested for their descendants.
The problem is the desire by you and @Guy_Coe to insert features into the primary scenarios envisioned for these pages that fundamentally disrupt the purpose for the scenarios:
@swamidassā work is geared towards fusing the schools of God-led Evolution with the schools of Special Creation.
@Guy_Coe wants to place Special Creation well beyond its usual Biblical time frame and you, Revealed, want to replace God-led Evolution with punctuated Special Creation.
The former proposal is not likely to appeal to the YECs that are a primary audience for the scenariosā¦ and the latter proposal would completely repel Christians who adhere to the fossil evidence for Common Descent throughout the animal kingdom.
The fact that both of you donāt find either problem to be āproblemsā is why you both agree with each other.
I think you fundamentally misunderstand Joshās mind on what will accomplish those aims.
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I produced a summary of what I think @swamidass has in mind. And I encouraged him to revise/edit this hypothesis to suit him.
Professor, what would you change in the description below? The sooner I more closely tune into your wavelength, the better it will be for everyone.
I think George @gbrooks9 also misunderstands your intent and mine as well. Whatever his other talents, he is just not very good at understanding viewpoints which are quite different from his own, though he works at it very hard and that is admirable. Still, I do wish he would get out of the business of trying to explain what I mean to others because he is often the last one to āgetā what I am saying and therefore his āexplanationsā just muddy the waters. Do you feel like that?
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Itās one thing to explain a scientific framework which may serve to minimize such perspectival differences, but another entirely to propose a model which has the potential to unite the various groups around a most likely, coherent scenario. The first without the last is only a Pyrrhic victory.
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