You are changing the subject, or you are profoundly confused. It is honestly hard to tell from my vantage point.
Sigh. There is evidence for widespread interbreeding several kya, but there is no evidence AE or their descendants were involved. Clear enough?
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My comment and claim did not mention AE. Perhaps stay on topic.
I thought the topic was “Is evolutionary science in conflict with Adam and Eve?”
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My comments apply to their descendants as well, who would have been involved in that global interbreeding. I did not stray off topic.
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That’s preposterous.
Achieving clarity often requires effort.
That passage (Genesis 1:14-18) says the “lights” are responsible for
(a) dividing “the night from the day“ – which is what the sun literally does;
(b) “signs” – prophetic signs: “’what will be the sign of your coming and of the close of the age?’ … ‘the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven’” (Matt 24:3, 29);
(c) “seasons, and for days and years” – refers to the liturgical calendar of Israel, which is regulated by the cycles of the sun and the moon. Then it says the sun provides light during the day and the moon provides light during the night – literal facts, as far as I can tell. It seems obvious to me that is a literal description. If you have a non-literal interpretation of that passage, I’d love to hear it (and try not to laugh).
… which seems to me to be a stretch. Gen 2:7 says that from inanimate matter (lifeless “dust”), God created the form of a “man”, which he then brought to life. I’m afraid my imagination struggles and is not vivid enough to squeeze “symbolic/metaphorical” evolution out of that verse.
I can see how “to dust” be read as a sign of human mortality”, but as for “from dust”, I have my doubts.
God endowed Adam with the potential for immorality, regardless of the fact that he was made “from dust”. And did not God, in effect, raise the deceased Jesus “from dust” to immortality?
“she”? Oh dear.
I have no trouble admitting that I’m wrong, because sometimes I do get it very wrong. I also don’t mind admitting I sometimes get it wrong because I easily qualify as the least intelligent, less educated and most scientifically-ignorant person on this esteemed, informative and intimidating site.
There seems to be very few meaningful objections left against my central claim. Before I get to those, let’s get some bookkeeping out of the way.
@Michael_Okoko , @Mercer : please actually read what I write. I was perfectly clear in the post where I laid out my argument:
@Michael_Okoko : as you’ve been told multiple times, please actually read the book. The evidence that I mentioned, that you keep asking for, are contained within.
Now on to some more substantive topics:
I remember I left Ask and Embla as an exercise for you to do, and left you some links to my blog as resources to help you. They should be adequate for you to learn to answer this question yourself, provided that you avoid your previous mistakes.
I will furthermore give you the hint that you’re actually pretty close to the answer, and that you should remember the nuance built in to the Bayesian definition of evidence.
First, thank you for actually replying with some substance. And since you say that you’re familiar with Bayesian reasoning, this will go quickly.
Oh, and the bit about oceanography - I was saying no more or no less than Bayes’ rule: P(H|E) may be dramatically different from P(H) for certain E, if there are strong differences in P(E|H) and P(E|~H). For exceptionally rare E’ (such as an entire parallel universe), they may have strong differences in P(E’|H) and P(E’|~H) for multiple disparate H’s, although predicting anything in a scientific revolution of such magnitude is difficult.
Anyway, on to the main topic:
The models, I laid out in my previous post, is as follows:
Now, does Dawkins work with ~H? Of course he does. Nearly 100%. I mean, I guess you can claim that he’s a secret Christian or a Norse pagan or something, but let’s not go down such a chain of “what ifs”. We are Bayesians, after all.
What is our E? As I said earlier, it’s the evidence that make up GAE. And it’s precisely a piece of that evidence - that of the recency of the common ancestor - that Dawkins is reacting to, when he writes “I don’t know about you, but I find these calculated dates astonishingly recent”
So, given that Dawkins operates entirely in ~H, and is reacting precisely to E, his reaction is the best possible non-numerical representation of P(E|~H). And he finds it “astonishing”. P(E|~H) << 1, unambiguously.
Of course, you may say that Dawkins is an idiot and didn’t react correctly to the evidence. You may say that you, surely, would have a mathematically precise model which would output exact numerical probabilities. You may beg to be personally excused from his reaction, and the P(E|~H) that it implies. Fair enough. But given that he’s an iconic atheist evolutionary biologist who’s deeply engaged in the “science vs. religion” controversy, his reaction speaks for a large chunk of people who meet any of those descriptions.
In fact, in order for anyone to be excluded from his reaction, I should like the following to be true of them:
Are they a better evolutionary biologist than Dawkins? If so, they may legitimately be in a place where they can say, “yeah, Dawkins is an idiot”.
Did they publish a book about biological ancestry? Because the quote above is taken from such a book. If so, then they may legitimately have thought about the problem more than he did.
Do they actually have a mathematical model which outputs precise numerical probabilities for recency of our common ancestor? If so, that value may supercede Dawkins’ clear expression of P(E|~H) << 1.
Otherwise, I’m not going to pretend to be able to read their mind, but I would strongly suspect motivated thinking if they say that, for them personally, P(E|~H) is not very small. His reaction is an excellent estimation of P(E|~H), given his qualifications, and the fact that he’s addressing our precise E with our precise ~H.
The rest of the argument is as I laid out before. P(E|H) ~ 1, so the Bayes factor is >> 1. The evidence of GAE is an “astonishing” amount of evidence for the existence of Adam and Eve.
That’s just great. Keep ignoring my request. I suspect the evidence you have in mind is the same that Prof. Swamidass enumerated some comments ago. If it is, then you have misinterpreted the book you are asking me to read. Joshua doesn’t present evidence for GAE in his book, what he presents is evidence (like recent universal ancestry) for the possibility of GAE.
Its simple to understand. There is no evidence AE existed, neither is there evidence they had descendants who admixed with POGs. However, there is evidence for widespread interbreeding going back some thousands of years. So if we assume AE existed within that period and had descendants who went on to interbreed with POGs, then it is likely that AE are our genealogical ancestors. The key thing to remember here is that we have to assume the existence of AE, to allow for the development of the full hypothesis.
For many Christians, accepting that AE were real people would be done with little or no hesitance, giving them an opportunity to largely reconcile their theology with our evolutionary history. For atheists and agnostics, there is no fundamental reason to assume the existence of AE, but since they miraculously came on the scene, there is no way to rule out their de novo creation, neither can we rule out interbreeding between their descendants and POGs. Thus, AE as our ancestors remains a possibility and that’s the beauty of GAE.
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I thought of a simple example to further explain this difference.
Imagine an aged man named Tom visits his doctor to know the result of a lung cancer screening exercise he recently underwent. Unfortunately for Tom, the test results showed that he had a relatively large tumor growing on his right lung. We can ask the question, what caused that tumor to form? At this stage we don’t know, but there are evidence-based possibilities that could account for the origin of his tumor. One possibility is that he has a broken tumor suppressor gene, another is that some of his proto-oncogenes have now become oncogenic. These possibilities are supported by myriads of clinical and laboratory studies that have clearly shown that either of both gene types are implicated in tumor development. So there is evidence for the possibility that either one or both could be responsible for Tom’s lung tumor.
Tom’s doctor decides to conduct a full analysis to pin down the actual genetic culprit. He takes a clinical specimen from Tom, isolates and sequences his genome, and discovers that indeed it was a broken tumor suppressor gene (TSG) that most likely kickstarted the tumor growth. This exercise provide evidence for the actual cause of Tom’s tumor and not just its possibility.
This is not a perfect analogy to the body of work put into GAE, because unlike TSGs whose existence we have evidence for, there is no such evidence for the existence of AE or their descendants. But if we grant that they existed, which is akin to recognizing the tumorigenic potential of oncogenic TSGs, then we can consider the possibility that AE were our ancestors.
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This seems like nothing more than a tactic to avoid answering, while smugly presenting yourself as superior to everyone else here.
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Does science work by making claims in which one has invested a great deal of pride, then invoking that same sense of pride while not thinking deeply about objections raised by others?
Or is this Culture War for you?
Using Dawkins reveals that you’re fighting the Culture War.
I would say that he is a former evolutionary biologist who now fights the Culture War.
I wouldn’t. You’re trying to pretend that your Culture War is science.
How about, “Are they practicing evolutionary biologists, more specifically population geneticists, and not preening Culture Warriors?” That would be @glipsnort, whom you are trying to denigrate in favor of fighting in the Culture War.
Maybe you are unaware of this, but virtually none of the primary scientific literature is published in book form. This notion is a common straw man employed by Culture Warriors, though.
So from my perspective as a Christian, everything you’re doing here is an attempt to fight the Culture War, not arrive at any truth or understanding.
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This is beautifully put, Michael.
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That conflation is at the center of most pseudoscience. There are many people actively trying to confuse others (and themselves) about this distinction.
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Fair enough, though it is relevant. Though AE is not nearly as important as the Resurrection, I suspect the analogy would reveal some salient parallels.
This is a broader use of “literal” than saying man is “literally” created from dust. Here, it’s speaking about purpose & perspective, not something historical or scientific.
Your points (b) and (c) are even further extensions.
Again, the word “literal” can be used in a very narrow way (literalistic) or a broader sense (literary according to authorial intent). In the more narrow sense, the word “literal” doesn’t really apply to statements of purpose, but to historical and scientific details, such that if you got in a time machine and went back, you’d notice a one-to-one correspondence between events, sequences, timing, etc. Only minor parts of Day 4 are germane here–as you say, the sun divides day and night, and the sun/moon provide light (though, even here, there’s an extension, b/c we know that the moon does not literally provide light but reflects light, and the sun does not literally divide day and night).
The broader use of “literal” works great here, by focusing on purpose regardless the actual scientific or historical origins of the heavenly luminaries. But, the same use of “literal” would also work in Gen 2 with the creation of man. So, for many of us who accept biblical authority, the question is one of authorial intent. I personally find the word “literal” unhelpful b/c we have to then have side conversations like this one before we can proceed to unpack the text.
You seem to misunderstand my point, are you are just dead set on only allowing a (narrow) literalistic view of the text. What the text says is one thing; what the author of the text means is another. One does not get to assume without argument.
I only see the potential for immortality if humanity stayed in God’s presence in the garden. I see no biblical evidence that humanity was created with natural immortality potential. Otherwise, why the need to eat the tree of life?
I don’t know what point you’re making here (is there a biblical text that emphasizes this?). Besides, the human Jesus was a mortal man.
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Which part of the passage I quoted (Genesis 1:14-18) makes no sense if read literally? Here it is again:
“14 Then God said, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years; 15 and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth”; and it was so. 16 Then God made two great [d]lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also. 17 God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth, 18 and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness.”
Genesis 1:14-18 (see above) makes perfect sense if read literally, regardless of the symbolic/allegorical nature of other parts of the creations account(s).
It seems to me that your argument fails, because the passage I quoted (Genesis 1:14-18) says nothing at all about when the Sun or earth came into existence. It merely describes the effect the Sun and moon have on the earth in terms of providing light – the literal effect.
This is an “addition” to your argument? It appears to be totally irrelevant to the point I’m making about the literal nature of Genesis 1:14-18.
Adam and Eve were created in the image of God, so they had souls. POGs did not have souls. Interbreeding between the descendants of AE and POGs would therefore involve acts of bestiality.