Ah, I remember the streetlight analogy from the book (maybe this is what you were pointing back to in chapter 8?). So would the claim be that if we were able to examine Adam’s genome we would see some type of discontinuity with POG (though not to such a degree that it precluded interbreeding)? Either something indicating de novo creation or merely that we would not see those aspects which are evidence of common descent?
This is the same as saying that the data commonly cited as evidence of common descent is actually underdetermined.
It seems no less intentional and miraculous for him to have created a human being out of dust with a genome that is fabricated to be indistinguishable from that of the humans that had evolved over billions of years.
That’s the thing, though: We don’t know what the genomes of the humans that lived at the time of Adam looked like, and whether they had a fused chromosome. That’s how I understand it, anyway, but Joshua can of course give a more authoritative answer.
If they didn’t, wouldn’t the fusing have to occur multiple times in separate locations, because there wouldn’t be enough time for the fusing to become fixed? I suspect interbreeding with isolated populations such as Tasmanians would result in some modern humans inheriting unfused chromosomes.
Not sure what you mean by “underdetermined”. But of course there is no possible evidence that God couldn’t manufacture. If you allow the God hypothesis, we can’t know anything whatsoever. He could make you think the universe exists when it’s all just him creating sensory input for you. He could have created everything just as you read the period at the end of this sentence. Poof. Now the universe exists when, a few seconds ago (and in fact as I type this) it didn’t. But it was created with all that implied history. Omphalism is sterile, and that’s why we reject it, not because there can be evidence against it.
However, even in omphalism one can distinguish necessary appearance of age from unnecessary appearance of age, though that’s theology rather than science. One could also talk about convenient or reasonable appearance of age, or non-deceptive appearance of age. If God wants to create a de nove Adam to interbreed with humans, the simplest thing to do is to give him a completely human genome, just as he reasonably creates him as an adult, with a human phenotype. That’s reasonable appearance of age. What reason would he have to insert random, chimplike markers into Adam’s genome?
And I still don’t see what point you are trying to make with all this. If Adam had unfused chromosomes, what would that tell us?
Of course we do, unless you put the date of Adam’s creation millions of years ago, which has nothing to do with GAE. The date of chromosomal fusion can be estimated (based on the amount of post-fusion evolution in sequences near the point of fusion), and it’s long before anyone’s proposed date for Adam’s creation.
If someone is arriving at a rational conclusion by following the evidence then they should have had some sort of criteria for judging the evidence. If there is no conceivable evidence that would falsify a claim then what you have is blind dogma, not a rational conclusion.
Are professional YEC’s interpreting the evidence, as they claim? Absolutely not, at least in my estimation. They start with the conclusion, and then try to invent reasons for dismissing inconvenient evidence. Again, this is a criticism of professional YEC’s who should know better. I give their followers a pass because they probably don’t understand the science involved.
The first question we should ask ourselves is “How would I know if I am wrong?”. That is the hallmark of a rational approach to a question.
Ignoring the irrelevant (and misguided) remarks about what you think “the God hypothesis” entails, your distinction between necessary/unnecessary is what I was touching on a long time ago in this thread when I first asked whether lacking C2f would prevent interbreeding.
I’ve tried to explain this enough times that I’m not sure repeating myself would be helpful to you if you if the previous remarks were not. Nevertheless, I’ll try once more: If there were evidence that Adam had common descent, then there is evidence against the de novo creation of Adam, unless one stipulates that the de novo creation of Adam included an appearance of common descent. The broader significance here has to do with one’s epistemic attitude, so to speak, towards YEC. But it likely is of no interest to those who reject A and B.
(I realize that second to last sentence may be vague, but I can’t get too deep into it right now.)
I think many people, including scientists, are too quick to adopt a naive epistemology. How would you know you’re wrong about last Thursdayism being false?
But why pick on chromosomal fusion as the evidence? Why would we expect a created Adam to have unfused chromosomes? And of course de novo creation of an individual belonging to Homo sapiens would necessarily contain evidence of common descent of Homo sapiens and other species. Adam would have had 7 cervical vertebrae, a dentary-squamosal jaw joint, opisthonephric kidneys, hair, and all the other marks of a mammal. If he had possessed moth antennae, that would have been evidence of de novo creation, I suppose. But would be expect God to have created him with moth antennae?
But it’s one thing to create two individuals in order to fit into a prior species, and quite another to create an entire biota with false evidence of common descent. The former is necessary omphalism, whie the latter is simple deception. If god had created the entire human species de novo, that would clearly have been unnecessary omphalism. If what you’re trying to say is that there’s no difference between GAE and YEC, you are quite mistaken. If you’re trying to say something else, you’re going to have to tell me what that is.
You won’t, of course. This is why science only works with empirical data and only generates hypotheses than can in principle be falsified empirically. You can still believe other things that cannot be empirically verified or falsified, but those beliefs are not scientific. Believing them anyway is your personal freedom, but when it comes to convincing others that you are right you will have to use other means than scienfitic discourse.
From my understanding of Joshua’s model, there is no problem with that. The only crucial thing is that Adam have existed long enough in the past to have been a genealogical ancestor of every human alive by the time Jesus was born. That then comes down to how wide the definition of “human” can be. For his purposes, there is no such thing as “too wide.”
You’re circling back around to issues I’ve already addressed. Here, for instance, is where I already talked about how C2f isn’t key to my point and then here you bring up in your latest response after you brought it up in your second to last response and I responded to it here .
When you have a falsifiable explanation supported by evidence, then you are no longer on equal footing. The conclusions that exist in mainstream science can be falsified by evidence. They are testable. This is why the conclusions in mainstream geology and biology are preferred over Last Thursdayism.
Let’s say you are on a jury in a murder trial. The prosecution presents mountains of forensic evidence including fingerprints, DNA, shoe prints, tire prints, and fiber evidence that clearly connect the defendant to the crime. The defendant also has a clear motive, and even threatened to kill the victim. The defense attorney gets up and says all of the evidence has to be thrown out because magical leprechauns could have planted all of the evidence in such a way that it was indistinguishable from a real crime. Would you go give more weight to the prosecution or defense attorney?
The question of the merits of Last Thursdayism, verification, falsification, and the epistemic sophistication of scientists is an interesting issue, but probably one for another thread. I was just pointing out that you made two claims:
“If there is no conceivable evidence that would falsify a claim then what you have is blind dogma, not a rational conclusion.”
and
“We couldn’t know if Last Thursdayism is false which is why people usually dismiss it.”
If there is no way to tell if Last Thursdayism is false then there is no way to determine if it is true. Therefore, dogma is about the only way to support Last Thursdayism.
In my view, when someone asks if a conclusion is rational I immediately look for the line of evidence that led to that conclusion. In order for there to be evidence there has to be a way for that conclusion to be false. If any conceivable observation fits with the conclusion then there isn’t evidence.
