Jeremy Christian's Take on Adam

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Each prong of this, I feel, stands on its own. But it gets really compelling when intertwined and really should be considered in that light. I know it’s quite different in concept than views most hold. Some of it can be a bit jarring initially, and those first impressions often take time to get around. That’s been my experience, anyway.

Scripture-wise, I could certainly use some help as a lot of this is tied up in my limited, admittedly simplistic, understanding of English translations of ancient texts. Obviously, there’s going to be some gaps and some misunderstandings. Those doing the translating obviously had their own impression that colors their work. For example, the more global-themed decisions made in the translation of the description of the flood. (“mountains” vs “hills”, etc)

But the physical evidence says this is the right context. These are the historical events these stories are happening around. These observable changes in humanity are the changes these stories are describing.

An evaluation of the text by someone more knowledgeable than myself would be great. To understand the exact story I believe it’s describing and evaluate the text in that context. That would fascinate me to no end.

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I have issues.

First, what is “sole-genealogical progenitorship”? We’ve established that it’s an invalid name for what @swamidass is talking about, but what is @Jeremy_Christian talking about?

Second, the history seems exceedingly Mesopotamia-centric. Doesn’t China exist? Is it supposed to have been founded by refugees from Mesopotamia? Are all the later civilizations, i.e. the various American ones, founded by travellers from Mesopotamia?

Third, how can the area of human habitation be limited to the Middle East at any time in history or prehistory?

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I’m still trying to settle the meaning of this. Given the sunk cost here, I think it is fine to use as a placeholder. One thing that struck me is when you, correctly, pointed out that sole-progenitorship is not even a scientific term. If this is the case, I’m not sure why it is a problem to use it. Though I agree it is confusing people.

Currently, I am leaning towards theological sole-progenitorship.

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No, that isn’t what I pointed out. What I pointed out is that it doesn’t mean what its words mean. “Sole” is just plain wrong, as we have, under your scenario, many genealogical ancestors living at the same time as the putative Adam and Eve. Also, “progenitorship” is just a 50-cent word for “ancestry”.

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Wow, that is really fast. @Alice_Linsley can you say something from anthropology about the establishment of Egypt and agriculture in the Indus Valley.

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Yes it is Mesopotamia-centric, just as the biblical stories are.

Yes, China exists. And yes, it was founded by refugees from Mesopotamia, as were the Americas.

The first cultures to show these same behavioral characteristics in the Americas were the Olmecs, the precursors to the Aztec and Mayan cultures. There’s evidence that suggests these cultures have roots in China as well. Steve Taylor’s book, The Fall, speaks a bit about this …

“Evidence for this includes cultural similarities between Indians of the Pacific north-west and dynastic Chinese culture (such as artwork, clothing, drums, and diet) and linguistic similarities. At the same time, there are cultural and linguistic similarities between the three “patrist” areas of the Americas, suggesting that the peoples are related”

Taylor sites Chinese archaeologist H.M. Xu who argues that the Olmecs sailed to Mexico from China after the fall of the Shang Dynasty in 1122BC. He notes that around this time about 250,000 people disappeared, and suggests that at least some of these traveled to America.

“This explains the presence of what appear to be Chinese symbols in Olmec written records, and strong similarities in art, architecture, religion and astronomical knowledge.”

It’s not limited to this. This is just the region relevant as they’re the backdrop of the Genesis texts.

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There would have to be very good evidence supporting such a claim. This sounds like a real fringe theory and a serious liability for you. And yes, it seems something like racist, though that isn’t the proper word for what’s apparently intended as a contagious mental characteristic. But the notion that New World (and other) cultures can’t have arisen on their own is a very common racist trope.

This is the first I’ve heard that the Olmecs had writing at all. Are you quite sure?

Then what is the point of the flood?

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What about Alice Linsley’s claims do you think warrants credence? I’m confused.

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This is twice now, in the week I’ve been here, that racism has been brought up. And in reading around on the site I’ve found it’s a pretty commonly played card and not just pertaining to my ideas.

Observing behavioral characteristics and looking to find where/when certain characteristics arose in humanity is not racist. If by these standards we’re going to deem something racist, then basically we’ll be unable to discuss anything at all and might as well just leave and move on.

Do you deny there’s a difference between humans of Western Culture and indigenous humans? One group became technologically advanced through countless inventions and proved to be exceedingly aggressive, the other remained content living a simple life in harmony with nature and never imposed their will on others around them.

Do you consider it racist to acknowledge this difference? Can this be discussed at all without being accused of racism?

Yes, the Olmecs had writing.

“Mesoamerica, along with Mesopotamia and China, is among the three known places in the world where writing has developed independently.”

“Early Olmec ceramics show representations of something that may be codices, suggesting that amatl bark codices, and by extension well-developed writing, existed in Olmec times.” - Mesoamerican writing systems - Wikipedia

The flood happened early on, before the change had propagated. First the mixing of lines, then the flood when the ‘contamination’ was still localized, then the dispersion at Babel, then the propagation throughout the world.

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Yes, and no. Especially when you claim that these supposed characteristics are spread, apparently, by descent. It’s not racism, exactly, but it amounts to something quite similar: “Native” people are inferior.

As for Olmec writing, I note that your Wikipedia page is full of “citation needed”; there’s no way to find out if any of that is true, there being no references.

How is “the change” supposed to propagate? Are there people living today to whom the change hasn’t propagated?

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Who said inferior? You’re the one who said that. If anything, “native” behavior is much more in line with the behaviors all people should strive for. Ego-less. They’re not inferior. They are anatomically/biologically identical in brain size and capability. They just don’t have an ego driving them to draw out boundary lines across the Earth and enforce their will onto others around them.

What characteristics are not spread through descent? That’s how evolutionary changes propagate. Is that racist? If you can only see racism in these discussions, who’s more the racist? The one the card is played on or the one playing the card?

Inferiority is a subjective observation, specific to the observer. I see no inferiority. Do you?

Sorry, that’s the first page (of many) that came up when I googled “Olmec writing”. Do the same and I’m sure you’ll find all you want to know. There’s plenty.

It’s propagated, as it’s described in the story, through procreation. Yes, the lingering indigenous cultures of the world would be the lines that don’t descend from both naturally evolved humans and Adam/Eve. And again, this doesn’t make them inferior in any way. If anything, the change has made us all a-holes in comparison. Is that racist? If I say my own race is a bunch of a-holes? Probably.

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So what you’re saying is that God screwed up big time in creating Adam and Eve, ruining the world not just for them but for anyone at all related to them and even those who aren’t?

Evolutionary changes propagate in a particular way: even if Adam and Eve were both homozygous for some single allele that causes this supposed characteristic, that allele would not be inherited by every single descendant, especially if the human population were many orders of magnitude greater than two at the time. In order to get the result you claim today, with almost everyone homozygous for this allele, you would need strong selection in favor of it. Is that what you claim?

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I wouldn’t say this ruined the world. This was the intent. Now the trick is to continue to behave that way though now it’s a willful choice to do so and not inherent. It’s our responsibility rather than our nature.

I don’t know the genetic specifics. I only know what the text says and what the evidence says. The text says this change was inherited. The evidence shows this change becoming prevalent throughout the region. Maybe you or others can shed some light on the genetic ramifications.

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What is “this” and whose intent was it?

I will assert that the text says nothing about any inherited change at all. I will also assert that the evidence doesn’t show any sort of inherited change at all, merely cultural changes related to large, permanent settlements. And these cultural changes happened independently at many places around the world at many times.

Now you provide evidence against my assertions.

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I agree with this, but with a twist. What if the change is new knowledge. Perhaps they were changed in the same way that going to college can change you, not with some grand metaphysical or biological alteration, but with new knowledge.

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Yes… more powerful than one might consider. Remeber Roger Scruton’s observation to the effect that it is not so much rational humans that make a civilized society, but civilized societies that make rational humans.

The difference between an uncontacted Amazon tribe and Princeton University is all cultural, and not at all biological.

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“This” is free will, or the change that happened to Adam/Eve when they ate the fruit. It was God’s intent to create Adam with this capability.

Certainly, I’d be happy to.

It’s often assumed, as you have here, that cultural changes related to largely populated settlements and increased human interaction is what caused this change. However, it doesn’t fit the evidence.

With the emergence of farming came a lot of highly populated cultures. Here are a couple of examples …

Exceptionally large settlements developed in Catal Huyuk (7,500 to 5,700 BC) in Turkey and the Lepenski Vir settlement (dating back to 7,000 BC) located in the central portion of the Balkan peninsula. The Lepenski Vir culture gave way to the Vinča-Turdaș culture (5,000-4,500 BC), which at one point had populations estimated at 2,500 or more in some of the larger sites.

What’s significant here is that while farming was adopted and spread all throughout the region and beyond, the changes I’m referring to did not. Unlike Sumer and the other civilizations to spring up in this region, other highly populated cultures did not have the same characteristics. All of these cultures, Sumer, Egypt, the Indus Valley, became class stratified, were male-dominant, and invented things like their own form of writing independently of one another, all relatively quickly. Not to mention they all developed organized military armies as well. This continued on into Greece and Rome and beyond. Those previous farming settlements, though highly populated, remained egalitarian. There was no class stratification, no written languages, no armies, none of the things that happened every time one of these civilizations emerged.

If your assertion were true we’d see the same thing repeated in multiple places where farming was adopted just like we see here. But the spread pattern of farming being adopted and the changes I’m talking about are very different.

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It does. Though it’s not clearly apparent. Let me lay it out and see if you agree.

Adam/Eve breaks God’s command and change (realize they’re naked, etc)
Then Cain kills Abel, showing inheritence from father/mother to next generation of behavioral capability.

Sons of God and daughters of humans intermingle, then humans become ‘wicked’, showing inheretence of a capability humans were not previously capable of.

Then, human behavior from that bloodline on consistently is out of bounds of God’s will

Not to mention the development noted in Gen11 about humans made by God … “nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them”

These are developments that God is observing and noting, and is then making changes in response to. First the flood, then separating them and confusing their language.

If it were something consistent with His creation, there’d be no progressions or developments of note to react to. These changes started with Adam/Eve, then propagated to their next generation, then onto humans.

Then there’s the “holy seed” that is stated as a priority to not “dilute”, but protect through breeding in that specific line.

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A couple of observances noted in Steve Taylor’s book regarding indigenous people …

1.The author Edward T. Hall recalls how, when he worked on Indian reservations in the 1930’s, the Indians seemed to possess an amazing quality of patience. In contrast to the Europeans, who fidgeted impatiently and become irritable, the Indians he saw waiting at trading posts and hospitals never showed any sign of irritation whatsoever, even if they had to wait for hours. As he writes:

An Indian might come into the agency in the morning and still be sitting patiently outside the superintendent’s office in the afternoon. Nothing in his bearing or demeanor would change in the intervening hours… We whites squirmed, got up, sat down, went outside and looked toward the fields where our friends were working, yawned and stretched our legs… The Indians simply sat there, occasionally passing a word to one another.

2.Another about the Aborigines … The book is no longer in my Kindle library for some reason, so I don’t have the exact quote. I’ll have to paraphrase…

A while back an attempt was made to assimilate an Aborigine tribe into modern culture. They built houses for each of the members and filled their houses with personal possessions. When they returned the tribe members all used each of the houses and all the personal possessions equally. They had no concept of personal possession. Everything was always the property of the tribe.

What I’m getting at is there seems to be, not a physical or biological difference, but a psychological one. Think about what Genesis says about Adam and Eve once they had eaten the fruit.

“Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked;”

Self-awareness. Of course, indigenous humans are self-aware. But this is something more. They realized they were naked. Meaning, it would seem, they realized they were individuals, separate from the natural world around them, and they realized themselves in relation to this environment and became conscious of the fact they were naked.

Note this observation by the Roman poet Ovid …
" There broke out … all manner of evil, and shame fled, and truth and faith. In place of these came deceits and trickery and treachery and force and the accursed love of possession … And the land, hitherto a common possession like the light of the sun and the breezes, the careful surveyor now marked out with long boundary lines."

Or this… These are the “mes”. According to the Sumerians, they are the “decrees of the gods that is foundational to those social institutions, religious practices, technologies, behaviors, mores, and human conditions that make civilization”. These are things introduced into the Sumerian’s lives by the gods. There’s over 100 of them, so I won’t list them all. But here are a few … things like “enmity”, “truth”, “falsehood”, “weariness”. They also established the world’s first monarchy with things like “The exalted and enduring crown”, “The throne of kingship”,“The exalted sceptre”,“The royal insignia”, “The exalted shrine”. - Me (mythology) - Wikipedia

Before Sumer there wasn’t even class stratification. No concept of one group being of any more importance or authority than anyone else. The Sumerians go straight from that to this. Kings. Written laws. Jails. Schools. And it’s not like this evolved culturally over time. The very first city, Eridu, was built with a temple at the center.

Sumer’s writing system was invented because at first they needed a way to keep track of how much of what belongs to who. So they invented a numbering system to keep account of what each individual was owed or owned. This is mine, that is yours. This land is my land, that land is your land. Stay off my land and I’ll stay off of yours.

There is a distinct difference that changed humanity and it appears it arose not all that long ago. It’s the cause of civilization and this modern life we enjoy now.

It’s a shame I have to say, but I’d like to qualify my above statements with the following… I am not suggesting that we are somehow “better” or “more superior” to indigenous humans. We simply have desires and needs in us that drive us to behave very differently that indigenous people do not. They’re content. We’re intensely and at all times discontent. That’s the difference. They could sit down and formulate a writing system, but what’s the need for that?

Matthew 19:21 - Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

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So now we’re talking about cultural inheritance? Could be. But what new knowledge? According to the text, it’s knowledge of good and evil, specifically the knowledge that nakedness is bad and to be ashamed of. How does that contribute to anyone’s story?

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