Mike Heiser: Interview on the Genealogical Adam and Eve Part 2

image

This is the second of two parts of Heiser’s interview on the GAE. Find the first one here: Heiser: Interview on the Genealogical Adam and Eve, Part 1 .

1 Like

You covered my favorite pet peeve :slightly_smiling_face: that people in ancient times didn’t know the earth was a planet or globe. My honest hope is that someday this will be seen as silly considering ancient people could sail to Australia and the Americas and their knowledge of astronomy was probably better than we even realize.

It was interesting hearing you cover genetic ghosts again. You had mentioned there are multiple uses in the literature. Before reading your book, I had read this article about “ghosts” who left no trace because the Australian aboriginal language is young but the people group is tens of thousands of years old. DNA Study Finds Aboriginal Australians World’s Oldest Civilization | HISTORY So I had assumed it was just a term to make up for problems in the current model. :slightly_smiling_face: Then I realized after reading the book it does make sense that we don’t get genetic material from all our genealogical ancestors. So now I am curious if there are different ways it is used.

Couldn’t help but smile when Heiser brought up C.S. Lewis and imagination. :slightly_smiling_face:

Also, I’m not sure why I didn’t connect it before but Heiser connecting Genesis 1 and 5 is obvious and I’m not sure why it hasn’t hit me like that before.

You mentioned scientific challenges and this has been on my mind before - from Carter and Sanford but I think I may have seen something similar elsewhere in another review or somewhere. I wondered if you had responded to it. And I figured I’d ask now so I don’t forget.

The lineage of Adam and Eve, a specific couple within a large hypothetical population, would have had a high likelihood of going extinct without God’s intervention (but this ‘intervention’ would invalidate the randomized mathematical model Joshua is using to defend his case). Looking at a genealogy from the present backwards, it is easy to find historically convergent lineages. But starting with a specific couple in a large population in the distant past—and looking forward —we have only a small chance that a specific couple’s lineage would survive at all, let alone become universal ancestors to all of humanity. True, somebody has to be the ancestor, and when we are talking about genealogy there are many more ancestors than genetic ancestors, but only a subset of the ancient population becomes a universal genealogical ancestor. Most ancient lineages go extinct. This is clear from the studies he cites for support and is a very serious problem for his ideas.

Where is that quoted text from?

Their review of your book.

So the transcript is up for this interview. The content here is among the strongest interviews yet. It’s great hearing Mike’s take on it all too.

Here is the big news. I’m interviewing Mike on our livestream this Tuesday too!

2 Likes

This topic was automatically closed 7 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.