For the record, RTB is giving this a serious look. It will be interesting to report back after the Dabar Conference. They are thinking through the theological implications, it seems. Dabar is going to be important for them, because they are appropriately deferential to theologians in the network.
Also, it appears the Gulf Oasis was around at 10 kya, and I do not usually set a firm date, ranging between 15 kya, 10 kya, and 6 kya, depending on the audience and (perhaps) my mood. So, maybe don’t say that I’m fixated on a particular data. I am not.
Most OEC theologians have come to terms with Adam as far back as 200 kya, so anythign less than 50 kya is surprising for them. I don’t really care when they want to put him. Everything with good theology that is consistent with the evidence is helpful.
On the scientific side, Fuz Rana has so far been unwilling to look at analysis or engage. That is very unfortunate. As @Guy_Coe and @anon46279830 have noted, this evidence overturns their model. This evidence, also, is starting to build an unlikely consensus between myself and several people outside the evolution camp (e.g. @Agauger and others). The sooner they engage with this the better. Though I’m not sure how to bring Fuz Rana to the table. Anyone have ideas there?
The information that Hugh Ross rejected the notion of “humans before Adam” based on interpreting the Genesis story of Adam and Eve as long subsequent to the events on “day six” in chapter 1 was because, by his own words, “a neolithic Adam and Eve would be too late for a Eden in the Persian Gulf region.” I learned this in a private conversation with him. He then went on to speak of the climatology of the Younger Dryas leading to rising sea levels, and the inundation of his best choice for the location of the garden.
I agree that location is the best choice, given the location of the ancient riverbeds via satellite technology.
I told him at the time I would keep working on the hypothesis (especially since he hadn’t noticed that, at the time, I had NOT advocated a neolithic setting --John Stott had --and I felt I was wading into preconceptions again, only to get his back up unnecessarily). And so, I have kept working on it. These dates do fit his criteria, and the best of Hebrew scholarship on the genealogies, as Mark just went into. I have long anticipated this is the scenario that might draw “unlikely allies” together.
As for my other conjectural elements, I don’t expect to make quick headway against a host of preconceptions…
but, I’ll keep working on it. It’s good to see Mark noting how deeply several features from our respective models align, for example. Another unlikely perspective that begins to align through this is Dick Fischer’s “The Origins Solution” perspective, as well as meeting almost all of the four major tests of orthodoxy proposed by C. John Collins’ “Did Adam and Eve Really Exist?” on pp. 120-121; though he, apparently, has never encountered this proposed scenario before. Enjoy!
I am confident that Joshua’s near-term residential scholar stint with RTB will result in a reworking of their model. Faz knows well what scenarios he’s “against,” but he has yet to work out the gory details on a postive model which would rival this proposal in terms of bringing all the facts together into an orthodox understanding. Yeah, I know that sounds somewhat hubristic… but, there it is.
Invite Faz to clandestinely visit and contribute to this blog, where he can work out the details in the safety of limited public scrutiny/“donor fallout.”
That @Agauger has already done so is a signal that good things might be on the horizon within a year or so.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” - Upton Sinclair
You will never sell him on this model as a way to incorporate evolution (particularly of humans) into what they propose. Instead, the framework must be presented to him as a way to defend OEC against the new genetic findings.
That is why @Guy_Coe Dr. Rana should read my book. If he accepts the framework, he may not even notice how much closer he is to GA. Instead of Christians being in the YEC camp, the OEC camp, or the TE camp, we would be in different sections of the same camp.
The bigger problem for them is that the evidence is squarely against a single couple genetic origin of Homo sapiens (though maybe a single couple origin with interbreeding might work?). If I could imagine a way to make it work, I would. However, I can’t imagine how the genetic data can be squared with their model. They do not have to like a genealogical Adam, but there current model is broken.
If they move to an @Agauger or @vjtorley model with a single couple origin much earlier, that creates special problems for them. Given their past positions, they have to accept evolution with in the “humankind”, after Adam, because we see (according to them) clear distinctions between Neanderthals and Sapiens. This puts them in a very uncomfortable bind. They have some work to do, but the TMR4A case I laid out is easy to understand, and does not rely on questionable assumptions: Heliocentric Certainty Against a Bottleneck of Two? - #12 by swamidass.
Word of caution here. Hugh Ross is an astronomer and will stay on the astrobiology side of things. He will take the results of the latest finding and force them into the Bible, not just Genesis but anywhere he can take a few words and phrases and make them look like bible prophecy. Then when a new scientific results comes along he will find another verse predicting that also.
Fuz Rana has a big problem and it is called Neanderthals. His model depends on human exceptionalism and that homo sapiens are the only humans to have culture, language and thus souls. He is getting boxed in as the latest DNA findings are showing equivalence and admixing between many species of humans. Ancient Human DNA sequencing is crushing Fuz almost on a weekly basis now as David Reich’s lab pumps out results. With Fuz crushed, RTB and Biologos are eccentrically the same with RTB stronger on the astronomy side (yes Hugh Ross is way better at explaining astronomy than Deb Haarsma) and Biologos staying strong on the Evolutionary Biology side.