TGC Reviews the GAE

It’s a long review, and I had time only to skim it. And of course, I have a 300 page dog in the fight!

Just a few observations.

The stress he makes on your “agnosticism” on the positions you present misunderstand the scientific approach (but the misunderstanding is probably an inevitable outcome from that approach). Interesting to know how he would deal with my book, which commits to a particular position deliberately (who=ilst being open to others).

It’s scarcely fair to blame you for excluding those who reject people outside the garden in your inclusiveness, since that is the thesis itself.

Again, the accusation of flexibility in theology as opposed to firmness on evolutionary theory is fair enough in itself - except that in point of fact evolution is pretty irrelevant to the thesis. The people assumed to be outside the garden, within GAE, are simply there, and it is not primarily evolutionary science that says so, other than the conclusions from population genetics. Palaeontology would offer the same evidence if Louis Agassiz’s platonic forms theory were true. Archaeology, linguistics, ethnology and so on equally have no dependence on evolution in forming their views of the past.

Most of the other disagreements, as far as I could see, have to do with not fully engaging the arguments in GAE. In particular, he appears not to have taken on board the unavoidable question of what constitutes “human” - to say that Romans requires that all men are sinners in Adam may be true, but doesn’t address what constitutes “all men”.

Neanderthals clearly existed (without reference to evolutionary theory). Were they “men”? Were they “in Adam.” If so, how and why? If not, how and why? Did they get to be Neanderthals only after the garden? If so, how did they get that way, and why so long ago?

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