Indeed, but if your objective is to express your views clearly, then I can assure you that referring to the GAE model as making Adam and Eve the “sole” and “unique” progenitors of humanity, you will fail to accurately and clearly communicate your views to others who are not first schooled in your particular usages. In such a situation, as the “descriptivists” in all those dictionary arguments will tell us, there is nobody who is “right” or “wrong,” but there are good ways and bad ways to communicate. When you have the burden of getting your own ideas across to people who are unfamiliar with them, you need to take that into account.
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Only if you re-define ‘progenitor’ and ‘ancestor’ to mean something quite different from what virtually every native speaker of English means by the terms. Given that English has well-defined meanings for all of the words in question, that the usage here does not match those meanings, that English also has perfectly good alternative ways of expressing what you want to express without redefining ordinary words, and that there is a very large body of people who do believe that Adam and Eve refer to sole ancestors of all humans (in the, you know, English sense of the words), trying to communicate by this approach is absolutely guaranteed to generate massive confusion. What the heck is the point of trying? And further trying to force others to hop into this self-inflicted linguistic sinkhole with you is beyond absurd.
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That is just flat out false, in direct conflict with the evidence. Your lack of expertise outside science really showing here, and it is blinding you. Normally you are more openminded and evidentially driven. It is strange to see this side of you.
But you have just added “universal”, which wasn’t there originally. You can’t just put new words in; that’s moving the goalposts. They wouldn’t be the sole ancestors unless their descendants were all incestuous.
Not true. You describe only the set of universal progenitors of that set, i.e. those who are ancestors of everyone in the set. But “sole” and “universal” do not at all mean the same thing.
No, we can’t. They are the definitional progenitors, but that’s adding another word again. They may be the sole progenitors of humanness (by definition), but not of humanity, which is a group of people whose ancestors include more than just that couple, and more than people descended solely from that couple. And that’s true for textual humans as well as biological humans.
It doesn’t matter what definition of human you adopt. A&E are not the sole progenitors of whoever is in that group unless there is no interbreeding with people outside the garden. Again, “sole” does have a meaning, and “of humanity” has a meaning too.
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I’ve made the GAE very clear using other terms.
It is valid for me to use theological terms that are clear there. For example, AE are our sole and unique ancestors that were in the Garden. That’s just a descriptive fact (assuming that the YAC model in GAE is true). There are other ways it’s true they are solely unique.
There is no reason any one should claim that the genetic bottleneck paradigm (which has nearly nothing to do with the GAE) gets to tell theological that scientists can overrule these uses of the term “unique.”
Turns out that there are counter examples that, non intuitively, show you to be wrong here. This is not self citation. These counter examples have been out there for a long time and are not about the GAE.
I’m pretty sure I have two more degrees in English than you do.
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This is you again displaying your tendency to drop cryptic hints. Please explain at least one of these counter-examples.
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That’s true know more than just science. But this isn’t just about degrees. 
On the best things about your recent article at BL is that you transparently acknowledge that you are largely ignorant of theology. That was humble and speaks well to your character.
That’s the specific gap that’s blinding you here.
Biologos has the same gap. They work with excellent no-Adam theologians like Greg Cootsona. But the problem is that even honest guys like him are out of touch with the relevant domains of theology to this discourse.
Sure, but note that that’s also true if you omit the words “sole” and “unique.” When the set of people is already restricted to two, the additional restrictions are of no operative consequence. As soon as you omit the “in the Garden” condition from that statement, you’ve got the same problem as before.
While this is slightly garbled I do think I see what you’re saying. The problem is that it is not a matter of who or what “gets to tell” anyone anything – there are, as you have noted, no authorities to arbitrate the dispute. It is a matter of whether you are conveying your ideas in a way that is reasonably intelligible to ordinary people. And despite being familiar with your GAE views, I cannot bend my understanding of the meanings of words sufficiently to find the statement that Adam and Eve are in any sense our “sole” and “unique” human progenitors compatible with those views.
And, bear in mind, I am no amateur in the world of understanding that words may have senses other than the obvious. I spent a career on it. I once won the argument in court that “chicken manure” is not “solid waste.” But “sole” and “unique” in this usage is a bridge too far for me.
If it is only a matter of what my opinion is versus yours, of course, you are as entitled to yours as I am to mine. But if it is a matter of figuring out whether you are likely to confuse other people by using these words in this way, I have to warn you that obtaining my agreement in your opinion would do nothing to remedy a very bad situation there.
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What a bizzare rebuttal. That’s also applies to your use of the terms in the genetic bottleneck paradigm.
Sole and unique convey additional information that is not in conflict with the rest of the claims. There were solely those in the Garden of our ancestors. No other ancestors of ours were there too. That means to exclude propositions like: “other ancestors of ours were also in the Garden with them.” Remove the sole / unique that isn’t true any more.
I’m not moving the goalposts. Instead, you’ve misunderstood me. I’ve always taken “sole progenitors of humanity” as a shorthand for “the only progenitor couple of all members of the set of all humans”. This is also synonymous with what I mean by “sole universal progenitors of humanity”. This is the theologically relevant definition, because this means that within the set of all humans, A&E being their ancestors is the only thing that unites them together as a group. Of course you can point out that individuals in that set might have other ancestors besides A&E. But that is not relevant to what we’re mainly concerned about, which is what defines humanity in theology. As you acknowledge, in the GAE model, A&E are the first humans. All other humans are descended from them. That is what being a progenitor means: to be the earliest ancestor of a particular group of individuals. Here the group of individuals is “theological humanity as a whole”. Not “subsets of theological humanity”.
To take another biblical example, Abraham is the progenitor of Israel. That doesn’t mean that individual Israelites may have had other, non-Israelite ancestors. But these ancestors were not Israelites, so they were not progenitors of Israel, because to be a progenitor of a group you also have to be a member of it. Thus, Abraham is the sole progenitor of Israel.
Furthermore, even in a model where there is no interbreeding, then an individual who is descended from A&E still has multiple ancestors, not just A&E - namely, their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and so on (all of whom are ultimately also descended from A&E - but they are still ancestors!). So even in this case, A&E are not the “sole ancestors” of this individual.
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Forgetting for the moment that there was no Garden — it’s just a fable — if that’s what you mean by “sole”, then it makes no sense without the addition of “in the Garden”, and you must never omit it. Yes, they were, hypothetically, the only ancestors of ours that were in the Garden, but that doesn’t make them our sole ancestors, period.
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I meant this conditioned on that story being true. Just to discuss the meaning of the word. So yes, set that point aside.
I think @dga471 answered for me just fine.
In the end this is a lot of discussion on an aside about a far more clear issue. So I don’t think this thread is productive any more. Instead, in the main thread, I invite you to your assessment on the equivalence of the two conclusions. Can 18 mya equal 500 kya?
Regarding this matter, let’s conclude it for now with this: