William Lane Craig: Predetermined Conclusions on Adam?

[swamidass (S. Joshua Swamidass)]

@pevaquark

So I wonder if any ‘honest’ look at the data must come to predetermined conclusions.

@pevaquark

So by faith, this position is not an intellectually honest one , where one must reject all evidence for common descent a priori and defend the special creation of Adam.

You have just accused WLC of intellectual dishonesty. This is extremely presumptuous. You are flat wrong on the facts.

@pevaquark

Presumably, Dr. Craig would agree with Biola’s (or at least has to sign a contract most likely saying he agrees) statement of faith given his job there.

I’ve asked him about this. WLC has not been asked to sign the belief statement, nor does he agree with it. He has stated in the past he has no problem with a refurbishment model, where Adam shares common ancestry with apes. WLC would gladly disagree with the Biola statement, and Biola would look the other way. WLC is much bigger than Biola.

@pevaquark

Therefore creation models which seek to harmonize science and the Bible should maintain at least the following: (a) God providentially directs His creation, (b) He specially intervened in at least the above-mentioned points in the creation process, and© God specially created Adam and Eve (Adam’s body from non-living material, and his spiritual nature immediately from God). Inadequate origin models hold that (a) God never directly intervened in creating nature and/or (b) humans share a common physical ancestry with earlier life forms.

It is also possible to make a Genealogical Adam model variant that is consistent with this belief statement. Essentially, a modified version of A Catholic Approach to the Genealogical Adam would work just fine with mainstream science. So even if he had signed the belief statement, there is not reason to think it is conflict with evolutionary science.

@pevaquark

It also seems like he misunderstood your particular model @swamidass.

WLC wasn’t discussing my model in this podcast. @pevaquark, you really need to catch up. Have you read this yet? Three Stories on Adam

He was discussing the work we did that demonstrated the evidence in Adam and the Genome was overstated (Story One: Ancient Sole-Genetic Progenitor Adam). There were several scientific errors made in Venema’s book, and BioLogos has been unwilling to publicly correct the record. WLC, here, is describing that fixing these errors was important.

What you call “my model” is just the Genealogical Adam, and it revealed a different set of errors that Venema made (Story Three: Recent Sole-Genealogical Progenitor Adam). That is another story. WLC does not engage it here. He has elsewhere.

@pevaquark

It seems as if the evidence against a bottneck of two was given at least lip service, but was easily dismissed citing something he read of yours and then proposing an idea perhaps you can speak to of - modern humans don’t necessarily share common descent, all of the similarity between us and other primates could be due to simply inheriting some genetic material from Neanderthals or Denosvians?

You do not know what he is referring to at all. That is a variant of the RTB model: Story Two: Genetic-Interbreeding Adam, which might in fact be viable. Though it has problems to be worked out. In contrast with RTB, if WLC went down this path, he most likely will not insist on the de novo creation of Adam.

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@pevaquark, I encourage you to refrain from calling Christian leaders dishonest before even hearing them out. We need to build bridges. We need to be honest with people. We have no right to patronize them by ignoring everything they say to insist we know already what they truly believe.