Bill wrote,
A more sobering thought: suppose they were _not_ wiped out. The
implication would be that there were then, and perhaps are now, creatures
walking around that are indistinguishable (to our senses) from human
beings, but have no spiritual dimension. Implications like that can be
(and perhaps have been) used to justify genocide, and that scares the
daylights out of me.
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This is indeed the view of several white supremicist groups--that there were
other humans around (i.e., non-white races), but Adam was the first 'real'
human (and was conveniently white). Consequently, they refer to blacks as
'mudmen' (but come to think of it, Biblically, Adam was the mudman!
This scared me when I first saw hints of this sort of reasoning in ASA (in
PSCF a while back), because we could accidently be giving ammunition to the
racists (who have no regard for scholarship, unless it reaches the same
conclusion that they hold).
Dennis Sweitzer
(no relation to Leroy Schweitzer, the "Freeman" in Montana who was just
arrested). ;-0