Obviously, I need to become a better writer. In both books I talk about
God planning things into the fabric of the universe in Genesis 1. Why
people miss it must be because I cain't writ no werds.
>
>Can we also agree that the resuscitated being so created by God was not the
>Adam of Gen. 2, but rather the "adam", the first hominid in the long lineage
>of humanity?
No, we can not so agree. For those who may be new to the list, I need to
explain why I do what I do before I answer your question. Christian
theology has traditionally believed that Adam was the first of the human
race. When this concept is added to the concept of direct, divine
intervention in the creation of man, creation apart from and separate from
the animals, one then has a problem with the modern scientific data. One
can do what liberals have done and believe that this portion of scripture
is allegorical. But if one prefers concordism, which I do, then I have to
explain why unique pseudogenes are found at the same sites in man, gorilla,
chimp, and gibbon, but not on other primates. Since the pseudogenes are
non-working, broken copies of working genes, it seems strange that a
designer would design a broken part on his brand new creation. And
especially a part that is identical to non-working parts on other,
evolutionarily closely related species. This data clearly indicates that
we DO have ape genes in our bodies. For the pseudogenes one cannot claim
common design as the YECs do because designers don't design broken things.
So, the only way that I could unite the clear Biblical indications of
direct divine intervention in the creation of Adam with the obvious
evidence that we are related to the apes is to assume that the body came
from the apes, and the spirit from God. This is not much different (in
total effect if not in detail) from the Catholic belief that apes evolved
to a particular place and God then inserted a soul. The thing I don't
like about the 'insertion' theory is that there is no clear point at which
one can define the insertion. All I add to that is a suggestion that when
two of the ape chromosomes fused to form a single chromosome 2 in man (apes
have 48 and man has 46 chromosomes), that this was the point at which God
intervened. I presume that the fusion resulted in a nonviable being which
God then fixed up. Can I ever prove this scenario--obviously not. But I
can point to the fact that the divergences in the genomes of anatomically
modern people alive today are so great that it would take 1 to 2 million
years for all these differences to accumulate. Modern genetics clearly
shows that our ancestry goes much further back than is possible if
biological Adam lived within the last 100,000 years as Ross, Wilcox and
others believe. This tidbit supports my view of an ancient Adam and does
not support a recent Adam as long as one accepts the assumption that Adam
must be the biological head of the human race. The only exception is to do
what Dick Fischer suggests and make Adam not be the biological head of the
human family.
So, back to the original question.Do I believe that it is possible to use
E.V.K. Pearce's suggestion that Adam of Chapter 2 is not adam of Chapter 1.
No. It raises racial concerns with me. Are any of the adams still alive
and if so, how should we treat them. The entire slave system of the US was
partially based upon the working belief that blacks were not human and
could b. For this reason, I think it is best for Christianity to maintain
the biological unity of the human family.
>I agree. It's not the size of the brain as much as its *organization*. I
>wrote, "The ability to use language is probably dependent on the
formation of
>the Broca and Wernicke areas of the brain (p. 13, _AA and A_) which appeared
>in the human
>lineage a long way downstream from the resuscitated Adam you described on p.
>185. I don't see how a such an Adam qualifies as the Adam of the Bible."
Here is where the statistical nature of the fossil record comes in. The
earliest fossil H. erectus is extremely unlikely to be the very first H.
erectus that ever existed on earth. H. erectus or something not to much
unlike him MUST have existed prior to 2 million years. First, H. erectus
appears all over the place (Java, Georgia and Africa between 1.6-1.8
million years ago. Migration from the original homeland would take some
time. Secondly, often the earliest examples of any item in the fossil
record is eventually replaced by an even earlier example, but there is a
big gap in time between the first and second occurrence. In 1958 the
oldest H. erectus was dated at 500 kyr at Beijing and Java. Then in the
60s H. erectus was pushed back to 1.5 million years with almost no evidence
of his existence over the intervening million years. Since then many
discoveries have filled in the gap. If you take the first and second
examples of any species you find some surprising gaps. The gaps between
the first and second occurrence of:
Precambrian hollow filaments 400 myr
Caecilians 80 myr
dinosaurs 12 myr
tarsiers 30 myr
gorilla 3.5 myr
Chimp no fossil record at all
African turtles 60 myr
birds 8 myr
references available on request
Notice that the gap in the bird record is larger than the entire hominid
time span. To postulate that we have the very first h. erectus that ever
lived in a museum box is highly dubious.
>
>The first resuscitated hominid of your account did not have the necessary
>organization of the Broca and Wernicke and associated areas of the brain to
>act the way the Adam of Gen. 2 acted.
That makes the assumption that I believe that the recussitated being was
definitively Australopithecus. If there were earlier H.erectus or H.
habilis, I would feel better, but I don't have that data as yet. As I have
said, I don't know what to do with Australopithecus. There are some (like
Terrance Deacon, The Symbolic Species) who claim that Australopithecus
could speak and Broca's area is the result of that speech , becoming
enlarged as speech became better. He defines homo symbolicus as those that
speak. he says
"The phylogenetic history of Homo symbolicus may cut across fossil
phylogenies in more profound ways than just including an ascending series
of ancestral species. A number of paleospecies may be entirely contained
within this superordinate noospecies, and others may be subdivided by it,
with some individuals within each species included and others excluded.
Also, because symbolic communication can be present without specific
biological correlates, we shouldn't expect that its first appearance
corresponds with any fossil species transition, so that we cannot rely on
biological markers to identify members of this noospecies. Nevertheless,
there are clear biological correlates to long-term symbolic communication
produced by its selection on brain traits, specifically brain size and the
correlated changes in internal organization that are so critical to symbol
learning. These effects are evident in fossil skulls. They do not allow us
to claim that a given species lacks symbolic abilities; rather, they can be
used to identify whether symbolic activities have been present for some
time and have provided selection pressures on brain organization. This can
tell us which species must be included in Homo symbolicus, but not which
can be excluded. Though the size of fossil hominid brains provides only
very crude information about this most complex organ, and so should not be
overinterpreted, it provides sufficient evidence to answer a
correspondingly broad question: Was languagelike communication present in a
given fossil species?" ~ Terrence W. Deacon, The Symbolic Species, (New
York: W.W. Norton, 1997), p. 341-342
This Adam named animals that God
>brought to him. He took care of the Garden. These activities require a much
>higher level of organization of the brain than what was available in the
brain
>of the resuscitated hominid. So my conclusion is that the first hominid
could
>not have been the Adam of Gen. 2.
glenn
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
Foundation, Fall and Flood
& lots of creation/evolution information
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm