Re: Is your brain really necessry?

Glenn R. Morton (grmorton@waymark.net)
Mon, 15 Jun 1998 21:13:24 -0500

At 08:59 PM 6/15/98 -0400, Dick Fischer wrote:
>Remember, there is not one biblical bottleneck, but two. Three if you
>count the incident at Babel.

I read your book and don't recall you giving a reason for a genetic
bottleneck at Babel. What are you suggesting?

Adam of Genesis 2 and Genesis 5 (which
>I also think is Adam of Genesis 1) appears to have a recent time frame,
>about 7,000 years ago, in an identifiable locale; to wit, Southern
>Mesopotamia. A perfect match with the Genesis genealogies from Adam to
>Noah considering Eridu, the likely place of the garden of Eden, dates to
>4800 BC. The city of Enoch, or E-Anna(k), dates to 4200 BC, and the
>flood layers in that area date to about 2900 BC.
>
>Plus, the flood stories in that region line up with Genesis. Look at
>these commanalities between the account of Noah in Genesis 6-9, the
>Sumerian account of Ziusudra, the Accadian legend of Utnapistim from the
>11th tablet of Gilgamesh, and the Assyrian narrative of Atrahasis. The
>historical accounts are a bit fragmented, and this is reflected in the
>narratives.

Here I disagree very strongly, the Mesopotamian flood idea is as silly as
the YEC global flood idea. You know from our debate 2 years ago that
1. there is no geological evidence of widespread holocene deposits in
Mesopotamia,
2. that the ark would be flushed into the Indian ocean in a week
3. That 8 people couldn't push the massive ark against the current
4. That there is no massive interuption of civilization in Northern Iraq as
this hypothesis would require.

A Mesopotamian flood could not possibly match the account in Genesis.

>Pardon the pun, but I think that our brains are really necessary.

I agree that our brains are necessary, but you can't rule out the
possibility of intelligence among smaller brained hominids given the fact
that many very small-brained modern humans seem to function OK.

>And
>I think if we use them we'll agree that a recent Adam and a recent flood
>best fits the data and makes the most sense.

You may have a point about the recent Adam, although I don't think it
matches the Scientific data or the Biblical data best and I am worried
about the racial implications, but you are most definitely wrong about the
flood. Just as there is NO geological evidence of a global flood, there is
also absolutely NO geological evidence of a widespread flood in
Mesopotamian in the past 10,000 years. Period. And a Mesopotamian flood
requires water to run UPHILL. A rather burdensome requirement.

glenn

Adam, Apes and Anthropology
Foundation, Fall and Flood
& lots of creation/evolution information
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm