RE: The wee people

I've read the Nature articles and a number of commentaries. I can't
profess to have any insight as to how to explain these fossils but I was
interested in what I haven't seen yet: a mention of molecular genetics.
If these bones are only 14,000-18,000 years old then that would make
them younger than some of the bones that have yielded DNA sequence data
from Neandertals suggesting the possibility that some sequence data may
be obtained from these new finds. I do realize that the preservation
conditions might mitigate the somewhat younger age but I was surprised
that I haven't see any of the primary investigators acknowledge they are
pursuing such data. Given the time span since the find I would be
surprised if some effort has not already been made. If these hobbits
were decedents of H. erectus rather than an offshoot of H. sapiens the
genetic data would seem to offer a fairly simple way of testing the
competing hypothesis. If the sequences fall outside the variability of
H. sapiens and neandertals combined the impact of this find will
certainly be quite great and I really don't' know what my response is at
this moment.

Joel

R. Joel Duff

Assistant Professor, Dept. of Biology

ASEC 185, University of Akron

Akron OH 44325-3908

330-972-6077

rjduff@uakron.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of Glenn Morton
Sent: Friday, October 29, 2004 12:10 PM
To: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: RE: The wee people

It is taking a bit for me to get my mind around this discovery. There is
an amazing implication for the theological views when it comes to fossil
man. H. floresiensis

appears to be a direct descendant of H. erecutus. While H. sapiens is
also a direct descendant of H. erectus, we are both sister species.
Yet, it appears that both species engage in the same kind of
behavior--making fire, making stone tools, and even speech. The
implication of this for apologetics and the way we Christians treat the
hominids must change. Here is why.

Alan Turing presented his Turing test to determine whether or not an
artificially intelligent computer had been created. The test is this:.
If normal humans interacting with the computer can't tell the difference
between the responses of a computer and the responses of another human,
then the computer must be considered to be intelligent. This is a
behavioral definition of AI. But this type of test also applies to the
current situation. The only way we have of determining who is
spiritually aware and who isn't is based upon their behavior. While we
can't definitely claim that the Liang Bua people had a religion, in all
other respects they seem to have behaved like us. And there in lies the
problem.

We have a four choices as I see it (there may be others).

1. Acknowledge that since both us and the Liang Bua people do the same
thing, that our common ancestor (H. erectus) was also spiritually aware
and thus move Adam way back in time.

2. Claim that the Liang Bua people are just fancy animals, which means
that we ignore their tool making, their means of hunting, the hafting of
stone points on wooden spears, use of fire and the likelihood of
language

3. Take Dick Fischer's view

4. Claim that the Scripture simply isn't historically valuable (which
seems to be a popular view on this list).

Number 1 goes against the tide of Christian apologetical thought where
it comes to humanity being recent and allows in human evolution. But
the data seems, to me at least, to support this viewpoint.

Number 2 seems almost racist. There is probably a very very small
possibility that we actually might find these people someday in some
isolated jungle valley. Surely we can't treat them as animals should
that day arrive.

Number 3 now would have to be modified to allow a Neolithic Adam
represent an entirely different genetic line.

Number 4 seems to me to border on driving one away from Christianity. I
know lots of atheists who simply say they don't beleive the Bible
because it isn't historically true. It is hard to argue against their
logic, imo.

The problems and issues raised by these fossils could easily have been
anticipated (indeed was at least within the framework of my views). But
too many Christians, want to have nice compact little answers that
ignore huge amounts of observational data. Until Christians begin to
deal with the data, and then build theories which can be tested against
observation, we will always be the south end of a north bound bull when
it comes to dealing with reality.
Received on Fri Oct 29 12:36:08 2004