Re: The wee people

MessageI want to consider option 2 for a moment. The other options altogether raise a question about whether or not we can reconcile Christianity, at least literal biblical Christianity with scientific evidence of humanid history. And, as quoted above, if this undermines the historicity of the bible, then the entire Christian construct falls "like a deck of cards"

So, a valid interpretation would be that there is no "spirituality" and there is nothing beyond they physical realm.

In that case your second choice would be correct, but of course that would apply to us as well.

In that scenario, behavior of a "spiritual" nature, is nothing more than an epiphenomenon of a high EQ. And we should probably expect to see such behavior in cetaceans since their EQ is not vastly different from ours. I guess this could be the case.

But, it seems that Glenn is making an asumption that "spiritual" behavior is something that is derived beyond the physical realm, it is more than just the complexity of brain structures. And if it is the case that there is a spiritual reality, then Christianity remains viable at least.

So Glenn what do you think? Is this "spiritually aware" behavior merely a function of relative brain size, or is there something else to this?
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Glenn Morton
  To: asa@calvin.edu
  Sent: Friday, October 29, 2004 12:09 PM
  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 22:59:59 2004