On Mon, 20 Nov 1995 21:46:14 -0500 Glenn wrote:
[...]
>Stephen wrote:
>GM>You miss entirely the arguments I have made. My arguments are not
>at all based upon Adam being created exactly 50,000 years ago. They
>are against ANY view which believes Adam was created LESS than at the
>very least 2 million years ago! I don't care whether you believe in
>a 10,000 year old creation of Adam, a 30,000, 40,000 or 50,000 year
>creation of Adam. There was evidence of human activities and human
>characteristics much longer ago than that!
>
>That was *not* what Glenn was originally arguing. He made a number of
>statements of things that occurred very recently and argued that they
>are too *recent* (not too *old*), for a view that Adam was created
>50,000 years ago. eg:<<
GM>Stephen the problem with all current views of how to incorporate
>fossil man into a biblical view is that if you believe Adam was any
>older than 10,000 years ago, then there is no evidence of farming.
>There are only four ways to solve this problem. Only one of them
>accounts for all the data.
I find it difficult to take Glenn seriously. He quibbles about no
evidence for farming for a period of tens of thousands of years, but
his own view of a Homo habilis Noah 5.5 MYA involves there being no
evidence for farming for thousands of thousands of years!
GM>1. Do as Pearce does in _Who was Adam?_ and believe that Adam was
>created 10,000 years ago. This ignores a). the evidence of human
>activity prior to 10,000 years ago, b) the lack of evidence for any
>flood which could remotely be claimed as the basis for the Biblical
>story and c) the fact that morphologically modern men existed prior
>to 10,000 years ago.
Pearce does not "This ignore...the evidence of human activity prior to
10,000 years ago". He believes such activity is Genesis 1 man:
"However much or little of the story of Adam and Eve is pictorial, the
point of prime importance is the apparent connection between Adam the
farmer of Genesis 2 and the New Stone Age farmer of pre-history. "The
Lord God took man and put him in the Garden of Eden to till it and
keep it." (Gen. 2:15) . The particular connection of Adam and Eden
with tillage - agriculture - is specifically mentioned three times.
Garden farming, or horticulture, began in the Near East about 12,000
years ago. This is also where the Bible places its origin. This
epoch-making event, the invention of farming, is called the New Stone
Age Revolution. The term "mesolithic" is now obsolete. Before this,
there had been types of man on the earth for half a million years, but
they were all Old Stone Age men who had never discovered the secret of
farming and of a settled existence. Consequently, they roamed the
earth in search of wild food as hunter-gatherers." (Pearce E.K.V.,
"Who Was Adam?", Paternoster: Exeter, 1969, p15)
GM>2. Do as Hugh Ross does and have Adam created 50,000 years ago.
>This ignores a) the gap between Adam and the first evidence of
>farming. b) This ignores the evidence of human activity such as
>warfare, art, religious activity prior to 50,000 years ago, c) the
>burials of the neanderthals. It leaves no explanation for the flood.
Again, this is not what Ross believes either. He does not believe this
these earlier hominid species were true man:
"From a biblical standpoint, I see Neanderthals as one of the nephesh,
soulish (not spiritual) creatures God made before he made humans. In
other words, the Neanderthals must have been a bipedal mammalian
species created a few tens of thousands of years before Adam and Eve.
Neanderthals became extinct, possibly as the result of some climatic
upheaval, at least several thousand years before the creation of Adam
and Eve" (Ross H, "Link With Neanderthals Cut by Computer", Facts &
Faith, Reasons To Believe: Pasadena CA, Vol. 9, No. 3, Third
Quarter 1995, p2)
Please note that I do not necessarily agree with Ross, but it is a
possible position and IMHO much preferable to Glenn's 5.5 MYA Homo
habilis Noah.
GM>3. One could suggest that Adam was created 120,000 years ago
>coincident with the appearance of modern man. This ignores a) the
>evidence of human activity like woodworking at 1.5 million years,
>body-painting from ochre at 1.5 million years ago, the existence of
>Broca's brain. This view also makes the image of god be dependent
>upon the morphological appearance or brainsize. It also leaves no
>place for the flood.
I don't suggest this. In fact I don't know anyone who does.
GM>4. One could do what I have with the Mediterranean flood. It
>places the creation of Adam prior to all known evidence of human
>activity. It explains the flood exactly as described in the Bible.
As I have previously stated Glenn's 5.5 MYA Mediterranean Flood
and Homo habilis Noah neither agrees with the Bible, nor with
Science. I have given my reasons previously, so I do not intend
to repeat them. Glenn and I will have to agree to disagree. I intend
this to be my last post on this topic.
God bless.
Stephen