Against my better judgement I will respond to your ad hominems. I am very
concerned with Christians getting the facts correct. This emans that when I
see someone saying something which is not true, or has counter evidence I am
going to point it out. You can call this "trying to disqualify" others but
it is merely my attempt to try to get Crhistians to do more research and
really know the detals of what they talk about.
At 06:39 AM 4/13/97 +0800, Stephen Jones wrote:
>Group
>
>On Mon, 31 Mar 1997 22:12:21 -0600, Glenn Morton wrote:
>>This gives modern man a 130,000 year tenure.
>
>The problem here is with Glenn's interpretation of the word
>"modern". Wilcox is using it in the sense of the sudden appearance
>of *fully* modern man only 40,000 years ago:
Define "fully modern". Is this someone who has our technology? Do they need
to have invented TV? Must they be farmers to qualify as fully human? Must
they be able to draw pictures on cave walls to be "fully human"? (The
Tallensi of Ghana were unable to draw 2d pictures when they were first
encountered in the 1930s See Meyer Fortes, "Tallensi Children's Drawings,"
in Barbara
Lloyd and John Gay, eds. Universals of Human Thought (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1981),pp. 46-70)
Or must they have lived at 40,000 years to be fully human?
>
>"Modern humans exploded across the map of the world around
>40,000 years ago." (Templeton J.M. & Herrmann R.L., "Is God the
>Only Reality?" 1994, p135)
At the risk of being charged with "disqualifying others, Templeton and
Herrman are wrong. The only place modern humans exploded across 40,000
years ago was Europe..
"The earliest evidence of modern humans in Europe is found between 35 and 40
kya; in China, perhaps as early as 67 kya at Liujiang; in Australia, 55 kya or
earlier; in America, at the earliest 35 kya (but according to many, only
later, 15-20 kya. An important gap in the record, from 100 kya to 50 kya
yields no information of events in most of Asia regarding a.m.h."~L. Luca
Cavalli-Sforza, Paoli Menozzi and Alberto Piazzi, The History and Geography of
Human Genes, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 64
Modern man was found from south Africa to China by 67,000 years ago. The
spread was gradual over many millenia and was not an "explosion'.
>
>But even accepting for the moment Glenn's figure of "65%", Wilcox's basic
>argument is still valid, namely that the difference between "modern humans"
>and "Neandertals" is *vast*, eg:
>
>"The modern humans that apparently replaced the Neandertals were,
>in" only 65% "of their tenure, walking on the moon!"
>
Maybe if the Neanderthal had had another 35% of the time he would have set
foot on the moon. Technologically, neanderthal and modern man were equals
until they died out.
>Glenn just ignores the whole point that the best that Neandertal man
>did was make a bone flute (or whatever Glenn wants to claim),
>whereas "modern humans" have already been "walking on the moon".
>
If walking on the moon is a measure of humanity, they you and I are not
human. Neither of us have walked on the moon. In fact by this definition,
there are only about 20 humans on earth. Tis sad to see so many people
walking around deluding themselves that they are human.
>In any event, Glenn who calls Wilcox and other Christian apologists
>"wrong", himself believes that Adam and Eve were "Homo habilis or
>Australopithecus" who lived 5.5 million years ago:
>
>"The only way to fit the scriptural account with the scientific
>observations is to have Adam and Eve be Homo habilis or
>Australopithecus." (Morton G.R., "A Theory for Creationists", DMD
>Publishing Co., 1996, http://members.gnn.com/GRMorton/dmd.htm).
>
Yes I do and I thank you for noting my old address. My new web page is
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm
>Reflectorites will note that Glenn hardly ever advances his own
>theory of man's origin when he is trying to disqualify other
>theories. His strategy seems to be to attempt to disqualify all
>competing Christian theories of man's origin, leaving his own the
>last one standing by default.
Science often works by eliminating other possibilities. There is nothing
wrong with doing it that way. To paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, "When you have
eliminated the impossible, whatever is left, no matter how improbable, is
probably the case."
Christian explanations of fossil man are totally untenable and never, never
talk details. Why have you never seen in a Christian apologetical book a
discussion of the carpentered wooden plank from Gesher Benot Ya'qov, Israel
which would have had to have been made by Homo erectus? I will answer that.
Because most christians don't want to know the details because it harms
their viewpoint. so we live in a world of our own delusion rather than in
the world as it really is.
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm