>I think that Jan points out the downside of aesthetically locating Adam
>in distant evolutionary history. I use the word aesthetic because we are
>drawing parallels between what appears to be mythology and what is
>research in the evolutionary sciences. The story of Cain and Abel
>to me and to Fischer, points to the Developed Neolithic. If Adam
>represents an event millions of years ago, Cain cannot possibly be
>his son. The context of the story indicates that perhistory rater
>that evolutionary history.
>
This is not true IF there was an earlier time, prior to the Flood. Consider
the problem you would have of transferring today's technology to your children
if you and 7 others are the only survivors of a world wide catastrophe. I
would dare say that you don't know what iron ore looks like, or where to find
coal or how to smelt iron. Do you know how to make stone tools with which to
carve a wooden plow? I would dare say that if you were Noah, your children
would be reduced to the most primitive savagry [sic?]. What I beleive we seen
in the anthropological record is the re-development of technology following
the flood.
[snip]
> The modern world has caged Genesis and
>put it on a shelf labelled mythology. I really think that the best
>way to respond is to figure ways to aesthetically link the stories
>to real (or evolutionary or prehistorical) events.
I agree with you here, but I do not think aesthetic linkages are sufficient
for a scientific society. If we can not explain why fossil men, with rather
different morphology, were performing human activities like making flutes and
whistles, then I don't think that the secular world has a reason to listen to
us. And besides, it is not the creation that is really the problem in
harmonizing Genesis to science. It is the Flood.
glenn
Foundation,Fall and Flood
http://members.gnn.com/GRMorton/dmd.htm