> At 11:25 AM 6/4/98 -0500, Pattle Pun wrote:
> >Progressive creation allows for most of the hominid finds to be true human
> >beings who may have been "devolved" from the original pair after their
> >Fall and lost their cultural heritage.
>
> This view would have the same difficulty that my view is often charged
> with. If these were 'devolved' people then why do they occuer PRIOR to the
> first evidence of the culture they supposedly devolved from? I place Adam
> and the flood much before the time of Homo erectus and have them have lost
> the culture after the flood. But most progressive creationists place the
> flood and Adam after Homo erectus and so there is no reason for them to be
> so culturally poor. How do you explain this in a coherent progressive
> creationist position?
>
Antropologist James Buswell II believes Cain could have lost his cultural
attainment because of the prevalence of sin based on Gen. 4:12. Thus a
considerable part of the economic culture as God gave it to humans before
the Fall might have been lost at an early date and then rediscovered
gradally (Gen. 3:17-19). The advanced culture suggested by Cain's
descendants can then be attributed to the arrival of civilization after
many generations had elapsed and the human population had grown. This
interpretation is borne out by Geen. 4:17 that suggests the presence of
dynasties or tribes instead of individuals, and this necessitated the
building of a city. The lost civilizations implicated by the archaelogical
remains found in South and Cental America lend credence to the
possibility of an advanced culture that was wiped out suddenly. It is
possible then that the flood came after humans had once again advanced in
culture in Noah's time.
------------------------------------- Dr. Pattle Pun Professor of Biology
Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL 60187
eMail: Pattle.P.Pun@wheaton.edu
Phone: (630)752-5303
FAX: (630)752-5996