>And there is no doubting that the Hebrew intended us
>to believe that birds ('owph) are created with the fish.
The same Hebrew word for birds (fowls in the KJV) also
applies to flying insects. If flying insects is intended, and
I don't know how we could know, then the Genesis chronology
parallels the fossil record.
>In defense of his Mesopotamian flood he claims that there would be no
>evidence left by even a 1-year-long, 300-foot-deep flood occurring there.
>(p. 155) This is false.
Of course it's false. There are clay layers analyzed as "water-laid"
at Ur, Shuruppak, Kish, Lagash, and Uruk (the biblical Erech). I don't
know about a "300 foot-deep flood" though. Sounds arbitrary to me.
>I have criticized Ross' views on Neanderthal and H. erectus many times in
>the past (see Fall 1996 Evolution Reflector archives). He considers them
>to be nothing more than bipedal mammals. The new twist in this book is
>that Ross tells us why he created these bipedal mammals. It seems that God
>created these beings to prepare the animal world for the coming shock of
>spiritual man.
Now that is creative. I was partial to God placing these sub-humans
on the ark to muck out the stables, sparing Noah and his family this
unpleasant task :>).
>Probably the most damning thing I can say about the book is that Ross
>selectively cites data that supports his views . He cites the date for the
>last common male ancestor of between 35,000 to 47,000 BC (p. 111) which
>comes from Whitfield et al, (1995) without mentioning that the immediately
>preceeding article, by Hammer, (1995) reaches a conclusion from another
>part of the Y-Chromosome that the last common ancestor lived 188,000 years
>ago with 68% confidence .
As I remember, the reason for the huge discrepancy in estimates was because
there was no difference found in Y-chromosome DNA samples. In other words,
the Y-chromosome is virtually identical in all males. With no rate of
divergence to measure, how could you estimate a date of divergence? Has
anything new been published on this?
>The fact is that many modern Christians, not Ross, are now beginning
>to accept the idea that Adam was the progenitor of only part of the human
>race (Fischer,1996), the combination of the two concepts would be very bad
>for racial relations.
I can't speak for Ross, but I can speak for Fischer. I had no intention of
striking a blow for or against race relations. My intention was to document
the historical integrity of Genesis 2-11. As I have stated in this forum,
these chapters are integral to Jewish history. It is the history of their
people beginning with Adam. In Accadian, the name "Adamu," was a
popular namesake with both Accadians and Sumerians apparently, as
this name appears repeatedly on clay tablets of census lists found by
archaeologists.
Dick Fischer - The Origins Solution - www.orisol.com
"The answer we should have known about 150 years ago."