Re: Genesis Question

Adam Crowl (qraal@hotmail.com)
Wed, 06 Jan 1999 02:35:00 PST

>Date: Tue, 05 Jan 1999 20:22:25 -0500
>To: asa@calvin.edu
>From: Dick Fischer <dfischer@mnsinc.com>
>Subject: Re: Genesis Question
>
>Glenn wrote:
>
[snipped a bit on bugs]
>
>>In defense of his [Ross] 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.
>
Dick I thought that the Flood stratum of each city had a different age
to all the others - how can they a record of the same event? Your dating
of the flood is probably correct, but the data seems against it being a
one-off. Or has a minor archeological revolution passed me by?

>>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 :>).
>
lol. Very insightful ;-) But seriously Ross' view is really a bit silly
since Aboriginal artwork has been dated to 60 kya here in Oz, and that
means a common origin atleast ~ 100 kya. 60 kya is ridiculous. If
Glenn's right about that 400 kya site then our origins go back to at
least ~ 500 kya - that's if those other hominids were sons of Adam.
There's nothing against the idea that other spiritualised human/oids
lived here prior to the "age of Adam". The Bible is silent on that
point.

>>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?
>
Another study to add is the one that used modern levels of mtDNA change
and got a coalescence time of just 6 kya! Naturally no one takes the
implications of that seriously, but it illustrates just how careful we
must be with these dating techniques. They need physical correlates, and
that's what human biogeography can supply.

>>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."
>
>
Wish the Aussie dollar wasn't so weak - I'd buy your book in a flash. Do
you have any Australian distributors Dick?

Adam

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