>ACtually the rivers have emptied into the Persian Gulf since the mid
Pliocene times about 3.5 myr ago. Prior to that they would have been
captured into the Mediterranean. Only by assuming that you are correct
and that Adam and Eve were definitely within the past 10,000 years can your
argument carry weight. Since we are discussing which view is correct, the
post 10,000 year Adam vs. my view which places him much longer ago, it is
incorrect argumentation to assume that you are correct and then use the
recent emptying of these two rivers into the Persian Gulf as evidence that
you are correct. It is a case of begging the question.
>Thus I would say to your statement that the rivers have emptied into the
Persian gulf over the past 10 kyr--you are correct but so what? That
doesn't mean you have delivered a fatal blow to my views. In fact you
haven't delivered any kind of blow to them at all other than by assuming
them to be wrong.
Comment:
My goal is not to deliver a fatal blow, but to try to justify an
interpretation that seems obvious to me. Of course, if one wants to
talk about the paleodrainage of the basin that became the 'Mesopotamian
basin' one could evocatively refer to that drainage as the Tigris
and Euphrates rivers. But at 3.5 Myr ago, well, who would have been
around to pin those names on that drainage?
In the same way, researchers who thought they pinpointed a mitochondrial
bottleneck labelled thier bottleneck 'the mitochondrial Eve'. Did
someone back then call the 5000 or so women in the bottleneck 'Eve'?
Getting back to the stories of Adam and Eve and to Genesis 1, however,
I admit that I have a double standard. I think that the stories of
Adam and Eve are legends that started as actual experiences of individuals,
that were then narrated over many generations. The stories themselves
sure seem to fit that mold. Also, Adam and Eve are linked through
genealogies to Noah (a figure who also appears in Sumerian literature -
what a coincidence!) and to Abraham (another founder coming out of
Mesopotamia - another coincidence?).
Genesis 1, in contrast, may have been a vision that was ritualized
into a narrative that was then passed on through memorization over
many generations. I think that this perspective allows one to
aesthetically reconstruct the contents of an original vision of
the evolutionary record, and to appreciate the accomodations that
were made in its passage through time. I think that Seely has
a firm grasp on the 'natural worldview' that would have altered
a vision of the evolutionary record. For example, the perception
that the sky was a solid dome would have made incomprehensible
the loss of cloud cover in the epoch following day 3. The
appearance of which WOULD HAVE BEEN PERCIEVED AS THE 'CREATION'
OF THE SUN, MOON AND STARS. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.
Notably, my 'double standard' is consilient with the documentary
hypothesis that concluded that Genesis 1 and the stories of Adam
and Eve represent different literary traditions.
This gets me back to my original point - that concordism is a two
pronged 'match' between Genesis and the evolutionary record. One
prong is the archaeological match - which Fischer has made so much
progress on. The other is the aesthetic evolutionary record match -
which Glenn has been involved with. I think that the 'match' will
have to accomodate the particularity of Fischer's view with the
expansive range of Glenn's approach.
Ray