>I would then argue that the advocate of a nonuniversal flood is
not arguing from the Bible but from his own idea of what things ought to be.
Comment:
Just read the other tales of Noah in the Bible to see whether the
probable location of the flood was Mesopotamia. Noah's children went
out and generated nations familiar to the Israelites. Hmmm...
Next, Glenn claimed that the discoveries of 'pushing back the date'
fossils (that are more ancient than current fossils) allows one to
conjecture the emergence of the Homo genus prior to the earliest
known fossils from Africa (now, say 2.5 Myr can be pushed to 6 Myr)).
These were the Adamites who were destroyed - except for Noah and
some others - in the Mediterranean basin infill. Prior to the infill,
the Adamites named the rivers flowing into the Mediterranean basis the
Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Glenn states:
>So could H. erectus have named the basins? Sure, they were smart enough
to--They could plan ahead which is necessary for moral accountability (see
my article in Sept 1999 PSCF) and THEY WERE RELIGIOUS!
Comment:
Does evidence of awareness of something beyond nature imply spoken
language - as would be required to name these rivers?
Next, Glenn rides this horse for a while, claiming that I doubt the 'humanity'
of H. erectus.
>You don't think that H. erectus can be human. Then explain this!
>Homo erectus built a village and altar that was found at Bilzingsleben and
dates to between 350-424,000 years ago.
>To ignore anthropological data like this is to bury our heads in the sand.
We need to incorporate it into our theological theories or explain it away.
If this is really an altar, then my view is correct and spiritual mankind
is much older than christians want to accept.
>But I would contend that your view pays no attention whatsoever to the
massive amount of data that is out there telling you that christian
apologetics must adjust. What is being taught (a young Adam) is wrong. Your
really need to study what is out there.
Comment:
I agree with Glenn that H. erectus - while not H. sapiens - certainly was
'on the way'. This is at the heart of my article in PSCF on the 'evolution
of human awareness of something beyond nature'. Our relgious sense is
ancient and may well be part of our human nature.
However, I locate the 'match', between these observations and the Genesis
text, not with the stories of Adam and Eve, but with the declaration
in 1:26 (or so) "Let us make man .... ". H. erectus corresponds to a
declaration of intention. H. erectus can be aesthetically regarded as
God's intention to create man.
Which gets back to the concept of a 'two teired' resemblance between
Genesis 1 and the evolutionary record. I don't get around the stumbling
blocks of a direct comparison, I use them. The stumbling blocks are
those phrases that are either naming or 'don't fit' the corresponding
epoch. I see those stumbling blocks as resembling the corresponding
epoch on a different level, as meaning, not as visualization.
Thus Glenn makes an inappropriate comparison when he states:
>... the whole concept that the earth was cloudy for 4
billion years simply won't work. Hugh Ross makes the same claim. But the
earth's atmosphere can not hold clouds of water all over the earth. First
there is too little water in the atmosphere and secondly, since the
droplets in the cloud want to fall, only the friction with an updraft of
air counteracts the gravitational pull and maintains the cloud in the sky.
Instead, he could look at the whole body of literature on the importance
of the greenhouse effect during the Archean and the Proterozoic. James
Kasting's Scientific American article depicted the Proterozoic earth as
an orange ball. The atmosphere of the early Earth was 20 times more
dense than today. It was 95% carbon dioxide. Talk about a greenhouse
situation. A strong greenhouse effect, on Earth, means higher atmospheric
temperatures and more clouds, amotng other effects.
My comparison can be found in the Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies
1993. To me, the comparison draws one - in the same way that Glenn's
does - to examine the evolutionary record more carefully and to really
appreciate the research.
But unlike Glenn's approach, I am not striving for propositional certainty.
I am striving for 'a sense of recognition'. That sense is sort of like a
switch, either you see it or you don't. But once you see a two-tiered
resemblance, a lot of interesting possibilities emerge, including the
concept of Genesis 1 as vision.
Also unlike Glenn's approach, I think that Mesopotamian prehistory is
crucial to an new appreciation of the early stories of Genesis. Even
though the concept of looking at Genesis 1 as if it had been a vision
is speculative, it is speculative with a wonderful engagement. It
engages with many of those issues of word meaning, of ancient world
views, of attitudes on nature and divinity, of diachronic development,
of syncretism and ritual stability, that Biblical scholars as well
as archaeologists currently wrestle with. It is a great learning
tool.
So Glenn wants to pound the table, to control, not to play:
>No one has the wisdom to know what changes were made to a story through
time. Not you, not me, not Seely. All presumed changes are hypothetical and
speculative. If one wants to reconstruct a totally speculative view, then
have at it, but don't try to tell me it is worth much. Only through
observational data can one really pound the table and say 'this is the way
it must have been!'
I think that I'm just a kid at heart.
Ray