Does evidence of awareness of something beyond nature imply spoken
>language - as would be required to name these rivers?
>
Glenn replied:
Of course. Do you think that anthropologists as a whole think Neandertal
and H. erectus and H. habilis couldn't talk? If you do, you are wrong.
Language appears to be related to Broca's area of the brain which is found
in Homo but not apes. Dean Falk states:
"The oldest evidence for Broca's area to date is from KNM-ER 1470, a H.
habilis specimen from Kenya, dated at approximately two million years ago.
autocatalytically so that it nearly doubled in the genus Homo, reaching its
maximum in Neanderthals. If hominids weren't using and refining language I
would like to know what they were doing with their autocatalytically
increasing brains (getting ready to draw pictures somehow doesn't seem like
enough)." ~ Dean Falk, Comments, Current Anthropology, 30:2, April, 1989,
p. 141-142.
Comment:
One of the funny things about the evolutionary sciences is that data
can be interpreted in more than one way. I think that the evolution of
talk can be separated from the evolution of 'the capacity for language'
or 'language as a modelling system'. Dean Falk is talking about the
capacity for language, not speech per se - as would be required to name
the rivers flowing into the 'dry' Mediterranean basin.
Next issue:
My 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.
Glenn's comment:
I don't believe H. erectus 'was on the way'. That is your view. Like being
partially pregnant, it is impossible to be partially religious. You either
have religion or you don't. If H. erectus built an altar--which it appears
that he had--then he wasn't 'on the way' he was already there!!! By my
reading of the Bible, Adam was the first religious person, indeed the first
human--the only one. If H. erectus was religious, then Adam was prior to
that time.
My comment:
There is a difference between 'religion' and 'religious sense'. H. erectus
may have performed rituals - but did those rituals have ideologies in the
same way that religion currently does? I don't know. But I also don't
think so.
Steven Mithen's Prehistory of the Mind gives a good example of what is
going through the heads of many evolutionary anthropologists today. He argues
that with H. erectus, knowledge was context dependent. However, with
humans, knowledge started to 'flow' across contexts. In sum, we don't
think like H. erectus.
As Steven Gould would tell you, humans did not 'have to' evolve.
Nevertheless, they did evolve. That is why I artistically associate
H. habilis and erectus - the intention of man - with Gen 1:26. Rather
than Gen 2.4.
Next issue,
First, I said:
>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.
>
(Consider) 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.
Glenn replied:
>Ray, the issue was clouds not CO2 and not the existence of a greenhouse
effect. Show me why you think the early earth was cloudy! CO2 is not what
makes the clouds on venus, it is sulfuric acid.
To which I note:
While I admit that the issue of the extent of cloud cover during
the Archean and Proterozoic is a matter of debate - the driver of the
greenhouse effect is not. It is carbon dioxide. The atmosphere of
Venus, for example, is over 90% CO2. That's why the sulfuric acid
clouds are there. Sulfur rich aerosols have been implicated in
the formation of clouds on Earth.
The 'match' between seeing day 4 as a loss of cloud cover during
the late Archean and Proterozoic may never be resolved on the side
of science. However, the possibility that the Earth had total
cloud cover during these epochs has not been ruled out. If anything,
the arguments that CO2 and other greenhouse gases - such as ammonia and
methane - explain the 'faint sun paradox' favor the idea that
the early Earth had total cloud cover.
Note that the phrases discussing 'what the sun, moon and stars do'
tell us the importance of the epoch and place the observer on the
surface of the planet. Thus the two tiered pattern is seen in
day 4.
Final issue:
The question of propositionality was brought up. To which I reply:
I am not looking for propositional certainty, I am looking for
consilience.
My intention is to find a perspective in which individuals can recognize
that the early chapters of Genesis aesthetically 'match' the evolutionary
record.
If nothing else, (as you have pointed out) the act of recognition
differentiates the Genesis 'origin myth' from all other 'origin myths'.
Through concordism, the Genesis text comes to be seen as a sign of
the evolutionary record (as well as a sign of God), while the others
are not.
Also, my pursuit of a 'match' has led me to think of hypotheses in the
evolutionary sciences that are very different from yours.
For example, I hypothesize that evolutionary psychology may explain
the evolution of 'human awareness of something beyond nature'. You
hypothesize that there may be very ancient H. erectus fossils under
the Mediterranean Sea.
I see my proposal as consistent with the fact that Christians
have always taught that humans acknowledge God as part of their very
being (or nature). I also see my proposal as pertaining to an
issue that evolutionary psychologists cannot avoid discussing.
(If not today, then tomorrow.) This is what I mean by 'consilience'.
Science and the Christian faith, through the perspective of
art, call one another to mind.
How are any of your hypotheses consistent with what Christians
have always taught?
Ray