Glenn wrote:
>Animal sacrifice 18,000 BC. Dick, how do you change your view now to avoid
>an animal now kept on farms not indicating religious sacrifice prior to 7000
>BC?
So you would contend they slaughtered bulls in a religious ceremony at 18,000 BC
because Adam came into the world at 5.5 million years ago? Is that a link that
makes sense to you?
>Afterall, the Jews sacrificed bulls for religion, why doesn't this count?
Count it. Now try to find references to Adam, Noah, and the tower of Babel prior
to 7,000 years ago, somewhere outside southern Mesopotamia, and you will have
really accomplished something.
It has never been my assertion that spirituality, however that is defined, entered
the world with Adam. You (and Hugh Ross, I believe) have tried to make this link
in order to get Adam near the top of the tree of humanity. Is it possible that such
a person is the 'adam of Genesis 1:27? Possible, yes. Is it possible that 'adam
of Genesis 2:24 is also this person? Not likely, but maybe possible if we ignored
the four river setting of Eden.
How about Genesis 3? Eve is mentioned by name here, and now she too must
be driven into antiquity Genesis 4 includes Eve's sons Cain and Seth, farming,
livestock, tents, musical instruments, brass and iron. Gets tougher and tougher
to push it all back millions of years - but maybe it could be done.
By Genesis 5 we hit reality, because 'adam, the father of Seth by direct descent
in ten generations is ancestral to Noah who built a boat and survived the flood of
2900 BC that struck southern Mesopotamia.
Of course, you could find rationalizations to put aside all the historical evidence.
But what have you done? Bought all the evidence of animal sacrifice to
substantiate merely a conjecture that spirituality commenced with Adam, and
rejected the boatload of evidence that substantiates Adam in a historical setting.
What does that accomplish?
Glenn, what if you found evidence of water immersion for a purpose of purification
prior to John the Baptist? Would that alter the significance of Baptism today?
Would you argue for an earlier date for Jesus of Nazareth?
Let's both admit that bears have nothing to do with it. I have no reason to doubt
your research, or even that early man pondered the existence of the Almighty. The
American Indians believed in the Great Spirit. They entered the Americas earlier
than 10,000 years ago, and I place Adam at 7,000 years ago. So the native
Americans belief in a supreme being likely has ancient roots that predate Adam.
I even knew that without your telling me.
If your contention is that a demonstration of spirituality anywhere in the past
means that Adam had to have been here before any spirituality was possible,
then make that link. You could do it with rhetorical arguments, a preachers
dogmatic assertions, but what data is there, the stuff of science, that would
place Adam of Genesis, husband to Eve, father to Seth, ancestral to the Jews,
Arabs and some others at any date earlier than 7,000 years ago?
And if anybody could do it, you could.
Dick Fischer - The Origins Solution - www.orisol.com
"The answer we should have known about 150 years ago"
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