>-----Original Message-----
>From: Don Perrett [mailto:don.perrett@verizon.net]
>Sent: Tuesday, April 23, 2002 2:00 PM
I wrote:
>it seems a
>bit
> ad hoc to then claim that we must interpret the
>same object differently if
> found with Neanderthal than if found with H.
>sapiens. Why the double
> standard?
>
Don replied:
>Don: No double standard. I do feel that just because one is aware of some
>power which is greater than our own and may be spiritual in
>nature, does not
>mean that they are the same. I realize that you see action as the means of
>understanding. In that I mean, you seem to feel that since Pre-Sapiens had
>alters or killed bears or any other gesture of religion, they must be
>somehow human. I myself do not define this as humanity. We do know from
>written history that our current species has, for some time, been aware of
>our sins and this is a major step in the human process.
There are two issues which you have assumed prior to this conclusion which
may not be supportable with evidence. First you have assumed that they are a
different species. If by species one means those who can interbreed and
produce fertile offspring, then there is lots of evidence that we have
Neanderthal genes in us. The earliest anatomically modern people have lots
of Neanderthal traits which are not found in the AFrican invaders of Europe.
see http://www.calvin.edu/archive/asa/200004/0022.html
Indeed one 24,000 year old child was found at Lagar Velho, Portugal who
showed ever evidence of being a hybrid between Neanderthals and us. Thus,
your assumption that we are different biologically may be false.
Secondly, if we don't define spirituality based upon awareness of
spirituality, then we are totally arbitrary as to where we place
spirituality and I fear that by limiting spirituality to H. sapiens we are
making morphology as the indicator of spirituality and that is a mistake
Christians made in the 1500 as Europeans began to find out that there were
lots of people who didn't look like us. INdeed there was a big argument
about whether or not Native Americans were descendants of Adam or not!
And all that being said, the bull sacrifice I spoke of were performed by
Solutreans in Spain and they were anatomically modern humans, long before
the time many want to place Adam. And, if we accept that anatomically
modern man appeared 150,000 years ago and then spent the next 100,000 years
behaving like Neanderthal, how can we accept AMH's spirituality and not the
possiblity of the N.'s.?
I do realize that
>these Pre-Sapiens may also have been aware, and as you said we cannot know.
>Perhaps this is why the years of ancestry in Judean faith is so short.
>Perhaps they to had no way of going back prior to written or direct verbal
>knowledge. They may have then assumed that it started much more recent. On
>the other hand they may have been right, but we have not figured out the
>point at which the change in behavior or intelligence came. The
>only thing I
>see as a guide is the breath of life. But this is difficult to measure
>scientifically and does take some faith.
All history takes some faith.
glenn
see http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/dmd.htm
for lots of creation/evolution information
anthropology/geology/paleontology/theology\
personal stories of struggle
>
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