On Wed, 13 Sep 1995 23:02:21 -0400 Glenn wrote:
ABSTRACT: Glenn has posted some interesting data on ancient man
including: tool-making/using, the use of fire, building, art and
religious worship. Glenn seems to sees this as evidence of these
beings' full humanity, but he must adopt an old Adam and Flood of 5.5
million years to accommodate the scientific data. /IMHO Glenn has
given too much weight to the scientific data as evidence of these
beings *full* humanity. The real difference between hominids and full
humans may have been spiritual, which does not fossilise well! The
Biblical evidence of Gn 2-11 seems to place the descendants of Adam in
the Fertile Crescent in comparatively modern times (eg. less
than 50,000 years ago). A "two-Adam" model would seem to accommodate
the Biblical and scientific data. Glenn is rightly concerned for
students from YEC homes who encounter at university scientific
evidence for a great antiquity of man. However his solution to push
Adam and the Flood back 5.5 million years raises more problems than it
solves. [this post is 450 lines long!]
GM>I am going to direct this to the lurkers on the reflector who are
>YEC's and PC's who beleive in the recent creation of man. Consider
>the following scenario. You have spent a life time teaching your
>child that the Bible is true. They believe what you believe, that
>man is a recent addition to the surface of the earth; he did not
>evolve and fossil man is some soul-less being or a postflood or
>preflood human.. So far so good. You have passed your beliefs on to
>your child.
Glenn's concern for Christian children being taught one thing about
man's origin in church and another in school and university, is
commendable. However, some would see his cure is worse than the
disease! :-)
As a parent who has brought up two adult children in conservative
evangelical churches, and who now attend university, I did not find it
necessary to confront them with a conflict over the Bible vs
Eviolution. I simply pointed out that: 1. the Bible is not at
textbook of science; 2. While the Bible is inspired, our human
interpretations aren't; 3. God is the Author of the books of Nature
and Scripture, and so they ultimately must agree, even if we cannot
always see how; and 4. if evolution is proven to be true, then that
could be seen as the means by which God created.
The above strategy proved to be successful, and my son is studying
Engineering and my daughter Human Biology and have not forsaken their
Christian faith. They have never seen the need to oppose their faith
and evolution. Yet, of their own volition, they both remain skeptical
of evolution.
Glenn oversimplifies by lumping PC's with YEC's in believing in "the
recent creation of man". This is unfair. YEC's believe that the
entire universe was created only 10,000 years ago. PC's accept the
radiometric age of the universe at 4.6 BY. On the basis of the
Biblical evidence, PC's do believe man is comparatively recent, but
they are willing to adjust their Biblical views with the scientific
data.
GM>You send him off to the State University. As part of his or her
>undergraduate degree, they have to take a humanities elective. Having heard
>all their lives how evolution can't be true, they are curious to see for
>themselves the strength of the anthropological data and they decide to take
>Physical Anthropology 101, as I did. After learning the following, they
>wonder how good your explanation of how Science and the Bible fit together
>is. Here is what they learn.
Glenn appears to be recounting his own personal story? His conflict
seems to have been acute because presumably he had been reared with
strong YEC views of an Earth that is only 10,000 years old and a Flood
that covered the whole world? For him the conflict with the
scientific evidence would have been acute. The same acute degree of
conflict between Bible vs science need not occur with PC.
GM>**Tool-making*************************88
>"The stone tools at Olduvai consist mostly of pieces of lava and
quartz... Crude rounded pebble tools called choppers..surprisingly
advanced-looking tools also were found... Pfeiffer (1969:79)
..engraving-gouging tools, quadrilateral 'chisels,' large and small
scrapers ..special-purpose tools...made of difficult-to-work lavas and
quartz.'
>"Some stone tools from the Omo River region in Ethiopia are dated at
>about 2 million years; and tools found near East Lake Turkana in northern
>Kenya are about 850,000 years older than the oldest tools from Olduvai. So,
>the evidence for toolmaking in East Africa goes back nearly 3 million years
>ago."~Victor Barnouw, An Introduction to Anthropology: Physical Anthropology
>and Archaeology, Vol. 1, (Homewood, Illinois: The Dorsey Press, 1982) p. 127
Thanks to Glenn for this information. It is difficult to know: a) if
the dates are right; or b) if the "advanced tools" were not from a
later age. But even if the they were as old as assumed, PC could
accept that hominids could make and use tools. Tool-making and using
is not necessarily diagnostic of human beings:
"The second view, which regards tool-making as the distinguishing mark
of man, also seems less than fully adequate. Its basic thesis has
been challenged by various findings. For example, Jane Goodall
observed chimpanzees breaking off twigs, stripping them of leaves, and
using them o probe termite hills for food. The chimpanzees carried
the twigs as far as half a mile as they went from one hill to another.
Goodall concluded, "In so doing . . . the chimpanzee has reached the
first crude beginnings of tool-making.... It is unlikery that this
pattern of fishing for termites is an inborn behavior pattern." (Jane
Goodall and Hugo van Lawick, "My Life Among Wild Chimpanzees,"
National Geographic Magazine 124 (August 1963): 307-08 in Erickson
M.J., "Christian Theology", 1985, Baker, Grand Rapids, MI, p485)
GM>**Fire:*************************************8
>No animal has mastered the use of fire, yet fossil man has. The
>oldest example I could find is from Europe. "...Remains of a
>pebble-tool culture in a cave on the French Riviera, dated at about
>1 million years go, were reported in April 1974 by Henry de Lumley.
>There was no evidence of fire in the cave.
I understand some fire evidence has been re-interpreted as natural
fire? In any event I would not see the use of fire as unusual in a
hominid with emerging intelligence. Meat that has been burnt is
easier to eat. A hominid would not have to be an Einstein to have
tried to eat an animal burnt in a bush-fire and finding it easier to
eat, realized he could cook it himself. The use of fire to keep warm
and give light is likewise not a difficult step. Again, it is
difficult to know if the date of "1 million years go" is right. I do
not see that the use of fire is diagnostic of full humanity.
GM>However, the earliest evidence of fire from Europe is ...750,000
>years ago at the Escale Cave in ...southern France; hearths of
>charcoal and ash have been found in the cave, along with the remains
>of primitive wolves and saber-toothed cats. Another site of about
>the same age is the Vallonet Cave in southeastern France on the
>Mediterranean, which contains tools dating from between 750,000 and 1
>million years ago. Two choppers like those of Olduvai Gorge were
>found, along with a few other worked stone tools and the fossil bones
>of such animals as rhinoceros, elephant, horse, and
>whale."...Barnouw, p.143 "These pieces of quartz must have been
>brought to the cave from elsewhere, for no quartz is found within two
>miles of the site. Worked bits of bone and horn were also found.
>Charred hearths in the cave provide the earliest evidence in Asia of
>the human use of fire -- perhaps around 500,000 or more years
>ago."..Barnouw...p. 141
See above.
GM>This last quote also shows that from the earliest times, these
>"non-human, souless" beings were able to gather stone material from
>far away and bring it back home for shaping. This is in a real
>sense, strip mining without the modern tools. Also note the
>separation between the first and second occurrences of fire hearths
>in Eurasia. They are separated by 250,000 years. This is another
>point in my contention that this is the nature of any object found in
>the fossil or historical record. The earliest occurences have large
>chronological gaps between them with no evidence that it existed in
>the interim.
I know PC's like Hugh Ross uses the term "spirit-less" for pre-human
ancestors. I don't agree with him. The Biblical view is that man's
body and soul are a unity. I prefer E.K.V. Pearce's "two Adam
theory" - I have just found out that this was not my original
discovery! :-( In that view, presumably (I haven't read his book "Who
Was Adam?" yet) the genus Homo would be Gn 1 "man", with an emerging
image of God, up to Homo sapiens, from whence Gn 2 Adam was taken and
placed in the Garden.
GM>**houses,***********************
>"Another site dated at about 300,000 or 400,000 years ago is at Terra
>Amata, part of Nice on the Riviera in France, where remains have been
>found of some apparently oval-shaped dwellings about 50 feet long and
>12-18 feet wide, contianing fireplaces. Holes about 1 foot in
>diameter are believed to have held upright beams. The site was near
>a stream running into the sea. Remains of rhinoceros, Elephas
>antiquus, rabbit, deer, and wild boar have been found."~Barnouw, p.
>144
>and
GM>"The most interesting results of the excavation were the traces in
>the sand of a series of eleven large, carefully constructed
>dwellings, each built on roughly the same spot as the previous
>year's. They were oval in shape and roughly measured 12 metres (40
>feet) long by 6 metres (20 feet) wide. They were constructed from
>walls of young branches supported in the center by a row of sturdy
>posts. The people of Terra Amata placed large stones around the base
>of the walls so as to add extra support against the northwest wind.
These were not necessarily "houses"! :-) But again, building shelter
is not an exclusively human activity. Birds build nests and rabbits
have burrows. Shelter-building is consistent with an emerging image
of God, but it is not necessarily diagnostic of the Adam of Gn 2.
GM>"...A hearth was built near the centre of each hut. A scatter of
>stone flakes indicated the work of a tool-maker...The hut dwellers
>used animal skins for comfort, probably both for sitting on and for
>sleeping on. A curious depression in the sand could have been made
>by a long-vanished wooden bowl....traces of worn ochre...Francois
>Bordes has suggested was used for body-painting.
Thanks again to Glenn for this interesting detail.
GM>"Remains of red deer, elephant, an extinct species of rhinoceros,
>mountain goat and wild boar reveal the hut dwellers' tast for
>meat...animals...were hunted rather than scavenged. Shells of
>oysters, mussels and limpets...resources of the sea....little to
>suggest what plant foods were collected...
I presume this is added to disprove YEC's original vegetarianism
theory? PC does not necessarily believe that, athough it is possible
that late Gn 1 man and early Gn 2 Adam were vegetarian, if that's what
Gn 1:29-30; 9:2-3 intends to teach.
GM>"...Richard E. Leakey, The Making of Mankind, (New York: E. P.
>Dutton, 1981) p. 124
GM>The ochre may be one of the earliest evidences of art even if it is
body art.
Smearing oneself with warpaint is hardly "art". Although no doubt
it could be regarded as modern art! :-) Then again I saw on TV an
artist who thought it was art to shoot a cow, and another who draped
hills in polythene! Seriously, primitive art is not necessarily
diagnostic of full humanity.
GM>**Building of walls*****************************
>"The Leakeys uncovered a simicircular wall at Olduvai, which may have
>served as a windbreak and has been dated at around 2 million years
>old +/_ 280,000 years --the oldest man-made structure
>known."~Barnouw, p.126
>and
GM>"At Terra Amata, in present-day Nice, we have evidence of seasonal
>habitations on coastal dunes. There are ovoid arrangements of stones
>..~Bernard Campbell, Human Evolution, (Chicago: Aldine Publishing
>Co., 1974), p. 385
>and
GM>"What may well be the first discovered ruins of Middle Palaeolithic
>dwellings have been found at open-air sites. At Molodova I these
>consist of an oval ring of mammoth bones, some 10 metres by 7 metres
>in exterior dimensions, containing extremely dense stone artifact and
>food-bone remains and fifteen hearths. The mammoth bones have been
>interpreted as weights to hold down a superstructure of streched
>skins over a light wooden framework...At Orangia, in South Africa,
>semi-circular rubble walls have been interpreted as supports for
>windbreaks. Deliberate structural modifications of cave interiors
>are also known in western Europe: for example, remnants of dry-stone
>walls were found in Mousterian levels at Morin and Pech de l'Aze, and
>the paving of living floors with rubble or cobbles is known from
>several caves, including La Ferrassie and Combe Grenal.
GM>A single posthole was also recovered at the last site. At La Baume
>de Peyrards an arrangement of large blocks may represent an elongated
>hut, some 11.5 metres by 7 metres in size, with a series of
>fireplaces along its centreline, the whole being constructed against
>the face of a rockshelter....an artificial conical mound of
>stones battered into spherical shapes, bone splinters and stone
>tools, constructed by Mousterian peoples in an artesian spring at El
>Guettar, Tunisia."~Leslie Freeman, "The Development of Human
>Culture," in Andrew Sherratt, editor, Cambridge Encyclopedia of
>Archaeology, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 84-85
All consistent with an emerging, rather than a fully developed,
humanity.
GM>**religious beliefs*********************
>"There are other implications of religious beliefs held by
>Neanderthals in the collections of bear skulls found in their caves.
>The mere preservation of skulls need not suggest anything religious,
>but in some cases special attention was given to their placement.
>In one cave, five bear skulls were found in niches in the cave wall.
>The skulls of several cave bears in a group have been found
>surrrounded by built-up stone walls, with some skulls having little
>stones planced around them, while others were set out on slabs. All
>this suggests some kind of bear cult..."Barnouw, p. 156-157
On the two-Adam theory, Neanderthals could be late Gn 1 man, or even
Gn 2 man. As to religious belief being a mark of God's image, Erickson
says:
"The third view theorizes that burial of the dead is a sign of the
presence of the image of God in man. James Murk, however, argues that
this practice evidences only a fear of the unknown, which in turn
presupposes only imagination. It does not follow that a moral sense
is involved, and indeed religion and ethics are treated separately in
the anthropological literature, because the two often do not
coincide." (James W. Murk, "Evidence for a Late Pleistocene Creation
of Man," Journal of the American ScientificAffiliation 17, no. 2
(June 1965): pp. 46-47, in Erickson M.J., "Christian Theology",
1985, Baker, Grand Rapids, MI, p485)
GM>**drawing, engraving, sculpting and art*******************
>"From Neanderthal sites have come pendants made a reindeer phalanx
>and a fox canine; a bovid shoulder blade coverd with fine parallel
>lines; and a carved mammoth molar, dated by radiocarbon at around
>50,000 B. C. The latter piece, which is quite beautifle shows skilled
>workmanship. It is reproduced in color in Marshack 1976:143. Also
>reproduced in coloy by Marshack is a remarkably elegant statuette of
>a horse carved in mammoth ivory found at Vogelherd in South Germany
>in 1931 and dated at more than 30,000 B. C, near the end of the
>Mousterian period. This work of art is 10,000 years or more older
>than the cave paintings of Lascaux and Altamira."~Barnouw, p. 156
>and
>
GM>"From the time of the Vogelherd figures onwards, the artistic
>output of our forebears in Europe and Africa was prolific. But what
>were its origins? There are paintings of animals on rock slabs in a
>cave in southern Africa dating from about 29,000 years ago. These
>have a good claim to be the earliest form of wall art. But engraving
>and carving apparently have a longer history. For instance, there is
>a pendant made from a reindeer's foot bone from La Quina in France
>which is at least 35,000 eyars old. A fragment of bone marked with a
>zig-zag motif from the Bacho Kiro site in Bulgaria stems from the
>same period. And from a 50,000-year-old site at Tata, Hungary, comes
>an intriguing object: a mamoth molar tooth that has been carved,
>shaped and worn smooth with use. On at least one occasion it had
>also been coloured red with ochre....The oldest engraved object so
>far discovered and dated takes us back an incredible 300,000 years,
>to the site of Pech de l'Aze in France...Bordes discovered an ox rib
>that had been engraved with a series of double arcs. The motif, once
>again, is a frequent feature of the art that was to follow more than
>a quarter-of-a-million years later."~Richard E. Leakey, p. 137
>************************************************
GM>With all this evidence of human-like activity, how can one
>reasonably expect their child to still believe your explanation after
>a semester of this? He or she will probably then want to take a
>geology course and from personal experience, the YEC explanation
>won't work and your child will be in deep trouble. I know a well
>known YEC whose son went into geology, and now believes nothing his
>father does..
I agree with Glenn here in two things: 1. this is "human-*like*
activity", and 2. IMHO YEC is inadequate to deal with these scientific
facts. However, I do not agree that in rejecting YEC one needs to go
to the other extreme and adopt TE. A PC mediating position can
accommodate the Biblical and scientific data at least as well as TE.
GM>My goal is to point out that Christianity needs to somehow account
>for this data, not to hurt Christianity. My view will do explain the
>scientific data! But I know people are repulsed by the very
>different course I say we ought Views like Hugh Ross's which believe
>in a relatively recent creation of man, simply leave out the data
>from an earlier time period. Only a view which allows mankind to
>have existed far longer than Christians have historically wanted can
>explain the data; all others must explain the data away.
While I do not necessarily agree with everything Hugh Ross says, on
the other hand, I don't necessarily agree with Glenn that this
evidence of emerging humanity is fully "mankind".
GM> There are two approaches to explaining this data away.
Glenn could have said "explaining the data" without adding the "away"!
:-) The "away" assumes that Glenn infallibly knows that his TE
interpretation is the only right one?
>GM First you can say these guys really weren't human, inspite of all
>the evidence that their actions are like modern hunter-gatherers.
>This view holds that the activities are merely animal instinct.
This is an oversimplification by Glenn of what is a complex issue. PC
would not see these emerging humans as "merely animal". But neither
does it follow that they were fully human (with the possible exception
of Neanderthal Man).
GM>Second, you can take the tack of the young-earth creationists and
>say that the dating processes don't work and the earth is really only
>10,000 years old. Thus, these "men" lived within the past few
>thousand years (probably post-flood people). Then there is my view
>which says human history is much much older and the flood was 5.5
>million years ago. I can not think of another approach to
>incorporate human activities into a Christian world view.
Again it is interesting that Glenn, after beginning with an
examination of "YEC's and PC's who beleive in the recent creation of
man" has somehow quietly dropped PC's! :-) Of course, there is a
middle view between "young-earth creationists" who "say that...these
`men' lived within the past few thousand years" and Glenn's "view
which says...the flood was 5.5 million years ago."
GM>Which option do you choose?
I lean towards Erickson's PC "option":
"Man is distinguished by the presence and use of complex symbolism or,
more specifically, of language. While the making of tools and burial
of the dead point to a fairly sophisticated pattern of behavior, it is
language which makes possible the type of relationship with God which
would be experienced by a being created in the image of God. On this
basis, one can correlate the beginning of man in the full biblical
sense with the evidence of a great cultural outburst about 30,000 to
40,000 years ago. The first man is not to be identified with
Neanderthal man, but somewhat later, probably with Cro-Magnon man.
(James W. Murk, "Evidence for a Late Pleistocene Creation of Man,"
Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation 17, no. 2 (June 1965):
37-49).
"...(this) view...seems to have the fewest difficulties. The growth
in culture from about 30,000 years ago is best understood as the
result of the beginning of language at that time. This has been
asserted by Bertram S. Kraus: "It seems most likely that Man could
not have produced, sustained, and altered culture without the ability
to transmit his experiences and knowledge to his offspring other than
by example." (Bertram S. Kraus, The Basis of Human Evolution (New
York: Harper and Row, 1964), p. 282).
(Erickson M.J., "Christian Theology", 1985, Baker, Grand Rapids, MI,
p484-485).
I would also point out one obvious fact that Glenn has apparently
forgotten. The modern man he is comparing fossil man to is *fallen*
man. The Adam and Eve of Gn 2 was "created to be like God in true
righteousness and holiness" (Eph 4:24). The nearest analogy we have of
Adam before he fell, is Jesus Christ "the last Adam" (1Cor 15:45). The
real difference between Adam and other humans before or since was
spiritual, and the problem with spiritual qualities is they don't
fossilise all that well! :-)
C.S. Lewis makes the point in one of his novels to the effect that if
unfallen Adam walked into the room, even if he looked like a
Neanderthal, we would all fall on our faces in the light of his
perfect innocence and holiness. This may have beem a literary
exaggeration, but it gets across the general idea. Of course
pre-Adamites seem like us - in many ways they were! But that is
because spiritually we fallen sons of Adam are probably closer to our
pre-Adamite cousins than we are to Adam our father!
Perhaps Glenn could ponder that naturalistic science is the science of
"the natural man" (1Cor 2:14), who "receives not the things of the
Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he
know them, because they are spiritually discerned." The natural man
scientist might be great at noting similarities between hominids and
modern man on the "natural" level. But if Paul is right, they would
be totally unable to understand spiritual differences, even if they
did fossilise.
As I have said before, IMHO the Bibical and scientific data is better
accommodated to a "two-Adam" model in which an emerging humanity
(genus Homo) in the image of God is represented in Gn 1, and modern
Homo sapiens in Gn 2. This would see the origin of modern man in the
Fertile Crescent less than 50,000 years ago, and a local Flood within
that time frame . However, a fall into sin and a mingling of "the sons
of God" (Gn 2 Adamites) with "the daughters of men" (Gn 1 pre-
Adamites), as hinted at in Gn 6, has blurred the distinction.
Indeed, I believe Glenn's 5.5 million year Adam and Flood would cause
more problems for his YEC student than it would solve.
God bless.
Stephen