>Wayne McKellips wrote:
>
>>Jesus died for man not for Neanderthals. However, that does
>>not mean Neanderthals and others before humans didn't
>>experience some type of relationship with God.
>
>Nor does it mean that other forms of animals don't have relationships
>with God in their own way. I believe that every single creature was
>made for the pleasure of both God and man. That God takes notice of
>even the little sparrow is confirmed by the Lord: "Are not two sparrows
>sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground
>without your Father." Matt 10:29.
While I have never been able to convince Jim of this, are you saying that a
being, the Neanderthal, who made flutes is not human? (Scripture said flutes
were invented by Jubal (Gen 4:21); see Science news 11-23-96 or
http://www.zrc-sazu.si/www/iza/piscal.html )
Is a being who made jewellry not human? Bednarik writes:
"Similarly, the idea that the advent of personal ornamentation coincides
with that of the Aurignacian is attributable only to insufficient knowledge of
the relevant material. Drilled animal teeth and other objects that are
several times as old as that 'transition' (up to 300,000 years have been known
to exist for many decades."~Robert G. Bednarik, "Concept-mediated Marking in
the Lower Palaeolithic," Current Anthropology, 36:4(1995), pp. 605-634, p. 606
See the front cover of Nature May, 16, 1996 for a beautiful necklace made by
Neanderthalor traded for by Neanderthal. You can't trade with a chimpanzee.
Is a being who prepares the bodies of his dead comrades and places them in a
grave with grave goods, not human? What about the burial of a child with a
stone placed over its tiny heart? Is this not the act of a human?
"The infant's delicate skeleton lay on its back, arms extended and legs
bent upward, at the bottom of a 5-foot-deep pit someone had dug perhaps 50,000
to 70,000 years ago. A limestone slab nudged against the top of the child's
skull,and a small triangular piece of flint rested at about the spot where the
tot's heart had once beat.
"A team of Japanese and Syrian scientists unearthed the prehistoric
youngster in a cave at Dederiyeh, a site located near the Syrian city of
Aleppo. They consider the skeleton to be that of a Neandertal and call the
discovery the best evidence yet of Neandertal burial practices.
"'This child was no more than 2 years old, and its anatomical features
are clearly those of a Neandertal,'asserts excavation director Takeru Akazawa,
an anthropologist at the University of Tokyo."~B. Bower, "Child's bones found
in Neandertal Burial," Science News, 148, October 21, 1995, p. 261
Don't be so quick to exclude a being such as this from humanity.
glenn
Foundation,Fall and Flood
http://members.gnn.com/GRMorton/dmd.htm