glenn morton wrote:
>
> Many Christian apologists reject the notion that modern man has any genetic
> connection with the ancient hominids, such as Homo erectus. This is
> normally done based upon theological considerations in which they believe
> that modern man was created within the past 60-200,000 years ago. If the
> theological considerations are correct, then genetic data should show a
> genetic bottleneck, it should show no human genes which require longer than
> 60-200,000 years of coalescence time (the time for mutations to create the
> present observed diversity in modern populations) and we should have no
> non-functional retroviral insertions in common with the Old World Monkeys
> and chimps. Modern observations falsify all these apologetical
> expectations. Below are some quotes from two articles which examine the
> genetics of primates. Each quote is relevant to the predictions made by
> apologists noted above.
Needless to say I have no theological objection to these results. In fact,
wouldn't it be true that those who accept human evolution should except that there would
be some genetic correlation between Homo s. & _non_-primates?
& the fact that we're related genetically to Homo e. doesn't prove that Homo e.
was theologically "human" (image of God, moral agency &c) anymore or any less than the
fact that we're genetically related to fish proves anything about the theological status
of fish. Other considerations - capacity for language, behavior, technology - which
you've addressed here are, I think, much more significant for theological consideration
- though the value of the genetic results in non-negligible and does close off some
possibilites for obscurantist apologetics.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jun 23 2000 - 10:33:27 EDT