Re: Special Creation

The thread that touched all this interesting discussion off was the
announcement that Alan Templeton's work has falsified the RTB model. Having
now had a chance to skim through Ross/Rana's "Who Was Adam," I'm not clear
on why that is necessarily so.

As I understand it, the problem for RTB's model arising from Templeton's
work would be that, although the genetic evidence still supports the recent
(~100,000 years) emergence of "humans" as RTB define them (home sapiens
sapiens) from a smal population migrating out of a Africa, it also suggests
those modern humans interbred with indigenous populations of hominids that
had migrated out of Africa in two earlier waves ~1.5MYA and ~750,000 years
ago. Such interbreeding would suggest the indigenous populations were
"human" as well, and thus human-kind is too ancient to trace back to a
single Adam and Eve less than 150,000 years ago.

But Ross/Rana seem to suggest, as I had earlier on the list, that God may
have used existing genetic material from earlier hominids when He formed
Adam out of the "dust of the Earth." If God did this, then our genome would
reflect the history of those earlier hominids, including those two earlier
waves of African migration. The "replacement" theory could then still
possibly be correct. Obviously, this wouldn't survive Occam's Razor, but
neither would just about any theory that seeks actual historical events in
Gen. 1 and 2.

I realize there are other possible problems with the RTB model, but it seems
to me that the Templeton data doesn't kill it completely. Have I completely
missed something here, or could that body in the cart be shouting "I'm not
dead yet?" I admit I'm no genetic anthropologist.

On 3/2/06, jack syme <drsyme@cablespeed.com> wrote:
>
> I dont see anything in there that suggests that Ross thinks that all homo
> sapiens today are not human. I agree he claims that hominids, before
> anatomically distinct modern homo sapiens appeared are less than human. And
> I agree with you that one could argue that they are human, using Ross's own
> criteria (religious artifacts, burials etc.)
>
> I expected them to say the same thing about h. floresiensis. They
> consider them less than human. Which leads me to another line of evidence
> against the RTB model. Does anyone know what the earliest date evidence for
> h floresiensis is? According to the RTB model, God rested after he created
> man, and no species should be created after Man, so according to RTB no new
> species after 100k years ago or so. If H floresiensis appeared after this
> date it would disprove their model.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> *From:* glennmorton@entouch.net
> *To:* asa@calvin.edu
> *Sent:* Thursday, March 02, 2006 5:16 PM
> *Subject:* Re: Special Creation
>
>
>
> For Jack Symes, Michael Roberts, For David Opderbeck
>
> Jack Wrote:
>
> >>>I will have to look at what you posted over the past month later when I
> get home. And I dont have a copy of "Who was Adam" I was a subscriber to
> their message of the month for 2005 when they presented their human origins
> model over a span of 12 months. And the following is my understanding of
> their model, It is hard to go back over the old monthly messages as they are
> not indexed, so if any of you that have the book see anywhere that I am
> misrepresenting their model please correct me.<<<
>
>
> I will make it easy for Jack, here is a quote from the Fingerprint of God
> and he has not changed that position
>
> " Man is unique among all species of life. By
> 'spirit' the Bible means 'aware of God and capable of forming a
> relationship with Him.' *** *Evidence of man's spiritual dimension
> would include divine worship, shown by religious relics, altars,
> and temples.* *** From the Bible's perspective, decorating, burial of
> dead, or use of tools would not qualify as conclusive evidence of
> the spirit. Moreover, nonspirit creatures such as bower birds
> decorate their nests, elephants bury their dead, and chimpanzees
> use tools."
> "While bipedal, tool-using, large brained hominids roamed the
> earth at least as long ago as one million years, evidence for
> religious relics and altars dates back only 8,000 to 24,000 years.
> Thus the secular anthropological date for the first spirit
> creatures is in complete agreement with the biblical date.
> "Some differences, however, between the Bible and secular
> anthropology remain. ****The Bible not only would deny that the
> hominids were men, it also would deny that Adam was physically
> descended from these hominids.* *** Even here, support from
> anthropology is emerging. New evidence indicates that the hominid
> species may have gone extinct before, or as a result of, the
> appearance of modern man. At the very least, abrupt transitions
> between [hominid]species is widely acknowledged. ~ Hugh Ross, The
> Fingerprint of God, (Orange: Promise Publishing, 1991), p. 159-
> 160.
>
> I have bolded the relevant sentences and since the archive does not use
> bold, I have offset them with ***'s.
>
> Two points, the first bolded sentence is his criteria for spirituality.
> The second is his statement that the hominids were NOT men. And that is why
> Hugh Ross' view has been falsified from the day it was first written. He
> claims that altars and religious relics are evidence of spirituality and
> then denies that what actually seems to exist (religious altars
> (Bilzingsleben) and what possibly exists,religious artifacts (Tan Tan venus
> figurine and the Berekhat Ram venus figurine). The latter two items are the
> first in a series stretching to the Mesolithic of tiny figurines depicting
> the human form of which the later ones, when found with anatomically modern
> man are known to have been used in worship as late as this century. It is
> the mother Goddess religion.
>
> From their broadcast
> pnm://broadcast.reasons.org/rtbradio/cu20041102.rm?start=00:04:30.0
>
> Air date: 11-02-04
>
> Fuz says, speaking of H. floresiensis:
> "Fuzz: Right, I like to think of the hominids in an analogous way to the
> way
> I think about the great apes, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans."
>
> And this:
>
> "****RTB's biblical creation model considers the hominids found in the
> fossil record to be animals created by God's direct intervention for
> His purposes. They existed for a time, then went extinct. These
> remarkable creatures walked erect They also possessed limited
> intelligence and emotional capacity. Such characteristics allowed them
> to employ crude tools and even adopt a low level of "culture," much as
> baboons, gorillas, and chimpanzees do. But while the hominids were
> created by God's command, they were not spiritual beings made in His
> image.* *This status was reserved for human beings*."***
> "Furthermore, the RTB model treats hominids as analogous to, yet
> distinct from, the great apes. For this reason, the model predicts
> that anatomical, physiological, biochemical, and genetic similarities
> existed among hominids and human beings to varying degrees. But
> because the hominids were not made in God's image, they are expected
> to be noticeably different from humans, as reflected by their
> cognitive and communicative capacities, behavior,"technology," and
> "culture.""
> "The RTB model maintains that while human beings reflect God's image
> in their activities,hominids did not. The model asserts that humans
> are uniquely spiritual and hominids were not. The archeological record
> associated with hominid fossils supplies key data to evaluate this
> prediction." Fazale Rana and Hugh Ross, Who Was Adam?, (Colorado
> Springs: NavPress, 2005), p.50
>
> ***
>
>
Received on Thu Mar 2 20:53:09 2006