David Opderbeck wrote:
>>>>No, it is not. In the YEC appearance of age argument, there is no real
connection at all between what we perceive and what the facts actually are.
The fossil bones were planted even though no such animals ever existed; M51
looks like the remains of a galactic collision untold eons ago even though
no such thing ever happened. I heartily agree with you that such arguments
are vaucous, and indeed dangerous for any kind of rational epistemology.
But I'm suggesting no such thing. There is data -- our genome is related to
that of earlier hominids -- the data tells us something true and real, but
the question is how to interpret the data. Is the only interpretation that
we evolved in the ordinary fashion? Or is there a possibility that God used
this preexisting material, in a very real way, to fashion an individual Adam
uniquely? In either case we would expect to see the same thing today -- a
clear genetic connection between us and the eariler hominids.
I will grant to you that ordinary evolution is a more appealing explanation
for those of us steeped in a culture that supremely values the scientific
method. No doubt, it is a simpler explanation and better survives the test
of Occam's Razor. The only reason to suggest an alternative is if we are a
priori committed to an understanding of the Biblical text that would require
it. And that is the 10,000,000 question, which I don't claim to be able to
resolve. <<<<<
WE may not be so far apart as one thinks.
>>>>>I believe whole-heartedly in miracles. If I object to your scenario, it
isn't because of the need for a miracle. Certainly God taking material from
a dead Homo Erectus and manipulating it to form a single man would qualify
as a miracle as well. So we don't disagree about miracles.
No, you're misunderstanding my suggestion about the "genetic dust." It
doesn't have to be degraded DNA from a body that has fully decomposed. In
my scenario it could be material from a recently dead body with intact
DNA. It really is hardly different at all from your scenario. In fact, if
we wanted to apply Occam's Razor to our two competing scenarios, mine might
survive longer than yours, because yours requires the additional step of a
resurrection, whearas mine doesn't. <<<<
OK, Then you are wanting the same thing I have advocated for 10 years, only you want it much later in hominid history. The problem with that is that once again, if you have a bottleneck more recently than 5 million years ago, you can't explain the genetic diversity. Only if God takes 20,000 apes and converts them to humans can you maintain the genetic diversity we see. The alternative is to have him do one or two 5 million years ago. Your late-in-time scenario doesn't solve the problem you want it to.
>>>>>It seems difficult to me to stretch the Genesis account of the creation of
Adam back millions of years. I can accept that Adam may not have been
neolithic, but I can't see anything in the text that suggests he was a
non-modern-human *homo *species from millions of years ago. If the Biblical
text requires a special creation of Adam, I think something like the
"genetic dust" scenario solves the "Templeton" problem in a way that is more
consistent with the Biblical context. <<<<
Actually a recent conversion of one ape's genes to modern human would leave us with exactly 2 alleles at each location. If God did 2 apes (adam ape and Eve ape) then you have 4 alleles at each location. The MHC complex has over 100 alleles. YOu can't generate them in a few 10's of thousands of years unless you have a hypermutation rate. You need to move Adam back in time.
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