Re: Special Creation

Just an addendum -- I actually called the RTB web-radio show today and spoke
directly to Fuz Rana about this. He was upfront about the fact that
Templeton's data poses a problem for the RTB model as presented in "Who Was
Adam." He said Templeton's latest paper doesn't differ significantly in
methodology from his earlier "Out of Africa Again and Again" paper;
that Templeton's methodology is the subject of considerable ongoing debate
within the relevant scientific speciality and represents part of the larger
OOA / multiregional fight; and that a large body of data supports some sort
of OOA scenario. All reasonably fair points, I think, though Templeton's
latest run seems to show more robust level of statistical confidence than
his earlier work. He also said it might be possible within his model that
there was indeed a limited amount of hybridization resulting from sinful
liasons between humans and other hominds.

I asked him about the possibility for his model of a genetic connection
arising from God using preexisting hominid DNA to fashion Adam. This was
very interesting, probably the most interesting part of the call -- he said
an earlier draft of "Who Was Adam" contained something like this as a
possibility, but that it was removed by the editors because of concerns that
it would be too controversial for the larger Christian community.

It was a nice conversation and he seems like a sincere and decent guy. I
guess they put MP3's of their web-radio shows on their website, so I suppose
you can download it from there if you want to hear the entire call.

On 3/7/06, David Opderbeck <dopderbeck@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> *While humans are less diverse than many species, there is still far more
> diversity than can be fit into 100,000 years. That is the whole point of
> Templeton's work. That is why he says the replacement theory is strongly
> rejected. *
>
>
> Right, the genome of those emigrants from Africa 100,000 or so years ago
> didn't entirely replace the genome of the hominids who emigrated before
> them. But I guess what I'm trying to suggest is that the group that
> emigrated from Africa 100,000 or so years ago could have acquired genetic
> information from those earlier hominds in some way other than through
> breeding *after* arriving in Europe. Looking at it in a strictly
> naturalistic sense, perhaps there was cross-migration -- earlier hominids
> migrated back into Africa 200,000 or so years ago, bred with the archaic
> hominids there, and a group of those hybrids evolved into homo sapiens
> sapiens and migrated into Europe. Templeton's work seems to destroy one
> earlier theory of replacement, but from what little I know of the field, it
> seems fair to say that there's lots and lots and lots of genetic and fossil
> data still to be uncovered and analyzed.
>
> From a perspective that requires harmonization with a certain reading of
> scripture, one thought: God takes genetic material from an existing hominid
> or hominids in Europe / the Levant / Asia, whatever; out of this "dust" he
> fashions Adam and places him in the Garden, say 150,000 years ago; he clones
> Adam (the "rib") to make Eve; he kicks Adam and Eve out the garden and
> perhaps boots them all the way to Africa. Or the African emigrants are
> remnants from Babel. Or something like that. Again -- not something I feel
> I'm capable of or wanting to propose, or suggesting anyone should accept,
> but just exploring alternative possibilities if we have to adhere to a
> traditional notion of special creation based on scripture but also provide
> real explanations for the genetic data.
>
>
>
>
> On 3/7/06, glennmorton@entouch.net <glennmorton@entouch.net> wrote:
> >
> > David Opderbeck wrote:
> >
> > >>Ok -- but isn't this effectively what we see now in the human genome?
> > In modern humans, there is not a great deal of genetic diversity throughout
> > the existing population. We are a young species. Our genome, however,
> > contains evidence of far more ancient haplotypes. Observing where those
> > haplotypes occur in the genome and the number of mutations between them
> > permits the construction of a haplotype tree that permits estimates about
> > population growth and gene flows. So yes, the new Imago Dei man's
> > ancestors would likely show limited genetic variability a couple hundred
> > thousand years from now. But since He inherited my genome intact, wouldn't
> > a Haplotype tree of his ancestors' genome show the same evidence of ancient
> > haplotypes that mine shows? <<
> > While humans are less diverse than many species, there is still far
> > more diversity than can be fit into 100,000 years. That is the whole point
> > of Templeton's work. That is why he says the replacement theory is strongly
> > rejected.
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
Received on Tue Mar 7 16:38:14 2006