Re: Historical honesty if not accuracy

Hi Chuck, It is late, and still being jet-lagged I woke up this morning at 2am so
needing to go to bed, this will be short.

On Thu Jun 8 17:13 , "Austerberry, Charles" sent:

>For some people, just the mere evolution of one species into another
>(particularly if it's Homo sapiens) produces as much of a crisis of
>faith in them as Jesus' bodily remains being discovered would produce in
>me.

It did in me, but that is because I was taught that if YEC be wrong, the Bible is
totally false. I think I have come to a new/novel concordistic possiblity, that,
while no one likes it, it works for me because it holds out the possibility that
the Bible is true historically.

>For example, the differences between the two creation stories in Genesis
>1 and 2 were retained, not glossed over or altered to be factually
>consistent. I think the ancient Israelites, and Jesus, knew about the
>differences as well or better than we do. Those "contradictions" might
>not have bothered them at all, because the differences are
>contradictions only if the first two chapters of Genesis are read in a
>hyperliteral (modern) way. Did God make humans after the animals, to
>rule over them, or did God make the animals after Adam, to see if some
>might be suitable helpers for Adam? Were the plants made before animals
>and humans, to prepare a home for them, or was Adam made first and then
>plants once Adam was available to tend them? You get different answers
>depending on which chapter (1 or 2) of Genesis is consulted.

Exactly, which is why the days of proclamation view avoids such problem. The order
God planned the universe may not match the order of fulfillment. see
http://home.entouch.net/dmd/daysofproclamation.htm

>Had God tried to implant the theory of evolution in their minds before
>scientific understanding prepared the way, I think God would have had to
>really take over the minds of the biblical writers in a manner that God
>(in my opinion) respects us too much to do.

Given that other ancient cultures DID believe in evolution (not the modern form of
it but evolution none-the-less), I don't agree with this point. The ancients COULD
understand evolution as evidenced by those other cultures.

>P.S. - Kudos to both Glenn Morton and George Murphy for their excellent
>pieces in the June 2006 issue of the ASA journal Perspectives on Science
>and Christian Faith. I do have one question for Glenn, though. Glenn
>cites a 1965 report of an "honors math student at Sheffield University
>... who had only a millimeter of brain encrusting the inside of his
>skull. The rest of his skull was full of water." Hmm... I'm skeptical.
>I'd want to see more data on the smallest sizes of human brains that
>appear to function normally.

Thank you, This is actually a rather widespread phenomenon, although admittedly the
math student was the extreme case. Here is more data on this type of thing.

Lorber was the leader in this area, but you can see that there are others who were
involved as well.

"Grant. Born June 13, 1963. Birthweight 7 lb. First son of an
unmarried mother. Uneventful pregnancy and labour. Referred on
account of rapidly enlarging head at 10 weeks of age.
        "At this stage he was well and he reached the usual
milestones at the right time. He had no abnormal neurological
signs but his head circumference was 17 1/2 in. (42.5 cm.). His
anterior fontanelle was very wide but not under great tension. A
right sided tap at his anterior fontanelle produced clear normal
cerebrospinal fluid at a depth of only a few millimetres from the
skin. The pressure was 180 mm. of water After injection of air,
a radiograph showed no evidence of cerebral cortex--the air
collecting immediately below the inner table of the skull and
moving freely in all directions. No brain was encountered during
needling the skull on this occasion. But for the absence of
symptoms and the fact that the CSF was fully normal at this
stage, this could have been a case of gross subdural effusion.
. . .
        "His head circumference at 17 weeks of age reached 19 1/2
in. (50.0 cm.). Nevertheless his physical and mental health
remained good. He laughed readily, could lift his head off the
couch both in the prone and the supine position, went for objects
placed in front of him and grasped them.
        "A further anterior fontanelle tap again encountered CSF
within a few millimetres of the skin and on advancing the needle
to a depth of 5.5 cm no brain could be encountered. After
injection of air, this cavity showed no evidence of brain but the
falx and the tentorium were clearly outlined. His shunt was re-
explored and the upper catheter was found to be blocked and was
replaced." ~ John Lorber, "Hydranecephaly with Normal
Development," Develop. Med. Child Neurol. 1965, 7, pp 628-633, p.
629-630
**
c:\noteback\man.txt
1846

        "Well over 500 CT scans were performed on patients, some of
whom were over 20 years of age. These included some who already
occupied responsible positions in life, including senior nurses,
university graduates and members of executive councils. Many
were never suspected of having hydrocephalus, although looking
back on their past history this diagnosis could have been made
much earlier. They obviously had slow progressive hydrocephalus
which did not detectably interfere with their life style. By the
time they had a CT scan, some had such enormously dilated
ventricles there was hardly any brain left above the level of the
tentorium. They retained the midbrain cerebellum and pons but
what was virtually missing was the part of the brain we attribute
to superior intelligence ; the centres for the fin control of
movements and the appreciation of visual and auditory stimuli.
        "The systematic CT scan study showed there were many older
children and adults who had grossly dilated ventricles with very
thin residual brain and yet did not suffer from physical defects
and had normal intelligence. Some were outstandingly intelligent
with IQs well above the 'bright normal' range. I can only
presume hydrocephalus with only moderately raised intracranial
pressure can slowly progress over many years to reach eventually
extreme degrees without ever causing symptoms. It is possible
that specific functions of the brain, such as the motor cortex,
may be relocated elsewhere from early infancy onwards or that we
do not need such a large quantity of brain and only need to use a
very small part of it under normal circumstances." ~ John Lorber,
"Is your Brain really Necessary?", Nursing Mirror, April 30,
1981, p. 20

"What is now unquestionable is that babies, whose frontal,
temporal and occipital lobes are reduced to a thickness of a few
millimetres, can grow up into normal individuals." ~ John Lorber,
"Is your Brain really Necessary?", Nursing Mirror, April 30,
1981, p. 20

        "We have arrived at a point at which we can define what
grammar genes would be. The grammar genes would be stretches of
DNA that code for proteins, or trigger the transcription of
proteins, in certain times and places in the brain, that guide,
attract, or glue neurons into networks that, in combination with
the synaptic tuning that takes place during learning, are
necessary to compute the solution to some grammatical problem
(like choosing an affix or word)." ~ Steven Pinker, The Language
Instinct, (New York: Harper/Perennial, 1994), p. 322

"This case indicates that in left hemispherectomy for early brain
insult, the right cerebral hemisphere and other intact residual
structures can furnish the necessary neuroanatomic substrata for
the development of superior language and verbal reasoning
skills." ~ Aaron Smith and Oscar Sugar, "Development of Above
Normal Language and Intelligence 21 Years After Left
Hemispherectomy," Neurology, Sept. 1975, p. 816
>

"In summary, although total brain volume and cognitive ability are
positively associated in the general population, the same is not
true among sisters in the same families. Similar results have also
been reported for males. This suggests that the direct, gene-
based, causal association between the total brain volume and
cognitive ability may be of minimal functional significance in
modern populations, even if large enough to be evolutionarily
relevant." P. Thomas Schoenemann, et al, "Brain Size Does Not
Predict General Cognitive Ability within Families," PNAS
97:9:4932-4937, p. 4937

"Lorber divides the subjects into four categories: those with
minimally enlarged ventricles; those whose ventricles fill 50 to
70 percent of the cranium; those in which the ventricles fill
between 70 and 90 percent of the intracranial space; and the most
severe group, in which ventricle expansion fills 95 percent of the
cranium. Many individuals in this last group, which forms less
than 10 percent of the total sample are severely disabled, but
half of them have IQ's greater than 100. This group provides some
of the most dramatic examples of apparently normal function
against all odds." ~Roger Lewin, "Is Your Brain Really Necessary,"
Science, Dec. 12,1980, p. 1232.

You can have half your brain taken away and not miss it. That makes you have a
brain the size of an Australopith.

     "In contrast to the pattern of drastic selective impairment and sparing
of either linguistic and verbal or nonverbal, visual, and ideational functions
in adults with either right or left hemispherectomy for tumor, studies of
initial and long-term effects of 36 infantile hemiplegics with left
hemispherectomy and 28 with right hemispherectomy revealed no evidence of
consistent or significant differences between hemispheres. Although the
overall findings revealed that earlier damage to the remaining hemisphere
limited subsequent developmental potentials in most of the patients, the
remarkable capacities of the intact residual structures were demonstrated in
long-term follow-up studies in two cases. At a 25-year follow-up; each had
obtained a college degree and had enjoyed a successful career as an executive,
following a right hemispherectomy in one case and a left hemispherectomy in
the other. Thus, as Smith noted, the findings demonstrate that at birth each
of the two cerebral hemispheres contains the neuroanatomical and substrate
necessary for the development of normal or even superior adult language and
verbal and nonverbal cognitive functions."~Aaron Smith, "Early and Long-Term
Recovery from Brain Damage in Children and Adults: Evolution of Concepts of
Localization, Placticity, and Recovery,", in C.R. Almli and S. Finger,
editors, Early Brain Damage: Research Orientations and Clinical Observations,
1, 299-323, p. 308

INterestingly, about the time that my article was being published, Nature published
an article talking about the stone tools made by Homo Floresiensis. The article
compared the tool making techniques of H. erectus 700 kyr at Mata Menge ago with
the stone tool making techniques of H. floresiensis at Liang Bua. here is what they
say:

"Despite being separated by 50 km and at least 700,000 yr, there are remarkble
similarities between the stone artefact assemblage from Mata Menge and that found
with H. floresiensis at Liang Bua. For instance, both assmeblages show an emphasis
on the use of volcanic/metavolcanic fluvial cobbles as raw materials, along with
the transportation of flake blanks for use as cores. Core reduction strategies at
Mata Menge and Liang Bua are also very similar, with special emphasis on freehand
reduction of cores both bifacially and radially. In fact, small, invasively reduced
radial cores from the two sites re virtually indistinguishable. In addition, single
platform cores, multiplatform cores, cores with 'burniation' scars from the
production of elongated flakes, 'truncated flakes and cores indicating anvil-
supported percussion and 'perforators' occur in both assemblages. The maximum
dimensions of the flake scars on Mata Menge and Liang Bua cores are also very
similar." Adam Brumm, et al, "Early Stone Technology of Flores and its Implications
for Homo floresiensis," Nature 441(2006): 627

These small brained men were descended from H. erectus. While some have tried to
say that these are merely microencephalics, the problem with this is that you would
have to have a whole village of them, something never before seen in modern
history. It would also have to deny that island endemic miniaturation, in which
animals on islands shrink in size over time, which occurs in all other species,
can't happen with mankind.

"The cognitive capabilities of early hominins, however, should not be
underestimated, as indicated by the technology of the stone artefacts
associated with H. floresiensis at Liang Bua. It is also significant
that hominins were able to colonize Flores by the Early Pleistocene
whereas the required sea crossings were beyond the dispersal abilities
of most other land animals, even during glacial periods of lowered sea
level."" M. J. Morwood, et al, ""Archaeology and age of a new hominin
from Flores in eastern Indonesia,"" Nature,431(2004):1091
Received on Thu Jun 8 22:54:27 2006