RE: [asa] The Bible does not require a Neolithic Adam!

Don writes:
>While your entire post was well thought out and I certainly might agree
with much of it, you used the idea of a "smoking gun"
>and state that Dick should dig deeper into the verses. Agreed. But what
about the statement above. You make it sound as if
>this is the first time anyone felt pain at childbirth. It says "greatly
increase" not "begin to have". This implies that there was
>already pain at childbirth, but now it would be even greater. This could
be a neurological increase, or more likely, a spiritual
>increase in pain. The memories of such a birth, painfully physical, and
then to see the very thing that you gave birth to
>(painfully) turn on you and become evil and corrupt as mankind is
currently, is painful (increasingly so) spiritually and
>hsychologically. What I'm trying to say is that the verse above refers to
our spiritual, mental, and psychological pain and
>memories of the birth and the disappointment many parents feel when there
children do not turn out as hoped. Know anyone
>with a child with whom they're disappointed? Certainly, if your
translation is correct, it cannot be the "smoking gun" for a
>Neolithic Adam. But, based on the idea that birthing pains would
"increase", not "begin", does not necessarily place him
>further back either.
 
Thanks for the kind words. First off, the pain in child birth is not the
smoking gun Dick speaks of. Dick used the term 'smoking gun' of metal work,
not me. I merely quoted him'. If Genesis 4:22 is really about metal work,
then there is a problem with my views. I have worked on my views for 12
years now and this passage has always been the biggest problem for me. Now,
having found a satisfactory answer to it, I am quite content. But, the pain
is not the smoking gun of when Adam lived. The human activities we see by
the bucket load in the anthropological data clearly says Adam is old, very
very old. I also didn't mention the genetic history of mankind goes back 5
million years, for that is the age of some of our nuclear genes. We can't
have an Adam who is parent to us all younger than that.
 
Concerning pain in child birth. The argument I thought I was making is that
pain in childbirth is due to the ratio of the neonatal head circumference
to that of the birth canal. This is one sentence out of my new pamphlet,
Who was Adam. The page number is still to be determined when I finish
formatting it.
 
". The human birth canal is 13 centimeters at its longest dimension and 10
centimeters at the smallest. By comparison the baby's head is 10
centimeters at the longest dimension and the shoulders 12 cm." Glenn R.
Morton, Who was Adam?, Pathway Papers, 5 (Spring: DMD Publishers, 2006),
page to be determined.
 
That is a tight fit. Similar proportions among fossil men go back to about
2.5 million years.
 
Anyone who has seen animals give birth, know that they are not entirely
comfortable. Watching the contractions during the birth of a cow, or even a
cat, the animal is experiencing discomfort. However, it is nothing like
what we humans experience. Everytime I tell a group of women that I once
broke my leg in 4 places and my foot was at my kneecap, and tell them how
horendously painful it was, they always say, it can't match childbirth. And
the few women who have broken their leg like that agree. Since I will never
experience pain in childbirth, I can't quite be an expert on it.
 
Thus, this is to say, I do agree with you that in and of itself, pain in
childbirth could be said to be psychologically increased. But when one
realizes that the anatomical features of the human birth which cause the
pain we see today, existed two and a half million years ago, why would I
need to resort to psychology or subjective feelings to say that pain
increased? I have the anatomical data which shows that it was a problem back
then.
 
 
 
 

glenn
They're Here: The Pathway Papers
Foundation, Fall, and Flood
Adam, Apes and Anthropology

http://home.entouch.net/dmd/dmd.htm
  

-----Original Message-----
From: Don Perrett [mailto:donperrett@theology-perspectives.net]
Sent: Saturday, October 21, 2006 5:00 PM
To: 'Glenn Morton'; ASA Discussions
Subject: RE: [asa] The Bible does not require a Neolithic Adam!

Glen wrote:
When God said to Eve, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing"
Why would that be a curse, if she already has it?
 

 
Don Perrett
 

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Received on Sat Oct 21 20:06:43 2006