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

I wonder if some things like the curse of increased pain in childbirth have
primarily a social / cultural aspect rather than a physiological or
psychological one. This would be analagous to the way many like to handle
the problem of "natural evil" before the fall -- there were hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc., before the fall, but sin destroyed the sort of wise and
just civil administration that otherwise would have mitigated the
consequences of those natural events on human civilization.

Similarly, perhaps absent the fall, the pain of childbirth would have been
more manageable, because human culture, including medical culture, would
have advanced more rapidly and would have been more equitably available to
all women. Today, for many women in developed countries, childbirth is not
nearly so painful as it otherwise would be, due to the epidural drugs. Of
course, even today, due in many ways to sin (economic and social injustice),
most women in the world don't have access to this technology.

On 10/22/06, jack syme <drsyme@cablespeed.com> wrote:
>
> I had kidney stones once. In a sense, I gave birth to those stones. And
> it was extraordinarily painful. It was beyond pain.
>
> And I have witness from a woman or two, who have both passed kidney
> stones and given birth, and, at least in their words, the experience was
> comparable.
>
> On a slightly more serious note. Do you think that we have reached the
> end of our evolution? Is it not possible, short of routine caesarian
> sections, that human brain capacity has reached its limits?
>
> 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.
>
>
>

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Received on Sun Oct 22 21:10:05 2006