Re: What is "human" - the grey zone (was Re: [asa] Two questions... (biological bottlenecking with Adam and Eve))

It's perhaps also worth mentioning that the question of exactly when
in the past did humans become morally accountable is pretty much
entirely academic. We know that everyone today needs the gospel. We
don't know for certain exactly who might benefit from it if we had a
time machine, but we don't have one.

"You believe that God will not condemn anyone unless they are morally
accountable. I presume this view is consistent with the view, e.g.,
that infants are not morally accountable and therefore not in need of
forgiveness.

You ought to know, however, that the vast number of Christians do not
agree with this presumption. What of those who believe that all
humans, even ones still in the womb, require the forgiveness of God
through Christ?"

I don't see the claim that God will not condemn anyone who is not
morally accountable as requiring the corollary that infants, etc. are
not morally accountable. One traditional response to this (e.g., it's
in the Westminster Standards) is to assume that God appropriately
communicates salvation to those elect humans who are unable to get the
message through the ordinary means of preaching, reading, etc. (such
as people who die in infancy, severely mentally incapacitated people,
etc.) (Note-I think it would be getting off topic for ASA to get into
the question of election-for present purposes I think it's sufficient
to say that all individuals getting saved get the message.)

If a single feature were chosen as distinguishing true humans, it's
possible that you could draw the line and say "at this point, a human
was born from a non-human". However, you'd be hard-pressed to defend
the choice of a single feature. To the extent that features of
interest fossilize, we can see a gradual accumulation of more
human-like traits in the lineage leading up to modern humans (various
adaptations to upright walking and running, increasing brain size,
reduced jaw size, etc.). The only two features that come to mind as
perhaps being suitable for an abrupt either/or would be spiritual
status, which might (or might not) appear abruptly (either through an
intervention-style divine action or as an emergent property at some
threshold level of mental capacity) and the chromosome rearrangement
that distinguishes modern humans from modern apes, which would occur
abruptly and which might interfere with cross-reproduction, thus
forming an abrupt biological barrier. However, apart from knowing
that it goes back at least to a common ancestor of all modern humans,
we don't know where the chromosome fusion appears-perhaps the efforts
at Neanderthal genomes will show what they had, but getting good DNA
will be very difficult for anything more informative about the
long-term chromosomal history in hominids (no confirmed ancient DNA
sequences are older than Pleistocene; humidity and warmth are bad for
DNA preservation).

> This whole issue of "morally accountable" is totally hollow to a person qua scientist. Therefore, I do not see how one can integrate the Christian faith with evolutionary theory. There is much criticism of ID for requiring God to "interfere." However, is there no interference from God when one supposes that He has something to do with "non-humans" become "humans?" It seems to me that theistic evolutionists are "punctuated equilibrium" IDers.<

The problem of ID related to interference in my opinion is not the
possibility of interference, but requiring interference, often in
situations where there is no scientific reason to think there was
interference. Certainly Biblical miracles are good examples of
"intervention" style action, although the extent to which natural laws
are set aside may be less than popularly supposed (for example, Jesus
telling Peter to catch a fish to pay the tax reflects the fact that
one of the local fish species is prone to pick up shiny things;
however, Jesus knows in advance that Peter will catch the individual
fish carrying exact change). Popular ID, however, insists that there
must be lots of scientifically-confirmed gaps in evolution, a stance
poorly supported both theologically and scientifically.

Moral questions in general are scientifically inaccessible. In a way,
it is true that Christian faith and evolutionary theory do not
integrate in that they are largely talking about different things,
just as there's not a whole lot to say about integrating Christianity
and gravity or quantum mechanics or organic chemistry. Christianity
tells us to do honest, high-quality work in whatever field we're in;
it tells us to make good use of the work in helping our neighbors,
taking care of creation, etc.; it tells us to praise God for the
wonder of His creation, which includes all the fascinating laws,
patterns, etc.; it tells us that everything is God's creation and thus
generally behaving in an orderly manner which we can study (as opposed
to being subject to whims of pagan gods, attacks by chaos monsters, or
pure random chance with no a priori reason why it should make sense
nor why the rules won't change tomorrow). Christianity doesn't
especially address the question of what the natural laws are,
however-we have to go and find out.

Of course, there are specific questions about how God's providence
relates to quantum indeterminancy or the evolutionary process or
whatever, but these are not all that different from the question of
how the outcome of casting lots can be under His control.

God's having something to do with the transition from non-human to
human could be "interference" style or not. It could involve some
degree of front-loading rather than intervention. This is really more
of a question about how God works all the time in the physical world
than something unique to evolutionary questions. One's views on
predestination versus free will, open theology, etc. play a major role
in deciding how you think God would do things, but He could take any
of those approaches and still give a result matching what we observe.

-- 
Dr. David Campbell
425 Scientific Collections
University of Alabama
"I think of my happy condition, surrounded by acres of clams"
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