Adam, Eve and human population genetics, Part 15: addressing critics – William Lane Craig, the historical Adam, and monogenesis | The BioLogos Forum

Well, Leo, genetically, if the process took many thousands of years, then it is impossible for the original humans to be a population of 10,000. That may have been the result at the end, but at the beginning of this “many thousands of years” one would expect only a few, perhaps one, a false start, then perhaps two or a dozen who may have continued. Then, during the rest of that long period of time, the rest of them would have followed (by this theory) by the rest. As an analogy, while it is true that europeans discovered the americas (after the aboriginals), and the europeans are a large number of people, yet we know that “Columbus” discovered America first (after the vikings). So in the same way, while a group of 10,000 may be what we think is required to explain the genetic diversity, yet we also know that somewhere along the way, there were some before others; some began at the beginning of the 10,000 years, some did not make it to be categorized as humans until near the end.

If it is argued that there is no single defining characteristic of humans that allows us to distinguish between human and non-human, then we are left in the quandary of not being certain that we are truly human even today. In such an abysmal state of uncertainty, we are left wondering what humans will yet evolve into, whether true humans, or something better than “the image of God”.

So yes, Leo, to be nothing more than an intelligent animal, or to be the image of God, even when somewhat less intelligent, that is the question.

@JohnZ I am not sure I follow the reasoning in your last post, but I accept Tattersall’s argument that there IS one defining characteristic that distinguishes human from non-human: it is the symbolic cognitive system that allows communication via language. You will find the clearest exposition of this in his book, “The Masters of the Planet”. It may not be just a coincidence that John begins his gospel: “In the beginning was the Word.”. Using this definition, our ancestors became human long after they evolved into the physical species, Homo sapiens. See the quote from Simon Conway Morris I gave in a previous post to jshammett. There is good evidence that this transition took place as a Great Leap Forward, which is reassuring if one postulates that, at some point in time, God bestowed upon humans an immortal soul.
Al Leo

Picking up on the question of what distinguishes humans from animals – it seems there is only one thing in which we differ in kind rather than degree. Even when it comes to using symbols in language, primates have been taught to communicate in sign language, certainly a use of symbols. This is taught rather than natural, but the primates seem to be pretty good at it. Dolphins can communicate with one another well enough to agree on a little show to put on for humans to observe. This must have used symbolic communication. Of course, humans do it more and better.

But there is one thing no animal does so far as I know. No animal wears clothes; no animal shows any shame about its body. They don’t even do this a little. So that’s a sharp distinction. And shame and clothes figure noticeably in the account of the Garden.

What do you think?

I agree you can’t put all your eggs in the language basket because research into animal communication keeps revealing more and more complexities and similarities with aspects of human language.

But not all humans wear clothes. And in some cultures, what “clothes” are worn is less a matter of shame than a matter of protecting the tender bits during certain activities.

But I think if you see clothes as symbolic of culture in general, than humans are the only creatures that have culture and produce cultural artifacts to unify groups.

Generally all data that is derived from human communities and activities display a spiritual dimension - this is displayed in a variety of ways, some foreign to us and if history is to be believed, some include horrific practices. Yet I am not aware of any historical narrative of any civilisation or culture that did not contain a religious/spiritual dimension. The extraordinary aspect of humanity is that Israel maintained its belief in the one true God against fantastic opposition and influence by military superior civilisations.

I do not agree with some type of bio-leap, but all available information shows a period when distinct human beings formed appeared and formed communities, civilisations and with these aspects of religion/spiritual and artistic expressions.

We seem to have switched from a discussion of genetic determination to a cultural determination of humanhood. Perhaps this shows the limitation of genetics: that it really cannot make definitive statements about humanity, including ancestry in the distant horizons. On the other hand, keeping the discussion back to genetics, I think I have clearly shown that the conclusion that the original human population must have been a minimum of 10,000, is clearly false, even by the assumptions of non-linear and discontinuous thinking.

On the cultural side, we can pretty well only gather evidence through the medium of language itself, particularly as written, or perhaps as told thru the generations (eg. as the Africans used to keep track of history and ancestry without written records). Some of that language may also be expressed in the form of art or pictures. But we cannot obtain an understanding of culture or a great leap forward, from the genetics.

The danger has been in the past to associate humanhood with culture in such a way that the more culture you have, the more human you are. If you cannot talk, are you less human? If you cannot write, or draw, or sing, does it make you less human? If your intelligence is less, are you less of a human? The answer to these questions shows the limitations of using a cultural definition for determination of humanity.

The central point is that no matter what outlook we employ, data and information becomes less informative as we go back in time. This shows the inadequacies of any methodology people may use to answer the questions related to human-hood, origins, and histories of peoples and nations.

The difficulties associated with models, including an assumption of somehow gradually sifting all sorts of hybrids until we get to 10,000 human beings, are simply too great for a discussion on true humans. We may note however, that biblical accounts go to some lengths to provide a line from Adam to Abraham, to David and to Christ. I think we need to acknowledge the difficulties inherent in the subject of origins from a biological/biosciences perspective, and note the distinct nature of the biblical account.

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If I remember correctly, Tim Keller has written a couple posts for BioLogos that express something like that view. For example, Creation, Evolution, and Christian Laypeople - BioLogos

Many, if not most, of the Christians I know believe that Genesis 3:20 implies that Adam and Eve were the genetic first parents of all humanity, so if that is a scientific impossibility, it matters.

Good observations. I think you can solve a lot of problems when you uncouple the concept of “image of God” from the concept of “humanity.” It is when everyone who has arrived at the designation “human” is automatically also designated “created in the image of God” that you run into a lot of problems when trying to reconcile Genesis and evolutionary anthropology.

@Christy

I think that Genesis says God created Adam and Eve as the first humans to commune with Him. Subsequent accounts in Genesis may be taken to mean there were other human beings and knowledge of God would have spread from Adam and his offspring.

This provides an adequate narrative for those who appear conflicted on this matter. Additional speculation that seeks to be grounded in so called proven science is, as I have suggested, without the scientific weight/proof that would require us to re-asses, or re-write Genesis. Indeed the modelling and other aspects proposed by some raises more questions without providing anything of substance on the Genesis account (please note the importance of the latter).

@johnZ

I seems to me that the issue of “the origin of humanity” and the issue of genetic bottlenecks do not overlap except to show that there never were just two in recent history. And that is significant of course, if one is defending a recent Adam and Eve as sole biological progenitors. But beyond displaying the genetic evidence that this was not so, I don’t think Dennis was here promoting the assumption that the bottleneck (the 10,000 or whatever there were at the recent smallest population size) must then also be identified as clearly the “first humans”.

On this latter question, there may be a continuum which was the point of Dennis’ reply to you. And it would seem that despite your protestations to the contrary, that you are indeed thinking in discontinuous terms, at least on this issue of identifying the “first” humans. I’m not saying that you are wrong to do so. I’m just noting that, on the evolutionary view, there does not appear to be any assumption that “bottleneck” must = “first” with regard to human identity, which is more of a theological / philosophical question anyway. So of course then, it does not rule it out either, and indeed, if Dennis is correct, then the long process of becoming human would probably include a whole range of time and probably any bottlenecks as well.

Christy, the implications of separating humaness or personhood from “image of God” are rather disastrous, don’t you think? Did not many racist slaveowners in the south used to do that? Or at least it raises the question of how would we decide? Is it possible for someone to be human but not to be created in the image of God? Are you suggesting that there are none of those left who are non-image people? Or that they still exist? What does it mean?

It seems to me that discontinuous or linear thinking is a “red herring” item. It was the geneticists that indicated an “original” population. “Original” is clearly a linear term. Origin is a discontinuous term. The term “first” is clearly a linear term, and a discontinuous term. It seems entirely unjust to condemn others for using such thinking when you yourselves are using it (not saying you specifically, but I hope you get my point).

So the point is that the smallest group of humans we could suppose would contain the genetic variability to explain the genetic variability we see today within the human population, is not necessarily the size of the original human population. If it took thousands of years for this development of this “smallest” human population, then we know that the original smaller human population was once much smaller, by definition of the process over time. This is a simple logical consequence, even without having a clear definition of humanhood.

Not since Adam.

I don’t think the image of God has anything to do with genetics or evolutionary development or biology. I think it is about election and a function given by God to humanity (via representatives, Adam and Eve) at a point in time, not necessarily immediately or automatically when humanity crossed the metaphorical and hypothetical threshold from animal to “human.” I think it is impossible to identify such a threshold anyway. It’s obviously a continuum. So trying to figure out when humans became humans doesn’t really relate to understanding Genesis. The point of this article was to dispute the claim of some Christians that Adam and Eve are the sole progenitors of all of humanity.

I think the whole concept of “image of God” has come to mean something other than what it means in the context of the biblical text. And then this other meaning is imposed back on Genesis. I’m not saying I disagree with the ideas people are referring to when they talk about this other meaning we have created for “image of God” (inherent worth, eternal soul, capacity for relating to God, etc.) I just don’t think that is what “image of God” means as a biblical concept.

“This is a simple logical consequence, even without having a clear definition of humanhood.”

Not if the human population was simply continuous over time with the previous population of hominids. All the genetics tells you is about a biological population size, with some constraint on when a minimum could have occurred. The move from one or two individuals to a population may have occurred back at the microbial stage and never again thereafter.

There’s no reason the transition to spiritual humanity should coincide with a speciation event, or that it should occur in only one person or couple and descend from them. That could be the case, but it could be that it happened wherever and whenever individuals (or a group) were given that capacity. The question of when or where the transition to spiritual humanity happened isn’t very accessible to us, except from proxies like artifacts that may be related to religious practice.

At any time near the near Eastern neolithic context of Genesis, there clearly were human groups all over the world. We can only guess at when all these groups “came of age” spiritually. Maybe the outcome in terms of a fall was determined by what a couple of representatives did, or maybe not. It suffices to know that we are spiritual and we are fallen. Exactly how this came about seems likely to remain a topic of conjecture alone. Genesis isn’t going to answer it and I don’t see how science will either.

I’m not sure you have clarified what it means to be image of God, Christy. I’m also not enlightened as to how this helps us to determine what “original” means, when we are simultaneously trying to be discontinuous, and yet using linear terminology such as “original”.

When terms have not been well defined, one has no basis for saying that the smallest human population was 10,000 people. Under that scenario, one could not argue against someone who insists that the group of 10,000 was likely not human yet, because of a different definition of “human”. You see, we don’t really look at the genetics first, but first look at the entity, and then look at the genetics. So if our perception of humanity includes a larger variety of genetics, and if interbreeding is possible, then that is the definition of humanity.

We are not just talking about “a population”. We are talking about the human race. So whatever happened to microbes, does not really help us to understand the term, “original human population”. Evolution assumes the human population was continuous with previous non-human hominids. This supposes that it was not a single chain of ancestors, but numerous ancestors, simultaneously mutating similarly, so that they could become different from their ancestors while becoming and remaining similar to all of the simultaneous similar mutants. We probably should not ask about the statistical probability of not just one or several major (species distinguishing) changes happening in one or two individuals and becoming fixed, but happening simultaneously in many (of course, over thousands of years), without being lost. Something it is rather unusual we do not hear much of happening presently? Over the last six thousand years of recorded history…

Dennis I have in the back of my mind had a problem with your analogy, but could not identify it.

I have now understood why your analogy does not work. The continuous part of child vs adult, refers to behaviour, so even reversion is possible. The legal part can be defined quite well. The physiological part is also quite reasonably able to be defined. Although a physiological definition could be disputed, it has a negligible continuum.

This would only apply to a certain perception of the past. It would not be true today, as human and non-human are biologically identifiable, and there is no confusion about intermediate species which are part human. If there once was a continuum, there is no such continuum today.

Dennis, this is an excellent post, rather under-appreciated by some of the commenters above. The proponents of the “extreme bottleneck” (2 original humans leading to today’s diversity by direct descent) have not engaged any of your substantive arguments involving independent, converging lines of evidence. I hope fence-sitters will take note of this absence.

I didn’t clarify, because that isn’t really the topic. I would go with the third concept of the list described here: http://biologos.org/questions/image-of-god “Image of God as our Commission.” Peter Enns fleshes out the view in this blog series: http://biologos.org/blog/series/what-does-image-of-god-mean

It doesn’t help determine the “original” humans. That is a pointless exercise in my book. I believe Genesis speaks of the first image bearers, not necessarily the first humans, not necessarily the first religious humans or the first humans capable of moral decision making. And we can know from science it does not speak of the biological parents of all humanity.