Adam, Eve and Population Genetics: A Reply to Dr. Richard Buggs (Part 1)

[Jay313 (Jay Johnson)]

@Swamidass

So the real question is how do the theological category of “adams” arise. That is the story told in Genesis, and it is concordism (i.e. eisogesis) read Homo sapiens into “adams.” To understand how this theological kind arises, we have to think about different models. In many models already proposed by others (e.g. Kinder and Walton), “adams” arise as a single couple, even though Homo sapiens may or may not arise as a couple.

I really wish you would stop saying “adams”. The Hebrew in Gen. 1:26 is adam, which is a collective noun meaning “mankind”. It is not a Hebrew plural, formed by adding -im, so what you’re doing is, in effect, talking about “mankinds” every time you say “adams”.

In any case, if you’re trying to define a theological category of “adams” in contrast to the biological category of “mankind,” I reject the distinction. We can have a theological definition of mankind and a biological definition of mankind, and they may be entirely different. But that is a far different thing than saying God created a “theological mankind” separately and at a later date than his creation of “biological mankind.”

All of humanity developed through one evolutionary process of creation. That is parsimony.