This article says there is scientifically a way to understand evolutionary evidence of ancestry, as well as keeping with a miraculous creation of Adam and Eve. It sounds like he’s saying the people that Cain was worried about killing him came about through evolution in a separate process.
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Swamidass was a regular here and his book first came out 2-3 years ago so I don’t see where there has been any recent “breakthrough.” From the article
If you are willing to accept that A&E were just 2 of the vast numbers of ancestors that are your ancestors then yes. But to me it reduces the significance of A&E to zero.
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Both books have been discussed here, Swamidass’s more extensively. Short summary: the science in both is sound, as far as I know (and I’ve paid attention to the claims of both). Whether you find their approaches attractive is more a matter of theological outlook, general perspective on things, and taste. The article you linked to that describes them is kind of hyperbolic. Neither book relies on particular recent findings in genetics for their main claims. The article is also not always accurate; for example, it says that an article I wrote for BioLogos on this subject echoes Swamidass’s model, which is not true. My article was about limitations on a single ancestral couple from genetics, and neither his nor Craig’s approach requires a single pair of ancestors at any point in the past.
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Tut trouble is our @glipsnort, the science is sound considered alone. But not when more, i.e. less, an actual negative quantity, is hitched to it. Especially the negative quantity of fundamentalism. One could only have this conversation with Americans.
I read that book and largely found it a waste of time. It seemed to be written by someone who hated disappointing his parents and their literal view of Genesis 1 & 2, and so wanted to reconcile his own evolutionist view and theirs. All he could conclude was that the genetic record is unable to tell us that a single pair of specially created humans could not have been part of our human ancestry, along with the rest of the human race which evolved. In other words, an argument from silence - no actual evidence of their existence.
Ok it does negate the ‘traditional’ understanding that genetics/evolution positively rules out such a pair, but I just found the whole endeavour to be pretty pointless. It made me ask the question, if that really reflects reality, why did God bother to create that special pair?
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Just to clarify my understanding, as I think out loud: While I think that the current understanding is that a solitary pair cannot be ruled out in deep time >500,000 years ago, genetics is really pretty solid that a single pair could not have given rise to humanity in the last 6000 years or even back to 100,000 years, which pretty much eliminates the “traditional” interpretation of a relatively recent creation. So, it is all in how you interpret “traditional.” Of course, genetics also pretty much precludes a bottleneck of 5 individuals at the time of the flood, presumably 5000 years ago as well, but that doesn’t get the same press.
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Was he thinking more of the genealogic pair? And thus, why would God make one that intermingled and passed on some sort of “image of God”? I think that was a lot shorter time–2000 years, right? Thanks
They can be ruled out. Unless they were siblings or cousins after a beneficial mutation. There is no possibility of two random hominids out of myriads having similar mutations, not being related and finding each other.
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That’s why I said “single.” I was trying to communicate genetic rather than genealogical, which of course science and genetics really cannot address.
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thanks. Sorry! Got it!
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