Fair enough, and thanks for the clarification. My point wasn’t really to offer the whole dialogue as a great example of how to discuss these things, but just because Eddie kept referring to positions about the MRCA that had been presented by BioLogos science writers, and this particular comment seemed to me to be a fairly clear explanation of what MRCA means to one of BioLogos’s primary science writers, in his own words.
Hi Eddie,
Chiming in from the peanut gallery to clarify your question,
Do geneticists today allow that a couple such as this could have existed? Neither the MRCA scenario (for any population of humans, past or present) nor the “MitoEve / YAdam” scenario permits unique ancestors, correct?
My nonspecialist’s understanding is that vanishingly few species have a truly unique ancestral pair, since (with the possible exception of two same-species life forms set adrift on a log that just happen to colonize a distant island) evolution tends to act upon populations.
@Jonathan_Burke, perhaps these texts find the middle ground?: Mankind, without God’s intervention, is mortal.
The Bible makes it clear that mortal man doesn’t have immortality. “God alone is immortal“, 1 Tim.6:15-16
“. . . the King of kings, and Lord of lords; Who only [alone] hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto…”
Those who seek immortality will get it, Rom.2:6-7:
"Who will render to every man according to his deeds: To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life. . . "
Jesus brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel, 2 Tim.1:10.
“But is now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel…”
1 Cor 15 discusses the spirit and resurrection, but doesn’t quite equate the spirit to a soul, or equate resurrection with immortality:
1Co 15:42-44
"So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption:
It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power:
It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body."
But if we take this text with the other texts, can’t we confidently say that while the soul might not be inherently immortal, the appearance of Jesus gives immortality to the believers?
You are correct. The evidence we have supports a large population, around 10,000 or more, back to 18 million years ago at least.
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Eddie, you are saying that you’ve seen the “6 million years ago” figure for Adam and Eve as unique ancestors on various EC blogs, etc. Can you be more precise? Where are you seeing this? A link would help as well.
I know for myself I have not written this, so if you’re thinking this is coming from me, that is not correct.
Do you still have your hopes up for that? I personally don’t see it happening as things stand now. It seems that Western Christian theology has to “evolve” too somehow… Don’t get me wrong, I’m all up for historical continuity of the Church. But maybe having some cross-over occur between “Western” and “Eastern” theology would be a wholesome trajectory for the Church overall. That some of the momentum for such change might come from the corner of population genetics shouldn’t be a problem in and of itself, right?
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Hi Eddie,
I’ve not made that argument, no - nor has anyone else here at BioLogos, to my knowledge. I’m not sure where you saw it, sorry.
The population genetics evidence we have shows us that our ancestral population actually gets bigger as we go back in time, not smaller. The ~10,000 bottleneck comes after we part ways with the lineage leading to chimpanzees.
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So here is my image of a genealogy, going from a population in the distant past (at the top) forward (to the bottom).
Squares are men.
Circles are women.
Lines show parentage.
Blue squares trace the lineage of the Y-Chromosome Adam.
Red circles trace the lineage of the mitochondria Eve.
Dark lines mark all individuals that are common ancestors of the youngest generation.
This should make clear that mitoEve and YAdam are separate concepts from the MRCA. It makes no difference how long ago mitoEve and YAdam lived, and if they ever met each other. This tells us nothing about our MRCA.
I am asserting that Adam and Even could have been common ancestors of us all (any couple in the thick line group), and this would largely leave orthodox theology intact. This does not make them our unique common ancestors (but that isn’t the case in the orthodox account either). Remember, we see clear textual evidence that humans are not a pure line to Adam.
In fact, it is possible that God created Adam and Eve de novo (among a population of other humans with whom they were genetically compatible). So we can still hold to the story of the dust and rib if we want to too.
The one thing this account challenges is the “sole progenitorship” of Adam, which I would argue is an extra-biblical claim altogether. It tells us no where in scripture that Adam and Eve are our sole-progenitors. In fact it tells us the opposite, that we are not pure, in the Nephalim story.
Does that clarify some more the distinctions I have been making?
Evolution does not rule out a historical couple in the distant past who are common ancestors of us all, or even that they were de novo created. It does, however, seem to contradict the notion that they are our sole-progenitors. However, if I just let sole-progenitorship go, this does not seem to impute error on scripture in any way, and this is clearly a model with a historical Adam. So that is why I say evolution does not rule out a historical Adam.
Remarkably (and I only recently learned this from the literature), in this model Adam and Eve could have been very recent, within the last 10,000 years. So this model might even be consistent with the geneology counting chronologies that YECs do with Genesis. That does not even need to be abandoned in this model, especially if we take @JohnWalton’s temple inauguration seriously. That could have taken place 6,000 years ago, over 6 literal days, with a literal Adam and Eve that are ancestors of us all. None of this would contradict what mainstream science tells us about evolution.
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It is a rough draft =). Also, from the caption you can see that the most recent generation in the diagram is the bottom.
I never claimed that I am holding to the traditional view. Rather, I have been saying that a “historical Adam” is possible within an evolutionary framework. The only thing that has to be released (changed from the traditional account) is sole progenitorship, a notion that is not directly stated anywhere in Scripture. This is why I personally take exception to pronouncements that science has demonstrated that Adam and Eve never existed, that a historical Adam and Eve are impossible.
This is most certainly not the case. Adam and Eve could have been real people who are common ancestors of all of us. They could be historical figures. Science has not ruled this out.
And I will concede upfront any deep expertise in interpreting Genesis. Maybe I am wrong. I certainly would not say that the Bible requires this interpretation to be correct.
However, there are several textual challenges that do arise that challenge the sole-progenitorship interpretation (e.g. the towns that Cain was afraid of, the blanket prohibition against incest in Leviticus is not conditional). In this model, these problems disappear.
In principle, given God’s action, this possible. He could have made Adam and Eve de novo just before any other humans emerged by evolutionary processes. In this case, they are still not the sole-progeintors, but they pre-exist all other humans, and are genetically related to all humans too.
The question I have from the genetics, however, is if the RTB model (special creation) is falsified by the data, especially if we allow for exotic starting conditions in genomes that would not be expected in evolutionarily derived organisms. I do not know if this has been carefully considered by anyone. Perhaps it has.
I would add that you have not shown a contradiction between the common ancestry model and Paul’s actual statements. Sure, this contradicts the traditional interpretation, but no the actual words written by Paul. Right?
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A couple of comments.
First, I would be a little more cautious about the scientific conclusions. I would say that population genetics rules out a sole progenitor couple within the last half million years (roughly speaking), barring extensive miraculous intervention to make it look that way. That’s at least much older than the first anatomically modern humans, but it’s a lot shorter than many millions of years. For the longer time horizon, I would say that the most parsimonious explanation for the data is that we had a substantial population throughout that periods, and that that is the conclusion favored by the data. However, I do not have a good enough handle on the uncertainties in the various studies to place a firm limit on possible alternatives.
Second, on terminology, specifically the “most recent common ancestor” or MRCA. Usage here has been consistent and is fine in this context: the MRCA is the most recent common genealogical ancestor, the most recent person from whom everyone can trace descent. If you’re reading or talking to geneticists you might run into problems, however, since they almost always mean something else by MRCA: they mean the most recent common genetic ancestor of a set of copies of the same genetic locus, i.e. the same chunk of DNA in the everybody’s copy of the genome. Thus, to a geneticist, Y-Adam is the MRCA for the Y chromosome and mtEve is the MRCA for the mitochondrial genome. There are lots of other MRCAs for different chunks of the autosomes and X chromosomes.
The time to the genealogical MRCA is short, since the number of ancestors doubles every generation. The main determining factor for humans is whether or not Australia was isolated genetically for tens of thousands of years. If it was, then the MRCA probably lived a few thousand years before that. If it wasn’t, then they lived within the last ten thousand years or so. In contrast, the time to the genetic MRCA is typically something like 1 million years, and varies widely across the genome.
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The RTB model has seemed to me a bit of a moving target. Is there a concise description of its current shape?
No no, I’ve been following along for the whole conversation, as it’s been positively riveting compared to certain discussions of change and time that shall remain nameless.
In fact, it’s precisely because I’ve been following along that I was confused why you asked the question you did, and I sought to clarify it. Because earlier it seemed to me you had understood well what EC scientists were saying, but then your question was posed in such a way as to make me think you hadn’t actually understood it after all. I am not trained in biology at any formal level beyond one general education undergrad course, but from the little I understand it seems population bottlenecks would very rarely narrow down to two specimens… yet that’s what you seemed to be hunting for with Adam and Eve. But it’s quite possible / probable that I misunderstood you.
As far as I can see, Adam and Eve wouldn’t have to be the sole progenitors of the human race if we assume an incremental evolution of a population of hominids, into which at some point God does something special with an original pair Adam and Eve. So let’s say just for the sake of discussion that all the other hominids at Adam & Eve’s time were 99.99% modern humans, and whatever it was that God breathed into Adam made him 100% human (whatever exactly that means). His kids and grandkids would then have felt perfectly natural intermarrying and making babies with the other very-very-nearly humans (cf. Cain’s wife) that were in this small population. From there, we would see the propagation of original sin throughout the rest of that hominid population.
How is this not consistent with both a relatively traditional (minimally modified) take on Protestant theology as well as the broad strokes of human evolutionary history?
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I would phrase it rather that reality should have veto power over both scientists and theologians, and that the methods of natural science are well suited to uncovering the reality of the physical world. At any rate, the track record of theology attempting to veto scientific conclusions is not good at all.
My grandfather’s American Protestant evangelical theology included the belief that the Roman Catholic church was of the devil. Should evangelicals have retained that traditional belief as well? (And what about his belief that Christianity was consistent with belonging to the Klan?) I actually don’t understand the basis for the question: Is your assumption that people born earlier are more likely to be right about theology?
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