More book reviews on the Genealogical Adam and Eve

[MOls (Michelle Ols)]

A couple new reviews of Joshua Swamidass’ book, The Genealogical Adam and Eve recently published.

This review was written by Richard Buggs, Professor of Evolutionary Genomics at Queen Mary, University of London, who is also a Christian:

Adam and Eve our ghostly ancestors?

From a YEC perspective, this review was written by Hans Madueme, an associate professor of theological studies at Covenant College:

Evolution and Historical Adam? A Provocative But Unconvincing Attempt

Some responses to these reviews are also being discussed on the Peaceful Science forum, where it is possible to interact directly with the author, Joshua Swamidass.

And Jon Garvey, the author of

The Generations of Heaven and Earth- Wipf and Stock Publishers

has been weighing in there, too:

Richard Buggs: Adam and Eve our ghostly ancestors?

TGC Reviews the GAE

And here is a commentary/perspective from Joshua Swamidass about impressions he has had while discussing the Genealogical Adam and Eve:

The Garden Path To 1+1=3

I would be interested in hearing which points made in these book reviews the readers of this BioLogos forum agree or disagree with.

[Randy]

I just finished the Gospel Coalition review. I agree it was more encouraging and peaceable than could be. He focused on the potential for encouraging Christians, rather than divisiveness. In that way, I was impressed. It’s a good starter for further conversation. PTL!

However, while I strongly agree with Swamidass (and most Christian scientists) that we need to unfetter our view of creation from any sort of prejudice possible, I dropped my lower dentures at reading this from Madueme:

He thinks that science’s exegesis of the physical data is better off without theological assumptions. I doubt that. Natural science is and always has been laden with theological assumptions—e.g., that scientific laws are uniform, that nature is intelligible, that we have the cognitive ability to make sense of it, and so on. Such tacit commitments are hard to account for outside Christian theology.

Does this mean that we should encourage our individual presuppositions? If so, how do we demand intellectual honesty from someone from a different creation mentality–Hindu, shaman, or other, for example (Islamic is quite close to Christian, and the have their own YEC movement).

I appreciated Madueme’s critique from an exegetical perspective, as there does seem to be a presumption in Genesis that couples are the origins of a population–such as in Noah’s Ark (comes to my mind). However, I also agree that this is an exercise in minimalism, allowing for a big tent for those who have to retain Adam and Eve (to some extent; I don’t think Paul even meant Adam and Eve in the traditional Calvinist sense, so I think that it’s not really necessary, but that’s beside the point).

I also thought that the CMI review was quite kind.Review: 'The Genealogical Adam and Eve'

Overall, I am very glad for what I have seen of the book reviews; that Dr Swamidass is arguing, not from personal conviction, but to encourage dialogue; and that it seems to be doing what it was intended to do, so far!

Thanks