Josh, here is where I get confused. You claim to be advocating on behalf of those who you think are being unduly excluded. OK, fair enough. But your arguments (which claim to be representing “their” arguments) are not fully representative of any “traditional” views on Adam and Eve that I have ever encountered. (And yes, I am familiar with their perspectives. I was raised in a traditional, conservative Christian community, I minored in theology in my undergraduate education and I have a MDiv degree. And I would say most people you are dialoguing with here are fully aware of what “traditional” theologies think about Adam and Eve).
I think the word “traditional” is hard to use precisely, so instead, perhaps we can use “conservative Evangelical Protestant” (CEP) in its place, because it seems most of the people you are trying to represent here fall under that category. The CEP view of Adam and Eve was expressed nicely by Hugh Ross in a recent blog post about the Keller/Duncan video:
a supernatural de novo creation of Adam and Eve as the first humans and sole progenitors of all humanity.
By this, I take them to mean that every organism that has ever existed that can properly be called “human” descends from a single pair of humans named Adam and Eve. I have never encountered any CEP who uses that phrase to mean anything different than that. I have never seen any caveats about “all humanity (since 0AD)” or “all humanity (with a sin nature)” or “all humanity (minus a certain percentage of the human population before the time of Jesus)” or so on, until I read your ideas. You are the first person I have ever encountered who introduces these caveats. I am very interested to hear of these “theologians” whom you claim you are representing, who are OK with these caveats. I read very widely on these issues and I have never heard of them before this. I’m not trying to be snarky; I’m genuinely curious.
As I’ve said to you many times, I think your ideas about Adam, Eve, science, and human origins are interesting, and thought-provoking. I am enjoying this conversation, and I think you raise a lot of very important points about the insufficiencies of certain proposals about Adam and Eve. Thank you for explaining the difference between genealogy and genetics; as a non-scientist that distinction had never occurred to me.
But as far as I can see, the novelty of your ideas is two-sided: It pushes both evolutionary creationists AND conservative evangelicals (who are skeptical of evolution) to rethink Scripture and science. I’m all for that; I love anything that moves the conversation forward. However, I think we should be clear about what conversation we are having. Many of the criticisms that you leveled against Loren’s ideas could easily be made of both your position and the position of CEPs. Which is not to say that your ideas are wrong or bad at all, but I confess to being very confused about who you are arguing for, and who you are arguing against. And it appears from this thread that I am not the only confused one.
Amen! I think CEPs are the main group who need to hear this message, though, not evolutionary creationists.
P.S. I don’t see any reason to exclude this topic from the discussion. Deb’s request was that there would be no speculation about your departure from BioLogos, or conversation about the size of the BioLogos tent. Your ideas logically require there to be populations of homo sapiens distinct from those genealogically descended from Adam and Eve, and it is legitimate and necessary to clarify what you mean by that (as you have already done in subsequent posts).