This page has been so badly quoted, it took me an hour to finally find the exact sentences involved.
Let’s look at the actual page, and the actual quote, and develop an understanding of what was “packaged” in the text, and what wasn’t…
[ Be sure to click on the image to enlarge the text to the maximum! ]
Notice, for example, that the sentence partially highlighted in yellow, is not where Dennis invested his thoughts on certainty. He wrote: “it seems…” And he drew our attention to the portion of 18 million years that included when we were “already human”.
So there should be no references to 18 million years of certainty.
The 2nd paragraph, which is where he prepares us for the certainty angle, he writes:
“As our methodology becomes more sophisticated and more data are examined, we will likely further refine our estimates in the future. That said, we can be confident that finding evidence that we were created independently of other animals or that we descend from only two people just isn’t going to happen.”
And now that the long drawn out thread is more or less done … we have a general consensus that the “data noise” that could hide a 2 person bottleneck is 700,000 years away! This is pretty consistent with Dennis’ prediction, right?
Because of the wall of noise at 700,000 … we are certainly not going to find evidence for a bottleneck before then. It just isn’t going to happen. All we must confess is that, after 700,000 years, there might be one… but we can’t tell from the current test techniques.
So, in view of a 700,000 time frame … which is dramatically beyond any estimate by any Creationist for when any humans could have existed… comparing these three conclusions as equally certain doesn’t seem at all wrong-minded!:
If there was a bottleneck at 700,100 years ago … what “things” would those hominids be? Would they be human? Certainly none of the critics of Evolution would think they would be.
The obvious bottom line that bears repeating. A H. erectus who lived more than 700,000 years ago would not meet any of the criteria for “Adam” that literal biblicists require based on Gen. 2-3.
Thank you for taking the time to look at what was actually said. Personally, I would have gone even farther than Dennis in his last sentence:
“Thus the hypothesis that humans descend solely from one ancestral couple has not (delete yet) found any experimental or evidential support …”
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