The Elimination of Intermediate Varieties: How Evolution Lays the Groundwork for Assigning Rights

Faith & Science Conversation
41

Al,
I share your disappointment!
Nonetheless let us try to argue relying on the evidence we have:

If one sets the generation of the primeval human persons at 3,500 BC (as I do), one has to assume that the first sin of human history against God’s law happened at a time when Homo sapiens had a population size of several millions spread all over the planet.

If one sets this generation at about 30,000 BC (as you seem to do), one has to assume that the first sin of human history happed at a time when Homo sapiens had a population size of hundreds of thousands, spread over a large part of the planet.

In either case, the question arises:

Were all the Homo sapiens individuals existing on earth at the time of the first sin already human persons?

  • If YES: Did all these contemporaries of the first sinner become affected by the first sin so that thereafter all people on earth was in “need of Redemption” (as Christian faith teaches us)?

  • If NO: At what time (or times) after the first sin did God transform all the non-personal human animals existing on earth into human persons in “need of Redemption”?

My answer is as follows:
The first sin was the trespass of one human person (say ’Adam’), likely with the complicity of his wife (say ‘Eve’) or some other primeval persons. If some of the primeval human persons didn’t sin, they were taken away by God.
All the other Homo sapiens individuals existing at the time of the first sin were non-personal human animals, and thereafter became transformed by God into human persons in “need of Redemption”.
So, after the first sin remained on earth only people in “need of Redemption”.

I would be thankful to know your answer. This may be helpful to establish the common base of statements which we both agree with, and have a fruitful discussion.

All the best

Antoine

42

I don’t think this is supportable at all. All humankind was created in the Image of God. That’s what the text says. But they were not held responsible to the law before they knew the law. That knowledge is exactly what Adam and Eve took before they were ready for it, and were then held responsible for.

This also very neatly does not require them to be the sole progenitors of humanity, since the idea that knowledge would be passed on genetically is ridiculous.

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43

This seems far too complicated. Why would God take away sinless primeval humans? And some of your comment sounds pretty racist to me.

44

I am very astonished by your claim: “some of your comment sounds pretty racist to me”

What I support is exactly the opposite to racism.

In my comments above I have repeatedly stressed and endorsed what I call the Foundation of Law:
In any coherent legal order personhood is defined by belonging to humanity; the fundamental rights of a person cannot be established by belonging to a subgroup of humankind, be it by race, religion, nation, stage of development, political class.

By contrast racism happens if one acknowledges that “being human sometimes means that you point at other humans and declare them to be not quite human” (your words in the comment of Jan 21 above).

Racism demolishes the foundation of law and any coherent legal order. And from my essay you can conclude that racism works even against evolution because evolution lays the groundwork for assigning rights through belonging to humanity.

So I can’t help thinking you have misunderstood a comment of mine, and would be thankful if you can explicitly quote it in order I can clarify the issue.

Your question “Why would God take away sinless primeval humans?” is a very interesting one and deserves a detailed answer I will post soon.

45

Antoine
First of all, it is a pleasure to converse with someone who seems to grasp the points I am trying to make with Human Origins, and then clearly ask for comparison of the outcomes of that proposal with another of equal or greater merit. We both seem to be comfortable associating the origin of Humankind with the appearance of Sin in the world. As I understand your position, you prefer the more orthodox explanation using the term Original Sin, while I believe the human condition is better viewed through the lens of Original Blessing (OB). Right or wrong?

What evidence is there to support the Origin’s date to either 3,500 BC or to 40,000 BC? I propose a rather naive theological argument that God had planned that one of his evolved creatures would merit a soul that was eternal. There is nothing gradual in the transition from mortal to eternal, and so the transition from a hominid with a mortal spirit to one with an eternal spirit had to be sudden. If the rather sudden transition occurred at 3500 BC we should have some rather district evidence for it. If it took place at 40,000 BC the evidence should perhaps be discernible but not so clear. That is why I accept the evidence for humankind’s appearance as a Great Leap Forward, but far into prehistory.

Here are some of the difficulties I see in my hypothesis:
(1) Darwinian evolution, as we now understand it, is much too slow to produce this ‘sudden’ appearance of humankind. However, since the Homo sapiens brain contains more potential neural circuits than the IBM Watson computer (which, as programming improves, is getting close to matching human intelligence) it is possible that some epigenetic ‘programming’ could occur that would allow one such programmed Mind to invent a language which could then program other Homo sapiens brains, allowing for a transmission of this Gift at an explosive pace. Currently this ‘programming’ is a Gap for God to fill. But we will find out how he did it before too long.
(2) Evidence for the GLF is clearest in Europe and the Mid East, but none (that I know of) in the Far East. There is evidence that Homo sapiens reached Australia somewhere between 50,000 BC and 60,000 BC. Since we consider the Australian aborigines as modern humans, perhaps there was there a second “programming event” that qualified as an Origin. Then, when European explorers invaded their territory, the aborigines were forced to reprogram their brains to be able to compete in a “white man’s world.” This part of my hypothesis fits rather well with Darwin’s puzzling experience with the Tierra del Fuego natives who adjusted quite rapidly to English society, but then reverted to their native roots when returned to their home turf.
(3) The greatest difficulty with my GLF/OB hypothesis is explaining Atonement–why was it necessary for Jesus to suffer and die to save us? It is understandable that in Jewish culture at the time of the crucifixion, the sacrifice of an innocent lamb was acceptable as a ‘sin offering’, and, since Jesus’ disciples were at a loss to explain the gruesome death of their innocent Master, seeing it as a necessary sacrifice to appease the righteous anger of the Father over the sins of humankind appeared reasonable. But this explanation needs explaining. Jesus, through the parable of the Prodigal Son, tells us that a Loving Father does not react this way to sinful offspring. Furthermore, to the modern mind this sacrificial explanation appears so illogical and unintelligible that it fuels the arguments made by the New Atheists (e.g. Dawkins and Harris) that the Christian God would be unworthy of worship. Yet the Truth of Christ’s role as Savior cannot be denied. So philosophers and theologians have examined other models, such as Participatory (At-one-ment) and Exemplary. which were met with mixed acceptance. (See “A Participatory Model of the Atonement” Tim Bayne & Greg Restall)
(4) So how can the Original Blessing (OB) model replace the Sacrificial Lamb (SL) model in explaining Jesus role? I believe that Christ’s death shows the unimaginable value of Humankind rising above its genetic, selfish nature, which evolution decreed, to aspire to the achieving the potential that God intends; i.e.imago Dei. Bayne & Restall stated their objections to the Exemplary Model as follows: "The problem, in a nutshell, is that the exemplary model needs to be able to characterize Christ’s death as accomplishing something in and of itself, apart from its inspirational value. A second problem with the exemplary model concerns its ability to address sin as an ontological problem. The New Testament does present Christ as a model of self-sacrificial love, but it doesn’t suggest that our primary problem is a lack of such models, nor does it suggest that we are ignorant of the costs of sin. Instead, it suggests that our sinful nature puts us at odds with each other and with God. The exemplary model lacks the resources to deal with a problem of this nature."
I maintain that these problems disappear if Sin is replaced with Evolution-induced Selfishness, which is really what “puts us at odds with each other and with God”. This is seen in Paul’s letters to Rom. 8:19-22 and Col. 1: 15-20.
I’ve rattled along too long. Don’t want to bore my newfound (and rare) audience.
Al Leo

46

I get uneasy when I hear talk about “non-personal human animals.”

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47

Thanks for this beaglelady.

You give me opportunity to clarify a crucial point:

Undoubtedly, today it holds that
all human animals are human persons.

But what was the situation before God created the primeval human persons?
The answer is obvious:
At this time there were no human persons on earth. The existing Homo sapiens creatures were non-personal human animals. Homo sapiens were not yet Homo sapiens personalis.

According to my explanation God created the first human persons by transforming non-personal human animals into persons, and He did this at about 3,500 BC. Nonetheless I have no problem predating this event, if one provides convincing arguments for this.

Anyway the question arises:
Did God transform all non-personal human animals into human persons at once?

This is one possibility, but we cannot exclude that He performed the transformation in several steps. On the basis of the Genesis narrative and the data about the emergence of civilizations, I prefer the option that this transformation happened in three steps, where the third and last one was after the Flood (but his is another story).

In any case:
The foundation of any coherent legal order is that personal rights are defined through belonging to humanity, the observable basis to assign rights is the human body.
NEVER after the creation of the primeval human persons, was there a community where human persons did live together with non-personal human animals.
Such cohabitation had been against the very foundation of morality and law, and God wisely took care to avoid it.

Certainly in course of history again and again there have been “humans that point at other humans and declare them to be not human persons”. This is racism, as you very well claim. This happens today once more when religious fanatics call to killing people of other beliefs. And also when parliaments and courts point to human embryos and unborn children, and “declare them to be not quite human”. All this is against the purpose of evolution, the foundation of law, and God’s commandment.

Please let me know whether this answer makes clear the meaning of the expression in my comments you refer to, or you wish still further elucidation. Thereafter we can tackle the other interesting question you raise of “Why would God take away sinless primeval humans?”

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In the above quote, shouldn’t the highlighted words be reversed to read: “was there” ? In any case, there is now good evidence of cross-breeding between Neanderthal and Homo sapiens, and so some degree of ‘co-habitation’ certainly existed. However, you may want to consider both of these homo species to be non-personal human animals at that point in time.

The final sentence in the quote is what bothers me. At the very dawn of a Creature With Conscience (Homo sapiens personalis) is it not somewhat presumptuous to declare that such cohabitation would be “against the very foundation of morality and law” and “God wisely took care to avoid it.”–i.e., God overruled the human person’s free will to prevent such co-habitation?? We presume that God is comfortable with evolutionary biology where intercourse between two sufficiently separated species does not produce fertile offspring (i.e. horse + donkey = infertile mule) But some animal hybrids are fertile and have biological advantages. This likely was the case with the Neanderthal/Sapien and Denisovan/Sapien hybrids in the distant past. So even if this occurred after the Sapiens partner was a ‘personal human’, it is not necessarily the case that such intercourse was sinful and against the foundation of moral law. At least that is my opinion.
Al Leo

49

I agree, Beaglelady. If you read my post to @AntoineSuarez where I discuss the implications of my Origins hypothesis, you would see why I worry that it could be used to support ideas about racial superiority. On the other hand, it offers a better explanation for the puzzle Darwin faced when he transferred three native Fugians to the English culture and later returned them home.

I note that the strong evidence for the Great Leap Forward in Europe probably occurred 10,000 years after Homo sapiens had migrated to Australia. The Australian aborigines had a much simpler culture than the Europeans who ‘discovered’ them in the 17the century, and many of these explorers did consider them less-than human. But we know better. So did their Homo sapiens brains get an altogether separate programming to become Minds? Or did some already-programmed Homo sapiens from Europe or the Mid-East migrate to the Far East and transmit the programming through a language taught by the migrant??

Further research could support one or the other of these alternatives–or could tend to discount both.
Al Leo

50

What? I’m still not okay with this. 3500 BC? How do you know? And what does BioLogos think about all this, including God’s miscegenation law?

Aleo is right, humans did intermarry with Neanderthals and Denisovans.

51

Thanks Al for correcting my grammar. Tell me please if you find such other mistakes.

Regarding your two last comments I would like to specify that I am referring to “the fact of a number of people living or existing at the same time or in the same place”, and not “the fact of having a sexual relationship”.

So by Foundation of morality and law I mean the following:
Consider a primeval community C of Homo sapiens consisting of a certain number of individuals living together. If one of these individuals is a human person, then all other members of C are human persons.

Suppose a non-personal Homo sapiens animal A comes from away and encounters community C of human persons: At this very moment A would be transformed by God into a human person. God would do this to ensure that the human body is the observable basis for assigning rights, so that any individual with human body has to be acknowledged as a person independently of race, age, strength, health, etc. (in accord with Genesis 9: 5-6).

As I have already commented, there are good reasons to accept that immediately after the Flood all non-personal human animals living on earth were transformed by God into human persons (I will further discuss this point in a new comment that may help to clarify how my explanation works).

Consequently:

  1. If one assumes (as I do) that God created the primeval human persons at around 3500 BC, then neither Modern-humans (before 3500 BC), nor Neanderthal-humans, nor Denisovan-humans are persons.

  2. By contrast: The Fuegians [not “Fugians”, by the way] Darwin met in Tierra del Fuego and described with “racist comments”, and the Australian aborigines Europeans ‘discovered’ in the 17the century, are human persons independently of the fact that they had a much simpler culture than their discoverers.

  3. Personal humanity (Homo sapiens personalis) is called to evolve blurring the boundaries between human races, but without blurring the boundaries between humanity and non-personal species (this would mean to destroy the work of evolution!): Interracial marriages are excellent, by contrast in my opinion “marriages” between humans and chimps would not be fitting.

  4. Hybridization is an important mechanism of evolution (as I claim in my Essay). Therefore hybridization between non-personal species and in particular between Neanderthal-humans and Modern-humans (at the time when these were non-personal animals) is a very convenient thing on the part of nature. However you seem to assume that such intercourse may have occurred after the Modern-humans were ‘personal humans’. Independently of whether this is sinful or not, your assumption bears a problem: it implies to accept that within a community of personal humans can live humans who are not persons, and this really means to open the door to all forms of racial discrimination.

52

Many thanks beaglelady for this comment.

Regarding “God’s miscegenation law”:
Are you suggesting that I criminalize interracial marriage?
If yes, I cannot really understand how you can derive this from what I say.

I state that God took care to avoid that human persons live together with non-personal human animals.

Against this you advance that “humans” [“persons”] did intermarry with “Neanderthals and Denisovans” [“non-personal animals”].

And you conclude: “Antoine states that God criminalizes interracial marriage.”

I reply that your conclusion is flawed and means you are assuming that interracial marriage is a marriage between human persons and non-personal animals!

I think such an assumption is the most racist statement one can utter.

You should be more careful in misinterpreting my statements.

Regarding 3500 BC:
This is an interesting question. I will answer it with pleasure if you cease misinterpreting my statements. Otherwise I have to spend my time in refuting misunderstandings.

Well, misinterpretations may also help to improve formulations, and for this I am thankful to you.

53

So non-personal humans need contact with human persons which makes God transform them into persons. Al has already brought up the Australian Aborigines. They were living in Australia for thousands of years before white colonists arrived to make them personal human beings.

Show me where I said these words.

54

I have strong sympathy with @beaglelady in this strange conversation. The suggestion that a human being can catch “personhood” the way they can catch Ebola is not just empirically ridiculous – it is potentially profoundly problematic morally. As I think @beaglelady has been trying to say throughout, this “idea” implies that there was once (and still could be) a large number of non-person human beings who were indistinguishable from persons in every way except contact with invisible and undetectable magic dust. In other words, there was once (and still could be) a world where some humans were intrinsically dehumanized. It should go without saying that this is a potent basis for racism and xenophobia, and more specifically it has historically been the basis of the systematic dehumanization of humans called “others.” In fact, I would say that @AntoineSuarez’s proposal is even more insidious than overt systematic racism/prejudice, which typically offers at least the pretense of identifying the characteristics that dehumanize a person (skin color, lineage, religion, sex). The unreasonable “idea” being discussed here makes the dehumanization invisible, presumably detectable only via supernatural means. The toxic potential here should be obvious.

I guess it could be different if the proposal had any empirical or explanatory merit at all. But it doesn’t. It can only do one thing: fill in a perceived gap in a religious narrative that itself has no empirical or explanatory merit.

This idea is toxic and without scholarly value. I invite Christians in this forum to reject it and to consider this small potential benefit of doing so: you will find common ground with humanists like me, who seek to affirm human dignity in the strongest possible terms.

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55

Stephen, before you declare an idea “empirically ridiculous”, do be sure you thoroughly understand it. The way you use "catch personhood" sounds like what I have been discussing as the Great Leap Forward, a term that eminent paleoanthropologists use to describe the sudden appearance of human culture in the Homo sapiens species that had been relatively dormant for 100,000 years. This sudden change could NOT have been the result of “normal” genetic mutation. Richard Dawkins (who is an acknowledged expert in Darwinian evolution) readily admits that the GLF occurred, but his only explanation for it: “It was as if the Homo sapiens brain was programmed.” His metaphorical comparison of the brain’s neurocircuitry with a computer,while admitting a current state of ignorance, at least suggests where future research should be directed. Your comment that the GLF is like ‘catching Ebola’ is simply derogatory, and not at all helpful; likewise invisible and undetectable magic dust. We should all be careful when deriding the ideas of others that, sometime later, we are not caught in a “blow-back” when those ideas show merit.

The mechanism(s) that spread the GLF (through language and other communications) from the area it first appeared (probably Europe and/or the Mideast) to the far corners of the globe to which Homo sapiens had already migrated, does leave the possibility that racial bigots might try to utilize. I brought this up in a previous post with @beaglelady. It is my opinion that @AntoineSuarez , in trying to salvage something significant from the myth of the Great Flood, is being mislead in who (and what) survived. But when he proposes that the difference between us and the “non-personal human beings” that preceded us is epigenetic, I am in agreement.
Al Leo

56

No, I’m referring to the description of how a “non-personal Homo sapiens animal” gets converted into a “human person,” as described in this thread:

The GLF is an interesting topic worthy of scholarly consideration. The notion that a human being becomes a person in an instant, by undiscoverable supernatural means, on contact with previously supernaturally converted human beings, is both ludicrous and potentially dangerous.

57

[quote=“beaglelady, post:53, topic:27852”]
Al has already brought up the Australian Aborigines. They were living in Australia for thousands of years before white colonists arrived to make them personal human beings.

This is a worrisome part of my hypothesis, beagle lady, but you don’t have it quite right. I maintain that, from Homo habilis onward, the increase in size of the (unprogrammed) primate brain was an exaptation–useful enough for survival, but having a much greater potential than was being utilized. In relatively recent times (~100,000 years ago) three species of Homo-- Sapiens, Neanderthal & Denisovan-- lived here concurrently and were similar enough to cross breed to some extent at least. All three had large enough brains that, if “programmed” properly, could render them “fully human”. But only Homo sapiens had the other features (larynx, Broca’s area??) that allowed an initial “programming event” to be passed on to others vocally; i.e. not the slow route of passing a successfully mutated allele to the next generation sexually.

Currrent evidence strongly suggests that the initial GLF event occurred in Europe or the Mideast about 40,000 years ago (hello Adam). But 10,000 years prior to this, some Homo sapiens had already migrated to the Far East and to Australia. Question: How did the Australian aborigines become “fully human”? Two alternatives immediately present themselves: (1) A second initiating event (programming) occurred; or (2) later migrants from Europe carried the program with them during the long (probably many generational) trek. in either event, the ‘program’ that arrived in Australia probably was somewhat different than what left Europe–transmitting a definite level of humanity but producing a significantly different culture.

So……the first Colonists did not MAKE the aborigines human–they were already there. But I guess we can forgive them for thinking that they raised the aborigines to a Higher Level of humanity??? But that revives Rousseau’s argument of the Nobel Savage , a nobility that Modern Society seems bent on destroying. The Aborigines viewed their world in terms of Dream Time; we Moderns walk on the moon and dream of interstellar travel to other worlds. Which is more truly human? Which is more pleasing to our Creator?
Al Leo

58

This Forum is my first chance to trot out my Origins hypothesis for discussion by intelligent, thoughtful scholars. As a result, I have had to sharpen (even modify) some of my previous arguments. So I cannot fault you or any others for misunderstanding some of the points I am trying to make–I’ve yet to understand them completely myself. That said, I want to make clear that the process of “humanization” that I am proposing is NOT undiscoverable NOR supernatural. My guess is that it will be found to be an epigenetic action resulting from DNA-methylation unique to brain tissue. How long it took for ‘brain programming’ to accomplish humanization in the distant past may never be known, but it could have occurred within one generation. How long does it take in each of our lives? Not instantaneous, acting like some ‘On/Off’ switch–more likely it takes from late pregnancy to the age of five, on the average.

On another post, I have discussed the interesting case of Helen Keller, and how her case sheds light on the humanization process. At the age of 19 months a disease shut her off from contact with the outside world through sight and sound. At this age she had only the barest idea that symbols, like language, could be representative of reality. It was truly a miracle that once Anne Sullivan showed her that water and its wetness could be symbolized with sign language, it constituted a communication breakthrough that ‘baptized’ Helen into the human race. Without an appreciation of Symbols, Helen would have remained much like the Neanderthals–almost human, but not quite there yet.

At best, my hypothesis for the Origins of our humanity needs a great deal of modification. So I take my hat off to the author of Genesis who describes it as: ‘God took the clay of the earth to form Adam, and breathed into that clay the breath of Life’. That is not satisfactory science, but it still is close to the Truth. Perhaps both Science and Faith are necessary.
Al Leo

59

Dear Al,

My comments are all about the original post by @AntoineSuarez and subsequent comments by him, which I quoted. I did not mean to imply that you have proposed anything like his idea.

The GLF is very interesting, and I can see why it is especially interesting in the context of a discussion on personhood in humans. I doubt whether a simple genetic/epigenetic switch accounts for it, but yes it’s interesting and perhaps even remarkable.

60

I think you’re creating a really dangerous equivocation here between cultural development and human dignity. Yes, the Aborigenes were less technologically advanced than colonists, but that doesn’t mean they were less human. I think the option that must be avoided in these discussions is a sliding scale of human dignity depending on some measure of cultural advancement.

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