If you say so.
You’re correct that “the slavery issue” is messy and that it is simplistic to state that “the church” uniformly taught just one consistent way on that (as other old threads on this forum make apparent.) But you need to recognize that the charge of being ‘simplistic’ applies even more so to you own position of insisting the church has been against slavery. Even when abolitionism just began finding its stride in the 18th and 19th centuries, and that mainly just among some select Protestant denominations (like Quakers or a few Anabaptist groups) - even then there was probably much more widely and culturally accepted Christianity that not only saw nothing wrong with slavery, but used the Bible as an active apologetic defense of it - especially in the Americas. So you are being naive in the extreme when you insist that the church has been - even just generally - against slavery through history. Wide swaths of it were not. So you either are forced to conclude: “well, then - they weren’t really the true church” or else to concede that the Spirit allowed them to teach false things, or finally you could just exercise one last option of insisting that “slavery is actually okay” (and I know a current Christian lady who apparently thinks just that!!!). And assuming its because of some things she’s hearing taught in her own church, I guess the Holy Spirit is continuing to let many churches teach contradictory doctrines to what others of us believe the Spirit is leading in our own churches.
Here is another way to think of all this - I’ll paraphrase some familiar passages below:
“Hey Jesus - Moses taught us ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’ - what do you think about that?”
See if you can identify which option below more accurately reflects Christ’s response:
Option A: “Well - there is no way that God would have allowed His Word to teach anything wrong for such a long time, so yeah - I guess go ahead and practice the limited vengeance that he allowed for!”
Option B: You have heard that it was said, ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’, but I tell you … Not so fast! Let’s revisit that and I’ll explain more fully what God really desires of you!
Hint: One of the above options is not like the other! I want to read and relate to scriptures the way Jesus did.
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You are right. I was talking about the istitutional Church, but it’s certainly true that many Christians have endorsed slavery troughout history, there is no denying that.
But when the Church condemned slavery these Christians weren’t following the teachings of the Church, they were going against them.
Firstly non dogmatic teachings can be wrong sometimes, the Holy Spirit just prevents the Church from teaching errors on fundamental matters of faith. Some claim that the Church can err and has erred on fundamental matters of faith and has dogmaticallu taught falsehoods to the faithfuls. This is not my understanding and it certainly wasn’t the understanding of the early Christians and the early Church Fathers. They followed the rule of Faith and believed that the final interpretation of the Scriptures and Tradition belonged to the Church.
Secondly, the fact that many Christians were still ok with slavery after it has been condemned multiple times doesn’t show that the teachings were wrong, it shows that even Christians can sin hugely against God and against their fellow man. The documents i have posted show that the Church had condemned slavery long, long before it was abolished. If many Christians still endorsed slavery it was because even Christians are sinners and can go against what has been taught to them,
Well I guess that’s also one of the problems that emerged with the reformation, namely there is no final authority and as a consequence many different Churches with contradictory teachings are born. Which is why there 47,000 different Christian denominations today, which was unthinkable in the past.
This is a misunderstanding. I never claimed that Dante would have influenced any council, what I told was that the kind of stories Dante and probably some other medieval story tellers told affected the popular image of the Hell. The images popular stories paint even today deviate quite much from the Christian teachings, including the teachings of the church of Rome (AFAIK). I hope that no church teaches that the Devil is the Lord of the Hell and spends the eternity torturing bad people.
What comes to the teachings about the original sin, we follow different traditions and just have to agree to disagree.
The discussions on this Forum have increased my understanding of the teaching of the RCC in this matter, which I think is good. I grew up as a Lutheran and I have got the impression that the teachings about the original sin by Luther and Lutherans in general differ more from the teaching of the church of Rome than I had earlier realized. I think that the interpretation of the RCC in this matter makes more sense than the teaching I learned as a Lutheran child. I still think that the the interpretation I learned later in my life is more faithful to the teaching I read from the biblical sciptures.
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Aaaaahhh ok Knor, i’m sorry for the misunderstanding, then. Yes what you said here is right, popular stories have often deviated quite a lot from the real teachings.
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That’s the teaching of the Catholic church, not the belief of all Christians throughout time. You should stop confusing the two. And it absolutely goes against all scientific evidence to claim human beings lived in a state of holiness before the “fall.”
Catholic doctrine as it exists today is not the same as 2000 years of Christianity. Don’t confuse the two.
Which specific idea was heterodox? The fact that animals exhibit mental illness, which is scientifically documented, or the fact that humans have perpetrated violence on one another since the moment they appeared on Earth? I’m sorry if the facts contradict your beliefs, but when facts contradict my beliefs, I realize it’s my beliefs that need to change.
No, I didn’t say that, despite your link. I don’t believe in an intermediate state, but I never said humans cease to exist between death and resurrection. You have a habit of reading too much between the lines. What I said was,
“I agree with Middleton that humans are a “complex unity” rather than a duality of body/soul, and the individual human destiny is to die and be buried with the hope of resurrection to an embodied life on a renewed Heaven and Earth, not the disembodied soul’s “beatific vision” of God lasting for eternity.”
Again, I said nothing about the soul ceasing to exist. My point was that our hope is in the Resurrection and our future is an embodied life on Earth. Since you asked, I believe the soul “rests” until God awakens it from sleep at the Resurrection. (Sorta like Sheol in the Old Testament.) Just like waking from natural sleep, the individual would not have experienced the passage of time. We close our eyes in death, we wake up to new bodies. Since all talk of what happens after death is speculation, I recognize I’m probably wrong, just like everyone else, but that’s the explanation that (currently) makes the most sense to me based on the scriptural data.
My view of the soul? It is entirely spiritual, just as God is Spirit. The soul is immaterial, meaning it cannot be measured or observed. Any system that mixes the soul with material things has made a category error. See, for example, comparisons of the soul to consciousness or the capacity to reason. Both require our physical brains for a large component of the process. Sounds like materialism masquerading as theism to me.
The soul is created by God, just like your Catholic doctrine believes. I see no reason why God couldn’t have bestowed souls on the entire (very small) human population in the distant past, long before they had the capacity for “rational thought” by Aquinas’ definition. It happens every day – a child is born complete with a soul, yet it takes years for them to reach maturity.
My view is no different than Irenaeus, who viewed Adam and Eve as children at their creation. (He, like Aquinas, assumed a literal first couple, having no way to know humans arose as a population.) He wrote in the 2nd Century and was a disciple of Polycarp, who was a disciple of John. Irenaeus lived 200 years before Augustine and 1000 years before Aquinas. Tell me again what Christians have always believed.
Glad you asked. Aquinas was working with limited information. His ideas were based simply on observing the differences between human beings and animals, so he settled on reasoning and language as the two “qualitative” differences. So far, so good. He was a genius, after all.
What he couldn’t know was the 6-million year on-ramp of evolution between our nearest relatives and who we are now. The present-day capacities of modern humans for language and “reason” didn’t emerge overnight. They appeared over time and there were many intermediate stages along the way. What would Aquinas have made of these early humans? We’ll never know, but I doubt he would’ve bent over backwards to make the evidence fit his theory, which is what present-day apologists are doing. Parsimony is a good thing.
Finally, @Mervin_Bitikofer or @jpm , this thread has wandered way off track. I suggest breaking off this digression and making a new thread out of it with a properly sarcastic title.
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I’m not confusing the two. The intermediate state was believed even in the beginning of the Church.
I’m not confusing anything.
Again I’m not confusing anything.
The theories of Craig and Kemp Adam & Eve: A Survey of Models for Catholics that I have posted don’t go against scientific evidence and can absolutely be held without ignoring anything, they go against what you personally believe and find likely, which is very different. You should stop disguising your personal and respectable idea as a scientific fact.
Ok. I do believe in it, just like the early Christians and the Church fathers and the Magisterial teaching of the Church always did.
The two aren’t mutually exclusive. The intermediate state is temporary, the final resurrection is the final destiny of the saved.
Iraeneus believed in the intermediate state, for example CHURCH FATHERS: Against Heresies, II.34 (St. Irenaeus) just like the other Church Fathers.
Let me quote Iraeneus, since you mentioned him.
“The Lord has taught with very great fullness, that souls not only continue to exist, not by passing from body to body, but that they preserve the same form [in their separate state] as the body had to which they were adapted, and that they remember the deeds which they did in this state of existence, and from which they have now ceased — in that narrative which is recorded respecting the rich man and that Lazarus who found repose in the bosom of Abraham”
So when I claim that the teaching about the intermediate state traces back to the early Church and it’s definitely not an invention of the Catholic Church I’m right, I’m certainly not making anything up. I don’t know why did you claim that it was a “catholic doctrine” only.
Irenaeus also viewed them as “free and self-controlled”, and said “so fair and good was this Paradise, that the Word of God continually resorted thither, and walked and talked with the man, figuring beforehand the things that should be in the future, (namely) that He should dwell with him and talk with him, and should be with men, teaching them righteousness.” From Demonstration chapter 11 and 12 St. Irenaeus: Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching - Christian Classics Ethereal Library
So according to Irenaeus there was a very clear difference in holiness and righteousness between the first metaphysical humans and the rest of creation.
This is what he said in chapter 11
“But man He formed with His own hands,98 taking from the earth that which was purest and finest, and mingling in measure His own power with the earth. For He traced His own form on the formation,99 that that which should be seen should be of divine form: for (as) the image of God was man formed and set on the earth. And that he might become living, He breathed on his face the breath of life; that both for the breath and for the formation man should be like unto God. Moreover he was free and self-controlled, being made by God for this end, that he might rule all those things that were upon the earth”
Free and self-controlled is certainly something that could not be said of previous hominids. And this is crucial because without freedom and the ability to be a moral agent there is no possibility of sin.
Good gosh. This is truly bizarre. You quote what I was saying about the fall and try to make it seem I was talking about the intermediate state. Take a look:
You didn’t address anything I actually said. I’ve posted facts that you’ve ignored. Deflecting to Craig and Kemp doesn’t help. WLC located a literal Adam & Eve around 650,000 years ago. His evidence for symbolic behavior at that distance is laughable. Kemp and the rest are actually worse, pushing for a recent A&E when “sinful” behavior is plentiful in the archaeological record.
I’ve presented scientific facts that you’ve ignored because they contradict your beliefs. Care to address any of them, or just my unorthodox opinion about the intermediate state, which I already stated was probably wrong?
Ummm, Aquinas didn’t live until 1200 or so. Not exactly 2000 years.
You should stop denying scientific facts that don’t fit your ideas.
That’s your opinion.
Again, this is just bizarre. I was talking about Irenaeus’ beliefs about Adam & Eve. Who cares what he thought about the intermediate state?
I’m pretty much done here. It’s a good example of why I quit interacting with you for a long time.
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I have also addressed what you said about Irenaeus and the fall, in the next post. I have quoted his words
I’m going to address them. It’s not something that can be done quickly if one wants to be precise, so you’re going to have to be patient. I’ve been working on it (way before you made the post i’m quoting) and i’m still working on it.
It’s also the teaching of the Fathers of the Church and the Magisterium of the Church. I’m going to stay with them, you are obviously free to believe that the intermediate state doesn’t exist.
If I’d been pope abusing priests would definitely have been “relocated”: to monasteries they would never see the outside of again, where they would be required to do work that would support victims.
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My sister, an engineer, called it the “quality inspection” theory of condemnation, where a score of 9,999 out of 10,000 gets a ‘part’ rejected just as much as a score of 1 would.
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Not really – science has no way to test it.
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Jay, your proposal, as i said, is not a scientific conclusion that the evidence forces on us. In your own article you say that Genesis 2–3 uses “conceptual metaphor,” that “Humanity did not begin with a literal first pair,” that “every detail of the text does not correspond to historical realities,” and that “the man” and “the woman” are “literary archetypes in a figurative text.” You also place your proposed historical fall in the window between roughly 75,000 and 65,000 years ago.
Once you frame your argument that way, you are no longer presenting a scientific discovery about the Fall, you are presenting a theological interpretation that leans on selected scientific proxies. That matters, because science doesn’t compel your reading in the first place, contrarily to what you claimed.
Your main scientific objection to a real Adam and Eve is that humanity arose as a population. But that objection is too strong, because it conflates genealogical ancestry with genetic ancestry. Rohde, Olson, and Chang say that “the MRCA of all present-day humans lived just a few thousand years ago” and that, a little farther back, “each present-day human has exactly the same set of genealogical ancestors.” Jotun Hein then explains why this does not translate into a large present-day genetic contribution: universal pedigree ancestry “does not imply” such a contribution, and the ancestor in question “might have contributed nothing.” Matsen and Evans sharpen the same point by stating that “the genealogical MRCA need not have any genetic relation to present-day individuals.” Gravel and Steel add that there can be ancestors of everyone alive today who left “no genetic trace.” https://steveolson.com/uploads/2009/04/nature-common-ancestors2.pdf So your appeal to population origins does not refute a real Adam and Eve in the genealogical sense.
That is also why current population genetics doesn’t let you use the word “population” as if it settled the issue. Mathieson and Scally warn that genealogical ancestry, genetic ancestry, and genetic similarity are often conflated, even though genetic data are “surprisingly uninformative” about the first two. They add that your pedigree contains “many ancestors from whom you inherited no genetic material.” So even on strictly scientific grounds, the claim “humans emerged as a population, therefore a real ancestral couple is excluded” doesn’t follow. The inference is invalid because you have moved from genomics to pedigree ancestry without justification. https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1008624
This is where Scerri and Will matter to my case: they don’t prove that a real pair was elevated by God to original holiness and justice, but they remove the scientific privilege of your alternative. Their 2023 review says that research has “failed to find a discrete threshold” for a complete modernity package, that the package concept is “theoretically obsolete,” and that the archaeological record bears “no direct relation to a simplistic shift in the human brain.” They also describe the record as asynchronous, regionally variable, and historically contingent, with demography and population connectivity playing key roles. That helps my case indirectly but in a very important way: once your preferred behavioral threshold collapses, you can no longer argue that science points toward a single population-wide moral awakening and away from a real primal pair. Your model becomes one theological option among others, which is exactly what it is, not the scientifically established option.
And Scerri and Will help in a second way: they themselves describe McBrearty and Brooks as having proposed “a long, gradual, and mostly cumulative process of incremental assembly of the modern package” in Africa. In other words, the literature doesn’t hand you a clean late threshold at which humanity suddenly became morally mature in the way your argument need because, if the archaeological picture is mosaic, asynchronous, and only variably expressed, then it is a mistake to convert that picture into a precise theological chronology for the Fall. At that point, your date-range of 75,000–65,000 years isn’t something science has discovered; it is a speculative theological placement built on evidence that leading archaeologists explicitly refuse to treat as a discrete threshold. https://pdf.sciencedirectassets.com/272603/1-s2.0-S0047248423X00050/1-s2.0-S0047248423000350/main.pdf?X-Amz-Security-Token=IQoJb3JpZ2luX2VjEOr%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2FwEaCXVzLWVhc3QtMSJIMEYCIQCOiBa5QsjBIc7wj3NoW7QlF2MoZCHoNUyLdN27vtJHwAIhAK1PHwb7rqbJJPfAdOOc592tFOyRcyKtQqmHTSs%2FKS8VKrsFCLP%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2FwEQBRoMMDU5MDAzNTQ2ODY1IgyFwWXekH7uZ3zOWSEqjwX51cy1bj7fXH1VnHS%2FyXnTcA2XfRBivWvEQpV1GdJVFgGYJgvVeeWake99BYXrLKLecAr5WYLOPzVKyrow7JGlaaVaWWrQuJPEBAzIhe%2FmBbyWvuJOmgtCVBdS%2FOMbuaNrUsmrd0AvrcB04gF%2FSfwIHq%2BwuPtBIgW%2F6T3zmZiCW5BNAcWyEcRU%2FcIluFd63z%2Bc5hMg5rRGo4BP2yTs8WyXvcCs5ZPHuNdWJ659c35wJeeD6RBj8SyLwG4m7iyMqoJmuCXexDYeQBkY1%2BH5AAV1fdX3X5GrslyMeOZ8KapkOSfY3q7HjTzhD%2FfMaT0%2FsVAX4qeJDE3%2F0huJa5YVFxXdinymss%2BnkN%2BFO4nzGm9NmWIRdaEN%2FZEIt9nxdiDO7HCz5ro3SmxEUmOb%2BswOAHEejBKx1jpUAJ175cwUREV%2FmIbQNeS2fEJ%2FnwuldVpNC5ZflgsYMlkBd491djBVmg%2BXQv%2Bi5uHG2dQZEN2JTZLPjfJtZxuKr3Lp9SxtWXGCIC9Hh45zuMHPAQ0G2U160XJNdCn3a%2FgomwcGd8v7tutHl1P2YA9zLnmZKjWFAdV8O%2F9KGzwcJUJBlFXfeeFa0MdpvVvPT%2Bb0m4IiT8INyugGDDP9ayGDxeioOOvuFmEp09MhJ0MRkEJAJq54h3XIbp2QqXCtFw2D8mUM%2F5BEeQ3QAS1PoCide90pFrpL6JiGdicu2ygSGJf4q3XToQXVdhgOqU3I5AYZqdRApmPSdFC0u7OnMO3PD4x0myIZ3FQzFB%2FJpWxg%2BtTu30HWWV9tYEtPGBSZpmRe%2FuG6yLZQbNolHpebYVXUZ%2FtkxBu1EoM20rmsXWsOaSnsy95c1sdfuWOcM0L9w8mc8RZtxM3KcrayMKD8gM8GOrABb%2F7RtX5QoMehTCxhST4OILjI4zqIFxMWf%2BdLFGxUxeFvwlXy33vJS%2FsOkG5qB1eMAscrCGXH1asRdJkEusFOj6PjfksjnVV0LTda0p9qHFllmcAxlZ%2Fo7SN8vM20IdGQnmnJvyvBlcrOxgtWTbExJzIT02WGoH5JVOhhmDUQCec7yVtLS6ORdlOkqzL53eFOg2V5r8kTvVPDYtGEllezsQcLhnolU%2FgXNPErqETT6UE%3D&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Date=20260416T030314Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=300&X-Amz-Credential=ASIAQ3PHCVTYS2WXV2JH%2F20260416%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Signature=aefeb00c248ebf280fd27e58172fb54db0c4a2d4507a4d8e33519d6cd4fa5419&hash=b3b151e140762d4da923028723e97f545f5888cee3a7f68a9ef8cb9416555039&host=68042c943591013ac2b2430a89b270f6af2c76d8dfd086a07176afe7c76c2c61&pii=S0047248423000350&tid=spdf-1054813d-10a8-4244-9aa8-5ce284bdfd91&sid=e6a015b65cf6e34e1e7b5d54c44a6058f8abgxrqa&type=client&tsoh=d3d3LnNjaWVuY2VkaXJlY3QuY29t&rh=d3d3LnNjaWVuY2VkaXJlY3QuY29t&ua=1316590205080153010b&rr=9ecff4ad6ef0ed44&cc=it
Your use of language evidence is similarly overconfident. Bolhuis, Tattersall, Chomsky, and Berwick say that the evolution of language “largely remains an enigma.” They also say that “Language leaves no direct imprint” in the fossil record and that anatomical potential for speech “provides no proof” that language itself was actually in use. That does not prove your dating wrong in a strict sense. But it does show that your alignment of language, symbolism, and a datable moral threshold is far more conjectural than your article suggests. You are building a theological timeline out of proxies that the language-evolution literature itself treats with caution. https://eclass.uoa.gr/modules/document/file.php/PHIL1595/ΚΑΤΑΛΟΓΟΣ%20ΑΡΘΡΩΝ%20ΓΙΑ%20ΤΕΛΙΚΗ%20ΠΑΡΟΥΣΙΑΣΗ/How_Could_Language_Have_Evolved.pdf
Now let me be clear, very clear, about one thing specifically: science cannot demonstrate “original holiness,” “original justice,” or a special divine vocation, because those aren’t empirical variables in genetics or archaeology. The National Academies state that explanations not based on empirical evidence are “not a part of science.” So if the traditional orthodox claim is that one real couple was specially elevated by God, science cannot verify that claim, but neither can it falsify it as such.
Richard Buggs, an evolutionary genomicist, writes, in “Adam and Eve: a tested hypothesis?”: “With my current understanding of the genetic evidence, I can’t state categorically that it’s impossible” that the human line passed through a bottleneck of two individuals.
A little later he adds: “I’m not yet convinced. I can’t echo him and say to someone who believes in an extreme human population bottleneck that they are against science”, and then he goes on to explain why. https://richardbuggs.com/2017/10/29/adam-and-eve-a-tested-hypothesis/
Again from Richard Buggs, “Science moves closer to Adam and Eve?” (1 September 2023): “the methods used were simply unable to detect short sharp bottlenecks”; “We agreed that genomics does not rule out a single couple as the sole progenitors of humans”; “Thus, a bottleneck of two is not ruled out by their methods”; “Such methods are not able to either prove or disprove the hypothesis of Adam and Eve” Science moves closer to Adam and Eve? – Richard Buggs
Also citing Ola Hössjer and Ann Gauger, from “ A Single-Couple Human Origin is Possible.” https://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/download/BIO-C.2019.1/105 The following are parts of the abstract:
- “The problem of inferring history from genetic data is complex and underdetermined; there are many possible scenarios that would explain the same data.”
- “We show that a single-couple origin of humanity as recent as 500kya is consistent with data.”
- “With only minor modifications of our parsimonious model assumptions, we suggest that a single-couple origin 100kya, or more recently, is possible.”
And then from the body of the article:
- “ We show that using assumptions commonly used by evolutionary geneticists, a single-couple origin is possible, despite claims to the contrary.” (From page 11 of the pdf).
- “But in light of the many possible extensions, we suggest that it is possible to fit a model to genetic data, for which the founding couple lived 100kya ago or even more recently. In any case, the critical point that we wish to make is that, as far as we know scientifically from the genetic data, the human species could have come from as a single couple, so that all humans alive today could have descended uniquely from that first pair.”
None of this, of course, proves the orthodox Christian doctrine, since it cannot be established with absolute certainty that such a couple existed or that they were raised to a unique state of holiness and righteousness, just as the opposite cannot be proven either. What it does do, however, is directly undermine the stronger and arrogant claim that science has ruled out the possibility of a historical Adam and Eve, or of a specially elevated pair.
So the problem with your idea is not that it is theological: the problem is that you repeatedly slide from a theological (and highly problematic at that, but you are free to have your doctrines) reading into stronger scientific claims than the evidence warrants. You are free to argue that Genesis 2–3 is best read as a figurative account of humanity’s collective moral maturation, but you are not entitled to present that reading as though science has forced us there.
The best population-genetic literature doesn’t refute a real Adam and Eve in the genealogical sense. The best archaeology doesn’t give you the discrete 75,000–65,000-year threshold your positive model needs. And the best philosophy-of-science guidance doesn’t allow science to adjudicate claims like original holiness or a special divine elevation of a pair.
So, please, spare me arrogant statements such as this one
Or this one
You are free to believe that your opinion on the subject is the correct one, but when you describe the opposing view almost as though it were comparable to Young-Earth creationism you are clearly wrong. Keep holding your opinion, don’t state it as though it were a scientific fact. Because it isn’t, and claiming otherwhise doesn’t change anything.
P.s
Exactly. Failing to acknowledge this means moving from science into scientism.q
Those are interesting claims. The models used in the calculations give values calculated for theoretical panmictic populations/subpopulations that are linked like the populations today. The study notes that the calculations would not be valid if some populations would be isolated but that even the most isolated island populations, like Tasmania, have mixed with the other groups of humans after the year 1800. That means that the models try to simulate the modern world but would not be valid in the world 500+ years ago.
The most recent common ancestors are necessarily a group of ancestors rather than two individuals. If they would be two individuals, that would have left signs to the genetic heritage. Two individuals cannot have many variants of a gene. Modern genetic diversity either originates from a larger group of ancestors or there would have to be superrapid evolution since the common ancestor pair.
Archeological evidence shows that there were human populations around the globe 10’000+ years ago and they were at least partly separated by distances, barriers and cultural differences. However we try to explain the past, the explanation needs to consider the archeological findings.
The linked article suggests that the most recent common ancestors would have lived in Eastern Asia but that conclusion is only based on the fact that the calculated distances to the other populations are shortest from E Asia.
I do not understand how the theoretical calculations about the genealogical ancestors of modern humans would solve the questions of who A&E were, when and where did they live, and how the speculated effects of the ‘fall’ would have spread to all human populations around the world?
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Richard Buggs isn’t an evolutionary anything. He’s an ID creationist.
How the [redacted] could you possibly know?
You haven’t even looked at “the best population-genetic literature”. The stuff you’ve cited is either irrelevant, or comes from ID creationists and non-specialists.
You haven’t addressed any facts presented by Jay. Instead, you’ve wallowed in pseudoscience.
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He is a professor of evolutionary genomic.
What I wanted to show is that science has disproven orthodox Christian doctrine on Adam and Eve. That’s all. This doesn’t mean that the doctrine was proven to be correct either, it means that you can hold it without being arrogantly treated like a YEC and without being told that the opposing view is 100% right and if you don’t accept it you don’t care about science.
That’s all.
That’s his job title, not his worldview. Richard Buggs is an ID creationist.
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