Blog Archives
Another Article on Polygenesis
My series on polygenesis–the idea that modern man evolved at different places and different times, rather than at one location in Africa from which early humans later spread out at a fairly recent time–has been dormant for a bit, as has the series on the Fall of which it is a sub-series. However, I ran across this article from the New Scientist which is worth noting. The article discusses recent evidence that humans reached China one hundred thousand years ago or more–much earlier than the traditional “Out of Africa” theory holds.
It’s worth adding that there is increasing evidence (see this article, and the series that begins here, both at the news site Indian Country) that Indians reached the Americas long before what has been long thought to be their time of arrival a mere twelve thousand years or so ago.
These are more pieces of the increasing amount of evidence accumulating that modern man dispersed much longer ago than had been previously thought, and therefore that the thesis of polygenesis–that humans developed in different places over time–has merit. This implies nothing about the unity of those living today–because of population bottlenecks, all living people share common ancestors. However, it is one more blow against the traditional view of the Fall of Mankind, in which a primal couple sins and transmit that sin to all future people, all of whom are said to descend from them. In the near future, I hope to return to a deeper investigation of the issues this raises.
Also part of the series Polygenism Revisited.
Please Help Me, I’m Falling
But not like that, although it is a classic song. I’m returning, after a considerable break to the topic of the Fall of Man. I still don’t have what I consider a definitive answer, and may never have one. I do want to do some more thinking about it and the related issues, though; so, once more into the breach.
First, I want to draw attention to my summation of where I stood when I took a break from the series almost a year ago: here and here I discussed what I thought needed to be the basis for further discussion. I want to take a few things from the latter post and add to them some notes that I think will be necessary as we proceed.
We Had to Destroy the Bible to Save It
Last time I stated the postulates I’m starting with in order to move forward in considering the Fall. They seem reasonable to me, in light of what has been looked at and discussed in this series over the last nine months. However, I want to look at one alternative (which I reject) in order to elaborate on why I reject it and what I see as being problematic about it.
First, I need to correct something I omitted in my last post. I gave my “postulates” for this discussion, but left out the most obvious and important one, the zeroth postulate, if you will, without which there’s no point in even having written this series to begin with.
0. Science is correct in asserting the vast age of the Earth and universe, and the evolution of humans from lower animals.
Comment: As noted in my update to the previous post, this is not a postulate properly so-called; but it’s solid enough.
Corollary: Any theology which does not take 0. into account is to that extent erroneous, and thus can–and should–be dismissed out of hand. Therefore, for example, young Earth creationism, anti-evolutionism, and so-called Intelligent Design as presented, are non-starters.
Having set the stage, let’s move on to look at an account of the Fall that seems fairly popular in some circles and discuss its ramifications.
Miracles, Evolution, and Metaphysical Frameworks
I actually ran across this on my extension hard drive while looking for something else. This was originally written as a response on a web discussion–I think it was at Beliefnet, but it’s been awhile, and I’m not sure (I sometimes write drafts for posts that I know will be detailed and lengthy, and save them for later posting). The discussion was with someone defending so-called Intelligent Design–with which I have no truck. Beyond that, I don’t remember the specific context; but I thought that with a little bit of editing, the following might be of interest.
The context is a discussion with a person who was trying to defend Intelligent Design (ID). He was arguing that evolutionary theory–which he insists on calling “Darwinism” necessarily implies a metaphysics (as opposed to a procedure). In other words, it goes beyond mere methodological materialism (which is a necessity for any type of science) and necessarily implies metaphysical materialism (a whole separate kettle of fish). In this regard, he argues that the intervention by God assumed by ID is no different from miracles, and to reject it is to reject miracles a priori. In any case, while I do believe in miracles, I think that’s only possible if one already has metaphysical commitments that imply miracles; one cannot use them to “prove” ID or any religion or metaphysical view in general.
The following is my response, slightly edited. The sentences in italics are relevant statements from my interlocutor’s post which I’ve quoted in the process of making my response.
Consider: you’re at the Wedding at Cana–you’re a scientist who has time-traveled back with equipment. You examine the water–it is basic or acidic, hard or soft, pure or with impurities, etc. etc. You look at the jugs–they’re made of such-and-such type of clay, glazed or unglazed, etc. etc. Now Jesus tells the servants to take this water and fill the jugs. You look in the jugs and see they now contain wine. You analyze the wine–such-and-such percent alcohol, tannins, etc. etc. This was a miracle, but both before and after you have ordinary materials obeying all natural laws to any possible observation. In other words, the wine may be 10% alcohol, or have tannins, sugars, and other congeners–but there is no experiment you can perform on it that shows it to be of Divine creation. As C. S. Lewis pointed out, in the aftermath of a miracle, the materials conform to the ordinary, everyday run of things. There is no “residue of holiness” that can be perceived! Even during the miracle itself, you can’t detect Divine power coming from on high, through Jesus, and into the water.
Thus, the antecedents and results of the miracle are perfectly normal. The question is, what about the miracle itself? That’s the kicker, and that’s where interpretation comes in.
The Atonement: Index
Some Theories of Atonement, or Love, not Honor or Substitution This post, by Father Nathan O’Halloran, S. J., is reblogged from Vox Nova. I’ve touched on the idea of the Atonement in the course of this series insofar as it has implications for the concept of the Fall and the interpretations of the Fall which I have been discussing. Thus I’m adding this as a sort of guest post that goes into more detail on that particular aspect of the issues I’ve been dealing with here. Update: Since I originally reblogged this, Vox Nova has moved to Patheos; thus, the reblogged link no longer works. I’ve deleted the reblogged post from this blog, and put the link to the original post by Fr. O’Halloran at the new Patheos site in the link above. Thus, clicking there will take you to Patheos, not to my blog.
Atonement Theology This post was reblogged from the blog Triangulations, and gives an excellent summary of various schools of thought on the Atonement.
The Atonement: An Overview of the Traditional Perspective
Hell’s Angels and Looking for God in All the Wrong Places
An Evolution-Oriented Song to Go With Recent Posts
Evolution, reincarnation, love, Julie Andrews, and Kermit the Frog. What’s not to love?
An Evolution-Themed Poem to Go with Recent Posts
Evolution
By Langdon Smith (1858-1908)
When you were a tadpole and I was a fish
In the Paleozoic time,
And side by side on the ebbing tide
We sprawled through the ooze and slime,
Or skittered with many a caudal flip
Through the depths of the Cambrian fen,
My heart was rife with the joy of life,
For I loved you even then.Mindless we lived and mindless we loved
And mindless at last we died;
And deep in the rift of the Caradoc drift
We slumbered side by side.
The world turned on in the lathe of time,
The hot lands heaved amain,
Till we caught our breath from the womb of death
And crept into life again.We were amphibians, scaled and tailed,
And drab as a dead man’s hand;
We coiled at ease ‘neath the dripping trees
Or trailed through the mud and sand.
Croaking and blind, with our three-clawed feet
Writing a language dumb,
With never a spark in the empty dark
To hint at a life to come.Yet happy we lived and happy we loved,
And happy we died once more;
Our forms were rolled in the clinging mold
Of a Neocomian shore.
The eons came and the eons fled
And the sleep that wrapped us fast
Was riven away in a newer day
And the night of death was passed.Then light and swift through the jungle trees
We swung in our airy flights,
Or breathed in the balms of the fronded palms
In the hush of the moonless nights;
And oh! what beautiful years were there
When our hearts clung each to each;
When life was filled and our senses thrilled
In the first faint dawn of speech.Thus life by life and love by love
We passed through the cycles strange,
And breath by breath and death by death
We followed the chain of change.
Till there came a time in the law of life
When over the nursing sod
The shadows broke and the soul awoke
In a strange, dim dream of God.I was thewed like an Auroch bull
And tusked like the great cave bear;
And you, my sweet, from head to feet
Were gowned in your glorious hair.
Deep in the gloom of a fireless cave,
When the night fell o’er the plain
And the moon hung red o’er the river bed
We mumbled the bones of the slain.I flaked a flint to a cutting edge
And shaped it with brutish craft;
I broke a shank from the woodland lank
And fitted it, head and haft;
Than I hid me close to the reedy tarn,
Where the mammoth came to drink;
Through the brawn and bone I drove the stone
And slew him upon the brink.Loud I howled through the moonlit wastes,
Loud answered our kith and kin;
From west to east to the crimson feast
The clan came tramping in.
O’er joint and gristle and padded hoof
We fought and clawed and tore,
And cheek by jowl with many a growl
We talked the marvel o’er.I carved that fight on a reindeer bone
With rude and hairy hand;
I pictured his fall on the cavern wall
That men might understand.
For we lived by blood and the right of might
Ere human laws were drawn,
And the age of sin did not begin
Til our brutal tusks were gone.And that was a million years ago
In a time that no man knows;
Yet here tonight in the mellow light
We sit at Delmonico’s.
Your eyes are deep as the Devon springs,
Your hair is dark as jet,
Your years are few, your life is new,
Your soul untried, and yet —Our trail is on the Kimmeridge clay
And the scarp of the Purbeck flags;
We have left our bones in the Bagshot stones
And deep in the Coralline crags;
Our love is old, our lives are old,
And death shall come amain;
Should it come today, what man may say
We shall not live again?God wrought our souls from the Tremadoc beds
And furnish’d them wings to fly;
He sowed our spawn in the world’s dim dawn,
And I know that it shall not die,
Though cities have sprung above the graves
Where the crook-bone men made war
And the ox-wain creaks o’er the buried caves
Where the mummied mammoths are.Then as we linger at luncheon here
O’er many a dainty dish,
Let us drink anew to the time when you
Were a tadpole and I was a fish.
Courtesy of here.
Something that Does My Heart Good
In light of the many, many words I’ve written in my recently concluded “Legends of the Fall” series about how we must take science into account in interpreting the Fall, I was gratified to read that the infamous Creation Museum, which pushes young-Earth creationism, is hard up for funds and experiencing reduced attendance. It certainly brightened my day….
Excursus: Hypotheses, Theories, and Squirrels
I was going to break the flow of posts to address a theological issue which I thought germane to the series on the Fall that I’ve been running. Then a comment on my last post struck me as worthy of an entire post, rather than a combox reply. It touches on science and the scientific method, and (as a sometime science teacher) I think it’s always good to make use of opportunities to discuss misconceptions about how they work.
In the original post, remarking on the things we know for certain (or as certain as we can know) regarding the origin of the world and humanity, I said the following:
3. Humans, beyond any shadow of a reasonable doubt, evolved from other hominids; any other account must be considered metaphorical, whether it be the molding of man from the soil in Genesis or the creation of man by a committee of demons in The Secret Book of John.
In commenting on this post, commenter Christopher C. Randolph says, with my emphasis added:
#3 can be jettisoned, I think. It’s a cool theory but hasn’t been proven. I don’t think it can be proved. Nor can God creating humans and everything else be scientifically proved either. The most that can be legitimately concluded is that the fossil record suggests…. it’s unscientific to say that evolution is a fact, I think.
Which isn’t to say that I don’t think it should be taught in science class. But it should keep to its “theory” status.
The rest is great! But I thought that the accepted age of the earth was 10,000,000 years?
First, on a smaller note, the age of the Earth is estimated at about 4.54 billion (4,540,000,000) years old. This is based on studies of the half-lives of various radioactive substances; a good, non-technical discussion of this is here. Read the rest of this entry
The Chequer-board of Nights and Days 