In “What does original sin mean in the light of modern science?” (Science Blogs, September 7, 2011), Jasen Rosenhouse comments,
One of the many problems modern science poses for Christianity is the question of how to understand original sin. The traditional teaching, which holds that Adam and Eve were the only humans on the planet when they were created on day six of Creation Week, that the ground was cursed and they were expelled from Eden as a result of a specific sin they committed, and that this corrupted state was in some way passed down to all future human beings, is no longer tenable. A variety of lines of evidence make it clear that the human population has always numbered in the thousands and certainly never dipped down to two. Moreover, evolution makes clear that humans arose through eons of natural selection. There was no moment of creation, and there was no state of primordial perfection for them to sully.
Just as Karl Giberson explained at Christianity Today (June 2011). Having accepted these many assumptions, Rosenhouse, a Madison U mathematician, does not suggest hollering ever more feebly for Jesus. Instead, he says,
Time to wrap this up. In science, it is fairly common to face the following situation: A theory works pretty well and explains a fair amount of data. But then some anomalies arise. Do we need to discard the theory completely, or is it just a matter of fine-tuning a few details? That is not the case with original sin. It is not as though we used to have really good reasons for thinking it is a valid and useful notion, but then modern science came along to provide a few distressing anomalies. Actually all we ever had was an ancient, Biblical account that told a pretty clear story about human sinfulness and its affect on the world. There was never any particular reason to think that story was true, and science now shows it to be completely false. But instead of throwing the idea of original sin straight in the garbage where it belongs, a lot of really smart people tie themselves into knots summoning forth strained reinterpretations of the doctrine. It is beyond comprehension to me that anyone could think this is a valuable use of time, or that our knowledge or understanding of the human condition are advanced, in even the slightest way, by such investigations.
Thats an immersion in real Darwin thought, not the fake Christian kind.
See also: Dennis Venema gets ID wrong again
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Well if Jason believes sin is merely an illusion forced upon him by a ancient religious text, I suggest that he perform a little experiment. I suggest that he try to live morally ‘perfect’ i.e. to live without ‘sinning’. Can he go a month without telling a single lie? Shoot can he go even one day without telling a lie??? Can he not lust for a month??? Can he not hate for a month??? etc.. etc.. etc.. ,,, Benjamin Franklin tried such a modest experiment at trying to live a ‘perfect’, sin-free, life and found:
As to these assumptions of Rosenhouse,,,
,,,the fact is that even papers from evolutionary biologists themselves repeatedly speak of a ‘genetic Adam’ and a ‘mitochondrial Eve’;
Thus it is just plain misleading for Jason to state that the human population ‘never dipped to two’ for not only was he not there, but the scientific literature is certainly not clear on the matter either;,,,
further notes:
But alas, we have it on Jason’s authority that there is no question of the Darwinian claim that we ‘randomly’ evolved from some ape-like creature, to which he adds his belief that original sin is an illusion,,, but what are we to believe??? Jason’s blind faith in Darwinism??? wrought by a very superficial scrutiny of historical narrative??? or are we to believe the crushing observational evidence against Darwinism, that we actually have in hand, that was wrought by rigorous analysis???
Of related note: CMI has finally uploaded some videos from its ‘Super Creation conference’. Of particular note is the video entitled ‘Are All From Adam and Eve?’ at the bottom of the list of videos,,,,
Are All From Adam and Eve
http://www.biblediscoverytv.com/
(Of note; though a YEC organization, I find the molecular biology of CMI to be top notch)
Here is a article to go with the video:
Human DNA points to historical Adam and Eve
The Non-Mythical Adam and Eve! – Refuting errors by Francis Collins and BioLogos – Dr. Robert Carter
http://creation.com/historical-adam-biologos
RE: Original post
This seems to me to be a bit counter intuitive. Why wouldn’t there be a progenitor “Father” and “Mother” pair of humans? Is Jason suggesting with that statement that “thousands” of humans evolved from a prior species in such a fashion that those same “thousands” were identifiable as humans at the same moment in time?
Certainly, he is entitled to his own opinion on the matter, but I don’t see how science has either proven or dis-proven the concept of original sin. Unless with “science” he is referring to the study of history, in which case, I don’t think he has read enough about the subject.
ciphertext:
Why wouldn’t there be a progenitor “Father” and “Mother” pair of humans?
Because populations evolve together due to interbreeding (i.e. mutations are spread throughout the entire interbreeding population).
Is Jason suggesting with that statement that “thousands” of humans evolved from a prior species in such a fashion that those same “thousands” were identifiable as humans at the same moment in time?
Yes exactly. However there wouldn’t be some magical point in time where you could say ‘aha, now we have humans!’. It’s a gradual change over millions of years with different populations of apes splitting and diverging over time, some acquiring more human-like characteristics, some retaining more ape-like ones. In hindsight it’s very difficult to look back at this bushy tree of primates and identify the branch that leads directly to humans or even the point that we can say where “fully human” begins.
NormO states:
That’s the Darwinian fairy tale that is repeated ad naseum, as if it had any merit, Yet, as is now commonly well known, the overall fossil record is anything but gradual, as NormO just portrayed. In fact here is a quote from a recent article that in no way misrepresents the actual state of the evidence:
And NormO, Darwinists always say something along the lines that a species/kind has found its niche, after its suddne appearance in the fossil record, thus that is the reason it stays basically unchanged for millions of years in the fossil record. Yet this post hoc ‘excuse’ is absurd. Why should we not see dramatically variation as Natural Selection is making its undirected search for new successful variations??? Even Darwin himself wrote something to the effect that Natural Selection would forever be searching (scouring?) through new variations looking for successful ones. But alas the fossil record is the antithesis of this foundational assumption of Darwinism and overwhelmingly characterized by sudden appearance and overall stasis.
If Darwinists were actually interested in the truth about why species/kinds demonstrate extreme conservation of form in the fossil record, instead of just making excuses for Darwinism, they would find that there are very good reasons why this stability of form is so. Here is one of the primary reasons: