Evangelicals waving goodbye to Adam and Eve?

_{Denyse O'Leary

January 13, 2019

Culture, Darwinism, Intelligent Design, Naturalism, Religion}

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Evangelicals struggle with their embrace of naturalism, ((nature is all there is), often called “materialism,” and don;t seem willing to count the cost:

5. Adam and Eve were real persons in a real past, and the fall was a real event with real and devastating consequences for the entire human race. This is likely to be a sticking point for some. An increasing number of evangelical evolutionary creationists are giving up belief in Adam and Eve as real persons in a real past.
The genetic evidence, at least as we now understand it, makes belief in an original human pair doubtful if not impossible. I suspect in 20 years’ time, support for Adam and Eve as real persons in a real past will be a minority view even within evangelicalism. Should this come to pass, I remain confident that the Christian faith will survive, even though this will require some reconfiguration of our deepest convictions. That being said, I personally don’t find the genetic evidence compelling enough to jettison belief in a real Adam and Eve in a real past. TODD WILSON, “Ten Theses on Creation and Evolution That (Most) Evangelicals Can Support” at Christianity Today

He’s right, and that shift will coincide with many church closings. As we have seen from various news items linked below, there is no definitive reason to “know” that there was no single couple.

It is a sign of significant loss of cultural confidence when people are willing to reconfigure their “deepest convictions” even when the evidence against them isn’t “compelling.” Almost always that’s because what they call their faith is not actually among their deepest convictions.

And they are—you may be sure—a market for someone.

See also: Ann Gauger Talks About Adam And Eve With World Editor Marvin Olasky

Adam a nd Eve reappear in a recent study

and

Adam, Eve, Richard Buggs, And Dennis Venema: Could Adam And Eve Have Existed?

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Comments

"Rather, it tells us that sin and sorrow originated when God took the human animal and made him “like God,” giving him the ability to think and make decisions on his own." So God is the origin of sin and sorrow? And you're relying on this guy to save you from sin and sorrow? Curious.ScuzzaMan_{January 20, 2019
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GS
I doubt, for example, that the story of Adam and Eve was ever intended to be taken as more than an allegory.
I tend to agree. However, there are plenty of people who view it as a literal truth. The same for Noah's ark and many other things in the bible.Ed George_{January 16, 2019
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From my 2016 book, "Christianity for Doubters" http://www.math.utep.edu/Faculty/sewell/articles/doubt.html I doubt, for example, that the story of Adam and Eve was ever intended to be taken as more than an allegory. It seems to me that the story about how ``mankind" (the literal translation of ``Adam") ate of the ``tree of knowledge of good and evil" and became ``like God" and had to leave paradise, is not about two historical individuals. Rather, it tells us that sin and sorrow originated when God took the human animal and made him ``like God," giving him the ability to think and make decisions on his own. The ``tree of knowledge of good and evil" is the free will which God gave us, which brought not only pain and evil into the world, but also joy and goodness. If the writer had intended for us to take this story literally, I believe he would have used a species of tree with a less metaphorical name!Granville Sewell_{January 16, 2019
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PaV
I’m curious if you think Intelligent Design is a better explanation for the Cambrian Explosion than Darwinian evolution/evolutionary biology.
Yes.Ed George_{January 14, 2019
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Ed George: I'm curious if you think Intelligent Design is a better explanation for the Cambrian Explosion than Darwinian evolution/evolutionary biology.PaV_{January 14, 2019
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i'm not claiming that shells on mountain tops is proof of global flooding and is proof against plate tectonics. In fact, I firmly believe in plate tectonics. The proof of catastrophic megafloods, across the globe is derived independently of any dispute over shells on mountaintops. In fact, I would hold that the proof of catastrophic megafloods, across the globe, approx. 13 to 14 thousand years before the present, is now just as compelling as the proof for plate tectonics is. ,,, A few more references to get this point across:
South America Excerpt: Ironically, the site with perhaps the best claim to a pre-12,000 BP date in the Americas is among the farthest south, Monte Verde, in south central Chile. Here Tom Dillehay and his crew have excavated a camp site that has been radiocarbon-dated to about 13,000 years ago, and below the levels of that age are layers of tools and debris that may be much older, perhaps up to 33,000 years old.(26),,, Dozens and dozens of hulking blocks lay scattered in all directions, tossed like matchsticks, Posnansky argued, in the terrible natural disaster that had overtaken Tiahuanaco during the eleventh millennium BC: This catastrophe was caused by seismic movements which resulted in an overflow of the waters of Lake Titicaca and in volcanic eruptions… In addition, fragments of human and animal skeletons had been found lying in chaotic disorder among wrought stones, utensils, tools and an endless variety of other things. All of this has been moved, broken and accumulated in a confused heap. Anyone who would dig a trench here two metres deep could not deny that the destructive force of water, in combination with brusque movements of the earth, must have accumulated those different kinds of bones, mixing them with pottery, jewels, tools and utensils…(152) http://humanpast.net/environment/environment11k.htm Ancient mega floods in the monsoon tropics of Australia coincide with climatic instability (approx. 15, 000 years ago) http://www.ansto.gov.au/AboutANSTO/MediaCentre/News/ACS013099#sthash.Wbwf2HUM.dpuf Ancient Earth Flood Created Martian-Like Landscape, Researchers Find – July 2010 Excerpt: This summer, he will continue the work he started at Mason by traveling to Siberia to study a series of mega floods that happened between 45,000 and 13,000 years ago. http://news.gmu.edu/articles/3416 From Atlantis to the Modern World Excerpt: The evidence of the antediluvian world now lies up to 400 feet below sea level. It consists of massive man made complexes off the shores of Japan and elsewhere in 500 other under water sites around the world discovered since 1997 and in underwater caves that have structures that can only form above sea level. It also exists in structures all over the Canadian shield that can only be attributed to massive glaciation. Huge gouges exist in solid granite, carved out by boulders. Huge boulders not native to the regions where they are found, suggest that they were dropped their by glaciers and or massive floods. Massive tombs of broken trees and animal bones crushed together exist in places like Alaska and Oregon. Two separate Clovis peoples are evident pre and post, but not during 12,600 years ago throughout N. America. The age of the Niagara escarpment is exactly 12,600 years old and it was formed by a massive earthquake of about Richter 11 at that time. All of these attest to great forces and sudden catastrophes. http://syzygyastro.hubpages.com/hub/From-Atlantis-to-the-Modern-World Coral links ice to ancient ‘mega flood’ – March 30, 2012 Excerpt: ,,,has confirmed that the event occurred 14,650-14,310 years ago at the same time as a period of rapid climate change known as the Bølling warming.,,, The team has used dating evidence from Tahitian corals to constrain the sea level rise to within a period of 350 years, although the actual rise may well have occurred much more quickly. http://phys.org/news/2012-03-coral-links-ice-ancient-mega.html#nRlv etc.. etc.. etc..
Also of note: "Deep beneath the earth, more water than in all the oceans combined"
Rare Diamond Reveals Earth's Interior is All Wet - March 12, 2014 Excerpt: The results suggest there could be a vast store of water in the mantle transition zone, which stretches from 254 to 410 miles (410 to 660 km) deep. http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rare-diamond-reveals-earths-interior-wet-181429521.html#tXnqTay Earth's 'underground oceans' could have three times more water than the surface - June 13, 2014 Excerpt: Scientists have published the first direct evidence of a massive reservoir of water three times the size of Earth’s oceans located hundreds of miles underneath the surface of the planet. The discovery could explain exactly why the Earth is so habitable, with scientists suggesting that this underground store of water – which is trapped in minerals – has acted as a buffer, keeping the Earth’s oceans at roughly the same levels for hundreds of millions of years.,,, between 250 and 410 miles in an area known as the “transition zone”. The H20 is trapped in the molecular structure of minerals within the mantle rock, with this unique form – neither liquid, ice nor vapour – created by the phenomenal pressure and heat underneath the Earth’s surface.,,, Jacobsen and Schmandt's study used data from a network of 2,000 seismometers across America to measure the spread of vibrations from earthquakes. Because these disturbances travel at different speeds through different materials, the scientists were able to infer when the seismic waves hit a patch of ‘soggy’ rock.,,, "We should be grateful for this deep reservoir," he said. "If it wasn't there, it would be on the surface of the Earth, and mountain tops would be the only land poking out." http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/earths-underground-oceans-could-have-three-times-more-water-than-the-surface-9534266.html Study: Deep beneath the earth, more water than in all the oceans combined - June 16, 2014 Excerpt: And it’s a good thing, too, Jacobsen told New Scientist: “We should be grateful for this deep reservoir. If it wasn’t there, it would be on the surface of the Earth, and mountain tops would be the only land poking out.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/06/16/study-deep-beneath-north-america-theres-more-water-than-in-all-the-oceans-combined/
Verse
Genesis 7:11 "When Noah was 600 years old, on the seventeenth day of the second month, all the underground waters erupted from the earth, and the rain fell in mighty torrents from the sky." What does Genesis 7:11 mean? Excerpt: We are told that on that day all the fountains or springs of the great deep burst forth. The picture is of geyser spewing its contents into the sky, implying that a great underground ocean had existed and had been under some amount of pressure since the beginning of creation. In addition, the "windows of heaven" were opened. Great torrents of rain poured from the sky. https://www.bibleref.com/Genesis/7/Genesis-7-11.html
bornagain77_{January 14, 2019
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I said
Perhaps my wording wasn’t as clear as it should have been. What I meant was that a global flood is not supported (as an explanation for shells on mountains as plate tectonics is). My apologies. I can see how my original wording could be misinterpreted.
I really have to start proof-reading my posts before hitting the Post Comment button. Third time's the charm. What I meant to say was that, as an explanation for fossil shells being found on mountains, a global flood is not supported as well by the evidence as plate tectonics is. That still sounds rather clumsy but I hope that it relates what I was trying to say.Ed George_{January 14, 2019
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BAyy
Ed George states the global flood is not well supported,,, yet scientific evidence for catastrophic megafloods, across the globe, approx. 13 to 14 thousand years before the present has now become compelling:
Perhaps my wording wasn't as clear as it should have been. What I meant was that a global flood is not supported (as an explanation for shells on mountains as plate tectonics is). My apologies. I can see how my original wording could be misinterpreted.Ed George_{January 14, 2019
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Ed George states the global flood is not well supported,,, yet scientific evidence for catastrophic megafloods, across the globe, approx. 13 to 14 thousand years before the present has now become compelling:
Humanpast.net Excerpt: Worldwide, we know that the period of 14,000 to 13,000 years ago, which coincides with the peak of abundant monsoonal rains over India, was marked by violent oceanic flooding – in fact, the first of the three great episodes of global superfloods that dominated the meltdown of the Ice Age. The flooding was fed not merely by rain but by the cataclysmic synchronous collapse of large ice-masses on several different continents and by gigantic inundations of meltwater pouring down river systems into the oceans. (124) What happened, at around 13,000 years ago, was that the long period of uninterrupted warming that the world had just passed through (and that had greatly intensified, according to some studies, between 15,000 years ago and 13,000 years ago) was instantly brought to a halt – all at once, everywhere – by a global cold event known to palaeo climatologists as the ‘Younger Dryas’ or ‘Dryas III’. In many ways mysterious and unexplained, this was an almost unbelievably fast climatic reversion – from conditions that are calculated to have been warmer and wetter than today’s 13,000 years ago, to conditions that were colder and drier than those at the Last Glacial Maximum, not much more than a thousand years later. From that moment, around 12,800 years ago, it was as though an enchantment of ice had gripped the earth. In many areas that had been approaching terminal meltdown full glacial conditions were restored with breathtaking rapidity and all the gains that had been made since the LGM were simply stripped away…(124) A great, sudden extinction took place on the planet, perhaps as recently as 11,500 years ago (usually attributed to the end of that last ice age), in which hundreds of mammal and plant species disappeared from the face of the earth, driven into deep caverns and charred muck piles the world over. Modern science, with all its powers and prejudices, has been unable to adequately explain this event. (83) http://humanpast.net/environment/environment11k.htm
Interestingly, Charles Darwin himself was shown to be wrong about a geological formation he predicted to have been formed gradually. Yet, it is now known to have been formed by a catastrophic megaflood,,,
Where Darwin Went Wrong – Argentina Megaflood http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3darzVqzV2o
bornagain77_{January 14, 2019
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EricMH as to:
Jesus refers to the events of the OT as if they were literally true,
For prime example;
Matthew 19:4 "Haven't you read," he replied, "that at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female,'
And contrary to what is popularly taught in American Universities today, identity politics, i.e. that you can basically just choose whatever sex you want to be, science is firmly on the side of Jesus:
On Gender, the Science Is Deafening – December 07, 2018 Excerpt: Reading the headlines this week is like taking a trip to an alternate universe. Ten years ago, if you’d have said that in 2018 teachers would get fired for calling a girl a girl, most people wouldn’t have believed you. Unfortunately, that’s the ridiculous world Americans are waking up to every morning. But to most people’s relief, not everyone is playing along with this charade. And that includes President Trump.,,, “A man on estrogen is not a woman. He is a man with a male physiology on estrogen, and that’s how a physician must approach him.” The very serious problem, she points out, is that people are so ideologically-driven that they want to ignore the medical research. More than ever, Dr. Cretella says, “Medicine is at the point now where we understand that men and women have — at a minimum — 6,500 genetic differences between us. And this impacts every cell of our bodies — our organ systems, how diseases manifest, how we diagnose, and even treat in some cases.” Treating a person differently based on their feelings isn’t just harmful, she argues, but deadly. In cases like heart disease, certain drugs can endanger women and not men. Even diagnoses present differently in men and women. The symptoms for certain diseases, she explains, can manifest themselves in completely opposite ways. “And these are nuances that medicine is finally studying and bringing to light. And it’s actually ironic that the transgender movement [is] so anti-science.” https://www.frc.org/updatearticle/20181207/gender-science The landscape of sex-differential transcriptome and its consequent selection in human adults – 2017 Excerpt: Men and women have almost identical genomes but are distinctly dimorphic, with dissimilar disease susceptibilities. https://bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12915-017-0352-z Surprise: Men and Women Greatly Differ Genetically | Jerry Bergman – May 8, 2017 Excerpt: An article in New Scientist titled “Sex Differences in Human Gene Expression” concluded that “Researchers uncover thousands of genes whose activity varies between men and women.”[1] Specifically, their study found 6,500 genes were differentially expressed. They concluded that men and women are distinctly dimorphic, consequently one result of this fact is that they have very dissimilar disease susceptibilities.[2] The sexual dimorphic traits result mainly from differential expression of the genes that exist in both sexes. These results strongly go against the current politically correct view that the only differences between males and females are a few minor plumbing variations and a couple of small hormones. http://crev.info/2017/05/men-women-differ-genetically/
Moreover, a man may think he is a woman, (or a woman may think she is a man), but as far as how our brains are wired, a man does not think like a woman, and a woman does not think like a man.
MEN AND WOMEN’S BRAINS ARE ‘WIRED DIFFERENTLY’ Men and women’s brains are connected in different ways Excerpt: A US team at the University of Pennsylvania scanned the brains of nearly 1,000 men, women, boys and girls and found striking differences. The “connectome maps” reveal the differences between the male brain (seen in blue) and the female brain (orange) Male brains appeared to be wired front to back, with few connections bridging the two hemispheres. In females, the pathways criss-crossed between left and right. These differences might explain why men, in general, tend to be better at learning and performing a single task, like cycling or navigating, whereas women are more equipped for multitasking, say the researchers in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). http://synapse.org.au/blog/blog-archive/men-and-womens-brains-are-wired-differently.aspx
On top of all that, Darwinists have no clue how sexual reproduction could have possibly evolved in the first place:
How did the sexes originate? Why is it that the vast majority of living things require a “male and female” to reproduce? If evolution were true – doesn’t it make much more sense that EVERY living organism was self-replicating and required no useless energy expenditure? When did the first male get here? When did the first female get here? How? Why? Wouldn’t they have had to appear fully functional and at the same time in order for the next generation of organisms to arrive? Of course, they would. So, how is it that the first male and female for almost 2 million living organisms arrived together and fully functional so that reproduction could take place? “Sex is the QUEEN of evolutionary biology problems.” Dr. Graham Bell – In his book, ‘The Masterpiece of Nature’ Another whack at the “sex paradox” – July 1, 2014 Excerpt: The article is most informative about tests done on the various theses but in the end (they state). And so the paradox of sex lives on. “We still really don’t know the answer to this very most basic question,” says Mark Welch. “We don’t know why sex exists.” https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/another-whack-at-the-sex-paradox/ Knowledge gap on the origin of sex – May 26, 2017 Excerpt: There are significant gaps in our knowledge on the evolution of sex, according to a research review on sex chromosomes. Even after more than a century of study, researchers do not know enough about the evolution of sex chromosomes to understand how males and females emerge. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170526084533.htm New book challenges sexual selection theory in evolution – May 20, 2018 Excerpt: Darwin’s Secret Sex Problem What Darwin Ignored,,, Darwin never seriously confronted the crucial, insurmountable gap in his grand theory between asexual replication and sexual reproduction. Nor could Darwins famed natural selection have provided simultaneous on-time delivery of the first male/female pair of millions of sexually unique species required for evolutions bedrock premise of common descent, a fundamental flaw fatal to the romanticized microbe-to-man Evolution Story. https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/new-book-challenges-sexual-selection-theory-in-evolution/
Whereas on the other hand, Christians have no problem understanding how sex originated, nor do they have a problem understanding why Men and Women are so “distinctly dimorphic” (nor why they have differently wired brains)
Mark 10:6 But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’,,
All in all, the denial of the distinctiveness between males and females is a unscientific position that is driven, primarily, by the sexual amorality found at the basis of secularist/materialist ideology:
“I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; and consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics. He is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do. For myself, as no doubt for most of my friends, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom. The supporters of this system claimed that it embodied the meaning - the Christian meaning, they insisted - of the world. There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and justifying ourselves in our erotic revolt: we would deny that the world had any meaning whatever.” ? Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means
bornagain77_{January 14, 2019
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AaronS1978
Science cannot simply disprove Adam and Eve
Proofs and disproofs are restricted to math. Science is about the most likely explanation. For example, one hypothesis for fossilized shells found at the top of mountains was a global flood. The account in the bible of Noah's flood supported this hypothesis. The other possibility, that mountains were once seabed that was somehow raised thousands of feet above sea level just seemed too preposterous to many at the time. However, with the proposal of plate tectonics and the mass of evidence obtained since then, it has become the most likely explanation. This does not mean that the global flood has been disproven, just that it is not supported as well as plate tectonics by the evidence we have.Ed George_{January 14, 2019
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How ironic is this: Catholics teach that we cannot understand Genesis as science, but that, nonetheless, our belief is that Adam and Eve did exist---from whom all humans have received life ( a soul). So, while acknowledging that Genesis is a kind of allegory, the Catholic Church nevertheless asserts that fundamental truths are found in it. Meantime, Evangelicals, who profess the literal account of Genesis, now want to teach that what they consider to be "literally" true, is not, in fact, 'true' because modern science tells us it isn't. Science derives itself from "natural" philosophy. Therein are found its roots. So, Scripture is being let go of by Evangelicals, in favor of 'philosophy.' Incredible irony. What's next? That 'atheists and agnostics' don't believe in Darwinian evolution? :)PaV_{January 14, 2019
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I've read the NT and a number of church fathers, and they do take a literal interpretation. For example, the fourfold method of interpretation practiced during the middle ages built the later 3 stages upon a historical literal reading of the Old Testament. So, it would be more correct to say the church fathers interpreted the OT both literally and metaphorically. Also, Jesus refers to the events of the OT as if they were literally true, and he also says "let your yes be yes and no be no" so either Jesus was contradicting himself and lying, or he was greatly confused, if the OT events are meant to only be metaphorical. It seems like a literal reading of the OT is the way to go. Another irony of this whole situation is the EVs are trying to head towards naturalism at the same time as your average atheist is heading away from naturalism. I get the impression that EV thought is not driven by a personal seeking after truth, but peer pressure/"seeker sensitivity" from the secular establishment.EricMH_{January 14, 2019
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I would also like to mention that Adam and Eve are genetically identical if you take a literal interpretation of any of the genesis account as Eve is grown directly from a rib of Adam. If that was the case you would only ever find a genetic Eve. The other interpretation also is that man was already created as there appears two be to creation myths inside the Bible at the beginning of Genesis and there is a lot of debate over that. Adam and eve might be the first to tested by God Either way Adam and Eve very well could’ve existed, in the literal interpretation of the events in the Bible does not make sense and the original church fathers did not take a literal interpretations and often debated the interpretation of genesis Science cannot simply disprove Adam and EveAaronS1978_{January 14, 2019
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As to,,,
"I’ve now read both a book on how all of Christianity was a MISUNDERSTANDING of The Mystery Religion (the Egyptian version names the Virgin “Isis”),
And yet, "Professional scholars unanimously reject the claim that Jesus is a pagan copy."
23 Reasons Why Scholars Know Jesus Is Not A Copy Of Pagan Religions. - 2015 Excerpt: 1. Professional scholars unanimously reject the claim that Jesus is a pagan copy. 2. Experts in the field unanimously agree that Jesus lived and that we can know things about him. This is very unlike the many pagan gods. 3. We actually know very little about these pagan secretive religions. 4. Most of what we know of secretive pagan religions comes after Christianity, not before it. 5. The Jewish were a people who refrained from allowing pagan myths to invade their culture. 6. The New Testament canon is history unlike much of the pagan secretive mysteries. 7. Unlike the pagan secretive religions, Jesus is an ancient figure we can actually know about, what he thought of himself, and what he did as a historical figure of history: 8. The Jesus of history does not fit the profile of someone that would be a myth. 9. Much of these secretive pagan religions have little to do with concrete history. 10. Evidence of dishonest pseudo-scholar work – Dorothy Murdock: 11. None of the mythicists are actual scholars in the relevant fields of expertise. 12. Jesus’ virgin birth is unique. 13. Jesus’ death had a radical impact on his disciples; a feat that no pagan god can boast. 14. Jesus’ resurrection from the dead is unique. 15. The notion that Jesus is a copy parallel of Mithras is rejected by scholars. 16. That Jesus is a copy of Horus is rejected by scholars. 17. That Jesus was a copy of Dionysus is rejected by scholars. 18. That Jesus is a copy of Krishna is rejected by scholars. 19. That Jesus was a copy of Attis is rejected by scholars. 20. That Jesus was a copy of the Buddha is rejected by scholars. 22. That Jesus was a copy parallel of Zoroaster is rejected by scholars. 23. Jesus’ crucifixion in comparison to other alleged deities is unique. https://jamesbishopblog.wordpress.com/2015/01/19/23-reasons-why-scholars-know-jesus-is-not-a-copy-of-pagan-religions/ Was Jesus a copycat Savior? - video playlist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FR08QtvapM&list=PL1mr9ZTZb3TVOYpPpjYhTUHXycJrY6P2I Jesus and the Story of Osiris and Horus (William Lane Craig) - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6AZqOO2FJA Are There Other Resurrection Myths? - Dr. Craig - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSmykWnFOS0
As to the reliability of the Old Testament:
A Closer Look: The Historical Reliability of the Old Testament - 2012 The historicity of the OT should be taken seriously. As for the OT text itself, the Dead Sea Scrolls (ca 150 b.c.- a.d. 70) provide good evidence of a carefully transmitted core-text tradition through almost a thousand years down to the Masoretic scribes (ca eighth-tenth centuries a.d.) Thus, the basic text of OT Scripture can be established as essentially soundly transmitted, and the evidence shows that the form and content of the OT fit with known literary and cultural realities of the Ancient Near East. https://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2012/february/closer-look-historical-reliability-of-old-testament.html Persian History and The Old Testament - Dr Mark Woolmer - video http://vimeo.com/426015 Egyptian Chronology and the Old Testament - Dr Mark Woolmer - video http://vimeo.com/410567
bornagain77_{January 14, 2019
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As I've mentioned before, the belief in a LITERAL understanding of the Bible (King James being the ONLY accepted translation...) only started in the mid-19th century as a REACTION by Fundamentalists to modern literary analyses of the texts. Those analyses of course raised a LOT of questions. So the Fundamentalists were ALWAYS on shaky ground. I've now read both a book on how all of Christianity was a MISUNDERSTANDING of The Mystery Religion (the Egyptian version names the Virgin "Isis"), and one on how the foundational books of the Old Testament where not TRANSLATED from Hebrew into Greek in 650 BC. They were CREATED from Greek sources in 650 BC and then TRANSLATED into Hebrew... And Alexander the Great SAW the "Tower of Babel" (The Great Tower of Babylon) still standing proudly circa 330 BC. And of course the so-called "Philistines" were in fact the Phoenicians. Much history is written about the wondrous and inventive Phoenicians. NOTHING (except the questionable Old Testament) is written about the "kingdom" of the Israelites. And the Temple foundations that remain in Jerusalem today are from the temple the ROMANS built as a civic improvement after they took over administration of the area. Etc., etc. But belief in God is the oldest piece of human culture. What messed things up was the rise of professional priests at the beginning of Civilization (living in permanent, fixed "cities"). And the sure way for professional priests to get PAID was to SCARE the city dwellers into believing that ONLY the Priests could prevent God (or "the gods") from smiting the Hell (the professional Priests also invented "Hell") out of the common folk. So cutting the professional priesthoods out of the loop is a step FORWARD. Or backward, in the Back to Basics kinda way.vmahuna_{January 13, 2019
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In fact ., due to alternative slicing, “Alternatively spliced isoforms,,, appear to behave as if encoded by distinct genes rather than as minor variants of each other.,,,” and “As many as 100,000 distinct isoform transcripts could be produced from the 20,000 human protein-coding genes (Pan et al., 2008), collectively leading to perhaps over a million distinct polypeptides obtained by post-translational modification of products of all possible transcript isoforms,,”
Frequent Alternative Splicing of Human Genes – 1999 Excerpt: Alternative splicing can produce variant proteins and expression patterns as different as the products of different genes. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC310997/ Widespread Expansion of Protein Interaction Capabilities by Alternative Splicing – 2016 In Brief Alternatively spliced isoforms of proteins exhibit strikingly different interaction profiles and thus, in the context of global interactome networks, appear to behave as if encoded by distinct genes rather than as minor variants of each other.,,, Page 806 excerpt: As many as 100,000 distinct isoform transcripts could be produced from the 20,000 human protein-coding genes (Pan et al., 2008), collectively leading to perhaps over a million distinct polypeptides obtained by post-translational modification of products of all possible transcript isoforms (Smith and Kelleher, 2013). http://iakouchevalab.ucsd.edu/publications/Yang_Cell_OMIM_2016.pdf
And although the purported evidence for human evolution is far weaker and illusory than most people realize, it is interesting to note that leading Darwinists themselves admit that they have no clue how evolution could have produced the particular trait of language in humans.
Leading Evolutionary Scientists Admit We Have No Evolutionary Explanation of Human Language – December 19, 2014 Excerpt: Understanding the evolution of language requires evidence regarding origins and processes that led to change. In the last 40 years, there has been an explosion of research on this problem as well as a sense that considerable progress has been made. We argue instead that the richness of ideas is accompanied by a poverty of evidence, with essentially no explanation of how and why our linguistic computations and representations evolved.,,, (Marc Hauser, Charles Yang, Robert Berwick, Ian Tattersall, Michael J. Ryan, Jeffrey Watumull, Noam Chomsky and Richard C. Lewontin, “The mystery of language evolution,” Frontiers in Psychology, Vol 5:401 (May 7, 2014).) Casey Luskin added: “It’s difficult to imagine much stronger words from a more prestigious collection of experts.”,,, https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/comparing-human-and-chimp-dna-using-a-software-analogy/#comment-654635
... It is hard to imagine a more convincing scientific proof that we are made ‘in the image of God’ ,,, than finding both the universe, and life itself, are both ‘information theoretic’ in their foundational basis, and that we, of all the creatures on earth, uniquely possess an ability to understand and create information, and, moreover, have come to ‘master the planet’ precisely because of our unique ability infuse information into material substrates.,,, Verses:
Genesis 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. John 1:1-4 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and that life was the Light of men.
Of supplemental note, the fossil evidence. like the supposedly incontrovertible genetic evidence for human evolution, also falls apart upon scrutiny:
Contested Bones: Is There Any Solid Fossil Evidence for Ape-to-Man Evolution? - Dr. John Sanford and Chris Rupe Excerpt: We have spent four years carefully examining the scientific literature on this subject. We have discovered that within this field (paleoanthropology), virtually all the famous hominin types have either been discredited or are still being hotly contested. Within this field, not one of the hominin types have been definitively established as being in the lineage from ape to man. This includes the famous fossils that have been nicknamed Lucy, Ardi, Sediba, Habilis, Naledi, Hobbit, Erectus, and Neaderthal. Well-respected people in the field openly admit that their field is in a state of disarray. It is very clear that the general public has been deceived regarding the credibility and significance of the reputed hominin fossils. We will show that the actual fossil evidence is actually most consistent with the following three points. 1) The hominin bones reveal only two basic types; ape bones (Ardi and Lucy), and human bones (Naledi, Hobbit, Erectus, and Neaderthal). 2) The ape bones and the human bones have been repeatedly found together in the same strata – therefore both lived at the same basic timeframe (the humans were apparently hunting and eating the apes). 3) Because the hominin bones were often found in mixed bone beds (with bones of many animal species in the same site), numerous hominin types represent chimeras (mixtures) of ape and human bones (i.e., Sediba, Habilis). We will also present evidence that the anomalous hominin bones that are of the human (Homo) type most likely represent isolated human populations that experienced severe inbreeding and subsequent genetic degeneration. This best explains why these Homo bones display aberrant morphologies, reduced body size, and reduced brain volume. We conclude that the hominin bones do not reveal a continuous upward progression from ape to man, but rather reveal a clear separation between the human type and the ape type. The best evidence for any type of intermediate “ape-men” derived from bones collected from mixed bone beds (containing bones of both apes and men), which led to the assembly of chimeric skeletons. Therefore, the hominin fossils do not prove human evolution at all.,,, We suggest that the field of paleoanthropology has been seriously distorted by a very strong ideological agenda and by very ambitious personalities. https://ses.edu/contested-bones-is-there-any-solid-fossil-evidence-for-ape-to-man-evolution/
Here is a video playlist of Dr. Giem's series reviewing John Sanford’s book “Contested Bones”. (The last videos listed in the series also deal with the misleading genetic evidence).
“Contested Bones” review by Paul Giem – video playlist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6ZOKj-YaHA&list=PLHDSWJBW3DNU_twNBjopIqyFOwo_bTkXm
Of further note from Dr. John Sanford:
The waiting time problem in a model hominin population – 2015 Sep 17 John Sanford, Wesley Brewer, Franzine Smith, and John Baumgardner Excerpt: The program Mendel’s Accountant realistically simulates the mutation/selection process,,, Given optimal settings, what is the longest nucleotide string that can arise within a reasonable waiting time within a hominin population of 10,000? Arguably, the waiting time for the fixation of a “string-of-one” is by itself problematic (Table 2). Waiting a minimum of 1.5 million years (realistically, much longer), for a single point mutation is not timely adaptation in the face of any type of pressing evolutionary challenge. This is especially problematic when we consider that it is estimated that it only took six million years for the chimp and human genomes to diverge by over 5 % [1]. This represents at least 75 million nucleotide changes in the human lineage, many of which must encode new information. While fixing one point mutation is problematic, our simulations show that the fixation of two co-dependent mutations is extremely problematic – requiring at least 84 million years (Table 2). This is ten-fold longer than the estimated time required for ape-to-man evolution. In this light, we suggest that a string of two specific mutations is a reasonable upper limit, in terms of the longest string length that is likely to evolve within a hominin population (at least in a way that is either timely or meaningful). Certainly the creation and fixation of a string of three (requiring at least 380 million years) would be extremely untimely (and trivial in effect), in terms of the evolution of modern man. It is widely thought that a larger population size can eliminate the waiting time problem. If that were true, then the waiting time problem would only be meaningful within small populations. While our simulations show that larger populations do help reduce waiting time, we see that the benefit of larger population size produces rapidly diminishing returns (Table 4 and Fig. 4). When we increase the hominin population from 10,000 to 1 million (our current upper limit for these types of experiments), the waiting time for creating a string of five is only reduced from two billion to 482 million years. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4573302/ Dr. John Sanford Lecture at NIH (National Institute of Health: Genetic Entropy - Can Genome Degradation be Stopped? - video 2018 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Mfn2upw-O8
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The death of Adam and Eve from the supposedly incontrovertible genetic evidence is, much like Mark Twain's death, greatly exaggerated. There are several problems with the genetic evidence. First off the strength of the 99% figure is far weaker than is commonly believed: As Richard Sternberg noted, "One can seriously call into question the statement that human and chimp genomes are 99% identical.,, the figure of identity that one wants to use is dependent on various methodological factors."
Guy Walks Into a Bar and Thinks He's a Chimpanzee: The Unbearable Lightness of Chimp-Human Genome Similarity - Sternberg - 2009 Excerpt: One can seriously call into question the statement that human and chimp genomes are 99% identical. For one thing, it has been noted in the literature that the exact degree of identity between the two genomes is as yet unknown (Cohen, J., 2007. Relative differences: The myth of 1% Science 316: 1836.). ,,, In short, the figure of identity that one wants to use is dependent on various methodological factors. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/05/guy_walks_into_a_bar_and_think.html
Moreover, the way in which the 99% figure for genetic similarity was originally derived has much to be desired. The original DNA similarity comparisons, according to a Darwinist, “needs to be treated like nuclear waste: bury it safely and forget about it for a million years”,,,
The Rise and Fall of DNA Hybridization – Jonathan Marks - 2011 Excerpt: the technique of DNA hybridization had devolved into being doubly “tricky” – but more significantly, the outstanding charge of data falsification was there in black-and-white in the leading science journal in America. It seemed as though nothing more needed to be said for the “wheels of justice” to begin turning. Yet they didn’t. In 1993, I was asked by The Journal of Human Evolution to review Jared Diamond’s book, The Third Chimpanzee. Noting that the book’s “hook” was based on the Sibley-Ahlquist work, which Diamond was still touting uncritically, I said: Perhaps you recall Sibley and Ahlquist. In a nutshell, their results were: (1) chimp-gorilla DNA hybrids were more thermally stable than chimp-human hybrids; (2) the differences were insignificant; and (3) reciprocity was very poor when human DNA was used as a tracer. Unfortunately, the conclusions they reported were: (1) chimp-human was more thermally stable than chimp-gorilla; (2) differences were significant; and (3) reciprocity was near-perfect. And they got from point A to point B by (1) switching experimental controls; (2) making inconsistent adjustments for variation in DNA length, which was apparently not even measured; (3) moving correlated points into a regression line; and (4) not letting anyone know. The rationale for (4) should be obvious; and if (1), (2) and (3) are science, I'm the Princess of Wales. This work needs to be treated like nuclear waste: bury it safely and forget about it for a million years.31 31Marks, J. (1993) Review of The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond. Journal of Human Evolution, 24:69-73. http://webpages.uncc.edu/~jmarks/dnahyb/Sibley%20revisited.pdf
More recent research has brought the fallacious 99% figure down substantially. As the following article states, "Ann Gauger, estimates that humans and chimps share around 92% of our DNA. To put that in perspective, scientists tell us that we’re 90% identical to cats."
Are We 99% Chimps? NOT SO FAST, BONZO By: John Stonestreet|Published: January 24, 2017 Excerpt: Writing at Evolution News and Views, David Klinghoffer points out that the “99%” myth is based on hopelessly outdated research. But it got a shot in the arm after researchers at the Genome Consortium announced in 2005 they’d sequenced chimp DNA and compared it with our own. Newspapers the world over trumpeted the similarity between the two genomes as further proof of our close ancestry. What they neglected to mention was that the project only compared protein-coding segments of the genome, which in humans, account for just 2% of the total! The rest is what Francis Collins once termed “junk DNA.” Except, as scientists have since discovered and Collins has admitted, this “junk” serves regulatory roles that determine how other genes are expressed, particularly in the brain. In other words, “junk DNA,” which makes up the vast majority of our genome, is a vital part of what makes humans, human and chimps, chimps. Second, it turns out that the “99%” figure resulted from using a complete human genome as the template to sequence that of chimpanzees. That would be like assembling a jigsaw puzzle based on how another puzzle fit together! The comparison also selected for areas of greater similarity and discarded those that didn’t match. To put it very simply, the two genomes looked similar because researchers expected them to look similar. Based on what we now know, biologist and Senior Fellow at the Center for Science and Culture, Ann Gauger, estimates that humans and chimps share around 92% of our DNA. To put that in perspective, scientists tell us that we’re 90% identical to cats. Fake Science: "About 99% of Our DNA Is Identical to That of Chimpanzees" David Klinghoffer | evolutionnews.org | January 2, 2017 How Chimps and Humans are Different, Pt. 1: The Genome Discovery Institute | November 18, 2016 How Chimps and Humans are Different, Pt. 2: Human-specific Genes Discovery Institute | November 22, 2016 http://www.breakpoint.org/bpcommentaries/entry/13/30394
And even more recent research by Jeffrey Tomkins and Richard Buggs has brought that figure down to 85%:
New Chimp Genome Confirms Creationist Research BY JEFFREY P. TOMKINS, PH.D. * | FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2018 Excerpt: The first time they constructed a chimp genome and compared it to humans, they claimed 98.5% DNA similarity based on cherry-picked regions that were highly similar to human. However, an extensive DNA comparison study I published in 2016 revealed two major flaws in their construction of the chimp genome.1 First, many chimp DNA data sets were likely contaminated with human DNA, especially those produced in the first half of the chimpanzee genome project from 2002 to 2005. Second, the chimpanzee genome was deliberately constructed to be more human-like than it really is.2 Scientists assembled the small snippets of chimp DNA onto the human genome, using it as a scaffold or reference. It’s much like putting together a jigsaw puzzle by looking at the picture on the box as a guide. Since many chimpanzee data sets likely suffered from human DNA contamination, the level of humanness was amplified. I studied the 2005–2010 data sets that showed less human DNA data contamination and found they were only 85% similar to human at best.1 Just this year, scientists published a new version of the chimpanzee genome.3 This new version incorporated an advanced type of DNA sequencing technology that produces much longer snippets of DNA sequence than earlier technologies. It also involved better protocols that greatly reduce human DNA contamination. And most importantly, the authors report that the DNA sequences have been assembled without using the human genome as a scaffold. They also acknowledged the flawed nature of previous versions of the chimp genome: The higher-quality human genome assemblies have often been used to guide the final stages of nonhuman genome projects, including the order and orientation of sequence contigs and, perhaps more importantly, the annotation of genes. This bias has effectively “humanized” other ape genome assemblies.3 This confirms what many creationists have been pointing out for years. Curiously, the authors of the new chimp genome paper said very little about the overall DNA similarity between humans and chimpanzees. However, the University of London’s specialist in evolutionary genomics, Dr. Richard Buggs, evaluated the results of an analysis that compared this new chimp version to the human genome and discovered some shocking anti-evolutionary findings. Dr. Buggs reported on his website that “the percentage of nucleotides in the human genome that had one-to-one exact matches in the chimpanzee genome was 84.38%” and “4.06% had no alignment to the chimp assembly.”?4 Assuming the chimpanzee and human genomes are about the same size, this translates to an overall similarity of only about 80%! This outcome is way outside the nearly identical level of 98 to 99% similarity required for human evolution to seem plausible. http://www.icr.org/article/new-chimp-genome-confirms-creationist-research Geneticist: On (Supposed 99%) Human-Chimp Genome Similarity, There Are “Predictions” Not “Established Fact” - July 31, 2018 Excerpt: To come up with the most accurate current assessment that I could of the similarity of the human and chimpanzee genome, I downloaded from the UCSC genomics website the latest alignments (made using the LASTZ software) between the human and chimpanzee genome assemblies, hg38 and pantro6.,,, The percentage of nucleotides in the human genome that had one-to-one exact matches in the chimpanzee genome was 84.38% In order to assess how improvements in genome assemblies can change these figures, I did the same analyses on the alignment of the older PanTro4 assembly against Hg38 (see discussion post #40).,,, The percentage of nucleotides in the human genome that had one-to-one exact matches in the chimpanzee genome was 82.34%. - Richard Buggs https://evolutionnews.org/2018/07/geneticist-on-human-chimp-genome-similarity-there-are-predictions-not-established-fact/
Even if DNA were as similar as Darwinists have falsely portrayed it to be, the basic ‘form’ that any organism may take is not reducible to DNA, (nor is the basic ‘form’ reducible to any other material particulars in molecular biology, (proteins, RNAs, etc.. etc.. ,,), that Darwinists may wish to invoke. That is to say, ‘you can mutate DNA til the cows come home’, (Stephen Meyer), and you will still not achieve a fundamental change in the basic form of any organism. And since the basic ‘form’ of an organism is forever beyond the explanatory power of Darwinian mechanisms, then any belief that Darwinism explains the ‘transformation of forms’ for all of life on earth is purely a pipe dream that has no experimental basis in reality.
Darwinism vs Biological Form - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyNzNPgjM4w
To further drive this point home, Dolphins and Kangaroos, although being very different morphologically from humans, are found to have very similar DNA sequences to humans.
Kangaroo genes close to humans – 2008 Richard Sternberg PhD – podcast – On Human Origins: Is Our Genome Full of Junk DNA? Part 2. (Major Differences in higher level chromosome spatial organization) 5:30 minute mark quote: “Basically the dolphin genome is almost wholly identical to the human genome,, yet no one would argue that bottle-nose dolphins are our sister species”,,, https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/a-gene-that-sets-primates-apes-and-humans-apart-from-other-mammals/#comment-669528
Where tremendous differences are found between chimps and humans (and all other distinct kinds of species) are in alternative splicing patterns.
Evolution by Splicing – Comparing gene transcripts from different species reveals surprising splicing diversity. – Ruth Williams – December 20, 2012 Excerpt: A major question in vertebrate evolutionary biology is “how do physical and behavioral differences arise if we have a very similar set of genes to that of the mouse, chicken, or frog?”,,, A commonly discussed mechanism was variable levels of gene expression, but both Blencowe and Chris Burge,,, found that gene expression is relatively conserved among species. On the other hand, the papers show that most alternative splicing events differ widely between even closely related species. “The alternative splicing patterns are very different even between humans and chimpanzees,” said Blencowe.,,, http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view%2FarticleNo%2F33782%2Ftitle%2FEvolution-by-Splicing%2F
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I have always viewed Adam and Eve and many of the events described in the bible allegories. However, even if the events in the bible are the literal truth, genetic research cannot be used to support it, as all extant lineages would have been derived from a very small number of people after the flood.Ed George_{January 13, 2019
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no Adam and Eve, is not a logical conclusion of the factual science evidence/results, which align with Eve and Noach, 1556 years after Adam and Eve formed in full stature, having multiple sons with Naamah, that survived the 1656 anno mundi mass extinction event, so does not preclude Adam and Eve, starting 1 anno mundi, just as advertised in scriptural testimony. reference the Moshe Emes series for Torah and science alignment, 'RCCF' framework.Pearlman_{January 13, 2019
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