Theology can lead us to some weird places. From Evolution News and Science Today, in a continuing series on Adam and the Genome,
As if on cue, science news today reports a remarkable discovery: cave art in Spain from upwards of 64,000 years ago, apparently by Neanderthals. The Wall Street Journal aptly summarizes the takeaway:
Neanderthals, once considered the low-brows of human evolution, may have been among the world’s first artists, creating cave paintings long before modern humanity arrived on the scene…
“Once considered”? This is timely because in the book Adam and the Genome, which we’ve been reviewing here, theistic evolutionist and biologist Dennis Venema discusses DNA that has been extracted from fossils of extinct members of the genus Homo, including Neanderthals and the recently discovered Denisovans. He claims these groups were “not members of our own species” (p. 62). Yet apparently, they were so genetically similar to humans that we could interbreed with them.More.
So Neanderthals only looked and acted like members of our species but weren’t really members of our species?
Has theistic evolution really come to this?
Look, speciation is a huge mess right now. It really doesn’t matter how many species of giraffe there are, certainly not to the giraffe. But if we are involving humans in the debacle, we have clearly taken a wrong turn.
Hmmm. Recently, we have been hearing a lot about Neanderthals, who – like all hominins – seem to get smarter every time we research them.
See also: Neanderthal artwork found: “Academic bombshell” obliterates “lesser human” theory? (2012)
Nothing says “Darwin snob” like indifference to the mess that the entire concept of speciation is in
Adam and Eve: Some of those just-a-myth citations turned out to be fig leaves
Researchers: Neanderthals used fire to forge tools 170 kya
and
Are Adam and Eve genetically possible? The latest: Richard Buggs (yes) replies to Dennis Venema (no)