by inkling 74 Replies latest watchtower bible
James James, James...
I'm worried about your reading comprehension.
Didn't Snowbird tell you that scientists have an evil agenda to destroy faith in the Bible?
So when they say that light can only travel at 186,000 miles per second, and that some galaxies are billions of light years away, don't you believe them!
After all, have any scientists traveled 4000 light years from earth? No? Well then they can't say for sure that anything is more than 4000 light years away, can they?
Wow. I always find it amazing how completely retarded some people can be, but they think they're reasonable. Apparently we got a lot more evolving to do.
It's important to distinguish between the fossil records and bone record. When have actual Neaderthal bones from which DNA has been extracted. DNA mutates at a somewhat predictable rate. By counting how many mutations have occurred between Neanderthals and us, we can approximate how long ago they lived. I must point out however, that many scientists feel Neanderthal and AMHs (anatomically modern humans) evolved independently.
I don't see the issue as either/or. Scientists feel the AHMs appeared "Out of Africa" about 10,000 years ago. In the eons of the time, 6,000 versus 10,000 years is not that much. Perhaps, when God said he "created" man, it just meant that he had directed evolution to the point that man, with a brain that could process and appreciated art and religion, now appeared. Maybe the Bible AND scientists are both correct.
Justitia
Actually, I believe the current estimate is that AMHs appeared approximately 100,000-300,000 years ago. Still... thats a far cry from "millions". That said, it may have taken us a while to tap our brains "new" potential, and overcome old memes and develop new ones that would eventually lead to what could recognizably be called 'civilization'.
My two cents...
I believe the story of Adam and Eve was made up by the Christian Church trying to scare people and put women in submission to men. Before religion came along Mother Nature was worshiped. Man had many gods. I honestly don't know who is right or what religion is the true religion. Should I deem this?
To answer the original poster's topic, "Mitochondrial Eve is thought to have been living around 140,000 years ago, according to probabilistic studies, ...To find the Mitochondrial Eve of all living humans, one can start by tracing a line from every individual to his/her mother, then continue those lines from each of those mothers to their mothers and so on, effectively tracing a family tree backward in time based purely on mitochondrial lineages. Going back through time these mitochondrial lineages will converge when two or more women have the same mother. The further back in time one goes, the fewer mitochondrial ancestors of living humans there will be. Eventually only one is left, and this one is the most recent common matrilineal ancestor of all humans alive today, i.e. Mitochondrial Eve."
If you disagree with that, then you might appreciate this link.
Dave
I believe most people misunderstand Genesis. This seeming conflict between Bible chronology and well established human history can be resolved by understanding that the Bible does not tell us that Adam was, in an absolute chronological sense, "the first man." God simply used Adam and Eve, and orchestrated the events in Eden, to illustrate the unrighteous condition of the then already existing human race. This understanding also answers the questions, "Where did Cain get his wife?" and "Who were the people living in the land 'east of Eden' whom Cain was afraid might kill him?" (Gen. 4:14-17)
The only place in Scripture Adam is referred to as the "first" man is in 1 Cor.15:45-47. There Adam is called "the first man." But there we also find that Jesus is called "the second man." The context shows that the writer of those words was referring to Adam as the "first" man only in his relative chronological position to Christ. In other words, since Adam came "first" and Christ came "second," Adam came before Christ.
The Roman emperor Julian the Apostate (A.D. 331-363) held this understanding of scripture (that Adam is not there portrayed as literally the first man in an absolute chronological sense) but he thought it could be used as a counterpoint to Christianity to restore paganism. Isaac de la Peyrere, a Catholic priest, also held this understanding of Scripture in 1656. For his efforts he was forced to recant and his books were burned. In 1860, one year after Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species, Bible scholar Edward William Lane published this understanding, but anonymously to escape reprisals.
Today this understanding is being advanced by Christians such as Richard Fischer. He received his master's degree in theology in 1992. He has published articles in Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, and has reviewed articles for publication in Christian Scholar's Review. He is a member of American Scientific Affiliation, Interdisciplinary Biblical Research Institute, Evangelical Theological Society, and he is listed in Who's Who in Theology and Science. Fisher's book on this subject is entitled The Origins Solution. It does a good job of making sense out of several controversial "origins" related subjects, such as biological evolution, the creative "days" of Genesis, the extent of Noah's flood and the tower of Babel. I found it to be a well worthwhile read.
I believe the story of Adam and Eve was made up by the Christian Church trying to scare people and put women in submission to men.
Male dominance and goddess worship notwithstanding, you are aware that the account is from Genesis, the Old Testament, and predates Christianity...right?
Justitita
As I mentioned earlier, Isaac de la Peyrére was a Catholic priest who published his understanding of the scriptures in the seventeenth century, that people just like us lived long before Adam and Eve. I find his writings especially interesting because he reasoned his entire case from New Testament Scripture.
He argued eloquently in "Men Before Adam" that a literal interpretation of Romans 5:12-14 clearly indicated the world was populated before Adam. The key was verse 13: "For before the law was given sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law." Peyrére reasoned that the "law" there referred to by Paul was the "law" given to Adam shortly after his creation, and if there was "sin in the world" before that "law" was given to Adam then there must then also have been people to commit that sin.
Peyrére wrote: "... it must be held that sin was in the world before Adam and until Adam: but that sin was not imputed before Adam; Therefore other men were to be allowed before Adam who had indeed sinned, but without imputation; because before the law sins were not imputed."
Peyrére argued that although men and sin were in the world before Adam, the manner of sin was in the form of offenses against nature, violations of "natural law," and all died a natural death. It was not until God imposed moral law, with Adam the first to be subject to it, that men were capable of "legal sin," trespasses against God's law. Beginning with Adam's Fall, human beings die both a natural death and a "legal" or spiritual death.
Today most Bible commentaries avoid any implications that all of humanity did not commence with Adam by saying that the "law" referred to in Romans 5:12 was the law of Moses. But if Mosaic law, and not Adamic law, was intended by Romans 5:13, it would mean that sin was not charged before Moses, and that imputation of sin was through the law of Moses, but that it somehow applied retroactively to Adam and his
descendants. Peyrére railed against this understanding of Romans. Peyrére argued that since the law transgressed was the law given to Adam of Genesis, the sin spoken of in Romans was sin perpetrated by those who co-existed and pre-existed Adam. Sin was not imputed to those forerunners, however, until Adam disobeyed God's law.
Peyrére wrote: "Before the Law of God, or till that Law of God was violated by Adam, sin and death were in the world, yet had gained no power over it : they had got no lawful possession, they had got no absolute power. The reason is, because before that time there was no Law given by God."
Clearly, Peyrére argued, sin was imputed from Adam to Moses. What brought the flood? Was the flood not judgment for sin? Or for that matter, what about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah? And if the "law" referred to in Romans 5:13 was Adamic law, the sin that we are there told "was in the world" before that law was given must have been sin committed by people who lived before Adam and Eve. People from whom Cain found his wife.
The Bible is not an archeological book but an history telling us what happen between good and his people. Calculate how many time goes on from the "first man" and us is not correct because the biblical story don't give all détails.
we can believe in god and we can also read without any problem that the first man like us appear on earth 60'000 or more years ago
Xavier
