Panel review of Andrew Loke's The Origin of Humanity and Evolution at ETS-EPS 2022
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 21 ส.ค. 2024
- During the panel review of my book The Origin of Humanity and Evolution: Science and Scripture in Conversation (London: Bloomsbury-T&T Clark 2022) at the ETS-EPS annual conference 2022, S Joshua Swamidass, William Lane Craig and Richard Averback commented on my book and I replied to their comments. I am grateful for their participation and for Michael Lepien and his team at Reasonable Faith for recording and editing the panel review and for sending me the recording.
The text of my reply to Dr Craig can be found here: www.academia.e...
My response to Dr Craig's podcast (www.reasonable...) can be found here:
• Decoding the Thought o...
Thank you for this video, Dr. Loke! There is a lot of food for thought!
Finally! Thank you so much for posting this.
Dr. Loke Is it not better if you stop arguing with people who are clearly ignorant in the comments section. Please put that time into more awesome research, Thank you very much for your work! ❤️
Thank you for your comment. I have chosen to stop engaging with some but to continue engaging with others whose comments can help me better understand which points those people are ignorant of, which is part of my research and which can help me better educate other people in the future by teaching those points.
Great discussion! question: the first person asking a question during Q/A, by any chance, was that Richard Carrier?
I wish Dr. Loke's book were available for a little cheaper (maybe as an e-book). I haven't gotten around to reading it, partially because it is $80.
Thanks for your comment, I had asked the publisher about making this book open access, but they have not yet replied to me.
(Following 48:00) To me it seems fair to say that Neanderthals and Denisovans were pretty much the same as us, and you might find a lot of people today that show no difference at all and cannot be excluded from the rest of our species. I don't believe in Darwinian macro-evolution (the evidence nowadays overwhelmingly negates this idea) and therefore see humans (in the image of God) to begin with God's creation of them and/or Adam and Eve, and therefore with the possibility that this does not actually play such a major role for the layman believer. Disagreements seem to center on where you consider homo sapiens to have started. Also, those people coming before Adam and Eve may not be different at all, in terms of religiosity, from those living now and not being active in the Christian faith or those experiencing other religions in other cultural contexts (i.e. much of Asia). We can pray for them, but how God handles all of these people upon their death can be open to a lot conjecture. I would say we just don't know and that that is quite alright. So I would favor a kind of synthesis of all the views brought forward at this debate. Many thanks to all the participants, esp. Dr. Craig and Andrew Loke.
Are you a fan of Low Bar Bill’s work?
I don't think these scholars or writers resolve any sorts of issues relating to the origins of humanity, Adam and Eve.
The reason is that, they're oriented with their secular studies and try to mix with Biblical accounts of creation, and this sort of approach isn't going to help, because the Biblical account of Genesis is something written by men inspired by God, and these scholars since they studied genetics or science develops multiple hypothesis, and entertaining people.
Adam & Eve were created by God as Immortals, but they lost their immortality b/c of their disobedience and deception. So, how do they lose Immortality? Or how do they crossover from immortality unto mortality? These sorts of questions can be answered from the Bible. Instead, these scholars suggest that people outside of the garden, if they were outside of the garden then what's the purpose for God to create the humans inside the garden?
You claimed your model works for an 'old' Adam - but the criteria you use, ie 'religiosity', and hte way you define that particular criterion - rules out most of what scientists would term Modern humanity. The guy in the audience was right - you are claiming that for most of the existence of our species, Homo sapiens, our species was not human.
And don't get me wrong - I think your model accurately represents the closest thing to a logical way to rationalise the Bible with science. It's just that it does it in a way that still fails to harmonise the Bible with science, and highlights some of the incoherencies in it.
In the science and religion literature Ancient (‘old’) Adam is a term that is often used (or implied) in contrast with Neolithic Adam. You also failed to consider the Stanford Encyclopedia article I cited, which shows that there are different definitions of humanity, and that science itself does not provide the answer to determine what are the sufficient conditions for humanity ontologically. Thus you fail to show how my model ‘fails to harmonise the Bible with science, and highlights some of the incoherencies in it’ as you claimed. In short, your objection fails.
@@andrewloke7
why do you keep making this category error?
Science (meaning evolutionary biology) doesn't have anything to say on the 'sufficient conditions for humanity ontologically' because ontologically, there is no such thing as 'humanity'. Humanity is a sociological term. It's a word that normatively speaking, is simply a place holder to refer to living organisms that are members of the species Homo sapiens, rather than any other extant species. It is fundamentally flawed as a scientific concept, because we now know about evolution - which is why 'humanity' is not a scientific statement about ontology, and no scientist claims it to be. That doesn't mean the word isn't used in a relative way by scientists, but when they do use the term, they use it with the tacit understanding that it's not a concrete, objective idea in the way you want it to be. But what is concrete, is that there is universal consensus that by definition, Homo sapiens is human. All Homo sapiens. That's not to say that all humans are Homo sapiens.
I don't care about your arbitrary distinctions between 'old' Adam and 'neolithic' Adam - Homo sapiens has existed as a discrete species for over 300,000 years. Your own definition of what entails a human (ie religiosity) claims that for 98% of Homo sapiens' existence, they were not human.
That doesn't sound very much like the Bible harmonising with science.
@@bengreen171 Your objection is based on a failure to note the distinction between anatomical homo and behavioral homo, a distinction which scientists themselves use as noted in the Stanford Encyclopedia article (Roughley 2021). Your objection that ‘Your own definition of what entails a human (ie religiosity) claims that for 98% of Homo sapiens' existence, they were not human. That doesn't sound very much like the Bible harmonising with science’ fails to note that some secular scientists have drawn the restriction even tighter ‘to include only contemporary humans, that is, those specimens of the species who, since the introduction of agriculture around 12,000 years ago, evolved the skills and capacities necessary for life in large sedentary, impersonal and hierarchical groups (Kappeler, Fichtel, & van Schaik 2019: 68).’ (Roughley 2021). Which is not a problem for those secular scientists unless they embrace your unjustified assumption that anatomical Homo sapiens is human (rather than merely ‘anatomical’ human). For goodness sake, please read the Stanford Encyclopedia article to correct your ignorance of what scientists and philosophers actually say, before you continue to raise unjustified objections. I have been advised by someone else in the comments section to stop wasting time debating with ignorant people and spend more time on important research. So I shall end here.
@@andrewloke7
"Your objection is based on a failure to note the distinction between anatomical homo and behavioral homo,"
No. I'm not talking about the genus Homo. I'm talking about one species within that genus - Homo sapiens.
Scientists to not make concrete distinctions between members of that species from 200,000 years ago, 20,000 years ago or 2 years ago.
You are the one claiming that one species can be divided into two groups - 'human' and 'non human', and your criterion is simply not one that science recognises.
"Which is not a problem for those secular scientists unless they embrace your unjustified assumption that anatomical Homo sapiens is human (rather than merely ‘anatomical’ human)."
What you don't seem to realise is that anatomical HUMANS and cognitive HUMANS and behavioural HUMANS are still being labelled as HUMANS. The qualifiers used here are simply arbitrary distinctions used for clarity with regards to what section of the timeline is being referenced.
The difference is that those qualifiers "anatomical" and "cognitive" and "behavioural" do not negate the "HUMAN" categorisation. Whereas you claim they do. So if we have uncovered anything here, it's that you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how scientists use the term 'Human', and that you actually think that members of a discrete species can be 'otherised' for arbitrary differences that are not based on any scientifically objective standard. That is called racism. To be clear, I'm not accusing you of being racist here - just your categorisation system.
You can claim all you like that I'm the ignorant one - but you've shown that you are scientifically illiterate and logically incompetent. You don't seem to realise that in standard scientific nomenclature 'Homo' is capitalised.
@@andrewloke7
do you know what Homo means?
lol. There was no garden, no Adam, no Eve, no talking snake. Just a story. Myth.
What is the basis for your assertion ?
@@andrewloke7 the basis is that I live in reality, not fiction. Magical stories are not real Dr Loke. With all due respect it seems rather silly to believe fantastic stories based on a book written by ancient peoples.
@@samkadi5443 What is the basis for your assertion that the stories in the Bible are magical fantastic stories that are fictional?
@@andrewloke7 see above. Mythology has magical stories. The Bible has magical stories so it is reasonable to think the Bible is fiction and not real. You need to be gullible to think the stories in the Bible are true. I’m not gullible and I have no need for Christianity to be true. You on the other hand have a vested interest in maintaining Your faith. I don’t.
@@samkadi5443 I’m sorry but it seems that you have just committed the logically fallacy of affirming the consequent. You wrote ‘Mythology has magical stories. The Bible has magical stories so it is reasonable to think the Bible is fiction and not real.’ It is like saying ‘Elephant has four legs. My dog has four legs, so it is reasonable to think that my dog is an elephant.’ You need to understand basic logic and reasoning (as well as some other things) first, before you can realize that the stories in the Bible are true. Without an understanding of basic logic you are being gullible in dismissing the Bible, as well as making fallacious ad hominem arguments like talking about vested interest.