[Home] [Site map] [Updates] [Quotes]
"What strikes one about the Jewish description of creation and early man, compared with pagan cosmogonies, is the lack of interest in the mechanics of how the world and its creatures came into existence, which led the Egyptian and Mesopotamian narrators into such weird contortions. The Jews simply assume the pre-existence of an omnipotent God, who acts but is never described or characterized, and so has the force and invisibility of nature itself: it is significant that the first chapter of Genesis, unlike any other cosmogony of antiquity, fits perfectly well, in essence, with modern scientific explanations of the origin of the universe, not least the 'Big Bang' theory." (Johnson P., "A History of the Jews," Weidenfeld & Nicolson: London, 1987, p.8)
[top]"But that wasn't to say there was no Eve. And while Africa was still the strongest candidate (in most people's minds), there was the chance-always subject to sudden and drastic change - that Eve had been where many people always thought she had been: in the Middle East, land of the Bible and that chapter called Genesis." (Brown, Michael H. [science journalist], "The Search for Eve," Harper & Row: New York NY, 1990, p.299)
[top]"Another possible model assumes that a population develops in a relatively isolated part of the available area, undergoes a demographic explosion, and invades the rest of the area, mixing with the local inhabitants or supplanting them. This may have happened repeatedly, at different times and places... People who like to think that man originated at a single place (the garden of Eden") would find their viewpoint expressed by [this] the second model... It seems more plausible to assume, however, that the concentration of finds in East Africa is the result of the area's having conditions favorable to early human life or to preservation of fossil specimens, rather than evidence of the location of Eden. In any case, the statistically very small sample of fossil specimens makes it impossible to choose between these models at the present time." (Cavalli-Sforza, Luigi L. [Professor of Genetics Emeritus, Stanford University School of Medicine, USA] & Bodmer W.F., "The Genetics of human Populations," [1971], Dover: Mineola NY, 1999, reprint, pp.694-695).
[top]"The biblical record does not settle the uniqueness, antiquity, and unity of the human race by a central appeal to morphological considerations. The disjunction between man and the animals, of the sub- Adamic forms and the Adam form of life, in Genesis, takes place with the formation of a creature under moral command. Man's basic distinction is that he is divinely endowed with the imago Dei, through the specially inbreathed breath of life. The Bible knows man as from the beginning intended for fellowship with God, for rational-moral-spiritual discrimination, for social responsibility for dominion over the earth and the animals. The record moves swiftly, in biblical theology, from the primal Adam, who is already a "cultured gentleman," to the beginnings of society and civilization. ... Perhaps we are not to rule out dogmatically the possibility that the dust of man's origin may have been animated, since the animals before man appear to have been fashioned from the earth (Gen. 1:24). The Bible does not explicate man's physical origin in detail. The fact that, after Genesis 1:1 the narrator deals with a mediate creation, which involves the actualizing of potentialities latent in the original creation, should caution us against the one-sided invocation of divine transcendence." (Henry, Carl F.H.* [late evangelical Christian philosopher-theologian], "Science and Religion," in Henry C.F.H., ed., "Contemporary Evangelical Thought: A Survey," [1957] Baker: Grand Rapids MI, 1968, reprint, p.282)
[top]"There's just one thing we haven't quite dared to mention. It's this, and you won't believe it. It's all happened already. Back there in the past, ten thousand years ago. The man of the future, with the big brain, the small teeth. Where did it get him? Nowhere. *Maybe there isn't any future*. Or, if there is, maybe it's only what you can find in a little heap of bones on a certain South African beach. Many of you who read this belong to the white race. We like to think about this man of the future as being white. It flatters our ego. But the man of the future in the past I'm talking about was not white. He lived in Africa. His brain was bigger than your brain. His face was straight and small, almost a child's face. He was the end evolutionary product in a direction quite similar to the one anthropologists tell us is the road down which we are traveling." (Eiseley, Loren C. [Professor of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania], "The Immense Journey," [1946], Vintage: New York, 1957, reprint, pp.129-130. Emphasis in original).
[top]* Authors with an asterisk against their name are believed not to be evolutionists.
[top]
Copyright © 2001-2003, by Stephen E. Jones. All rights reserved This page and its
contents may be used for non-commercial purposes only.
If used on the
Internet, a link back to my home page at
http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones would be appreciated.
Created: 12 January, 2001. Updated: 13 July, 2003.