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    Comments on Dennis Venema and Scot McKnight’s Book (2017) Adam and the Genome
    Comments on Dennis Venema and Scot McKnight’s Book (2017) Adam and the Genome
    Comments on Dennis Venema and Scot McKnight’s Book (2017) Adam and the Genome
    Ebook55 pages33 minutes

    Comments on Dennis Venema and Scot McKnight’s Book (2017) Adam and the Genome

    By Razie Mah

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    Saint Augustine formulated Original Sin in order to justify infant baptism. The theological concept turned out to be very useful. It became Christian doctrine.
    Augustine postulated that Original Sin was transmitted through procreation. The sexual union was the path of descent.
    Today, this implies that a historical Adam and Eve are the biological ancestors (or “parents”) of all humans. This theoretically locates Adam and Eve between 50kyr and 300kyr ago, when the first anatomically modern humans appear in the fossil record.
    Venema shows that this cannot be the case. The genetic variability of humans does not support a genetic bottleneck of only two people.
    Augustine also treated Adam and Eve as historical characters, reading the second creation story in Genesis as an actual event.
    McKnight shows that this is not tenable. Religious literature before Augustine took Adam and Eve to be literary, archetypal and bearing the image of God. Their stories are taken as lessons, not as reports of factual events.
    So, Adam and Eve are founders. They begin the genealogies. But, they are not founders of humans in the modern biological sense of the word.
    In sum, Venema and McKnight lower the curtains on Augustine’s play on Original Sin.
    However, the curtains come alive. On one side, the category-based nested form shows that biological descent with modification has the same relational structure as the message underlying the word “religion”. A theological mystery resides at the heart of Darwinism. On top of that, this mystery compares to the relational structure of the postmodern university, leading to some wonderful and goofy word play.
    On the other side, a scientific hypothesis sheds new light on McKnight’s point of view. This hypothesis addresses the question: Why is our current Lebenswelt not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in?
    “The first singularity” is a scientific concept that inspires a re-scripting of the Story of the Fall. The literature of the ancient Near East points to a horizon-limiting cultural event.
    The curtains fall on Augustine’s version of the Story of the Fall. Then, miraculously, the curtains themselves come to life with a new - postmodern and scientific - play.
    Take a look. It is enough to inspire one to enter a hope for salvation.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRazie Mah
    Release dateJun 24, 2017
    ISBN9781942824374
    Comments on Dennis Venema and Scot McKnight’s Book (2017) Adam and the Genome
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    Razie Mah

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      Comments on Dennis Venema and Scot McKnight’s Book (2017) Adam and the Genome - Razie Mah

      Comments on Dennis Venema and Scot McKnight’s Book (2017) Adam and the Genome

      By Razie Mah

      Published for Smashwords.com

      2017

      Notes on Text

      This essay comments on a 2017 book by biologist, Dennis Venema, and theologian, Scot McKnight. The title is Adam and the Genome: Reading Scripture after Genetic Science. The publisher is Brasos Press in Grand Rapids, Michigan

      The book consists of two equal parts. The geneticist shows that Adam and Eve cannot be a single pair who founded the human species. The theologian wrestles with how to read Genesis in light of modern archaeology.

      My goal is to supplement these arguments in two ways. I will re-articulate ideas about evolutionary biology using the specialized language of the category-based nested form. I will present a scientific hypothesis that re-images the Adam and Eve stories as ancient Near Eastern fairy tales.

      Perhaps, at the end of these comments, I can declare, The old historical Adam is dead. Long live the new historical Adam.

      ‘Words that belong together’ are denoted by single quotes or italics.

      Prerequisites: Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form (#1), Primer on Sensible and Social Construction (#2), message chapter of How to Define the Word Religion

      Table of Contents

      Augustine Sets the Stage 0001

      Classic Darwinism 0016

      Neo-Darwinism 0027

      Converging Lines 0041

      Adam and Eve are not the Biological Ancestors 0051

      The Remainder 0057

      A Theologian with Principles 0129

      The Historical Adam 0148

      The First Singularity 0168

      Twelve Theses 0199

      The Variety of Adams and Eves 0230

      The Curtains Rage 0243

      Augustine Sets the Stage

      0001 In order to see where many evangelicals are coming from, consult the September 2010 issue of Perspectives in Science and Christian Faith. This particular journal of the American Scientific Affiliation presents a snapshot of some of the difficulties posed by the early chapters of Genesis.

      0002 The 2017 book, Adam and the Genome: Reading Scripture after Genetic Science, addresses one conundrum with a simple admission: Adam and Eve cannot be the progenitors of all humans, as proposed by Saint Augustine, 1600 years ago. The admission rebukes Christians striving to locate the primal couple in a genetic bottleneck between 50 and 150 thousand years ago.

      0003 Unfortunately, their solution provides little defense for Christian churches. Big government (il)liberals (BGilLs) still claim that evolution disproves the second creation story in Genesis, just like the mercantilists, fascists and communists did before. BGiLs also insist that the Bible is the stuff of myths.

      Evangelical communities will continue to bleed students.

      0004 Why?

      Original Sin.

      0005 Christians think it describes the human condition. BGilLs do not.

      0006 Christians believe that humans are disoriented. Jesus provides orientation. Jesus is the way.

      For BGilLs, the human condition is perfectible through the never-ending revolution of an administrative state. The human condition may be fulfilled

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