10 Jan 2016

If Bible Stories Are True, Then We’d Expect Other Cultures to Have Stories of Them as Well

Religious 89 Comments

As with just about anything humans argue, there are good and bad versions of the claim that Christianity must be false because other cultures have similar traditions/beliefs dating back earlier. (Gene Callahan’s post prompted me to write on this.)

For example, by itself I think it’s a decent argument for an agnostic to say, “There are lots of pagan myths about gods impregnating virgin human women who then give birth to superhuman offspring, so that makes me think the gospel accounts of Jesus are also myths.”

However, it is a terrible argument to say, “There are lots of pagan stories of a great flood in antiquity, and so I think the Genesis account is just a myth.”

If there really were a giant flood, then everybody alive after the fact must have been descended from the survivors. It would be odd if other cultures didn’t have accounts of it.

For another example of a terrible argument (though I must confess I probably used something like this when I was an atheist), I often see people saying, “Humans throughout history have believed in tens of thousands of deities. You think every single one of them is wrong except yours. Really?”

Again, if there is a living being who created the universe, then it should not surprise us that every culture pines to know more about this being. It would be evidence against the God of the Bible if the Hebrews were the only ones who had a notion of God.

If we find evidence that the Egyptians in 800 BC studied the stars–and moreover that they had many erroneous beliefs about them–does that make us doubt modern astronomy?

89 Responses to “If Bible Stories Are True, Then We’d Expect Other Cultures to Have Stories of Them as Well”

  1. E. Harding says:

    “It would be evidence against the God of the Bible if the Hebrews were the only ones who had a notion of God.”

    -This is the only part where I disagree with you here.

  2. Vitor says:

    I don’t think that’s a good one, Bob–the immediate retort would be that astronomy is a science, so we believe in modern astronomy over Egyptian astronomy because we have more evidence about stars than they did.

    I think a better analogy might be one about political systems. You could reply with:

    “Sure, and people throughout the ages have used thousands of different legal systems. You think most, if not all, of them is inferior to the one you live in. Really?”

    I think that helps to illustrate that the argument, while not necessarily factually incorrect, is just missing the point.

  3. GabbyD says:

    Bob,

    the obvious counterargument to ““Humans throughout history have believed in tens of thousands of deities. You think every single one of them is wrong except yours. Really?””

    1) if its true that ONE particular god is responsible for all the gods of various societies, then why does he present himself with different particulars/specifics? Why have no body in one, but appear like a man in another, and be an animal in another?

    2) the argument says that just because many people(s) believe in something, it is true/right. It might also mean that if people stop believing in something it MUST be false/wrong?

    i think a reasonable counter would be that the “rightness/wrongness” of a notion cannot solely lie, and cannot be refuted by merely the number of people believing in it. Itsnt it possible for vast numbers of people to believe in a false thing — i.e. the possibility of holding false beliefs for extended periods of time?

  4. Khodge says:

    All of the biblical evidence, I.e. the early stories of the Bible, says that the Jews believed in multiple deities. To go from many gods to our God to the One God is, I would suspect, a fairly easy and natural growth. Much, much more difficult is the counterintuitive move to a Trinity, a step so radical that explaining it requires a paradigm shift that leaves many people behind.

    • Grane Peer says:

      Are you talking about Jesus spending most of his life in India?

    • Guest says:

      OR maybe the trinity is a misnomer. Jesus is God’s son.

  5. Tel says:

    If there really were a giant flood, then everybody alive after the fact must have been descended from the survivors. It would be odd if other cultures didn’t have accounts of it.

    No, because if it was a flood that covered most of the Middle East, it would still be a giant flood, and probably seem like the whole world for the poor people caught in it… yet not such a big deal for people living in Europe at the time.

  6. Tel says:

    Again, if there is a living being who created the universe, then it should not surprise us that every culture pines to know more about this being. It would be evidence against the God of the Bible if the Hebrews were the only ones who had a notion of God.

    I dunno, take Hindu culture for example. The Hindus have various concepts of a supreme and absolute God above all others and there is even evidence for Hindu monotheism.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_in_Hinduism

    However, they weren’t entirely consistent about this monotheistic idea, and what’s more, most Hindus don’t see that as the main focus of what religion is about (even amongst those who do believe in some God that is supreme above all others). So the notion certainly was there, but it just never took off the way it did in the Middle East.

  7. Grane Peer says:

    Bob, paragraph 2 is not a decent argument it is corroboration. I think you find it decent because there is no way for you to accept that Jesus and Mary are not the antecedents of that myth(?).

    • Bob Murphy says:

      Grane I’m not sure I understand you. I’m saying if there were stories predating the story about Mary, then that is a decent argument for saying the early Christians borrowed that story from elsewhere.

      I.e. it can’t be that other cultures heard about what happened to Mary, and then tweaked it for their own stories, if their stories came first.

      • Grane Peer says:

        I agree that it is a decent argument for saying they got it from elsewhere but is it a decent argument for saying the whole lot is then myth? I would think from your point of view that despite it’s persistence through time and across cultures you would rather dismiss that theme outright as make-believe rather than accept it as a real event occurring at some unknown time long before and unrelated to Christian teaching.

  8. Harold says:

    Interesting comparison. Focusing on the many gods part.

    Widespread belief in gods is consistent with there actually being such things. It is also consistent with there not being gods. Now you say that there is only one of these that is real, and all the others are mistaken quests for the real one. Further, you also say that the real one is powerful and knows everything.

    I would argue that this is inconsistent. Why should the only real god, that is powerful and knowledgable, fail to reach the majority of people? Why should vast populations of India and China (and others) not find out about this one real god for centuries? I say that this widespread belief in many different gods is inconsistent with the belief of one true, powerful god.

    What is consistent with this diverse range of beliefs?
    1) god is not interested or powerful enough to be involved in human lives
    2) god is in control of all human lives, but chose not to be known to most people most of the time
    3) god has manifested differently to different populations.
    4) there are actually many different gods, none of which influences the whole world
    5) there is no god.

    The only one that is consistent with the bibilical point of view is 2) -God could have been there for generation after generation of Chinese and Indians, but chose not to be. This does not strike me as the most likely outcome, but we cannot rule it out completely.

    Is there another good explanation for the widespread belief in supernatural beings that also explains the variety of beliefs? I believe there is – it confers a survival benefit. By “enforcing” cooperation, it makes the group stronger and prevents the group being taken over by the selfish. The evolution of altruism is difficult to explain, because while groups that contain only cooperating individuals perform better than groups containing selfish individuals, within each group the selfish individuals out-perform the altruists. Each group ends up being taken over by the selfish. Religion provides a mechanism for altruism to persist, so the groups with this mechanislm out-perform the selfish groups, and are not themselves taken over by the selfish. Therefore, every succesful group has such a mechnism, but there is no requirement for them to each have the same belief. The only requirement is that they all promote cooperation and punish selfishness. It is often said that all religions share many factors- such as discouraging theft and murder and promoting cooperation. This could be why.

    Since we have a good explanation that does not require extra assumptions (of supernatural powers and unknown motivations for apparently unexplainable things), Occam’s Razor would require that this is the default option we should take.

    • Steve says:

      You say, “What is consistent with this diverse range of beliefs?
      1) god is not interested or powerful enough to be involved in human lives
      2) god is in control of all human lives, but chose not to be known to most people most of the time
      3) god has manifested differently to different populations.
      4) there are actually many different gods, none of which influences the whole world
      5) there is no god.

      The only one that is consistent with the bibilical point of view is 2) -God could have been there for generation after generation of Chinese and Indians, but chose not to be. This does not strike me as the most likely outcome, but we cannot rule it out completely.”

      But this is incorrect. The Hebrew sacred texts give an explanation for the polytheism of the other nations.

      The book of 1 Enoch describes the decent from heaven of 200 angels in defiance of God’s will during the time of Enoch, great grandfather of the Noah of the Great Flood fame. These angels are called Watchers. According to 1 Enoch and Genesis chapter 6, these Watchers mated with human women who gave birth to giants called the Nephilim (or Rephaim in some later scriptures). This destruction of the human genetic line was the ultimate reason for the Great Flood, and why Noah was chosen to be saved. The Hebrew word in Genesis 6:9 that describes why Noah was chosen, תָּמִ֥ים, is usually translated as “blameless,” but it literally means “to be pure, without defect.” This, given the context of the previous verses describing hybrid Nephilim, implies the reason Noah and his family were chosen to be saved was to preserve the true humanity. The Flood story goes from one of horror and judgment to one of a great rescue.

      Back to 1 Enoch, all but 70 Watchers were destroyed and all the Nephilim in the flood. Some time after the flood, and probably after the Tower of Babel story in Genesis 11, God gives the remaining 70 Watchers dominion over the 70 nations of the earth (which are anachronistically listed in Genesis 10). These remaining fallen angels set themselves up as the gods of these nations. God saved the nation of Israel for himself so He could work his ultimate plan of redemption of the whole human race (and the whole earth) through them.

      So you can see that your assumptions are false. In the Judeo-Christian worldview there IS an explanation for why many cultures have many gods and ours has just one, the True God.

      There are many arguments that atheists can make against the existence of God. The one about other cultures having many gods is a dreadfully weak and easily explained one.

      • Harold says:

        Well, if you think that is an easy explanation, then fair enough. It sound much more complicated than mine.

        So we add another option:
        6) Angels defied God and mated with humans to create Giants, then God sent a flood to destroy the giants, then the remaining angels set themselves up as false gods over the vast majority of the world, so that the vast majority of people did not get to hear about the true God.

        I am not sure that makes the case any stronger. It is just a variant of 2) God is in control of all human lives, but chose not to be known to most people most of the time.

        Speaking of stories being re-used, this sounds rather like the Greek gods mating with humans to produce demi-gods.

  9. knoxharrington says:

    “If there really were a giant flood, then everybody alive after the fact must have been descended from the survivors. It would be odd if other cultures didn’t have accounts of it.”

    Bob,

    Are you arguing that Noah’s descendants spread out after the flood and that this post-flood diaspora explains aborigines in Australia, Amazonian tribesmen, Chinese and Japanese civilization, Vikings, sub-Saharan African cultures, and Native Americans to name just a few?

    Thanks,

    Knox

    • Bob Murphy says:

      Knox, are you saying that life spontaneously arose in at least 6 separate prebiotic ponds? I.e. are you denying that all humans have a common ancestor?

      • E. Harding says:

        Bob, that’s a non sequitur. Answer knox’s question.

        • Dan says:

          He was pointing out that they both believe that all humans came from a common ancestor. Unless, of course, Knox denies this.

          • Craw says:

            A common human ancestor named Noah after a vaguely remembered flood? That’s very different from a common ape like creature a few million years ago.

        • Bob Murphy says:

          Yes’m massah. Yes I think every human today has a common ancestor, and since I also think there was a great flood I think that common ancestor survived the flood.

          My point, in case it wasn’t clear, is that Knox is making it sound as if it’s ludicrous to suppose that people on different continents could all be descended from Noah. And yet, if I’m not mistaken, Knox and Richard Dawkins believe that people on different continents are all descended from the same ape-like creature in Africa. Right?

          • Craw says:

            How much time are we talking here? Was the flood a few million years ago? Remembered in oral tradition for a few million years? That does seem ludicrous, doesn’t it?

          • E. Harding says:

            My point, in case it wasn’t clear, is that Knox is making it sound as if it’s ludicrous to suppose that people on different continents could all be descended from Noah. And yet, if I’m not mistaken, Knox and Richard Dawkins believe that people on different continents are all descended from the same ape-like creature in Africa. Right?

            -Different animals entirely, Bob. Different animals entirely. Knox, if I am not mistaken, is not claiming anything as ludicrous as human population size going below a few thousand.

            • Bob Murphy says:

              Different animals entirely, Bob. Different animals entirely. Knox, if I am not mistaken, is not claiming anything as ludicrous as human population size going below a few thousand.

              E. Harding you think if we traced human genealogies back through time, we would never get below 1,000 separate ancestors?

              This is really funny. What started as a standard, “Let’s mock the Bible thumper” has turned into, “Let’s throw standard evolutionary biology out the window.”

              • knoxharrington says:

                Bob,

                I claimed nothing and took no position. I asked you “Are you arguing that Noah’s descendants spread out after the flood and that this post-flood diaspora explains aborigines in Australia, Amazonian tribesmen, Chinese and Japanese civilization, Vikings, sub-Saharan African cultures, and Native Americans to name just a few?”

                I just wanted you to answer the question – and the answer should be either a “yes” or a “no.”

                Knox

              • E. Harding says:

                “E. Harding you think if we traced human genealogies back through time, we would never get below 1,000 separate ancestors?”

                -What do you mean? There is a last female common ancestor all humans are descended from, as well as a last male one (although he lived thousands of years earlier than the female one). But human population size never dipped below several thousand.

                This is really funny. What started as a standard, “Let’s mock the Bible thumper” has turned into, “Let’s throw standard evolutionary biology out the window.”

                -Bob, now you’re just displaying your ignorance of biology. Any human population size of below a few thousand would produce evidence of inbreeding far greater than that seen in human DNA today.

                https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/how-big-was-the-human-population-bottleneck-not-anything-close-to-2/

          • Harold says:

            The genetic variation among people worldwide is apparently quite low. Geneticists think humans might have passed through a population bottleneck, reduced to a few thousand individuals more than 50,000 years ago. If Noah and family can be reresented by a few thousand, and “the world” can be represented by a part of Africa, and it could be more than 50,000 years ago, then this story could fit the evidence we have now. But only as far as humans were concerned. There is no way the rest of the animal kingdom could have arisen from two individuals by any mechanism we currently understand

          • knoxharrington says:

            I love how by simply asking a question, premised on Bob’s own post, it is inferred that I’m taking a position. It makes me wonder why Bob is loathe to confirm that all of the cultures and ethnicities I mentioned are from Noah’s line and therefore began 4,500 years ago?

            • Bob Murphy says:

              Knox, there are fundamentalist preachers who don’t think Noah only lived 4,500 years ago. They think the Bible might skip generations. Vernon McGee thinks the universe might be way older than 20 billion years, for example. So no, the reason I was astounded at your question was that it sure sounded like you were saying it’s inconceivable all the different humans on various continents shared a common ancestor.

              • Dan says:

                Yeah, had he simply asked if you believed everyone descended from Noah that’d be one thing, but the way he asked it it sounded like he thought it was absurd to think the different groups of humans he listed could possibly be explained by a single ancestor. Otherwise, why say it the way he did?

            • knoxharrington says:

              Thanks Bob. I didn’t realize you were reading into the Bible various “outs” that allow the Noah claim to seem not as ridiculous as it appears.

              The idea that all humans, and their various cultures, languages, and ethnicities, are the result of inbreeding amongst Noah’s kin is quite simply unbelievable.

              Noah and his descendants emerged from the Ark on Mt. Ararat (or wherever) and started a human inbreeding project that would make Appalachia blush. Christians really want to stick to that story? Have at it. It certainly doesn’t make your views look inbred.

        • knoxharrington says:

          “Bob, that’s a non sequitur. Answer knox’s question.”

          I think Bob is embarrassed to say “yes” and is not allowed by his faith to say “no.” Hence the evasion and failure to answer the question with a simple “yes” or “no.”

          • Bob Murphy says:

            Why am I embarrassed to say “yes” Knox? Do you agree with the others on this thread that it would take millions of years for humans to have spread out to all the continents?

            • knoxharrington says:

              Bob,

              I’ve seen Ken Ham lecture live in person and have been to the Creation Museum in Kentucky where the Noah story is presented as being in every respect true. It is embarrassing. Two of each animal? What did the carnivores eat on the Ark? Where was the food for the herbivores kept? When the water receded and the Ark came to rest what did the animals eat (all the plant life having been destroyed by immersion in water for a period of weeks)?

              Did Noah and his sons commit incest? How did the earth come to know such disparate cultures and languages? Do you believe, like the Mormons, that Ham was cursed for looking on Noah’s nakedness and that he and his descendants were made “black”? The Bible doesn’t restrict the flood zone to the middle east – if it does I am unaware of the verse – so it appears that out of just a few humans, in a very short period of time, Eskimos, Kalahari bushmen, Vikings, and Aborigines all came out of Noah and his incest loving family.

              When you start peeling the onion it brings tears to your eyes. This is stupidity and nonsense on steroids on stilts.

              I think it’s weird. You don’t have to agree with me – but Dan should even though it is probably a “terrible argument” to make.

              Knox.

              • Bob Murphy says:

                The Bible doesn’t restrict the flood zone to the middle east – if it does I am unaware of the verse – so it appears that out of just a few humans, in a very short period of time, Eskimos, Kalahari bushmen, Vikings, and Aborigines all came out of Noah and his incest loving family.

                Knox, so for the record, you think only a fool could believe that all modern humans are descended from the same creature? I already told you I didn’t have an opinion on when the flood occurred so the “very short period of time” is out.

                One other question: If you are OK with the idea that all humans today share a common ancestor, how long ago do you think that ancestor existed? Just ballpark of course. I gather that Craw (the commenter formerly known as _____) thinks it would have to be a million years, at least, to make the story plausible. What do you think?

                (I am going somewhere with this, but I want to hear your answer first.)

              • knoxharrington says:

                “Knox, so for the record, you think only a fool could believe that all modern humans are descended from the same creature?”

                I think only a fool would believe that all the animals in the world were cajoled onto an Ark in pairs (including dinosaurs – we have to account for them), that the earth was flooded so that every human and animal not on the Ark died, and that the survivors got off the Ark and committed incest on a scale which can only be described as of Biblical proportions such that we get the diversity of humanity we see before us.

                Bob you may not have an opinion on when the flood occurred but for the Bible to be taken seriously as a historical work it would have to be sooner rather than later, right?

                I think the scientific evidence indicates that modern humans came into existence through the process of evolution within the last 60,00- to 200,000 years from common ancestors. I have put a disclaimer on this because I am not a great student of evolution.

              • Bob Murphy says:

                OK Knox I’m glad you are acquainted with the literature to know that the “million years” suggested by another commenter was off the mark.

                I’m still curious about this part of your critique though:

                and that the survivors got off the Ark and committed incest on a scale which can only be described as of Biblical proportions such that we get the diversity of humanity we see before us.

                Are you saying standard Darwinian accounts don’t involve incest in this fashion?

                I.e. it seems like you have a problem besides just the timeframe involve. It sounds like you are saying it is absurd to think every human alive today, could have the same great-great-…-great-grandparents. Is that what you’re saying?

                ADDED: In the above, Knox, I’m not doing a “gotcha.” This stuff gets really tricky, with concepts like “mitochondrial Eve” and “most recent common ancestor” (who may have lived only 2,000 – 4,000 years ago according to some models). So I can’t tell from your remarks if you’re taking all that into account, or what. (E.g. the MRCA doesn’t imply a “sole couple” at that point. This stuff gets tricky and counterintuitive.)

                On the other hand, since standard evolutionary theory says all life on Earth is descended from a single cell, I’m wondering exactly what your problem with the “incest” of the Flood story is. That’s what I mean.

              • E. Harding says:

                This stuff gets really tricky, with concepts like “mitochondrial Eve” and “most recent common ancestor” (who may have lived only 2,000 – 4,000 years ago according to some models).

                -An impossibility. What man (and it would have had to have been a man) could spread his genes from the uncontacted tribes of Australia to those of the Amazon in only 4000 years? Completely ridiculous.

                On the other hand, since standard evolutionary theory says all life on Earth is descended from a single cell, I’m wondering exactly what your problem with the “incest” of the Flood story is. That’s what I mean.

                -As I pointed out, human population size never reached below a few thousand. I’m stunned by your inability to understand our points, Bob.

              • Bob Murphy says:

                E. Harding wrote:

                As I pointed out, human population size never reached below a few thousand. I’m stunned by your inability to understand our points, Bob.

                (Emphasis in original.)

                I’m reading that over and over and you’re right, I don’t understand. E. Harding, it sounds like you’re saying no matter how far back in time we go, there will always be at least 3,000 homo sapiens alive at the same time.

                That can’t possibly be what you mean, even though you’ve said it now twice. So what are you trying to say?

              • knoxharrington says:

                1 Peter 3:20 states that eight people were put on the Ark – Noah, his sons and their wives. Based on that Noah and his kin left the Ark and began an inbreeding regime which would give the American Kennel Club pause.

                “Are you saying standard Darwinian accounts don’t involve incest in this fashion?”

                Do standard Darwinian accounts involve incest in this fashion? I don’t know – I’m not ducking the question I really don’t know the answer.

                The question of standard evolutionary theory – while interesting – is really beside the point. The original interrogatory dealt with the Noah story and whether or not it was credible or scientifically probable. The answer is most surely “no.”

                What I find amazing is the way the obvious inbreeding and incestuous sexual relationships between parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren, and so on isn’t more troubling to Christians? Eight related people get off the Ark and go Warren Jeffs’ on us – we are all the progeny of this immoral activity?

                The “bottleneck” has been mentioned on here and, while I’m no expert, I don’t think the number of humans passing through the bottleneck has ever been as low as 8.

              • Craw says:

                As for incest. The Noah story requires it. Standard evolutionary theory does not require it. It does imply interbreeding. Not the same thing, unless you count boinking a third cousin as incest. This confusion arises from Bob Murphy’s misunderstanding of species and speciation. See my comments explaining this below. The interbreeding group is inbred, but there need be no sibling sex.

            • Craw says:

              It is not stupid to believe all humans have a common ancestor. But that isn’t the claim of the Noah story. That story makes a much stronger claim. The stronger claim — which Knox and I have clearly identified — is ridiculous.

              • knoxharrington says:

                Well stated.

            • Craw says:

              Who made that claim?

            • Anonymous says:

              1 Peter 3:20 (NASB) “who once were disobedient, when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah, during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the water.”

              “Are you saying standard Darwinian accounts don’t involve incest in this fashion?”

              Do standard Darwinian accounts INVOLVE incest in this fashion? I don’t know and for the purposes of my critique it doesn’t matter. According to the Bible eight individuals – all related – boarded the Ark. When those eight people left they Ark they started inbreeding. Am I the only one who thinks this “story” is absurd? I can’t say for sure how many humans survived the “bottleneck” that has been mentioned on here before and, again, I never made any such claim. My goal was to show that the Bible story of Noah and the Ark is utter nonsense based on its own premises. Not to mention the morality of sleeping with your sons and daughters, sisters and brothers, and so on. Am I the only one that finds that REALLY creepy?

              My problem with the incest story should be obvious by now. As an aside, and I don’t mean this as a “gotcha” either, are you advocating for incest? Is it moral to sleep with your daughters, sons’ wives, and grandchildren? I know you think that incest is wrong so I wonder why you are being rather cavalier about it with regard to the Noah story. That seems odd to me.

              • knoxharrington says:

                This was my original posted response and I didn’t see it in the feed so I posted again.

                Knox

              • Bob Murphy says:

                Right Knox but there were slight differences so I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to delete or approve the other one, when I saw it…

            • khodge says:

              I like the “on one hand…” better.

      • knoxharrington says:

        I should have posted this here rather than down below:

        Bob,

        I claimed nothing and took no position. I asked you “Are you arguing that Noah’s descendants spread out after the flood and that this post-flood diaspora explains aborigines in Australia, Amazonian tribesmen, Chinese and Japanese civilization, Vikings, sub-Saharan African cultures, and Native Americans to name just a few?”

        I just wanted you to answer the question – and the answer should be either a “yes” or a “no.”

        Knox

        • Dan says:

          He did answer your question. It’s not his fault if you are blind.

          “Yes I think every human today has a common ancestor, and since I also think there was a great flood I think that common ancestor survived the flood.”

          • knoxharrington says:

            Thanks Dan – that was a very Christian response on your part showing grace, humility, and understanding all at once.

            • Dan says:

              You’re welcome Knox, but I’m not a Christian, or a follower of any religion for that matter. I just think you consistently make terrible arguments in the comments in these religious posts, and I find your arrogance astonishing.

              • knoxharrington says:

                Thanks Dan. Your response indicates that you are an atheist. Presumably you don’t believe in the flood story and Noah and the Ark. Is that true? If it is true why are you so incensed at my question? After all – to go back to the beginning – all I did was ask Bob whether or not “[he is] arguing that Noah’s descendants spread out after the flood and that this post-flood diaspora explains aborigines in Australia, Amazonian tribesmen, Chinese and Japanese civilization, Vikings, sub-Saharan African cultures, and Native Americans to name just a few?”

                I made no positive claim – I simply asked the question. All Bob needed to say was “I believe the Bible story to be true and accurate in every respect and that, indeed, all cultures and civilizations are derived from Noah and his progeny after the flood” or in the alternate a simple “yes.” Why is that such a difficult thing to answer?

                Not that you care but I don’t believe for a second that you are an atheist or even an agnostic. I’ll just make that a faith claim.

              • knoxharrington says:

                Dan,

                Please read my above response to you in the most arrogant and condescending voice you can imagine. That is how I meant it.

                Knox

              • E. Harding says:

                Dan, whether you are an atheist or a religionist, one thing you most certainly are is a troll.

              • Dan says:

                Knox, I just don’t respect you or take you seriously. Sorry.

              • Craw says:

                Of course you don’t Dan. He disagrees with you.

              • knoxharrington says:

                “Knox, I just don’t respect you or take you seriously. Sorry.”

                That cuts me to the quick Dan. I was hoping that we would become fast friends after this – man, you sure know how to hurt a guy.

    • Anonymous says:

      I think the tower of Babel would explain how humanity dispersed and diversified so quickly.

  10. Guest says:

    You don’t need to understand human origin to accept Jesus as Savior.

    Christians don’t need to correct everyone else and their many gods, they just need to accept Christ on a personal level.

    This is not a collective endeavor.

    • anon says:

      >Christians don’t need to correct everyone else and their many gods

      You do if you take the Bible seriously.

      “Afterward He appeared to the eleven themselves as they were reclining at the table; and He reproached them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who had seen Him after He had risen. And He said to them, ‘Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved; but he who has disbelieved shall be condemned.'”

      There’s a reason missionaries were risking life and limb to preach the word, and it wasn’t always because they were preening, pious, or particularly altruistic. Mostly Christians proselytize because it’s their duty, as Jesus et al commanded them.

      • Guest says:

        There were only 12 Apostles. This is who Jesus was speaking with ( 11 as Thomas was absent)

        Even if we are suppose to mimic the Apostles( which we cant), we are not to prove anything. Instead we are to share the good news.

        1 Cor 8:1 But knowledge puffs up while love builds up.

        • Guest says:

          Let me clarify. My original point was that Christians do not need to prove anything. I do not need proof of my origin or Biblical authenticity to have faith. We are saved by faith. Call it hokey, call it a crutch, call it weak. I am all of these , all the more reason to have faith.

  11. Craw says:

    The notion of a single breeding pair within the few thousand years is foolish. But the Noah story implies it.
    Now if we were talking simple branching we’d go back a long way.
    If we look at human DNA we see Neanderthal DNA, and they seem to have split off 400K years ago.
    But it is possible that since the confluence of Neanderthal back into Homo sapiens sapiens there has been a bottleneck, down to a smaller population. But not one of size 2 or 20 or 200. Harding gave a good link.
    So all Murphy’s talk about incest with ancestral cells is just sand in the eyes. The Noah on the other hand story implies brothers blinking sisters, sons booking mothers and fathers boinking daughters with each other — a lot. God must love him some incest real bad to require that.

  12. Harold says:

    There seems to be some confusion between “common ancestor” and “descended from a single person”. Among my siblings I need to go back one generation to find a shared ancestor. Among first cousins I must go back 2 generations. More distant cousins three generations. As we get less realated, we must go back further. Eventually we go back far enought that I share an ancestor with everyone in the world.

    Would you say that me and my third cousins were all descended from only one individual? No, clearly there are a great many other peope we ar all descended from as well.

    Bob Murphy: “E. Harding, it sounds like you’re saying no matter how far back in time we go, there will always be at least 3,000 homo sapiens alive at the same time.

    That can’t possibly be what you mean”

    Perhaps a better way of putting it is that there was never a time when there were only a handful of Homo sapiens.

    • Bob Murphy says:

      Harold wrote:

      Perhaps a better way of putting it is that there was never a time when there were only a handful of Homo sapiens.

      I’m not trolling, I’m being serious. I’m also not ridiculing the standard evolutionary story. I’m asking you to explain what happened between the time there were 0 homo sapiens and the time there were more than a handful. I had assumed there was a mutation such that one particular offspring of a non-homo-sapien crossed the line, but yet that offspring was capable of mating with the other non-homo-sapiens, but it sounds like you are saying something else. So how did it happen?

      • E. Harding says:

        Let’s try this:

        http://bit.ly/1Q6qF9H

        There was a spectrum between “no homo sapiens” and “a few thousand homo sapiens”. Anywhere you draw a sharp dividing line, you don’t get a number between a few thousand and zero. Only one or the other.

        “I had assumed there was a mutation such that one particular offspring of a non-homo-sapien crossed the line, but yet that offspring was capable of mating with the other non-homo-sapiens,”

        -Not how it happened. Instead, it was a gradual accumulation of mutations with no sharp dividing line. It’s like creationists can’t tell which ancient hominids are humans and which are apes. That’s because there’s no sharp dividing line between them.

        talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/compare.html

        BTW, links to the Marginal Counterrevolution still get marked as spam here. Could you please fish a comment out of the spam folder? I blame Tyler Cowen, who marked the Counterrevolution as spam, so now I have to spam it at his blog using link-shorteners.

        • Bob Murphy says:

          OK I’ll check out your diagram, thanks. I checked the spam folder and there wasn’t anything from you in the first page.

          • E. Harding says:

            Sigh. Anything that has to be done, I have to do myself. I’ve already tested out unmarking the Marginal Counterrevolution as spam by approving comments made by myself at my other blogs.

            • Bob Murphy says:

              Another strategy, employed by thousands of people, is to not be so obnoxious as to get banned at popular blogs.

              • E. Harding says:

                Too late.

                And I didn’t know Tyler was so intolerant of anti-homosexual slurs. He left behind far more intellectually vacuous comments than mine, including those of people impersonating me. Indeed, he only started deleting the comments impersonating me after I started impersonating him (just to make a point).

                Now, he’s far more dedicated at deleting every one of my comments than he ever was at deleting those of my impersonators.

        • Bob Murphy says:

          E. Harding which of my statements does your diagram disprove? I specifically said in these comments that the “most recent common ancestor” doesn’t mean there was a couple at that point that gave birth to everybody following, etc.

          BOB: “I had assumed there was a mutation such that one particular offspring of a non-homo-sapien crossed the line, but yet that offspring was capable of mating with the other non-homo-sapiens,”

          HARDING: -Not how it happened. Instead, it was a gradual accumulation of mutations with no sharp dividing line. It’s like creationists can’t tell which ancient hominids are humans and which are apes. That’s because there’s no sharp dividing line between them.

          I’m pretty sure we are saying the same thing. It’s just you are going to have a plastic definition of homo sapien. If instead we have a definite rule (however arbitrary) about the genetic barrier of homo sapien from non-homo-sapien, then I think my statement works.

          In any event, make sure you take into account with the Biblical flood account that Noah’s sons and their wives (non-relatives) were on board. So there would be more genetic diversity for the humans than everybody coming directly from two people at that point. (However the bottleneck would occur with the animals.)

          • E. Harding says:

            E. Harding which of my statements does your diagram disprove? I specifically said in these comments that the “most recent common ancestor” doesn’t mean there was a couple at that point that gave birth to everybody following, etc.

            -OK, great. That’s a relief. Given that you appeared to be objecting to my statement about human population size never reaching below a few thousand, I thought differently. But, in any case, I didn’t see it. “E.g. the MRCA doesn’t imply a “sole couple” at that point.” wasn’t placed in any good context, so I didn’t know if you realized the broader implications of that statement, or this was just a caveat.

            In any event, make sure you take into account with the Biblical flood account that Noah’s sons and their wives (non-relatives) were on board.

            -I never forget to do that. But 6 remains orders of magnitude less than what the genetic evidence indicates.

            I have massive problems with arbitrary rules. Sure, if the arbitrary rule was true, than your statement would work. But it isn’t true.

            In any case, homozygosity in any population of below a few thousand is really bad. Think of the lack of genetic diversity of some endangered species.

          • Craw says:

            Part of the problem is “crossed the line” and “could still interbreed”. This is not a correct notion of species. If you interbreed you are conspecific. I choose that abstruse term because “same species” is part of what you are confused about. It is lpossible that every one of my ancestors was conspecific with his parents yet I am not conspecific with my great great great … Great grandparents. So I am not of the “same” species as they, yet each generation was of the “same” species as his parent. This it looks to me is what has confused you.

            • Craw says:

              So now imagine an interbreeding group. Over time a similar thing happens. After a few thousand years the group is no longer conspecific with their ancestral group. But at no point were there only two breeding members. Even if there is a mitochondrial Eve in the group.

      • Harold says:

        As E. Harding and Craw are getting at above, imagine a group of two thousand individual apes somewhat similar to chimpanzees. One half is displaced to an island. At this point there are no humans. You come back 1,000,000 years later and discover that the island group have evolved into 1000 humans, whilst the mainland group remain as similar to chimpanzees. There is no requirement that the island population ever fell below 1000, yet we have gone from no humans to 1000 humans.

        • Bob Murphy says:

          Harold wrote:

          As E. Harding and Craw are getting at above, imagine a group of two thousand individual apes somewhat similar to chimpanzees. One half is displaced to an island. At this point there are no humans. You come back 1,000,000 years later and discover that the island group have evolved into 1000 humans, whilst the mainland group remain as similar to chimpanzees. There is no requirement that the island population ever fell below 1000, yet we have gone from no humans to 1000 humans.

          Guys, this is hilarious. You and I keep saying the same thing, we are just choosing our definitions differently.

          Harold, yes, I get what you are saying. Now how can it be that check the island at year=1, and say, “There are 0 humans,” and then come back at year=1million, and say, “There are 1000 humans”? It has to be that we have a definition of what it means to be a human vs. a non-human.

          Now I totally get that if we are going to come up with a crisp dividing line, that that line will be arbitrary. But if we do come up with an operational definition, so that when we look at any particular creature we can say, “This is a human” or “This is not a human,” then my description of the process would be true. At some point, the first creature satisfying that requirement would come into existence (from a mutation). But in order for that mutation to survive, that creature would have to be able to mate with the other creatures. Then if the mutation came out in some of the offspring, the population of humans would go from 1 to 2, 3, etc.

          I am OK if you guys want to say, “Eh, that’s a weird way of looking at it, and no evolutionary biologist would talk that way,” OK fine. But it’s rather odd to be issuing statements like, “The population of humans has never been lower than 1,000.” It obviously was 0 at some finite time in the past, and it obviously was 1,000+ at some point after that, so what happened in the interim?

          • Craw says:

            First, the real issue is breeding population. You have been refuted. Word games won’t change that.

            Second you are wrong even in the word games. There is no crisp definition of any species over time just as there is no crisp definition of high ground or nearby. I can live near Knox who lives near Harold … Who lives near you without living near you.

            Also you can be wrong even if you insist on your silly game. Say the criteria for human is having both mutation b and v. Today there are none, but b and v are widespread and in the next year all kinds of b v breeding results in all kinds of b v offspring. By your definition suddenly lots of humans from nowhere. (The moral is your definition seeking is otoscope.)

            • Craw says:

              To clarify paragraph 2, creationists play a game with the word same. They pretend being in the same species is a transitive relation. That is why I talked about conspecific.

            • Bob Murphy says:

              Also you can be wrong even if you insist on your silly game. Say the criteria for human is having both mutation b and v. Today there are none, but b and v are widespread and in the next year all kinds of b v breeding results in all kinds of b v offspring. By your definition suddenly lots of humans from nowhere.

              Wait, so there would jump from 0 creatures with b+v to “lots” of creatures with b+v in the passage of one Planck time? That’s amazing.

              (My point is, even in your scenario, there would be a point at which there would be 1 such creature.)

              You didn’t “refute” anything Craw. I was trying to understand where you guys were coming from by saying the human population has never been below 1,000, which on the face of it sounds crazy. Now I get what you are saying, and fair enough, I get your point.

          • Harold says:

            OK, I see where we are differing, I think.

            IF we were to decide that there was one single mutation that “crossed the line” to be human, then you would be correct. However, this single individual human would not be a species by any usual definition. It would be very little different from its parents and be capable of breeding with individuals from several generations before and after.

            So yes, it is a wierd way of looking at it, becasue there is no way to actually draw that line if it did exist, and pretty good reasons for thinking that it does not even exist. it is better to say perhaps that there were 0 humans, then there were 1000 individuals that were 1%human, then there were 1000 that were 2% human, until we end up with 1000 individuals that are 100% human.

            In the context of the Noah discussion, I don’t think it helps your case. You are saying that there is only one individual that we consider human. Lets say we accept this. That individual is still sharing very nearly all their genes with the rest of the non-human population, and they and their descendents will continue to exchange genes with the rest of the non-human population for generations to come.

            The upshot is that we might define this the first human, but from a genetic point of view it would not make any difference where we decide to draw this line. We end up with the same genetic mix now if we say it is when the first ape walked upright or whether it was when the first election was held. the genetic mix we have now according to geneticists at the moment comes from a population thet never fell below a few thousand.

            • Craw says:

              And as I point out, even then Murphy’s logic chopping has a hole. He insists it must necessarily be the case that if you draw a line that you get one first pair, and that isn’t so.
              But the real point is that the Noah story predicts something that just isn’t so. Believing the Noah story is ridiculous– as Knox pointed out a hundred comments ago.

  13. Major.Freedom says:

    Borrowing from Wittgenstein:

    What would it have looked like if it had looked as though Christianity was merely a collection of stories copied from older tradations and was not literally a true history of the world?

    Or,

    If there are multiple versions of the same basic story lines throughout history, thrn by what reason should we label Christianity as true with all others being “foreshadows” and “echoes”, rather than the other way around?

    • Guest says:

      Even the Bible has multiple version of the same story. The Gospel is the same story told 4 different times by 4 different authors. Not an immediate disqualifier.

      • khodge says:

        There is good Biblical Analysis that shows how various traditions have been woven into a single narrative. The Noah story and and Exodus story are a couple of the most interesting.

        To get some idea of how this works (I am more familiar with this analysis in the Exodus story): A careful read of the crossing of the Red Sea can easily be pulled into two very different narratives (there are actually 3 or 4 such narratives intermingled). One story speaks of the wind blowing all night and the chariot wheels being clogged with mud as the water flows back; the other speaks of Moses raising his staff, walls of water on the left and right, the Israelites passing through on dry land.

        • E. Harding says:

          For the Biblical authors to copy-and-paste verses would be difficult, and that’s saying it lightly. More likely, as in the description of the Sennacherib campaign in 2 Kings, they copied chapters or half-chapters, not verses.

          • Khodge says:

            You are thinking like someone with a word processing program and a printer. The seminal Bible started as oral stories. At some point the priesthood compiled the various stories. Since these stories were foundational to the Israelite people, rather than edit, each line was woven into the narrative and, yes, we come up with not just verse by verse, but phrase by phrase, and possibly, in key phrases, word by word intertwining narrative.

            Go read the story I referenced. The two key narratives are interwoven by phrase. (Or, as you would have us believe, copied and paste .)

            • E. Harding says:

              If the sources were woven together from memory, that would make more sense, but is there any actual evidence of such a thing happening for any ancient text outside the Bible?

              • Khodge says:

                Stories from all ancient cultures preexist writing. Prior to the Gutenberg Bible, a written text in the common church was rare.

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