| Dear Friends of Reasonable Faith,
This month saw the release of my dialogue with Sir Roger Penrose on the British program “Unbelievable” with Justin Brierly, recorded in London during our English Schools Speaking Tour earlier this spring. Sir Roger is without exaggeration one of the greatest physicists of all time, so it was a tremendous privilege for me to have this conversation with him. Our discussion was quite extraordinary, ranging over metaphysics, cosmogony, and the fine-tuning of the universe. He actually thanked me afterwards for giving him some new things to think about.
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Sir Roger Penrose and WLC on "Unbelievable" with Justin Brierly.
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(L-R): Justin Brierly, Sir Roger Penrose, WLC
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Back home, I continue my fascinating study of the historical Adam. I’ve now turned my focus from the biblical material to the scientific evidence for human origins. So in this report, I’ll describe what I’ve been learning and thinking about this past month.
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| Scientific Quest for Human Origins
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| For me, the operative question has become, where in evolutionary history are a historical Adam and Eve most plausibly to be located? Since Adam and Eve are supposed to be the ancestors of every human being that has ever lived (this excludes theories according to which Adam and Eve were selected by God out of a wider, pre-existing, human population), the question thus becomes, what evidence is there for the first appearance of human beings in history? This is a difficult question because it raises the further question, what is it to be human? While it may be difficult to lay down necessary and sufficient conditions for “being human,” if we begin with ourselves as paradigmatic examples of human beings, then what we want to know is when people like us first appeared on the scene.
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Anatomically modern human beings are thought to have originated in Africa around 300,000 -200,000 years ago. So an initial answer to our question might be to locate Adam and Eve around that time. So doing would presumably require us Caucasians to shake off our culturally conditioned and even racist assumption that Adam and Eve looked like white Europeans, as depicted in paintings of the Italian Renaissance, rather than black Africans. But I think most of us are capable of making that adjustment.
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When I began this study, part of my motivation was the challenge said to be posed by population genetics to the idea of an original human pair. It was asserted in the strongest of terms that the genetic profile of the current human population could never have arisen from a single human pair but required a population that was at no time in history less than 10,000 people. This conclusion was said to be as certain as the earth’s going around the sun!
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Well, to my complete surprise, it turns out that this problem is nothing but smoke! The calculations tacitly assumed that there was no outside genetic input into the population descended from Adam and Eve. But we know that assumption to be false. There were populations of other archaic hominins which interbred with Homo sapiens, such as Neanderthals and Denisovans. As the chart shows, Neanderthals and Denisovans interbred not only with each other but also with Homo sapiens [modern humans].
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We carry DNA not only from Neanderthals and Denisovans but probably also from lost lineages that “infected” them. Moreover, Homo sapiens DNA infiltrated Neanderthal DNA long before and then got recycled and passed back to us via interbreeding. So it’s impossible to make a clean distinction between our DNA and theirs. This seems to be an absolute game changer for genetic objections to a traditional Adam and Eve. Could there be an original couple from whom all humanity descends? Absolutely! There could well have been an original human couple whose descendants interbred with other lineages, resulting in the genetic profile of humanity observed today. Estimates of ancient human population size based on mutational distances among the present human population now seem pointless and futile. For we are no longer interested whether the present mutational distances among people can be traced back to a single couple on the assumption that the human lineage is “pure” or hermetically sealed to outside influences. For that assumption is grossly mistaken.
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The question that then arises for me is, what about these Neanderthals and Denisovans? Were they also human? In interbreeding with them, were the descendants of Adam and Eve engaged in bestiality, either willingly or by compulsion? Maybe so, given humanity’s fall into sin; but maybe not! The anatomical differences between Neanderthals (we have no extensive Denisovan remains) and modern humans were not that radical. Neanderthals were stockier and well-suited for living during the Ice Age, had brow ridges and a flatter skull (though these vary), and a broader pelvis and a differently shaped rib cage.
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Composite reconstruction of a complete Neanderthal skeleton (left), compared with a Homo sapiens of similar stature. Photo by Ken Mowbray.
[Tattersall, p. 222]
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These differences don’t seem all that radical. Neanderthals were not stooped apemen. Significantly, their cranial capacity was close to that of modern humans, so they may have had comparable intelligence.
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 | The "Turkana Boy" skeleton (KNM-WT 15000) from Nariokotome, West Turkana, Kenya. DS.
[Tattersall, p. 178]
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| In 1982 the remains of an eight-year-old boy dated to around 1.2 million years ago were unearthed near Lake Turkana in Kenya. This date is earlier than the split of modern human beings and the line that led to Neanderthals and Denisovans. What is amazing about the Turkana Boy, as he has come to be known, is that from the neck down he has a modern human skeleton and would have stood about 5 foot 4 inches tall. But his cranial capacity was smaller than modern humans or Neanderthals, so that he would have lacked their brain size and, hence, intelligence. One of the lessons of this remarkable skeleton is that essentially modern human anatomy may have originated much earlier than we realized.
It also shows that merely modern anatomy doth not a human being make. It’s possible for a hominin to have evolved modern anatomical characteristics without having the full cognitive capacities (and, hence, a rational soul) of a human person. Recently I finished reading Becoming Human by the developmental psychologist Michael Tomasello. He is engaged in extensive testing of human children and chimpanzees with respect to their cognitive capacities. He shows that chimps have intentionality and can use and carry tools in order to execute those intentions.
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To be honest, I used to be averse to such attempts to demonstrate advanced cognitive capacities in apes because they seemed to diminish human uniqueness. Tomasello, however, shows that what makes humans unique is their capacity from early infancy forward to form joint intentionality with another human being (like bonding with its mother) so as to have a sense of “we,” which no ape has. Humans are able to think symbolically and to acquire language, which no ape has been able to learn.
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Now if this is right, then what we want to know is when evidence of such joint intentionality appears in the evolutionary process. Tool use is not enough. I actually now welcome signs of intelligence in apes because that serves to keep Australopithecines (ancient bipedal apes that many think were evolutionary precursors to humans) securely on the ape side of the divide.
Since joint intentionality is not something that one can directly discern in the fossil record, what paleoanthropologists need to look for are signs of human culture which show such joint and collective intentionality. Look, for example, at an artist’s drawing of an ancient hunter’s hut, discovered in excavations near Nice, France, which has been dated to some 340,000 years go!
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Artist's reconstruction of one of the hutlike structures at Terra Amata, France, with side cut away to show a hearth and interior debris. Drawing by DS after a concept by Henry de Lumley.
[Tattersall, p. 169]
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Surely, such a construction is the product of human intelligence! Significantly, recent studies of Neanderthal skeletal remains suggest that they may have been physically capable of speech. If we can get used to the idea that Adam and Eve were not Caucasians, maybe we can get used to the idea that they didn’t look like a modern European either and that they gave rise to the line leading to Neanderthals as well as modern humans.
These are the sort of intriguing and difficult questions that now occupy my mind as I seek to integrate the biblical material with the scientific evidence.
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This month I’ll be speaking to about 400 high schoolers at Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Atlanta on arguments for God’s existence. The new youth minister has a Master’s degree in apologetics from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, and I’m so glad for his commitment to equipping his students to meet the intellectual challenges teens face these days! Then Jan and I shall be off to Houston to speak at West University Baptist Church and to teach for a week at Houston Baptist University on “The Kalām Cosmological Argument.” It struck me that this year is the 40th anniversary of the publication of The Kalām Cosmological Argument, and I am so gratified by the wide, ongoing influence this argument has had.
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For Christ and His Kingdom,
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Dear Dr. Craig,
I can't thank you enough for the way your lectures and teachings have impacted my life. I really appreciate and respect the work that you do. Every time I'm faced with a cumbersome doubt I turn to your videos and lectures, and what do you know, I find an answer! Your book "On Guard" really helped me prosper and flourish in my faith, and I'm looking forward to buying another one of your great works. Before discovering you and apologetics in general, I had the feeling that belief in God is basically a leap of faith, that there's no evidence at all for Christianity! To my knowledge, there was an extensive branch of deeply committed, diligent and hard-working people who had all the answers I need. Whenever I receive an explanation to a difficult question I have, I get this inexplicable sense of peace and joy in my mind. Thank you, Dr. Craig, for helping me in the most distressing times of my doubt - I know I can always count on you and your work for answers! God bless you!
-Boris
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