Thursday, January 6, 2011

Imagination Failure

What amazes me most about the commenters at Biologos is how their imaginations function.

A man in the wilderness of Siberia finds a tooth! Their imaginations runs wild! They come up with a whole back story (and end story) for a whole race of peoples. Complete with language and dress, diet, mating and burial customs. They give them all names.

A Creationist suggests that there was no death before the Fall. Total brain-lock. "Where would all the animals live after a while?" There are more galaxies than there are people today, each with that many stars - I say. "How would the animals get to the planets around those stars?" Well, how about a nuclear powered rocket ship? And a space elevator.

I don't get it.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Anthropology at Biologos

(matching my first post on this subject)
Biologos has posted a continuation of their anthropology series. This one covering their "homo divinus" model.

This model fails to answer key questions, just like the first:
"In this model the Fall then becomes the disobedience of Adam and Eve to the expressed revealed will of God"
Here we must ask, "how is it that the revealed will of God is contrary to the 'good' behavior of all other humans at this time". That is, either Adam and Eve were particularly monstrous (which no one is suggesting) - or they were just like everyone else. And if everyone else is "good", why is God telling A&E to do differently?

An interesting point to draw in the previous post:
"According to this model, God in his grace chose a couple of Neolithic farmers in the Near East"
Most Old Earth models have a fairly stable human population - never less than maybe 100k, and usually 1e6 to 1e7.

Across 1e6 years, at 20 years per generation: that is 5e4 generations. At 1e6 people per generation, that is 5e10 people (50 billion). So you have 50 billion people living and dying before God decides to say anything to anyone.

In the Young Earth model, taking into account exponential growth (under exponential growth, the sum of all previous generations is equal to the current generation), roughly half the people who have ever lived are alive today.