RE: Genesis is not fact, there for Jesus is not necessary?
March 5, 2015 at 1:54 pm
(This post was last modified: March 5, 2015 at 1:59 pm by FiveSpotCharlie.)
Actually... no.. I think it is in fact you that misses the point. Or.. Context to be specific.
You .. like the Theists you are playing devils advocate for, throw out context, and focus on a single point at the expense of context. Your whole argument is based on my use of the word "first". You fail to include the context of that word with reference to Genesis. First is not just the "first" man, but the first and ONLY man. As always, context makes a difference. If I must be forced to type out "first and only" every time just to maintain context, we'd get no where. TLDR;
It's far more simple than the complex one you attempt (as devils advocate) to layout. Making a case for a traceable lineage, does absolutely nothing to support the Theist claim of there being a first/only Human that we all owe our Original sin to. Remember, this is the point of the original post. Jesus absolved us from our Sins handed down to us thanks to the Fall.
Evolution = Fact
There was a first Male and Female Human = False . There were many.
Original Sin = False, as there clearly was not a first man and woman.
Need for Jesus = False due to there not being an original sin.
Christianity = Unfounded.
You (or they) can attempt to find nuance to explain how there is some sort of common ancestor traced by a single gene, but that common ancestor, no matter how you get back to it, is still 1 in a larger group of many in the same species. Tracing our lineage of just mtDNA to a single Female, is not to say she is our one and only ancestral mother (again, the point of the original post). All one has to ask is, what happened to the mtDNA from other women contemporary to mtEve? "So what about all of the mtDNA of the other women who lived during "Eve's" time? What happened to it? Simply this: Somewhere between now and then, they had female descendants who had only sons (or no children). When this happened, the passing on of their mtDNA halted."
Like I said...(and I don't have a Yoda Meme to drive this home) tracing back a single gene to a single person, does nothing to support that person as being the single origin of our species. Only the origin of that gene. So, while this dna tracing is indeed an interesting topic and discussion, it actually plays little to no role in supporting the claim of "The Fall".
P.S. I never once accused you of being a Christian. I value response from both sides, so long as they are well thought out and valid. You made the statement, so I did direct my responses to you. You laid out points, and I addressed (or attempted to) them, and expanded on them. Nothing more. I think I assumed you were not a Christian by your posting "for the sake of debate".
Edit: Intersting note from a pbs article at mtDNA.
You .. like the Theists you are playing devils advocate for, throw out context, and focus on a single point at the expense of context. Your whole argument is based on my use of the word "first". You fail to include the context of that word with reference to Genesis. First is not just the "first" man, but the first and ONLY man. As always, context makes a difference. If I must be forced to type out "first and only" every time just to maintain context, we'd get no where. TLDR;
It's far more simple than the complex one you attempt (as devils advocate) to layout. Making a case for a traceable lineage, does absolutely nothing to support the Theist claim of there being a first/only Human that we all owe our Original sin to. Remember, this is the point of the original post. Jesus absolved us from our Sins handed down to us thanks to the Fall.
Evolution = Fact
There was a first Male and Female Human = False . There were many.
Original Sin = False, as there clearly was not a first man and woman.
Need for Jesus = False due to there not being an original sin.
Christianity = Unfounded.
You (or they) can attempt to find nuance to explain how there is some sort of common ancestor traced by a single gene, but that common ancestor, no matter how you get back to it, is still 1 in a larger group of many in the same species. Tracing our lineage of just mtDNA to a single Female, is not to say she is our one and only ancestral mother (again, the point of the original post). All one has to ask is, what happened to the mtDNA from other women contemporary to mtEve? "So what about all of the mtDNA of the other women who lived during "Eve's" time? What happened to it? Simply this: Somewhere between now and then, they had female descendants who had only sons (or no children). When this happened, the passing on of their mtDNA halted."
Like I said...(and I don't have a Yoda Meme to drive this home) tracing back a single gene to a single person, does nothing to support that person as being the single origin of our species. Only the origin of that gene. So, while this dna tracing is indeed an interesting topic and discussion, it actually plays little to no role in supporting the claim of "The Fall".
P.S. I never once accused you of being a Christian. I value response from both sides, so long as they are well thought out and valid. You made the statement, so I did direct my responses to you. You laid out points, and I addressed (or attempted to) them, and expanded on them. Nothing more. I think I assumed you were not a Christian by your posting "for the sake of debate".
Edit: Intersting note from a pbs article at mtDNA.
Quote:There are many variables that can affect the mutation rate of mtDNA, including even the possibility that mtDNA is not always inherited strictly through maternal lines. In fact, recent studies show that paternal mtDNA can on rare occasions enter an egg during fertilization and alter the maternal mtDNA through recombination. Such recombination would drastically affect the mutation rate and throw off date estimates.
Not surprisingly, there is currently a heated debate over the value of "mitochondrial Eve"—especially between history-hunting geneticists and some fossil-finding paleoanthropologists. According to these anthropologists, even if we could accurately gauge the age of the ancestor, that knowledge is meaningless because all she really is is the woman whose mtDNA did not die out due to random lineage extinctions. Furthermore, her status as the most recent common ancestor doesn't mean that she and her contemporaries were any different from their ancestors. (Remember, she and all of her contemporaries had their own mitochondrial Eve.)
Perhaps the most valuable finding regarding the "most recent common ancestor" is that she probably lived in Africa—a finding that supports the most popular theories about the worldwide spread of hominids.
