The Great Human Origins Controversy

2003

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but usually manages to pick himself up, walk over or around it, and carry on." [Winston Churchill] One out of every four Americans believe we can communicate with the dead. A comparable number think the sun revolves around the Earth, not vice versa.

Origins of Modern Humans: Biology Reconsidered, 2013

In the late 1980s, I went off to college interested in a handful of possible futures but certain of none. A moment of clarity came in a "theory and method in physical anthropology" class when the topic of the week, and of one of my papers, turned toward modern human origins. This had become the hot topic of paleoanthropology by the late 1980s and had largely eclipsed the field's obsession with hominin origins. As I delved into its literature for the first time, I encountered a single book that not only was a wealth of information for the paper that I needed to write but also the work that had been instrumental in changing the focus of paleoanthropology. This book, Smith and Spencer's The Origins of Modern Humans: A World Survey of the Fossil Evidence (1984), was a weighty tome that I felt as I carried it around with me for the rest of the semester and well after I had turned in my first paper on modern human origins. Other books on modern human origins had come out by the late 1980s and all had their own strengths. However, what set Origins apart, aside from being the first, was its detailed fossil descriptions and decidedly new theoretical explanations combined with comprehensive geographical coverage. Many of the book's chapters went on to become core readings for any student of physical anthropology, and the book as a whole became essential for all paleoanthropologists. Origins transformed me and many others from undeclared college students into anthropology majors determined to become paleoanthropologists.

The most recent anthropological and genetic research has shed new light on human origins and contributed to seemingly rule out the concepts of ‗Mitochondrial Eve' and ‗Y-Chromosome Adam' as our Most Recent Common Ancestors. In addition, it has posed new questions about how many ancestors human beings have and whether the Christian doctrine on the origin of human beings and original sin still makes any sense. To address these questions we need to consider not only the latest population genetics data, but also the contributions of other sciences, such as cultural and biological anthropology. This paper reviews the current state of research and attempts a philosophical reading of the data, taking into account the Christian teaching on human origins and original sin.

Evidence for a purely Darwinian account of human origins is supposed to be overwhelming. But is it? In this provocative book, three scientists challenge the claim that undirected natural selection is capable of building a human being, critically assess fossil and genetic evidence that human beings share a common ancestor with apes, and debunk recent claims that the human race could not have started from an original couple.

Theology & Science, 2023

In this article, I respond to Malik’s analysis of positions on common descent (“Creationism, Human exceptionalism, Adamic exceptionalism, and No exceptions”), regarding their metaphysical and hermeneutic compatibility with al-Ghazali’s approach. As a “no exceptions” proponent, I offer a number of Jewish theological sources that support this position, and argue with Malik’s assessment of this stance as scientistic. Due to my divergence from Malik on this fundamental issue, I then go on in the article to explore possible conceptualizations of disagreement, dialogue and the interaction of diverse views regarding fundamental matters.

Throughout history, the worldview at the heart of virtually every culture has been a religious worldview, at the heart of which in turn has been a creation story that explains how we came to be here and our place in the cosmic scheme of things. The story typically attributes divine intent to our creation and assures us that we have a significant role to play in the ongoing drama. Believing that our creation story is a true and accurate account also reinforces our sense of belonging and commitment to those who hold the same worldview, and usually confirms our prejudice that we – our particular tribe, nation, ethnic or religious group – are superior to, and more divinely favoured than, others. So the Biblical creation stories in the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis, thought to have originated in the 10th century BCE, introduce the core theme of the Judaeo-Christian narrative that for so long has shaped our Western worldview – namely, that we have been created by God in his image, have subsequently fall into sin with all its attendant consequences, and need to be restored again, by our faith and ethical behaviour, to a right relation with each other and our Maker. Since the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century, and particularly since the publication in 1859 of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, the Biblical narrative has been increasingly eclipsed by a quite different creation story that yields a very different understanding of who we are, where we have come from, and what if anything we may construe to be our raison d’être. Born of continuing archaeological, biological and anthropological study, this new creation story remains a work in progress, with many unanswered questions and a good deal of ongoing debate. There is widespread consensus, however, about its broad outline – and, however different it may be from what has for so long underpinned our Judaeo-Christian worldview, what remains consistently the same is our need throughout the whole of our history to have some creation story. This paper is a summary presentation of a small portion of this developing story, which in its entirety spans nearly 14 billion years since the universe is thought to have been born. It is a brief but reliable account of what we currently know about our human origins – from our emergence as a primate 2.5 million years ago until our last great exodus from Africa 60,000 years ago. It is offered with the hope that it may be useful to any who are disinclined to struggle through the many far more academically sophisticated works that tell this story in greater detail and that have informed this paper.1 It is presented in seven sections: • Our primate ancestors • The big brain experiment • Our extinct human predecessors • A “Garden of Eden” update • The world of early Homo sapiens • The Great Leap Forward • Epilogue

Dialectical Anthropology, 1975

International Journal of Anthropology and Ethnology

There is a consensus among evolutionists today that man first appeared in Africa approximately four million years ago. Others counter this theory saying, "... when shall we speak of man as man"? The timeline they give is approximately one million years and to fully understand one million years is still a difficult task. However, another even better way to understand time and man is to study it in terms of generations. So, keeping in mind that primitive people married and had children early, twenty years will make an average generation. According to this there would be 50,000 generations in a million years. Keeping this in mind if we calculate generations we find that 250 generations back take us to the time when written history began. While, another 250 generations back would take us to the time (10,000 years ago), when cultivation began, and man started settled life. Now we are left with 49,500 generations of men, plus a time span of 990,000 years. Keeping these statistics in mind let us ask the question once more, when should we speak of man as man? Therefore, this paper attempts not only to understand the timeframe "when we can really call Man?-Man" in light of the so-called history of human evolution but also to understand that if the specie roaming the earth for a million years was truly man's ancestor, as is claimed by Charles Darwin. Then what took man's ancestor so long to show signs of development that we only witness in the last 12000 years. Moreover, while keeping man's progress under consideration of the last 12000 years, it will further shed light on why there are serious reservations about Charles Darwin theory of human evolution. As many scientists, evolutionists, archeologist and different religious scriptures strongly claim that man came to the earth fully developed and did not evolve from a lesser specie.

In T. Rasmussen (ed.). The Evolution of Humans and Humanness. Pp 75-94, 1993