Hi Jeanie, you said,

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I can't buy that man had to evolve from the big bang (maybe that was how the earth was originally created like eons ago??)


Erm . . . well, the Big Bang is the nickname for the dramatic expansion of space-time and energy at the beginning of the universe. Increasingly, discoveries made by the new generation of satellites and telescopes casts doubt on how much we really understand about this, but there is still a lot of evidence which points to the universe having begun as a singularity and expanded. Russ2 went into more detial about this in various places here. The cosmic microwave background is a big clue.

In this sort of time frame, the evolution of humankind has happened in the blink of an eye -- 200,000 years for the existence of homo sapiens, compared to 13.7 billion years for the universe.

As far as the actual evolution of humans is concerned, all I can honestly see in your comments is personal incredulity. Are you aware of the evidential base of the study of human origins, or do you not feel this is relevant?

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I know they do evolve or adapt, at least, but don't think they make the dramatic (albeit slow) leaps as is thought at least to other species.


What, in your eyes, prevents small changes over a certain timespan, adding up to larger changes over a greater timespan? This is what the fossil record shows.

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To me the earth being old does not conflict with the time table of how long man has been on the earth, though.


This introduces a new twist to the creationist position, one which I suspect Russ is trying to avoid by not telling us how old he thinks the earth is. If you accept our scientific understanding of strata, geological processes and radiometric dating, then how can you claim that humans have been on the earth for only 6,000 years when the oldest homo sapiens remains have been dated to circa 200,000 years, and other hominin species older still?

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I know archaeological findings (pottery, etc.) are used (are they carbon dated??), etc., but regardless, I hold to that time table at least.


You can't carbon date pottery, but you can carbon date organic material up to the age of about 40,000 years. This includes bones, and materials in the surrounding stratum such as seeds and pollen. The archaeological finds are important in their own way, though, because they show a pattern in human ancestors of progressing from simple tools to stone hammers and flint cutters to more sophisticated equipment. We can see when hominins started cooking their food, burying their dead, wearing body paint, making jewellery, wearing clothes, all these kinds of things that characterise us as "human." Many finds date as being more than 6,000 years old.

It's maybe worth considering that there are two general positions a person can come from: that of love, and that of fear. Underlying fear causes many of our problems. I perceive a fear among Biblical literalists that the world will come crashing down, the consequences too horrible to imagine, if they question the literalness of any part of the Bible. If you have such a clear blueprint in front of you for how to live, what is good and bad and what you shall and shall not do, it removes that fear. Quite a few people in the world, though, demonstrate that full lives can be lived even if you e.g. do not accept the literalness of the Adam and Eve story. Sometimes symbolism can take us closer to the truth than information taken at face value.