Neanderthals and God

[triadboy]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=8&u=/ap/20040428/ap_on_sc/neanderthal_maturity


How do xians handle the existence of Neanderthals? They aren't humans like us. God didn't mention creating them. Were they on the Ark too?

[Hexxenhammer]

Neanderthals aren't humans. They're apes of course. It's humans over here, and apes over there, and thats it.

What's that you're saying about brain size, physiogomy, skeletal structure, and tool use? LA LA LA! I CAN'T HEAR YOU!

That sums up the young earther position.

[Abdul Alhazred]

Originally posted by Hexxenhammer
Neanderthals aren't humans. They're apes of course. It's humans over here, and apes over there, and thats it.

What's that you're saying about brain size, physiogomy, skeletal structure, and tool use? LA LA LA! I CAN'T HEAR YOU!

That sums up the young earther position.

Not always. One young earther once told me the Neanderthals were just people and the dating was off.

[cloud_strife]

I've also had a young earther suggest that they were half-men, half-apes, early humans. And when the sons of God came and mated with them, they created the real humans....

[Hexxenhammer]

Originally posted by Abdul Alhazred


Not always. One young earther once told me the Neanderthals were just people and the dating was off. I've also had a young earther suggest that they were half-men, half-apes, early humans. And when the sons of God came and mated with them, they created the real humans.... Those that you talked to were obviously deluded and not REAL christians. REAL christians know they're apes.

Maybe all the creationists need to get together and get their stories straight.

[triadboy]

Originally posted by Hexxenhammer
Maybe all the creationists need to get together and get their stories straight.

According to the 2nd creation story - God made Adam before anything else. So that should shoot that scientific theory down.

[geni]

Originally posted by triadboy
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=8&u=/ap/20040428/ap_on_sc/neanderthal_maturity


How do xians handle the existence of Neanderthals? They aren't humans like us. God didn't mention creating them. Were they on the Ark too?

Reapeat 100 times christian is not equal to fundy (or YEC).

[triadboy]

Originally posted by Abdul Alhazred


Not always. One young earther once told me the Neanderthals were just people and the dating was off.

Yes, I would say their dating was 'off'. They apparently dated apes.

[triadboy]

Originally posted by geni


Reapeat 100 times christian is not equal to fundy (or YEC).

I understand. But just for fun - how would a normal xian see this?

[geni]

Originally posted by triadboy


I understand. But just for fun - how would a normal xian see this?

Same way they handle everlution.

[cloud_strife]

Same way they handle everlution.

What? close their eyes and tell themselves "I don't believe in reality, I don't believe in reality" over and over again?

[geni]

Originally posted by cloud_strife


What? close their eyes and tell themselves "I don't believe in reality, I don't believe in reality" over and over again?

The majority of christians accept everlution.

[cloud_strife]

The majority of christians accept everlution.

they do??? I've been on Christianity.com, and Christianforums.com for like 3 years, and most of them don't accept evilution

[geni]

Originally posted by cloud_strife
The majority of christians accept everlution.

they do??? I've been on Christianity.com, and Christianforums.com for like 3 years, and most of them don't accept evilution

Lets guess most of those are US christians? Looking at the numbers ther are around 2 bill christians and 900 mill chatholics. Everlution is part of cahtolic church teaching so I've probably only got to find maybe another 200mill christains who accept everlution. I think you find that most christians accept everlution. It's just that the ones who don't tend to be the noisyest (and live in the US).

[Bottle or the Gun]

Originally posted by cloud_strife
I've also had a young earther suggest that they were half-men, half-apes, early humans. And when the sons of God came and mated with them, they created the real humans....

There's a passage somewhere that after the 1st murder, the other brother (can't recall the name) went to the land of Nod and gave the creatures that lived there souls (mated) and thereby more humans were created.

[cloud_strife]

There's a passage somewhere that after the 1st murder, the other brother (can't recall the name) went to the land of Nod and gave the creatures that lived there souls (mated) and thereby more humans were created.

what passage? and in context! and how would he give them souls?

[Bottle or the Gun]

How else would a human, one of God's children, give an ape a soul?

Sex, of course. The off-spring would be part of God and the human, and therefore deserving of souls.

Wouldn't it be funny if all humans decended since then were inelligible for heaven by virtue of their origin?

4:16 And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden.
4:17 And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch: and he builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch.

http://www.gracecathedral.org/enrichment/brush_excerpts/brush_20030702.shtml
The Land of Nod, East of Eden, and The Mark of Cain

[cloud_strife]

so you're saying if we have sex with dogs and cats, they suddenly have souls?

[Bottle or the Gun]

Originally posted by cloud_strife
so you're saying if we have sex with dogs and cats, they suddenly have souls?

Only if God says it's ok.

[cloud_strife]

Only if God says it's ok.

And God says it's bad to have sex with things that aren't human. So either Cain met up with people that were humans already, or he was going against Gods will.

[pupdog]

Some say they were apes.
Some say they were normal people.
Some say they were people with bad arthritis.

My favorite is the notion that they were in the process of "devolving." I think this is orthodontist Jack Cuozzo's pet idea, although "devolution" may be Michael Cremo's baby http://humandevolution.com/

[Bottle or the Gun]

Like the bible is consistent! Murder, incest, theft. 'Thou shall not kill', but an 'eye for an eye' is ok.

Confusing. Good thing it's a myth!

[triadboy]

Originally posted by cloud_strife
so you're saying if we have sex with dogs and cats, they suddenly have souls?

There's some mighty happy sheep in Tennessee then.

[Correa Neto]

I remember a fundie saying that "ape-men" derived from a common sin back in Noha's times, interbreeding between humans and apes. And since God did not liked that...

[Bottle or the Gun]

Originally posted by triadboy


There's some mighty happy sheep in Tennessee then.

Yeah, that describes pretty much anyone who lives there.

[triadboy]

Originally posted by Correa Neto
I remember a fundie saying that "ape-men" derived from a common sin back in Noha's times, interbreeding between humans and apes. And since God did not liked that...

That's a new one to me

[Jas]

Neanderthals are just really old people because back then, people lived to be 600 years old, like Noah. They've just got arthritis and stuff, and since no one today (due to our evil ways), lives to be 600, we just don't know what they look like.

Duh.

[Jas]

Originally posted by cloud_strife
Only if God says it's ok.

And God says it's bad to have sex with things that aren't human. So either Cain met up with people that were humans already, or he was going against Gods will.

Ah, but they hadn't been given the rules yet. Which is was okay for Adam's children to have kids together, because the law wasn't given to them until Moses came around.

[Bottle or the Gun]

Originally posted by Jas
Neanderthals are just really old people because back then, people lived to be 600 years old, like Noah. They've just got arthritis and stuff, and since no one today (due to our evil ways), lives to be 600, we just don't know what they look like.

Duh.

We don't live to be 600 years old because after the flood, the heavy cloud cover (all that water had to come from somewhere) that kept out UV and other radiation was gone, the effects causing the reduction in our lifespans.

[ceo_esq]

Here's a link (http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v24/i4/humans.asp) to a fundamentalist article addressing the possibility of "pre-Adamic people".

I haven't been able to locate much in the way of online sources addressing the more subtle theological questions raised by the existence of Neanderthals and so forth, such as the spiritual fate of pre-modern hominids. For what it's worth, here's one view:The non-Homo Sapiens people of ancient times, then, may well have enjoyed life intensely much as children do today before they reach adulthood. They could speak and think to some extent and carry on social life in conformity with their comparatively limited intellectual powers. Their power to think abstractly indicates that they had immaterial and immortal souls which do not die. What about their eternal destiny?

The Lord has not seen fit to reveal this to us. But we know that every single person whom He once creates, lives forever after. This is true of all persons, whether they are children or adults, whether born or unborn. We know also that God loves everything He has made, and that He is infinitely good. We entrust the non-Homo Sapiens hominids to His goodness, just as we entrust to Him the children whom He has created and who die without Baptism before they could be born, or who died after birth but before reaching the use of reason.
On a somewhat related note; I also found this observation in The Range of Reason (http://www.nd.edu/Departments/Maritain/etext/range05.htm) (1947) by the estimable philosopher Jacques Maritain (http://www.bartleby.com/65/ma/Maritain.html):Primitive men did not philosophize; but, for all that, they had their own way, an instinctive, non-conceptual way, of believing in the soul's immortality. It was a belief rooted in an obscure experience of the self, and in the natural aspirations of the spirit in us to overcome death. We need not embark on an analysis of this natural and instinctive, non-philosophical belief in immortality. I should like merely to quote a passage from a book by the late scientist Pierre Lecomte du Noüy. Speaking of prehistoric man, he said: "Not only did the Neanderthal Man, who lived in Paleolithic times, bury his dead, but sometimes he buried them in a common ground. An example of this is the Grotte des Enfants near Mentone. Because of this respect he had for his dead, we have reached an anatomical knowledge of the Neanderthal Man that is more perfect than that which we have of certain races which have recently become extinct, or which still exist, such as the Tasmanians. This is no longer a question of instinct. We are dealing already with the dawn of human thought, which reveals itself in a kind of revolt against death. And revolt against death implies love for those who have gone as well as the hope that their disappearance is not final. We see these ideas, the first perhaps, develop progressively alongside the first artistic feelings. Flat rocks in the shape of dolmens are placed so as to protect the faces and heads of those who are buried. Later, ornaments, weapons, food, and the colors which serve to adorn the body, are placed in the tombs. The idea of finality is unbearable. The dead man will awaken, he will be hungry, he will have to defend himself, he will want to adorn himself."

[Graham]

Originally posted by ceo_esq
Here's a link (http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v24/i4/humans.asp) to a fundamentalist article addressing the possibility of "pre-Adamic people".

I haven't been able to locate much in the way of online sources addressing the more subtle theological questions raised by the existence of Neanderthals and so forth, such as the spiritual fate of pre-modern hominids. For what it's worth, here's one view:
On a somewhat related note; I also found this observation in The Range of Reason (http://www.nd.edu/Departments/Maritain/etext/range05.htm) (1947) by the estimable philosopher Jacques Maritain (http://www.bartleby.com/65/ma/Maritain.html):

Am I the only one who finds something unbearably sad about that last passage?

Regardless, there are any number of creatures known to have existed that are not mentioned as having been on the ark.

So the neanderthals had burial traditions and mourned for their dead, so what? So do elephants, to an extent. Why should neanderthals worry the religious more than elephants do? Just because they look more like us?

Graham

[triadboy]

Originally posted by ceo_esq
Here's a link to a fundamentalist article addressing the possibility of "pre-Adamic people".


Thanks ceo_esq.

Notice that Ross states that Adam and Eve lived 10–25 thousand years ago (he realizes that he can’t push the genealogies too far). However, when the same dating methods in which he trusts said that the Australian Aborigines and American Indians lived 40–60,000 years ago, he changed the sentence in the above quote to read: ‘Then about 10 to 60 thousand years ago, God replaced them with Adam and Eve.’14 Presumably the change was made because the 25,000 year limit would mean that the Aborigines and Indians could not have been descendants of Adam and Eve. However, his adjusted range of dates does not solve the problem. If it is possible that Adam and Eve lived 10,000 years ago, then this implies it is possible that such indigenous people are not descendants of Adam and Eve (which would mean that they could not be saved through Christ, our kinsman/redeemer—Isaiah 59:20).15

A lot of tap-dancing going on. It seems simpler to just say: Adam and Eve is a 'just so' story about the beginning of man. It should never be taken as history.

[Correa Neto]

Lets not forget that a few centuries ago the catholic church was discussing if natives from the americas had souls or not.

Useless discussions. They don't. Neither we.

[triadboy]

Originally posted by Correa Neto
Lets not forget that a few centuries ago the catholic church was discussing if natives from the americas had souls or not.


Amazing. What audacity!

[cloud_strife]

it's also ironic and interesting to note that the europeans (including the catholic church) thought they were more civilized and moral than the Natives....yet the natives were slaughtered and conquered...

[geni]

Originally posted by Correa Neto
Lets not forget that a few centuries ago the catholic church was discussing if natives from the americas had souls or not.


Source for this?

[Nikk]

Originally posted by Correa Neto
Lets not forget that a few centuries ago the catholic church was discussing if natives from the americas had souls or not.

Useless discussions. They don't. Neither we.

Well the natives brought back from Columbus's first expedition were baptised and the second expedition of 1493 included 12 missionaries. So when did this discussion take place.

[epepke]

Originally posted by Correa Neto
Lets not forget that a few centuries ago the catholic church was discussing if natives from the americas had souls or not.

Actually, it's worse than that. The Catholics eventually decided that Native Americans had souls. The Church of England, however, did not. This had an effect on the ways that natives were differentially treated in Hispanic versus English colonies. They were treated very badly everywhere, but the native population of South America never went below 3 million estimated, wheras north of the Mexican border, the native population is estimated to have gone as low as 150,000. It's much higher, now, fortunately.

Anyway, if you go to Mexico and stay there for a while, you'll notice that many people are clearly identifiable as having Mayan ancestry, and that there is an entrenched racial distinction in the culture between them and more European-looking mexicans.

[Donks]

Originally posted by geni


Source for this?

Decreed by Pope Paul III Sublimus Dei (http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Paul03/p3subli.htm)

We ...snip... consider, however, that the Indians are truly men

The person who fought for this was Bartolomé de Las Casas, info here (http://historicaltextarchive.com/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=444)