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The Geneological Adam and Eve - Dr. Joshua Swamidass
160 Plays1 year ago
Adam and Eve, ancestors of us all? Matt and Nick chat with Dr. Joshua Swamidass, author of “The Genealogical Adam and Eve: The Surprising Science of Universal Ancestry.” In his book, Dr. Swamidass carefully investigates the findings of genetic science, biblical tradition, and some of the key assumptions that have divided Christians in the human origins debate. His thesis presents not only a surprising plot twist but also acts as a watershed moment for theological discourse on the issue.
Resources Referenced: The Genealogical Adam and Eve by Joshua Swamidass, Adam and the Genome by Dennis Venema and Scot McKnight, The Lost World Series by John Walton
Theme Music: "Believe" by Posthumorous. More at https://linktr.ee/posthumorous
For more fun, check out www.reparadigmed.com
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Transcript
Introduction to the Episode
00:00:02
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the ReParadigm podcast. Today we're excited to share with you a conversation that we actually had back in August with Dr.
Meet Dr. Joshua Swamidass
00:00:10
Speaker
Joshua Swamidass. Dr. Swamidass is the associate professor in the laboratory and genomic medicine division at Washington University. He's published over 150 articles focused on statistical machine learning and decision theory in the context of chemical biology and research. Yeah, he's a smart guy. I could go on.
Book Discussion: The Genealogical Adam and Eve
00:00:28
Speaker
In 2019, though, he published the genealogical Adam and Eve, the surprising science of universal ancestry. And that's the reason why we asked him to come on the podcast with us.
00:00:39
Speaker
I want to give you a little bit of background before we hop into the conversation because I don't want you to be left in the dust. We kind of hit the ground running here.
Challenging Genetic Consensus
00:00:45
Speaker
So his thesis comes in the face of an almost universal consensus among genetic scientists today that the diversity in the human gene pool today cannot be mathematically reconciled with the supposition that all humans today descended exclusively from a human pair anytime in the recent past, really.
00:01:03
Speaker
Now, it's perhaps possible that we all descended from a single human pair exclusively several hundred thousand years in the past, but you would have to go back there for that to be the case. Now,
The Single Pair Thesis
00:01:16
Speaker
Dr. Swamidass, who is a computational biologist by training, he published a thesis that has not as of yet been disproven. And in fact, it's only become stronger in the last several years.
00:01:27
Speaker
His thesis is basically this, that it's not only possible, but it's actually probable that every human alive today has descended from a human pair who lived within just several thousand years in the past, so long as that human pair interbred with a larger gene pool of humanoids. So this would explain why many people today actually have like Denisovan and Neanderthal DNA, but they would still share genealogical ancestry with the rest of humanity.
00:01:56
Speaker
We all, in fact, would have descended from a single human pair just thousands of years in the past. Now, theologically speaking, we could kind of restate his thesis like this.
Theological Implications of Adam and Eve
00:02:08
Speaker
If a de novo Adam and Eve, meaning a mature, created out of nothing Adam and Eve, if a de novo Adam and Eve existed just several thousand years ago, then we would actually more than likely all descend from them.
00:02:23
Speaker
However, we did not all descend exclusively from them, as the evidence suggests that they would have interbred with people living outside the garden. Now, if that all seems confusing or fascinating, I really hope you enjoy the conversation. And I really hope you pick up his book too, because it's really a solid and interesting thesis.
00:02:43
Speaker
Now one of the things I really appreciate about Dr. Swamidass is his strong desire to stick with traditional readings of Genesis.
Dr. Swamidass's Computational Biology Background
00:02:51
Speaker
His thesis really offers us the ability to do that and also to more or less accept the scientific consensus about biological ancestry today. So with all that said, I really hope you enjoy the conversation that we had with Dr. Joshua Swamidass.
00:03:13
Speaker
To introduce you just a little bit more, what does it mean to be a computational biologist? So I have a PhD in computer science and I also have a medical degree. And for over 10 years now, I've been a professor at Washoe writing computer algorithms and mainly artificial intelligence algorithms to better understand biology and answer biological questions and chemical questions in ways that might be important for human health.
Science vs. Scripture: Origins Debate
00:03:38
Speaker
So how did you go from computational biology towards wanting to study the genealogical Adam and Eve. That's a great question. I mean to get to the place I am now. I mean you spend a lot of time in school so as a scientist or a science student I should say for a good part of my life and even though my primary area of focus wasn't evolution you know the questions that come up in biology all the time.
00:04:02
Speaker
for science students are questions of how the story that we learn about our origins from science, how does that relate to the story we learn about our origins in scripture? And it really does seem on face value that these are very different stories. And so it's not very clear how they fit together, if they should fit together and how to make sense of that. And that's been a big part of my personal story of becoming a scientist is working through and struggling through that apparent sense of conflict.
00:04:32
Speaker
But it's not just personal something you can kind of see in society to the lot of people have really been struggling to make sense of that question. Yeah i know in the church is i've grown up and there is kind of been this to camp mentality especially around the question of human origins so on the one side you got one camp saying humans have come from evolution common ancestry and therefore adam and eve if they were real people.
00:04:56
Speaker
we don't really have any genetic relationship with them you know the other side you got a camp that says no i don't need work the first humans there created directly by god and therefore we are all the sense of Adam and you. The subtitle on your book was the surprising science of universal ancestry and it was certainly surprising for me to go through this and see.
00:05:15
Speaker
that those are not the only two options available on the table. Can you discuss alternatives or maybe some of the ways that your book here suggests possibilities that don't fit neatly in either of those camps?
Evolution and Adam and Eve: A Disagreement
00:05:27
Speaker
Yeah, what I would say is that for a long time, everyone pretty much agreed that if evolution were true, and you might still think it's false, but if it were true, then large parts of how people historically and traditionally understood Adam and Eve could not be true at the same time.
00:05:43
Speaker
And so based on that conflict, you'd have some atheist claiming, well, therefore, you know, this is evidence against Christianity. You'd have creationists saying, well, that's why we can't accept evolution. And you'd have some Christians saying, well, maybe we can modify how we see Adam and Eve. And that's really, you know, the range of possibilities you have. You might modify it a great deal or not, but that's all based around a common agreement that everyone had. Well, that evolution is true.
00:06:13
Speaker
then we can't all descend from Adam and Eve, and Adam and Eve could not have been de novo created. And it certainly couldn't have happened in the relatively recent past.
Science and Religion: Scholarly Contributions
00:06:23
Speaker
So everyone pretty much agreed on that, essentially until my work came out. Now, usually when you hear a person say that, you should be very skeptical because if everyone is not one thing and they came up with a different view.
00:06:35
Speaker
There's a very good chance they're wrong. And typically, I will say, I don't think it's just you that would say that I know like Dr. William Lane Craig, he's very much credited you for being kind of a linchpin or basically a watershed moment came with you and your work in this whole conversation about the compatibility between traditional scientific theories and biblical orthodoxy, let's call it.
00:07:00
Speaker
It's not just you taking credit for some of that headway that's been made in this conversation. Other people have recognized it as well. Yeah, in that way, I mean, that's one of the signifiers. And it hasn't just been, you know, Bill Craig is a Christian scholar, too. There's been several Christian scholars, but also there's been even atheist scholars that have said, oh, you've actually shown. This is the way how Nathan Lenz puts it. He says that in the past, like, you know, Adam and Eve was when it was in that category that science had clearly disproven.
00:07:28
Speaker
But what my work does is kind of move Adam and me from that category more into the same categories as the resurrection and the virgin birth. Or science doesn't really tell us either. But maybe Adam and Eve were, this is an atheist saying this, right? Maybe Adam and Eve were de novo created. And our ancestors evolved us even in the very recent past. That's a surprising thing.
00:07:50
Speaker
And so that I think really reshifts the conversation and kind of changes how we see
Historical Theological Interpretations
00:07:55
Speaker
this. So many people agreed on the conflict between Adam and Eve and evolution that it ended up shaping almost every position there, out there, both in terms of the details of what those positions were and also why people came to them.
00:08:11
Speaker
Here's a great example of that. John Stott is a well-known theologian. He was involved in drafting the Lausanne Covenant, one of the most important documents in evangelical Christianity. And he, like many evangelical Christians, was saying some legitimacy to evolution is trying to make sense of it. And so what he proposes is ideas that maybe Adam and Eve were real people in a relatively recent past, from whom we all just said, but maybe they were just chosen out of a larger population, not to know what created it.
00:08:41
Speaker
And why did he say that? He said that because he thought that evolution had pretty much ruled out that possibility. That's not the case.
00:08:47
Speaker
And then also maybe they weren't actually a couple from whom we all descended. And why did he say that? Well, he said that because he thought that evolution would rule that out, but it didn't. And so he was trying to uphold a historical view of Adam and Eve, and he was giving a lot of ground to science, except for a lot of that ground he didn't need to give.
00:09:14
Speaker
And so when you look at people like him and Derek Kidner and others, I have to wonder to what extent they would have actually come to many of the positions they did come to if they knew what we know now. We now know that Adam and Eve could have been de novo created without parents of their own.
Genetic vs. Genealogical Ancestry
00:09:29
Speaker
And even if they were in the relatively recent past, you know, the best estimates from science show that they would be ancestors of everyone in our current theological era.
00:09:39
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's what's so fascinating about your book. And I really love the charts and different visual aids that you provided in your book as well. Awesome. But yeah, that's what's kind of shocking about it is that genealogical ancestors arise almost inevitably. And it doesn't take very long for them to arise. 2,000, 3,000, maybe 4,000 or 5,000 years.
00:10:00
Speaker
And that's in a period of world history in the past where you didn't have international travel to the degree that we have now. I mean, here's maybe a fun question for you off the cuff. How long do you think it will take a genealogical ancestor to arise from now until X?
00:10:16
Speaker
Will there be a genealogical ancestor of all living people in year X? Because my assumption is nowadays, man, it's going to be much under a thousand years, according to the data you would think. Well, there's two things that make it more effective. One is that there may be more international travel happening. I mean, you say international, except for that's a weird word, because if you go before maybe like four or five thousand years ago, were there any nations? I don't know.
00:10:40
Speaker
intercontinental inter regional global. Okay. Yeah, we'd say there wasn't modern. There certainly wasn't like planes and trains and automobiles and things like that. People weren't globe trotting like they do now. Right. But over the course of their lifetime, there certainly was intercontinental travel happening. So the amount of travel probably has increased now, right? At the same token, the number of people is really increased. And so that increases the amount of time.
00:11:07
Speaker
Good point. And so it's not entirely certain, but my guess is it'd probably be just a couple thousand years even now. But the more interesting thing is what's going on in the past before all this modern travel stuff is around. And it turns out that there's a lot more travel in the past that we generally give credit. And just because of the amount of mixing that we know about, it just seems that very likely we're just in a few thousand years, everyone becoming ancestors of Adam and Eve.
00:11:36
Speaker
Now, what's kind of been going on on set, and I want to bring it to the fore, because I think this is where the interesting theology comes out, is that I'm not saying that there was a certain point where there was only Adam and Eve as the only homo sapiens across the entire globe on Earth.
00:11:52
Speaker
That wouldn't be the case because there would have been people outside, other Homo sapiens, if they were recent, that is, from whom we all descend as well. So we descend from Adam and Eve and their lineage would have inner bread with people outside the garden. So we'd have, we'd have Adam and Eve's lineage, but we'd also have these people from outside and our lineage as well. Which scientifically speaking is the reason why a lot of people have Neanderthal DNA remnants of that in their genome and Denisovian as well. Is that the theory, I guess?
00:12:21
Speaker
Yeah, so Denisovans and Neanderthals lived before 40,000 years ago, and they kind of intermixed and intermingled with in a bread, I should say with the homo sapiens. And that's part of the population that gave rise to us now. Sure. And those that would have been the DNA from all the people outside the garden, right? That's coming to us.
00:12:41
Speaker
the question of whether or not we have a genetic connection to Adam. And we most likely don't, if they're recent individuals, we most likely don't have a direct genetic connection to them. But they would have been very, very similar to us. They would be homo sapiens too. Yeah. Could you explain that actually for our audience? Because this is a really just fundamental point to your whole book, the difference between genetic ancestry and genealogical ancestry. Yeah. This is one of the big surprising things because people tend to conflate genetics and genealogical ancestry.
00:13:07
Speaker
And this is one of the key things that I think has to be undone in our modern era to kind of come back to what scripture actually tells us and what actually has historical theology been telling us, right? What we know is that genetic and genealogical ancestry are very different. So one way to kind of conceive this is to think about your parents.
00:13:28
Speaker
They're both your genealogical ancestors. You descend from both of them, right? Both your mom and your dad. But you only get 50% of your DNA from each of them. So each of them are only 50% your genetic ancestor.
Scripture and Genetic Descent
00:13:40
Speaker
You go back one generation beyond that, your grandparents, all four of them are your genealogical ancestors, right? But they're only one quarter your genetic ancestors.
00:13:51
Speaker
And if you go back one more generation, it's one eighth, your genetic ancestors, and you go back and back. And the best estimates in science, once again, are in around 300 years in the past, it's around 10 generations or so, 10 to 15 generations, most of the ancestors at that point are what's called genetic ghosts, people that are genealogically your ancestors, but didn't actually directly give you any DNA. And so that's kind of crazy, isn't it?
00:14:21
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. That's really quick. So what that means, though, is that these two types of genetic ancestry just, you know, propagate in very different ways. And we find out that, you know, if Adam didn't exist, they probably are our genealogical ancestors, but most likely would not be our genetic ancestors, unless they are in the very, very ancient past. Let's ignore that, possibly, because we're talking about the fairly recent past.
00:14:44
Speaker
Now, if they're that recent and they're not our genetic ancestors, you know, you can ask, well, wait a minute, is that a problem? What does scripture tell us? Does scripture actually tell us that Adam gave our genetic ancestors of us all? And is that what historical theology has taught? And this is where context really helps us because, you know, DNA inherits in a very weird way. It's a very particular sort of thing. Most people didn't know. I mean, honestly, we only discovered what DNA was, you know, less than 150 years ago.
00:15:14
Speaker
Sure. Well, yeah, exactly. So it'd be false to assume the biblical writer had any type of understanding of the way genes were passed down.
Monogenesis Tradition
00:15:20
Speaker
They're not talking about genetic ancestry or it's safe to assume they're not talking about genetic ancestry. Very safe. Yeah. So the Christian tradition has had the view, like one of the demands of orthodoxy.
00:15:30
Speaker
has been the confession that we all descend from Adam and Eve. It's the monogenesis tradition of the church. It's really, it really became crystallized with the discovery of the new world. And the big question was, when you look at all these people out there across the globe, are all of them equally human as us? And are they all descendants of Adam and Eve or some of them different? Do they all have a part in God's plan or not?
00:15:56
Speaker
And there was an incredible debate in the church about this. It's called the pre-Atomite controversy. And the big conclusion that was kind of came to for in large parts of the church, you could say most of the church was, well, you know, we don't know what happened in the deep past. There's a lot of big questions about that that we don't really have figured out yet.
00:16:17
Speaker
But when it comes to those people over there in the Americas, and in Africa, and in Asia, they all descend from Adam and Eve. And they're equally human as us, and they're equally in the image of God, and they're just as equally included in God's plan.
00:16:33
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. That became like the demands of Orthodoxy and say the idea that we all descend from Adam and Eve. So that's why it's been so difficult for the church when it comes to this question of do we descend from Adam and Eve?
Orthodox Views on Descent
00:16:46
Speaker
Something you can infer from Scripture.
00:16:48
Speaker
It isn't clearly stated maybe as much as we want to. It's a little bit like the Doctrine of Trinity. It's formed in a historical context, but it's become essentially synonymous with the idea of Adam and Eve to say that we all descend from them because of that.
00:17:03
Speaker
that tradition, right? And so when you have John Stock, for example, thinking about Adam from whom we don't all, we don't all dissent, he's still obviously, at least I hope it's obvious, he's definitely saying that the gospel applies to everyone across the globe and that everyone is equally included in God's plan and that we're all equally human. He's saying that he's saying those things too. So he's not going in some sort of racist path, but he's saying that maybe we don't need to affirm monogenesis anymore.
00:17:33
Speaker
And he was doing that because of the challenge of science. And and I guess we should consider that if that's actually what science demands of us. Right. I agree. Can I jump in here? Please do. I agree. And I'm open to considering those things as well. You know, like you read Dennis Venema and Scott McKnight wrote Adam in the genome. And that's kind of the territory that they land on. They kind of imply they say that I mean, you are real.
00:17:57
Speaker
Well sure but you have to explain somehow the tax like romans five or whatever they're not gonna go some racist path or something and be like oh we don't all matter obviously so they have theological commitments that they're gonna maintain and they're gonna rework how to understand romance five and all that whatever.
00:18:12
Speaker
I think we should consider those options and all that, sure. What you have offered, though, is for the church to simply affirm genealogical ancestries at a pretty recent time from a single human pair from which we all descend.
00:18:28
Speaker
And that view is consistent with standard scientific evolutionary theory, as long as there's people outside the garden. And I think that liberates a lot of people because a lot of people do not even want to entertain the idea that Genesis 1 or Adam and Eve are a purely mythical and non-historical
00:18:49
Speaker
human pair. They don't even want to entertain those theological ideas at all. You kind of give permission to just affirm the more traditional account of Adam and Eve and also you can affirm standard evolutionary theory as well. They're not in conflict so long as there's people outside the garden.
Aligning with Historical Christianity
00:19:05
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's that's exactly right. Basically, I think we can consider that that's what science demands, but it's not what science demands. So, right. So my, my view is like, you know, like, I mean, I'm an evangelical Christian, I from the Lassan Cup. And I mean, that is a theological evangelical, not not necessarily, well, I'm certainly not sociological evangelical or political one. I mean, that theologically.
00:19:27
Speaker
And you know, I think that there's diversity in that group. And I think that we know that the fact that Jesus rose from the dead is the grounding thing, right? The same token I want to, and we want to align ourselves with historical Christianity. And we can negotiate with it, but we're going to only depart from it when there's very good reason to. And there hasn't been really any good reasons to walk away from a historical Adam and Eve.
00:19:53
Speaker
There's just been an assumption that science disproved that we could have all descended from them a recent time ago. Yeah, and so I think that that just gives us a lot of flexibility and freedom. You mentioned Scott McKnight and Dennis Fenema. They represent an important group of Christians that have really abandoned any idea of like a historical Adam and Eve.
00:20:11
Speaker
And I think that that's OK. They're Christian still. I think for them, a lot of them were really earlier adopters of evolution or really quickly came over because they saw it as a way to kind of, you know, as a way that they have a theological solution for that, too. Right. So if you would have come along 20, 30 years ago, they wouldn't have had to go that route. Is that what you're saying?
00:20:30
Speaker
Well, it's interesting. So a lot of them, like, so for example, Dennis Venema still thinks that there is no Adam and Eve, right? But I think his commitments that actually come not from, from science, ultimately, they actually have to do with his theology and a theological positions. And I think what's going on here is that they've, I mean, you mentioned Dennis Lamara too, because also, once again, a real Christian, real follower of Jesus.
00:20:52
Speaker
But in some ways, I think that they really formed their views with the presumption of conflict that isn't really there. And so I think the warrant, the merit of their views is really in question. It's not really clear why we should revise the Christian tradition. Like, what's the reason to do that? And I haven't heard any good reasons from them yet.
00:21:13
Speaker
So why do you think it took so long for someone to do this work? Is the fact that human origins is such a hotly contested issue, does that kind of dissuade people from trying to find any, you know, or do any work in kind of a camp that doesn't fit neatly into one side
Modernists vs. Fundamentalists: Evolution Debate
00:21:27
Speaker
or the other?
00:21:27
Speaker
That's a really good question. So I think that the dialogue has not always been there in this space. I mean, if you look at the history of what happened, I mean, I think that the history of conflict has just been very strong. So you really had camps where there was one group that really took Scripture seriously and believed that Jesus rose from the dead.
00:21:45
Speaker
another group that didn't really see scripture as inspired by God and didn't even affirm that Jesus rose from the dead, but they affirmed evolution. And you have these two groups, like the modernists on one side, the fundamentalists on the other. And I don't mean like the neo-fundamentalists of like Bob Jones and all that. I mean, kind of like the fundamentalists like William Jennings Bryan. And so there wasn't really until very, very recently, there wasn't very many publicly identified people that both affirmed that Jesus rose from the dead and that scripture was inspired.
00:22:15
Speaker
And also affirmed that evolution is
Faith and Evolution: Francis Collins
00:22:18
Speaker
true. There was very, very few people like that. And that's probably within only the last maybe 20 years that that really became well known as a possibility. Francis Collins was one of the most important
00:22:33
Speaker
public people come out with that. But then most of the Christians at that time, that affirmed evolution, really were kind of working from the same operating assumption that there was a conflict between Adam and Eve and evolution. So, you know, by a loco so not formed, their founding assumption was that the only way to advance evolution among evangelicals was to get evangelicals to get up on Adam and Eve.
00:22:55
Speaker
And that's why they made all those arguments. They tried to say, you've got to take the science seriously. It's disproven it and gone down that path. They softened a little bit, but not much after that. And with that, I mean, I remember talking to one of the leaders there and it really was surprising to me and it opened my eyes to a little bit what was going on. But I told me, you know, I'm just not sure that what's being said here is scientifically accurate.
00:23:17
Speaker
Now, remember, I'm a scientist. I could actually look at this myself. Right. Right. And this person wasn't a scientist, but it was an important leader there. And he told me, you know, even if what you're saying is true, it's not that helpful because, you know, when we go to ETS and we talk to these conservative theologians, there's a lot of problems of theology and they got to move away from that eventually. And, you know, evolution is important for kind of really showing them that they need to move and change that.
00:23:42
Speaker
And I told them, you know, well, I don't know if that's actually true. I don't know why they have to change their theology. And evolution is not challenging what they're saying. And his response was he got really angry with me.
00:23:55
Speaker
And I think what I realized then was that, oh, there's a lot of people here that are really seeing evolutionary science as a way to kind of force theological changes that they care about. And that was more, I mean, that's why they were even in the whole faith science conversation anyway. Rather than what I was trying to do, which is to say, well, I want to actually understand this really well. And I want to understand the questions from theologians really well. And I want to give them honest answers.
00:24:24
Speaker
in a way that shows them how to preserve as much as what they say is valuable to them. Yeah. Do you think that's because you have a bit of a unique perspective as both a committed scientist and a committed Christian?
00:24:36
Speaker
I mean, to say that's unique, wouldn't be fair. I mean, I think there's a lot of Christians there. I mean, I mean, I was very fortunate. God, I mean, it was very providential how a lot of this played out. What I was missing is when I had to like the scientific education, but I didn't actually have a theological education in some providential ways. A big part of it was the creation project, Trinity evangelical university. That's how I met Bill Craig, actually from there.
00:25:00
Speaker
And getting a chance to actually sit down and talk at length with theologians about this stuff. And then eventually going to ETS and talking to them and finding out, Oh, okay, this is actually where they're coming from. And getting that kind of vicarious theological education really helped. And so just listening and being able to do that.
Genetic Data and Evolutionary Assumptions
00:25:18
Speaker
And then on the other hand, I'm a computational biologist. I wasn't an evolutionary biologist, but I was trained on how to actually study the exact data that was at the center of this debate on genetics. And for a little while, I was working with biologists, so they kind of didn't like the direction I was going and kicked me out. But I got a chance to talk to Dennis and say, you know, you're saying this, what's the evidence behind that? And finding out that he really didn't actually have any evidence.
00:25:43
Speaker
behind that, except for some misunderstandings of the data. And so, I mean, so there was a very strong technical component to this to actually figure out, well, what is actually the data saying? So, I mean, when I enter into it, I have been, and I still am willing to say, you know, I'm going to be truthful about what the evidence says. And if there's something there that is uncomfortable for you in the church, or me in the church, us in the church, I'm going to be truthful about that and say that too.
00:26:08
Speaker
And one thing that's uncomfortable for people is that I really do think that there is strong evidence for common descent, the idea that we share common ancestors of the great age. That's uncomfortable for a lot of people. I get that. It was uncomfortable for me, but there's also that evidence and I'm willing to explain it to you. But I also think we need to be honest about the places where it's not in conflict.
00:26:26
Speaker
Sure. Yeah. Can I actually press you on that a little bit to explain that a little bit too? Like you talked about interacting with theologians that have theological commitments and trying to understand where they're coming from and where their commitments are actually at. You also talked about this two kind of different groups of people, groups of organizations, both like, you know, the fundamentalist modernist controversies, right? Both groups assume that a traditional understanding of Adam and Eve is incompatible with standard scientific evolutionary theory.
Traditional Views and Evolutionary Theory
00:26:54
Speaker
So we talked about on the one hand, you have Christian organizations like BioLogos and others who've fully embraced that they're incompatible. But on the other hand, you have like Young Earth Creationist Ministries who also assume they are incompatible and they built their business. Sorry, they built their organization on saying these are incompatible. Trust the Bible instead of science. So I want to press to you a little bit to maybe like a Young Earth audience.
00:27:18
Speaker
You're a scientist. I think a lot of times, young earthers, they'll hear you say there's a lot of scientific evidence for common descent, for example, and their eyes might just glaze over a little bit. They'll be like, never seen it, not interesting, don't really care. The Bible's right. Could you distill some of that evidence that you see as a eugenic scientist? Could you distill some of that evidence that you see for evolution or for common descent?
00:27:44
Speaker
Well, I mean, I'll say a couple of things about that. First of all, you know, for the young creation of the skeptical, you don't have to agree with me about that evidence that it's there. I mean, if you just think I'm totally wrong about that, you saw something I didn't find. I mean, I guess that's OK. I mean, I don't have to convince you that evolution is true for my point to still stand, that if it were true to enter this kind of counterfactual world in which it's true, that still wouldn't be in conflict with Adam and Eve. That's my primary point.
00:28:10
Speaker
I hear you. I just don't think that many young authors are actually listening to any scientists like yourself who are saying, Oh, there's evidence for this stuff. It's not like it's just made up because people want to bash the Bible or the hate God or something. Yeah. So, I mean, I, I can't explain that. And I'd say that that evolution really gives a very clear mathematical theory to explain a lot, a large range of weird observations we find in our genomes.
Genetic Evidence: Humans and Chimpanzees
00:28:36
Speaker
A great example of that is this. When you look at the chimpanzee and the human genome, you can look at the similarity between all the chromosomes. And the most different chromosome is the Y chromosome. Why is that? And also the most similar chromosomes are the X chromosomes.
00:28:52
Speaker
Why is that? That's a puzzle. I've never heard a single creationist explanation for why it is that God made humans with Y chromosomes that are more different than chimpanzees in the rest of our genome and X chromosomes that are more similar.
00:29:08
Speaker
Turns out there's a very, very simple mathematical explanation for it. It turns out that we know that males, men, have higher mutation rates than females. X chromosomes spend more of their time in females than men, and Y chromosomes spend all of their time in men.
00:29:25
Speaker
And if humans and chimpanzees had a common genetic starting point and they split off and separated from that common starting point at a rate that's determined by those mutation rates, then what you'd exactly expect is for the Y chromosomes to be farther apart, the X chromosomes to be closer together, and everything else kind of in a middle row.
00:29:47
Speaker
And that's what we observe. So why is that? I mean, it's possible God made it that way, but for some reason He chose to create us in a way that's perfectly consistent with this observation. Yeah, it's like you can maybe extrapolate this and map it onto the conversation about like cosmology and stuff like that and say, well, it's possible that it was created this way.
00:30:08
Speaker
but it looks as if it is super old, so in the same conversation with evolutionary biology, it's possible God created these mutations to do the same things in chimpanzees and human beings, but it also looks as if they share ancestry, and it's possible that that's not true, and then you just have to wrestle with the question. I wonder why God did things this way, which is a fair question for sure.
00:30:30
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I've been in this conversation for some time now. I have yet to see the mathematical explanation coming from a creationist or ID point of view on that. And that's just one example of a pattern. That's just a weird observation that has no explanation that I know of from intelligent design or, you know, creationism. But you have like this simple, I mean, I just explained it to you right now. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to understand what I just said. Yeah, thank heavens.
00:30:59
Speaker
Maybe to understand the math and the modeling that goes into it to do the math precisely. It does take a little bit of care, but you know, at a high level, what I said is very easy to understand, right? Yeah. And it's the type of thing that even a high school student can sit down and go figure out this math and apply it and see. And and, you know, all that, I mean, it basically is that idea, that model of having a common
00:31:22
Speaker
ancestor from which two things diverge, two species diverge, ends up being very, very predictive of hundreds and thousands of data points. And so, I mean, I need some good reason to reject that. Now, one good reason could be that scripture tells me that humans don't share common ancestry. Which is what the young earth creationist assumes.
00:31:41
Speaker
Yeah, but the thing about it, there's no place in scripture that teaches that. What it teaches is that the most literal way you want to read it is that humans descend from Adam and Eve who were created without parents. And so, but I already showed you how that's compatible with common descent because of the people outside the garden,
Scripture and External Populations
00:32:00
Speaker
right? And scripture does not actually say there were no people outside the garden. And it doesn't deny evolution. It just tells us a different story that can be true too at the same time.
00:32:10
Speaker
So, if I don't actually have a reason to reject it from Scripture, what's my grounding to reject it? I just don't think there is very good grounding. Part of the reason why we wanted you on is because it's sort of our contention that if we do consistent contextual reading of the Bible, careful observation, original authors, editors as best as possible to understand their culture and who they're communicating to,
00:32:34
Speaker
We believe we will have biblical interpretations that don't download all the controversies of the 20th century in the United States of America into our readings of the text.
00:32:44
Speaker
Now, certainly, we're not going to come up with readings that say, you know, Genesis 2.3, and God said, let evolution be and let all human beings descend from apes. Of course, you're not going to get that from the text ever. But we are going to get a textual reading that, like I said, does not attach to the meaning of the authors in that text, a bunch of meanings that were based off of this culture war in the United States of America.
00:33:07
Speaker
Yeah, you can hope that that'd be the case, right? One would hope anyway. Hey, we gotta try. Yeah, I think you're right. I think that a lot of our concerns are just not the concerns of Scripture. Yeah. It reminds me a lot of the people who came to Jesus with questions that were very pressing for them. Like, what do we do with this coin that has Caesar's image? Very pressing question for them. I just don't know if Jesus really cared. Yeah.
00:33:32
Speaker
I just don't think that was, well, when we know that wasn't really the real reason why he came and what he was about. He was, these are these things where you see that he was of first century Palestine, but he was speaking from beyond it. And so, I mean, scripture is situated and it speaks to all time. It's situated, you know, in first century Palestine, at least the New Testament is. It speaks to all times, but it's not really speaking out of our time.
00:34:00
Speaker
As often it is, you know, in our readings, our readings are often spoken out of our time as we kind of read ourselves. I'm just sure where maybe it doesn't belong.
Genesis and Evolutionary Debates: Critique
00:34:10
Speaker
To that point, maybe a bad example of scripture reading that we would see in our time is, I've heard this, I've heard the reading of the first chapter of Genesis that when it says, each according to its kinds, that the Bible is explicitly denying evolution so that people in Western cultures in 2023 wouldn't believe in evolution. Very strange way to approach the text, in my opinion, I think it's unfaithful.
00:34:33
Speaker
Well, I mean, I think that fall is just some purely textual grounds. So that phrase, according to their kind, is interpreted in what you're saying this guy is doing to say that they'll only reproduce after their kind. Sure. So there's two things to keep in mind about that. And they're trying to take that against evolution. The first thing is how that phrase is actually used in other parts of scripture. Comes up again, I think it's in Deuteronomy and Numbers, in lists of unclean and clean animals.
00:35:00
Speaker
And and what I'll say is I'll list off a bunch of animals and I'll say in this one, according to its kind, which when you actually look at it in context, the right way to read it is that it's just a phrase that means of many kinds. It's not actually making any reference to reproduction. There's no way to read those actual lists of different types of animals as being about reproduction. Yeah. And so that's the first thing.
00:35:26
Speaker
where you kind of just realize, well, wait a minute, that's not even what the text says. It's just saying that the land and the sea, that God called forth the land and the sea brought forth plants and animals of many kinds. But let's say we even grant that, just for the sake of argument, even though I don't think that that actually works with the actual words of the text, that it's talking about reproduction, like reproductive limits.
00:35:51
Speaker
Scripture, I mean, this is what the Chicago statements of inerrancy and hermeneutics says. It says the scripture is speaking phenomenologically, not with scientific accuracy. What phenomenologically means, it's according to unaided human perception.
00:36:06
Speaker
For example, when scripture talks about the sun rise and the sunset, it's not actually making a statement about geocentrism and saying that the sun is rising because that's relative
Scripture's Perception Language
00:36:19
Speaker
to the earth. That's not what it's saying, because by ordinary perception, we all just talk about the sun rising, the sun setting. And so they recognize this. I mean, this is a big debate that came out with Kepler and a few others in the rise of modern science, but that's another discussion.
00:36:34
Speaker
The whole point is that a literal reading of Genesis is going to be phenomenological. It's not going to be scientific. It doesn't speak with scientific precision or that universal frame. So what we can say is that modern evolutionary theory actually affirms the phenomenological truth that in general, by ordinary perception, animals reproduce according to their kinds.
00:36:59
Speaker
That's actually not in conflict. It's more when you look at the geological time scale, which is not by ordinary perception, that you see something different. And so it kind of fails really on both points. One, first of all, that's not actually what it says. It doesn't say they reproduce according to their kinds. It says many kinds. And then two, it's only talking about ordinary perception. It's not talking about deep geological time.
00:37:26
Speaker
And I guess my broader point was just to say that the text is clearly not trying to communicate something specific about the arguments that we have in America in 2023. It's talking about something else. It's talking about something very important to them at their time and place. And it's communicating theology that is universal that we can take into our time and our place. But I think it's pressing the text and it's perhaps a little bit disrespectful to just assume that it's talking to me about my arguments that I have with my friends.
00:37:53
Speaker
Yeah, I think you're right. I think one of the things too, you talked about a lot about harmonics and context. I think one other thing I just put into the mix that I think is key part of it too is interpretive history or reception history as it's called sometimes, or historical theology. So I'll grant that this is a theological position. So let me articulate it. I'd say that, you know, the God who rose Jesus from the dead to reveal him to all people didn't really fumble the ball so horribly that core things weren't communicated to the church after that.
00:38:21
Speaker
That doesn't mean that the church has always been right, but it does mean that I'm a traditionalist in some important ways. Like, I... You're sounding a little bit too Catholic for me right now, Dr. Tommy. I'm just teasing you. Yeah, you don't have to be a Catholic. I'm a Protestant. You don't have to be a Catholic to take this route. It's just more this idea that the God who wrote Jesus from the dead is going to preserve his message to us in history.
God's Role in Scriptural Preservation
00:38:45
Speaker
Amen.
00:38:45
Speaker
I mean, we have to believe that if we're willing to even translate the Bible into any other language. We can't actually verify in fully accounted detail that all of scripture was transmitted perfectly. We have to take parts of that. We have to at least take parts of that, right? On this faith that the God who had the power to raise Jesus from the dead can providentially govern the formation of the canon and
00:39:12
Speaker
and how it was conveyed to us today. So even when there's translation errors that we're going to be protected as a church from truly grave errors and things like that. And if we believe that, which I do, and I would say that most evangelicals also believe something aligned with that.
00:39:28
Speaker
That means that we have to take seriously interpretive history and that we should be seeking positions that are most continuous with historical Christianity. And that's why, for example, we are rightly concerned about positions that do major modifications to the doctrine of Trinity. Not because the doctrine of Trinity can be perfectly recovered from Scripture because it can't. I mean, I don't think it can. Not easily.
00:39:52
Speaker
But it's because it's part of a particular tradition that we're inheriting out of which we find Christ, right? And that's also where we find the monogenesis tradition, too, and other things like that. So, you know, I think that is an important piece of it. Now, it's true that there has been new information that can impact how we read Scripture. But we should still, I would say, keep in mind what reception history has been and seek what's been continuous in that as well, I would say. Does that make sense?
00:40:22
Speaker
Yeah, this sentiment makes sense of your pushback against me when I misused the word tradition. Well, yeah, so that's I think that's kind of what the core of the concern has been when these debates. So moving out of the scientific frame for a moment, what surprised me is I spending time talking to theologians is I found a large number of them that were OK with evolution in principle.
00:40:41
Speaker
But were in fact to me but you know i really reject evolution and creation of some help and i was a puzzle to me cuz i thought that evolution and creation is almost just a synonym for the solution that's right been taught. I was listening to more but i found out that i should be talking about was really a cluster of theological news that really i'm.
00:41:01
Speaker
position themselves honestly as revisionist theology. Yeah. The narrative was is that science really forces us to rethink core traditional theology is about original sin and about Adam and Eve.
00:41:14
Speaker
And we need to remake the Christian faith around those changes. And your contention is just, why go that route when we literally don't have to? Exactly. And so when that was kind of proposed to them, what we found out, actually, is there's a large number of scholars, a large number of Christians, too, beyond just the scholars, but certainly among the scholars, are people that really want to come to terms with evolutionary science, but don't want to do it in a way that's giving that much ground, and certainly not that much ground unnecessarily.
00:41:40
Speaker
Do you think your work has provided some space for Christians to come together?
Dialogue on Christian Views of Evolution
00:41:44
Speaker
Have you seen that? Yeah, I think it has provided space for people to come together because we can find out that. Well, I'd say it's space and some people are willing to enter that space and some people aren't. That's what I was going to ask. Have you seen people occupy that space? Yeah, I mean like one of the some of the best conversations I've been having have been with young earth creationists. I was going to ask about that if you have been engaging them directly.
00:42:08
Speaker
Yeah, I have. And also, you know, with also also Old Earth creationists, too. So a lot of a lot of creationists that have kind of just been historically uncertain about evolution for theological reasons. Yes. Yeah. And so to give the names of some people, I mean, there's the reasons to believe Old Earth creation. Also Ken Keithley and the Southern Baptist Convention, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Old Earth creationists are really leading an important voice there.
00:42:34
Speaker
what I've noticed is that they've really kind of embraced what I'm saying as aligned with their theology, what they think is really critical to the point. They see it as just another type of Old Earth creation. Interesting. And that's how they frame it. And so I think what's happened with Old Earth creation is that it's been really adapting from a place of being opposed to evolution to being more about affirming particulars.
00:43:00
Speaker
So almost all of them will say, yeah, but a historical Adam Eve is kind of a non-negotiable for us. But evolution, maybe that's not a problem. So do you see how that kind of situates in a different place? Yeah. Switch to saying what you believe. And it's not evolution and creationism, because they're not necessarily committed to evolution. They might even disagree with it. And evolution and creation really emphasizes and forefronts a non-historical Adam and Eve. That's really what it's focused on. And that's a view that's really rejected by them.
00:43:28
Speaker
Sure. So it's really kind of shifted that group. Yeah. And I would say too, just personally, I'm more interested or invested in the hermeneutics and in the theology of the thing. I'm obviously not a scientist. So one thing I've noticed too, on some of these evolutionary creationism interpretations of Genesis one and two is that they also
00:43:46
Speaker
I mentioned earlier about maybe young earthers sometimes thinking that the text is lambasting our modern debate about evolution, but I've also seen some pretty unfaithful readings on the other end too where evolution is read into the text as if the text is trying to describe biological evolution or common descent or anything
Eisegesis in Biblical Texts
00:44:04
Speaker
like that. And I'm like, that's pretty unfaithful too, I think.
00:44:09
Speaker
I'm not really a fan of any of that concretism. I'm not really a fan of that. Well, I mean, concretism is a bit of a, what's the right word, a poorly defined and contentious word, a better word to just say you're probably not a fan of that type of eisegesis. All right. Eisegesis. I'll take it. Yeah. I'm using it in a sense that Dr. Craig uses it.
00:44:27
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think that that's a real challenge. I mean, I think the bigger thing is that Christians as a whole want to see science and faces friends, even young earth creationists do. They just think that the reason why they're not friends is because they've provided alternative scientific theory to make sense of the biblical data.
00:44:43
Speaker
Yeah, and you know, I think creationists tend to veer into kind of having them not really end up being friends with more like enemies. I'd say evolutionary creationists and theistic evolutionists tend to veer into having them be more strangers.
Science and Faith: Continuing Dialogue
00:44:55
Speaker
They don't really have much to talk about with one another. I think that the stories are different. They're talking about different things, but they actually do science and faith do have a lot to discuss with one another.
00:45:06
Speaker
They're both concerned with many of the same questions and ways that are once again in dialogue. And I think there are questions that the religions are bringing and that science can actually answer in empathetic and accurate ways and vice versa. And so I think that sort of dialogue, that back and forth is exciting. That's where the fun is.
00:45:25
Speaker
And I do think that both the veer towards enemies and the veer towards strangers really undermined that dialogue. You affirmed earlier that we trust God, we trust in God's providence that he would preserve his message to us through our language translations and all that stuff. So also like I have a view of God's sovereignty and God's providence that what we discover in nature according to scientific method also reveals truth about the world.
00:45:52
Speaker
I don't think it's dishonoring to God when even the pursuit of that causes us to question some things about our framework that we had previously, whether it's a theological framework, et cetera. Obviously, the church went through that when Galileo discovered the non-geocentric universe. That was a big struggle for a long time for a lot of people.
00:46:11
Speaker
But then we considered, we batted around the ideas, we argued about it, and we realized, oh, you know what? I don't think the text of the Bible is forcing us to have a geocentric view of the universe, although the author might have had that view. It's maybe just neither here nor there.
00:46:26
Speaker
So also now, I just think that the church is similarly going through a struggle right now where we do feel like if we affirm some type of evolution by common descent or theory like that, that that's unfaithful to God and his revelation. We think it's an anti-God view, or I'm just talking about evangelicals, at least in America, we kind of tend to feel like it's an anti-God view. And I do believe that your proposal allows us
00:46:51
Speaker
to really wrestle with that scientific evidence and think about it. And it's fine to maybe feel a little bit of like, ah, OK, that's a little bit tough for this view. But then to your point, it's important to then not just jump ship and revise all of our theology. We should just sit with that tension. I think they're both revealing truth.
00:47:06
Speaker
I think the idea that what we learn from God's book of works or, you know, science and nature is going to not contradict with what we learn from God's book of words and scripture. I believe that too, yeah. A lot of people believe that, but I think it's important to remember that that's an eschatological claim.
00:47:25
Speaker
It's kind of like once we know everything, we will see that they are not in conflict. Like once we reach a final understanding, it's a complete understanding. But along the way, our imperfect view of Scripture and our imperfect view of nature are going to leave us often with really deep contradictions at times. And so we're kind of left with this paradoxical tension of wanting to hold on to the truth of both, knowing that we don't always know how they're going to fit together.
00:47:52
Speaker
Right. I mean, so I think ultimately there are things that we just don't know how to make sense of and understand, right? Yeah. And we're only going to really know how they fit together, I would say, when we get to heaven. Now we can just have faith that they'll fit together.
00:48:08
Speaker
If you look historically at where the big fights have been, you know, I mean, geocentrism was a big fight, but it got resolved for the most part. Evolution was a big fight that went on for over 100 years, and it was about Adam and Eve, and it hasn't really been resolved. That's one where a lot of people were kind of having to rely on that eschatological hope for a long time, without actually being able to see. I just think that now maybe we can have a little bit more of a view of how it could be reconciled.
00:48:35
Speaker
And so maybe it's a lot easier. I mean, it certainly has been a lot easier for me. Yeah. I think that's exciting. Yeah. I've really appreciated your work. We've kept you past when we said we would, but Dr. Joshua Swamidos, thank you so much for being with us today. Oh, my pleasure. Thanks for having me. I would encourage anybody listening to go check out his book, The Genealogical Adam and Eve, Surprising Science of Universal Ancestry. Thanks for coming on. Appreciate it, man.