Speaker 1 00:00:05 ID the future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.
Speaker 2 00:00:12 Hello and welcome to ID the Future. My name is Emily Reeves, and today I'll be speaking with Dr. Casey Luskin, associate Director of the Center for Science and Culture at Discovery Institute. We're gonna be talking about his recent paper in the Journal of Religions that compare eight different models of human origins. Human origins may be the area where mainstream science and faith appear to be most at odds, but are they, what are some of the various ways that contemporary scholars have reconciled these differences? In today's podcast, we'll get answers to these questions and more. Welcome, Casey, and thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 3 00:00:49 Thank you, Emily, or should I say Dr. Reeves? It's great to be on the show with you. Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:00:54 Absolutely. It's been a while since we've done one of these together.
Speaker 3 00:00:57 Yes, it's been a while.
Speaker 2 00:00:58 Yeah. So Casey, the title of your paper is Comparing Contemporary Evangelical Models regarding Human Origins. Can you tell us just a little bit about that title, what your paper's about and who did you write it for?
Speaker 3 00:01:13 Yeah, so the purpose of the paper is to look at various attempts to sort of synthesize science and religion in the area of human origins and compare those models, sort of looking at the, the strengths and the weaknesses of different models that are out there. And it's purpose is really to help people sort through all the different models that are out there. I'm aware that there's a lot of different viewpoints and ideas and thoughts that people have had about how to explain human origins in the context of, uh, science and faith specifically, you know, myself speaking as a Christian in terms of traditional Christian theology, and sometimes all these different models can be a little bit confusing for people as they're trying to sort through them. So I really wrote this article for somebody who is interested in the question of human origins is trying to reconcile science and faith, but is trying to figure out sort of which model is best for them in terms of understanding these issues.
Speaker 3 00:02:11 And so I really wrote the article for anybody, uh, whatever their viewpoint happens to be. I tried to be somewhat objective and academic about it. This was written for an, uh, you know, a mainstream academic journal. So I wasn't being too much of an advocate, although certainly I do have my own view as far as which models I think are better. And that probably comes through a little bit in the paper. But I try to be fairly objective just reviewing how these various models interface with the scientific evidence, with various theological views and which ones do better than others, and just sort of comparing them so people can make up their own minds which models they think are best.
Speaker 2 00:02:45 That's, I think that's great objective. And I, I recall first reading a draft of this paper before it was published earlier this year, and my, my husband Daniel and I, we were, we were on a long two hour drive, but we didn't really notice the time or the traffic because we were so taken with this, this paper. And we were struck, I think, by how concise and organized and how it really does help, one, to think through both the theological issues as well as some of these scientific ones. Well,
Speaker 3 00:03:15 I I really appreciated the feedback from you and Daniel, who many of our listeners will know Daniel Reeves here at Discovery. It was really helpful to get feedback from my colleagues because this is a complex issue and I I wanted to make sure I was being fair to the different views and also trying to help people think it through. I should add that, you know, this paper really is very far field from Intelligent design. I published it in this journal called Religions, which is having a special issue on science and faith. And I wanted to explore this issue from a science, faith standpoint because it's something that I'm interested in personally as a Christian, but of course, I recognize that this is not necessarily intelligent design. Television design does not require you to have a Christian view of human origins. I know folks in the ID community who are not Christians and hold very much, you know, very different kinds of views on human origins from maybe what what I might believe, but yet they still see evidence for design in nature. So this paper really is not about in intelligence design. I should just make that clear. It's definitely more in the tradition of looking at science and faith and how we can fit those two together.
Speaker 2 00:04:17 Yeah, and you're, you're so right. So let's go ahead and maybe you can introduce us to, I don't know if you wanna do all eight of the models or just a few of them that your paper evaluates.
Speaker 3 00:04:27 Sure. I mean, I'm not necessarily gonna go through all the models in detail right now. I think that's better. If you really wanna do that, download the paper. It's open access, it's free, you can get it at the Religions Journal, um, uh, which is published by MD p i or we also have it linked from evolution news.org. And certainly we'll link to it from the podcast as well. But the eight different models we looked at, um, are number one, the classic theistic evolution or evolutionary creationism, a model which is often associated with groups like BioLogos and also others like Dennis Larou and some, you know, well-known theistic evolution folks. Another, the second model would be the Homo Deus model, which was initially advocated by the theologian John Stott, but more recently by the prominent theistic evolutionist biologist Dennis Alexander of the Faraday Institute. And the third model that I looked at is the Genealogical Admin Eve model, which is developed by computational biologist and scholar Joshua Swamis, who is a professor at the University of Washington in St.
Speaker 3 00:05:26 Louis. A lot of folks have probably heard about this model because, uh, professor Swamis has done a lot of YouTube, uh, interviews and chats about this, and it's certainly gotten a lot of attention in the last few years. It's an interesting model. Um, the fourth one is another model people might have heard of. It was developed by the famous Christian philosopher, William Lang Craig, and I call this the Homo Heidelbergensis model. It's the model that he puts forth in his 2021 book in Quest of the historical Adam. And so for folks who have read that book, this is basically looking at the model that he puts forth in that book. The fifth model, uh, is what I call the unique Origins design model, which was developed by two intelligent design proponents. Uh, that would be biologist Ann Ger and mathematician Ola Hoster, who many of our listeners might recall, did a research project, a scientific research project on human origins.
Speaker 3 00:06:16 A few years ago, they published their results in the Journal Biocomplexity, which basically found that the human species could have come from an initial pair of two, and we could still explain all of modern day human genetic diversity, even if we only came from an initial pair of two individuals. The sixth model is the classical old earth creationist model, which is advocated by some well-known, uh, scientists at reasons to believe such as Elle Rana and Hura. The seventh model is the classical young earth creationist model, which is probably very well known to folks, whether you, uh, agree or disagree with it. I think that the young Earth creationist model is certainly the, the sort of the traditional model of Adam and Eve in many ways. Uh, the idea that, you know, they were created just a few thousand years ago, um, that they were specially and miraculously created by God, um, that they're the sole progenitors of all humanity, and certainly many of the other models hold various aspects of that model as well.
Speaker 3 00:07:10 But the Young Earth creationist model is probably very well known to folks. Um, it's advocated by groups such as the Institute for Creation Research and Answers in Genesis. And then an eighth model is sort of an interesting model. I call it the, the Old Earth recent humans hybrid model. It's not quite as well known, and it's not advocated by a lot of people, but it is out there. So I thought it worth including, it's basically the idea that, um, you know, the earth might be old, but humans might have been created very recently, and there are some folks out there that hold to that view. So, um, I'm not gonna get into too much detail about all these models, um, but I'll, I'll just say this, four of the models are evolutionary models, and four of the models are what I call non evolutionary models.
Speaker 3 00:07:52 So the four evolutionary models are the first ones I mentioned, the classic theistic evolution model, the Homo DNI model, the genealogical Admin Eve model, and the homo Heidelberg sys model. Each of those models essentially proposes that humans evolved from a common ancestor they shared with apes. Now, some of those models would explicitly deny a historical Adam and Eve, I'm thinking of like the classical theistic evolution model really denies that there ever was sort of an initial pair that all humanity came from, and they just basically take the standard evolutionary view and say, this is the way that God did it. But there's no traditional theology incorporated into that model. The Homo Deus model, it will believe in, it's sort of an admin eve, but admin Eve are not necessarily the, the, the traditional admin Eve. They're just, you know, two hominids and a much larger population that evolved from a common ancestor with apes.
Speaker 3 00:08:43 And God just sort of one day said, okay, you two, there you are Adam and Eve, and they're not necessarily the progenitors of, of the rest of humanity. Um, they might have some sort of federal headship authority over humanity, but they're not like, you know, traditionally the, the, you know, Genesis says that Eve was the mother of all the living. They would not view Adam and Eve like that. Um, the genealogical Adam and Eve is interesting. Um, it certainly believes that all humans that have ever lived are descended from a common ancestor that we share with apes and, and evolve from that common ancestor. So certainly evolution is part and parcel of the genealogical Adam Eve model. But what it says is that at some point, God specially created two individuals, admin Eve. So they would've been miraculously created, at least it allows for this miraculous creation of admin Eve.
Speaker 3 00:09:30 And those two individuals and their offspring then might have interbred with this much larger population of hominids that fully evolved from a common ancestor with apes. So it's sort of a emerging of a standard evolutionary view, but then God specially creates two individuals and their offspring interbreed with that evolved population of hominids. And we are the product of that, uh, marriage between Advent Eves progeny and this basically standard evolutionary, uh, evolved population of hominids. And then the Homo Heidelbergensis model says that, um, yes, humanity did evolve from a common ancestor that we share with apes, but at some point we went through a bottleneck of two individuals, and those two individuals would've been like, essentially they would've been Adam and Eve. Uh, now God did not necessarily especially create them, but at least we're descended from just that those, that initial pair that God, you know, essentially, um, deemed to be the first people who were made in the image of God who would've been given souls, et cetera.
Speaker 3 00:10:31 And we are descended, all humanities descended from just that initial pair. And then the other four models are the non evolutionary models. The, uh, first one, the unique origins in design model would basically say that, uh, God created Adam and Eve potentially, you know, especially in miraculously created them separately from the apes. But that this happened a long time ago, maybe as far back as say 1.5 million years ago, or perhaps as recent as 500,000 years ago, maybe even more recently. But the, the point of this model is to say that if Adam and Eve lived long ago and they could have been specially created by God, that's fine with this model, and it's not an evolutionary model. So, you know, a all humanity would not be descended from a common ancestor with apes under this model. But the idea is that Adam Eve lived a long time ago, and this is supposed to give enough time for modern day human genetic diversity to just sort of arise naturally.
Speaker 3 00:11:24 Then, uh, again, we got the older Earth creationist model that also says that God specially created admin Eve, but not necessarily as far back as the unique origins in design model. Um, the unique origins in design model basically says that, that when God specially created and eve, that might have been potentially around the same time that the human-like members of the genus homo first appear in the fossil record. So it could be anywhere, you know, one to one and a half million years ago, maybe less than that, but you know, something like that. The old Earth creationist model, it correlates the timing of the creation of Admin Eve with the, uh, explosive appearance of modern day human intellectual activity in the archeological record. And that shows up about a hundred thousand years ago. And so they would say that the, uh, creation of Admin Eve is aligned very well with when humanity sort of the evidence of our modern day high intellectual abilities when that first appears in the archeological record.
Speaker 3 00:12:20 And there's a very big, they call, I've heard people call it the culture explosion, the fossil record, when we suddenly get all of these modern human-like activities in the fossil rec, or sorry, in the archeological record. And then of course, uh, the Young Earth creationist model says that humans were created just a few thousand years ago, maybe six to 10,000 years ago. And the old Earth, uh, recent humans hybrid model says the same thing. It just says that the, the earth is not necessarily young, there's an old earth, but God waited a long time to create humanity, uh, just a, just a few thousand years ago. So those are the, the eight models, and, and, and some of them are evolutionary, some are non evolutionary.
Speaker 2 00:12:56 Yeah, that's a great summary and for those of our listeners who want to learn more about those, each particular model and the details of that model, definitely you are gonna want to check out the paper. There's lots more good stuff in there. So we've covered a few of the key issues that differentiate and distinguish these different models. And you talked a little bit, Casey, about how you separate the first four, I believe into evolutionary models, into the second four, into non evolutionary models. Do you wanna talk maybe a little bit more about, maybe let's, let's talk about some particular lines of evidence for your favorite model
Speaker 3 00:13:39 <laugh>, that that's fair. Sure. So my, my hope is that if people read the paper, they won't necessarily know what my favorite model is. And I don't know, I haven't talked, I've had a, a number of people email me who read the paper, but I haven't asked anybody yet. Oh, could you figure out which one I like? Uh, but so I'm hoping that they couldn't, you know, it's like a teacher that's a
Speaker 2 00:13:58 Great goal. <laugh>.
Speaker 3 00:13:59 Yeah. Like, you know, that's a great goal. You have that professor in college where the professor says, so what do you think? I think, and then the class raises their hand and they get it totally wrong, and the professor's like, great, I did my job. You know, like, I didn't come off too far one way or the other that that was my goal. And maybe I, I don't know if I accomplished it perfectly or not, but certainly I do favor the, uh, you know, a non evolutionary view. I think that the scientific evidence does not support an evolutionary model of human origins. My preferred models, I'm, I'm kind of somewhere between the unique origins and design model and the old earth creationist, the classical old earth creationist model. I'm kind of somewhere between those two models. I would say that, you know, that that's pretty much where I fall. So, um,
Speaker 2 00:14:39 Yeah. And, and maybe you can tell us just a little bit, I know in the paper you really go through some of the different, how these models square up with like some of the different traditional theological beliefs. Maybe you can speak to that a little bit for this model.
Speaker 3 00:14:55 Sure, sure. So, I mean, we can, we can do a quick rundown. I mean, the traditional theological beliefs that I looked at is number one, do you even believe in Adam and Eve, like, you know, this i, this traditional theological view among Jews and Christians and probably Muslims and many other folks out there believe that humanity was initially descended from Adam and Eve, who were specially created by God that all humanity is descended from these, just this, these two initial individuals, and that they were real people. So I mean, right off the bat, the classical evolutionary creationists theistic evolution model, they typically will deny that Adam and Eve were even existed. They're not, they're not even on the radar screen essentially as far as theology, you know, needing them to actually have been real historical people. So that's, that model does not agree with that.
Speaker 3 00:15:38 Though all the other models believe in historical admin Eve, the homo de venous model believes in historical admin eve, but it does not believe that Adam and Eve were the progenitors of all humanity or the soul progenitors, nor does it believe that they were specially created by God. The genealogical Adam Eve model does actually allow that, uh, God specially created admin eve. But then it says that we evolved, we also are descended from this population of homages that evolved. So in this model, admin Eve might be the progenitors of all living humans today, but they have not been the progenitors of all humans that ever lived. And we also have other, many other progenitors such as this population of evolved hominins. So it's sort of a mixture there. Some folks might, you know, say, okay, well, does that is, is that weird to say that a lot of humanity over the history of the human race has not been CEED from Adam and Eve?
Speaker 3 00:16:31 What are the theological implications of that? I think there's a lot of interesting questions that are raised there. Uh, the homo heidal briza model, it really does not propose if, if you look at what William L. Craig says, you know, specifically about, I think that model, it really favors the idea that they were not specially created. I mean, I think that he might be open to that, but I think that Model F does not favor the idea that they were specially created, but that they evolved from a common ancestor shared with apes in his book, William L. Craig cites certain lines of evidence like Pseudogenes and so forth that he thinks shows that we are descended from a common ancestor with apes. Now, what is sort of more, I think theologically traditional about this model is it does say that we are all descended from just this initial pair of individuals.
Speaker 3 00:17:15 They might have descended from a common ancestor with apes ultimately, but at least we're descended from just that pair of two individuals, sort of a bottleneck that the human race went to. And we call that bottleneck Adam and Eve. So the unique origins in design model, um, as well as the classic old earth creationist model, I mean, they, they all propose that God specially created Adam and Eve, that they are our soul, uh, progenitors, um, that they were made in the image of God, uh, really where they depart from, maybe the traditional view is they don't believe that ab were created just a few thousand years ago, that they might have been, uh, tens of thousands of years ago, or a hundred thousand years ago, maybe even multiple, hundreds of thousands of years ago, that God made Adam Eve. And so for some folks who wanna have a more recent Adam and Eve that, you know, these models probably will not appeal. And then the y the Young Earth creationist model and also the hybrid model, they adopt all those views. Adam and Eve were real historical people. They were specially created by God soul progenitors of all humanity. But then they were made just a few thousand years ago. So that sort of fulfills, I think all of the standard traditional theological views of Adam and Eve are fulfilled in those two models. But do you wanna talk me to talk about the science? I,
Speaker 2 00:18:24 Yes. Yeah, I was just thinking, let's, let's go to the science now. I know, and I would recommend for anyone looking at this paper if you, if you don't have two hours to in depth read it, which I do recommend, but if you just have a few minutes, if nothing else, be sure to check out tables one, two, and three in the paper where Casey summarizes how these models interact with what you just talked about, the traditional theological beliefs as well as how the different models mesh with or do not mesh with the mainstream scientific positions on human origin. So yeah, take it away, Casey.
Speaker 3 00:19:01 Yeah, and I, I don't recommend reading the paper while you're driving. Uh, maybe if you have somebody else driving. I think, I think Daniel was driving that one day. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:19:07 Was, yeah, Daniel was driving and I was reading.
Speaker 3 00:19:09 Ok. Okay. Okay. Well that, that makes me feel a lot better. Yeah. But yeah, certainly we can get into the science. I, I mean there's so much to talk about here, but as far as the science goes, I, I mean, I do think that the science does not support an evolutionary view of human origins. Um, and so, I mean, evolutionists will cite various lines of evidence from, you know, say fossil evidence, genetic evidence that they believe shows that humanity is descended from a common ancestor with apes. Um, I would argue that when you dig into the technical literature, you find that evidence is not nearly as strong as it's often claimed to be. Uh, for example, with regards to the fossils, we find that it's very well acknowledged in the literature that there is a large and un bridged gap between human-like members of the genus homo and some of our supposed ancestors like the ape-like australs.
Speaker 3 00:19:55 And so this really causes a problem. You can look at the literature and see people saying that, you know, there had to have been a genetic revolution because no australs species is obviously transitional and, you know, calling for a big bang model of human origins. So this really, I think, does not support the, I fossils at least, I don't think that they have a, a clear cut case that humans and our genus homo are descended from a common ancestor with apes. As for the genetic evidence, I mean, one of the biggest arguments has been that modern day human genetic diversity is too great for humanity to have ever been, uh, sort of arising from just an initial pair that we had to have risen from a large population of many thousands of individuals. And, and this happened over, you know, many thou, hundreds of thousands, millions of years to generate all the modern day human genetic diversity.
Speaker 3 00:20:44 Uh, this is made by some, uh, theistic evolutionists, uh, such as Dennis Vema and others have made the, these arguments. Well, it turns out that, that you really, you actually can account for modern day human genetic diversity and having us arising from just an initial pair of two individuals if admin Eve or as we could call them, lived far enough back. So that really is not a problem for Adam and Eve. And then I actually, when I dug into the literature, I found out that some, some young earth creationists have actually had some, you might call it creative genetics here, where they essentially found a way to say that if there was diversity built in, not just in into the genome of Adam and Eve, but also into their gametes, that they could then account for modern day human genetic diversity if Adam Eve lived only just a few thousand years ago.
Speaker 3 00:21:32 So it seems like there might be some solutions to this modern day human genetic diversity problem, whether you believe in an, in a more ancient Adam Eve, like I would probably favor that view, or whether you believe in a more young admin Eve. Um, either way, there seem to be some solutions to this question of how do we explain modern day human genetic diversity. So I don't think that that's a good argument anymore for an evolutionary origin of, of, of admin Eve or of of humans I should say. Um, another line of evidence that we hear sometimes cited is the idea that human and chimp chimps and our, our ape-like, uh, you know, friends that are out there that our genetics are so similar, we have 99% similar genomes, and this is proof that we share a common ancestor and that we're related through an evolutionary history.
Speaker 3 00:22:18 Well, we do share a high degree of genetics with chimps, but it's not 99%. Um, the best estimates that I've found, and I documented this in the paper, it's probably somewhere between 84 and 96%, although the jury really is still out because, uh, we really don't have, I think, a, a really good draft of the chimp genome that did not use the human genome as a scaffolding yet. But whatever the actual number is, no percent genetic similarity between human and chimp genomes is going to prove, or I would say force you to accept an evolutionary origin in a common ancestry for those, you know, for for those species. Because the similarities could be the result of common design where we're simply built upon a common blueprint. Um, but then people will come back and say, well, okay, fine, there's, but there's certain DNA between humans and chimps that's really similar that does not have any function.
Speaker 3 00:23:09 So why would you have this common design of say, all this junk d n a in the human and chimp genomes? Why would God independently put the same useless DNA into the genomes of both humans and chimps? Isn't that better explained by us inheriting all this junk from a common ancestor? And I would say, well, um, if, if it was in fact junk, I might be inclined to agree with you, but the, the data, the trend line is really not going in the direction of the idea that our genomes are largely full of junk. And I talk about some of the data that's come out of the Encode project, um, where, you know, the Journal of Science had a headline that said that encode project writes eulogy for junk, d n a, uh, and and other papers as well. There was a paper in the journal Genome and Bio Genome Biology and Evolution a couple years ago.
Speaker 3 00:23:54 It said, the days of junk d n A are over because essentially we're finding mass evidence of functionality for essentially, you know, the vast majority of our genome. Now of course there's still many specific examples of, of D N A elements that we don't know exactly what they're doing yet, but there is good evidence, prima evidence. I would say that it's, it's functional. So I think that really this idea that our genomes are largely full of junk is not so workable anymore. So the last one I'll hit, so people will say, fine, maybe a lot of our gene is functional, but we still have these pseudogenes pseudogenes and also endogenous retroviruses seem to be very persuasive to our theistic evolutionist friends that humans and apes share a common ancestor. Well, we have the same problem with pseudogenes and endogenous retroviruses that we have for the rest of the junk d n and that is that we are discovering more and more evidence of function for those types of d n a as time goes on. And you can read the paper and get all the literature, but that means the literature is filled with papers saying, don't use the term pseudogene anymore. Or we now think that pseudogenes might actually be functional. And of course there's still a lot where we haven't discovered specific functions yet, but I think this assumption that pseudogenes are non-functional really does not work very well anymore. And I could tell some stories on this, but we'll just leave it at that for now. Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:25:12 That's great. Yeah, I just recently heard of an example where the region from the Pseudogene is sometimes put into the region of the regular gene and providing like more variation or I don't know, we don't know what it's doing. So
Speaker 3 00:25:26 Yeah, there are good reasons why we have these things that look like the protein coding version of the gene, but don't yield functional proteins. Exactly. And it has to do with gene regulation. Pseudogenes can yield r n a transcripts that might not be able to produce a protein, but those r n a transcripts are involved in regulating the, the other version of the gene in your genome that does in fact produce the protein coding version of the gene. So we have very good functional reasons to understand why we have these things that look like genes but don't produce proteins and they're, they're there cuz they're part of a normal gene regulatory system. Let me give one last example of this for, for people who are tempted to say, but, but come on, like, doesn't, isn't this well known? Well people have been so sure that pseudogenes are nonfunctional.
Speaker 3 00:26:10 And I tell this story in the paper back in the Dover trial, Ken Miller testified about the beta globin pseudogene. He said, it's broken, it has molecular errors that render the gene non-functional. And two years later, Eugenie Scott participated in this large debate at the Natural History Museum where she said, the pseudogene, the beta globin pseudogene is not going to do deadly. It's just going to sit there and not do a thing. And lo and behold, you know, we, we waited for the data, they were just assuming it was functional in the, in the absence of evidence, but we waited for the day to come in and now we know that this pseudogene is in fact very important. In fact, a 2021 study found that it is essential for forming human red blood cells. So this pseudogene that, you know, some istic evolutionist folks like Ken Miller were so confident that they testified in court that this, that this demonstrates that we share common ancestry with apes. And it, they said it's broken, it now turns out it's essential according to a scientific paper for forming human red blood cells. So that tells you to be really cautious about making this argument that pseudogenes are non-functional. There's a lot we don't know and the more we study them, the more refining function function function. Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:27:20 Excellent point, excellent point. And there are so many examples of this in the literature. So to kinda start wrapping this up a little bit, I know you propose a scoring system helping a reader to evaluate these different models. Do you wanna talk a little bit about that?
Speaker 3 00:27:37 Sure, I can talk about that real quick. So I use a scoring system based upon how these models perform on various scientific points, scientific evidence, and also traditional theological views. And I try to, you know, try to ask which ones are doing better. I'm not even sure to be honest with you if I like my own scoring system because I think that, you know, it's a little bit arbitrary and some people are going to weigh some things differently than others. Some people will wanna say, well, which models are doing better on the science? That's what they care about. Other people are gonna say, well, which meta models are doing better on the theology because that's what they care about. And some people are gonna wanna look at both. I'm the kind of person that's gonna look at, at both the science and the theology. So that's why I like the unique origins and design model.
Speaker 3 00:28:21 It actually scored a among the highest, or actually it was tied for the highest, um, as far as scoring well with both the science and the theology. But you know, some of these models don't do so well. The, the theistic evolution model only gets points for the science, um, and the younger earth creation model, it gets all of the, you know, the, the theological points, but then on the mainstream scientific points it, it really doesn't do so well. So there's a real spectrum of how these different models are doing. You can read the paper to get a feel for it, but really the, the, the hope is not necessarily tell you which model you should adopt, but to help you understand the models and get a better feel for them. So then you can decide which model, uh, appeals most to you and which do you think is the best model. That's my hope.
Speaker 2 00:29:02 Okay. So to wrap this up now, where do you think this leaves attempts to reconcile science and faith regarding human origins?
Speaker 3 00:29:11 Yeah, so look, there have been a lot of models that have been developed over, uh, the last few decades for reconciling science and faith on human origins. And I think that, you know, there's a lot of different opinions that are out there. I think what we're seeing is that some models are more successful than others at trying to reconcile science and faith. Some look just at the science, some look just at the theology others work on, you know, from looking at both. But I think what's clear is that you, you don't have to jettison traditional beliefs about admin eve in light of the findings of science. That that's my take home from this. Now of course some people have different ways of coming to that conclusion, but there is a real rich diversity of models that are out there. Um, and then, you know, some people don't care about this cuz they're not even religious.
Speaker 3 00:29:55 They're not trying to reconcile science and faith. Okay, fine. Well you know, I still think it's worth looking at this cuz it's very interesting to see how, I think that, you know, it's not as hard as some people might think to reconcile science with sort of a traditional view of the origin of humanity. And again, if, you know, download the paper and read it, you can get a feel for this. The paper is available from the religions journal. We'll also link to it from our uh, podcast interview here. It's open access, so it's free and uh, you know, if you're driving alone, pull over and read it on the side of the road. If not, take a little, have somebody else when they're driving you around, take a couple hours and read it and I'd love to hear what you think about it. Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:30:32 That's great. I think that there's so much complexity to balancing and harmonizing scientific evidence with scripture that it is really important to just approach these topics of human origins with an open mind and willingness to learn. And Casey did a great job of that in this paper. And so I think really it's a great starting point for understanding these different models and working on this reconciliation between science and scripture. So let's continue, you know, to explore this area and discuss it with curiosity and respect. And I hope all of our listeners will read this paper, share it with family and friends of faith who have questions. Talking about origins raises some of the most important questions in life about our worth value, and knowing where we came from can provide direction, hope, and emotional wellbeing. So thank you so much for your time and effort in summarizing these various models, KC, both in print and now over ID the future. So with that, we'll conclude this podcast and hope to speak to you guys more in the future. I'm Emily Reeves with ID The Future. Thanks so much for listening.
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