Question:

Recently Dr. William Lane Craig published his book called ‘In Quest of the Historical Adam’ he also mentioned you in his podcast

https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5ibHVicnJ5LmNvbS9mZWVkcy9yZWFzb25hYmxlX2ZhaXRoLnhtbA/episode/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5ibHVicnJ5LmNvbS9yZWFzb25hYmxlX2ZhaXRoLzgxNjMzMTkyL3JlYWN0aW9ucy1iZWdpbi1vbi1oaXN0b3JpY2FsLWFkYW0tYm9vay8

What do you think of his thoughts and what he said there?

Answer:

I love this article and am glad you found a reference to myself by Dr. Craig.  This was fun.  I am looking forward to reading his book In Quest of the Historical Adam.  WLC is doing a great job here.  I agree with his comment about Genesis being mythico/historical. He is right on there.  Craig does have one push-back, but that is because I did not explain myself sufficiently.  I made the comment that we do not know much about art or language, which Craig pointed out correctly, is definitely not true.  We have a lot of evidence for art and some even for religion, all the way back to 40,000 years ago from cave paintings.  What I should have said (but did not) is that we have very little evidence for this in the specific case of the Neanderthals.  The evidence for art and some sort of primitive religion (and, by inference language) for the early modern humans is very strong, as Craig points out, but the evidence of this for Neanderthals is largely if not completely missing.  I am prepared to accept that it is highly likely that the Neanderthals had some sort of language and even some sort of art, but the evidence is not strong in that area just yet.  My point is this.  Craig’s hypothesis is not an unreasonable one, but the hard evidence pushing the humanness/image of God before the cro magnon species is still lacking.  Either way, I like the podcast and look forward to the book.

John Oakes

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