17. Matthew Nisbet, Scientists in Civic Life: Facilitating Dialogue-Based Communication, American Association for the Advancement of Science 2018, www.aaas.org/programs/dialogue-science-ethics-and-religion/resources-engaging-scientists-project.
18. S. Joshua Swamidass, “Grieve the Segregation of Science,” God and Nature (Winter 2018), https://godandnature.asa3.org/essay-grieve-the-segregation-of-science-by-s-joshua-swamidass.html.
19. S. Joshua Swamidass, “The Overlooked Science of Genealogical Ancestry,” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 70 (2018).
20. Swamidass, “Genealogical Adam and Eve in Evolution.”
21. S. Joshua Swamidass, “In Defense of Tim Keller,” Peaceful Science, October 1, 2017, http://peacefulscience.org/defense-tim-keller/.
22. S. Joshua Swamidass, “A Genealogical Rapprochement on Adam?,” Peaceful Science, October 24, 2017, http://peacefulscience.org/genealogical-rapprochement/.
23. Matthew Nisbet, Scientists in Civic Life: Facilitating Dialogue-Based Communication, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2018, www.aaas.org/programs/dialogue-science-ethics-and-religion/resources-engaging-scientists-project.
24. Andrew Ter Ern Loke, “Reconciling Evolution and Biblical Literalism: A Proposed Research Program,” Theology and Science 14 (2016): 160-74, https://doi.org/10.1080/14746700.2016.1156328; Gregg Davidson, “Genetics, the Nephilim, and the Historicity of Adam,” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 67 (2015): 24-34; Kenneth W. Kemp, “Science, Theology, and Monogenesis,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 85, no. 2 (2011): 217-36, https://doi.org/10.5840/acpq201185213; Edward Feser, “Monkey in Your Soul?,” Edward Feser (blog), September 12, 2011, http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/09/monkey-in-your-soul.html; David Opderback, “A ‘Historical’ Adam?,” BioLogos, April 15, 2010, http://biologos.org/blogs/archive/a-historical-adam; Douglas L. T. Rohde, Steve Olson, and Joseph T. Chang, “Modelling the Recent Common Ancestry of All Living Humans,” Nature 431 (2004): 562-66, https://doi.org/10.1038/nature02842; Steve Olson, Mapping Human History: Genes, Race, and Our Common Origins (Boston: Mariner Books, 2002).
25. I presented this thesis to the Dabar Conference, summer of 2018. My discussion group included exegetes Richard Averbeck, C. John Collins, Richard Schultz, philosopher William Lane Craig, and theologian Ken Keathley. At this conference, Andrew Torrance and C. John Collins offered written responses to an early draft of this book (appendixes 2 and 3). In summer of 2018, John Hilber also gave a public response (appendix 5). In early 2019, William Lane Craig published his thoughts about this proposal too (appendix 4). Appendixes 2–5 are available at www.ivpress.com/the-genealogical-adam-and-eve.
26. Andrew Ter Ern Loke, “Reconciling Evolution and Biblical Literalism: A Proposed Research Program,” Theology and Science 14 (2016): 160-74, https://doi.org/10.1080/14746700.2016.1156328.
27. This expands on blog posts Jon Garvey has written over several years. “Genealogical Adam,” category archive, The Hump of the Camel (blog), http://potiphar.jongarvey.co.uk/category/genealogical-adam/. I am very grateful to Garvey’s feedback and support over the last several years in pursuing this work. Many of the ideas here have been refined with his input.
28. It is not clear if Craig will adopt a variation of the genealogical Adam or not.
29. See online appendix 3.
Chapter 2: A Genealogical Hypothesis
1. Niels Bohr, Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature (Woodbridge, CT: Ox Bow Press, 1987), as quoted in Karen Michelle Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007).
2. Mervi A. Asikainen and Pekka E. Hirvonen, “Thought Experiments in Science and in Science Education,” in International Handbook of Research in History, Philosophy and Science Teaching, ed. M. Matthews (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2014), 1235-56, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7654-8_38.
3. Charles H. Bennett, “Demons, Engines and the Second Law,” Scientific American, November 1987, 108-16 https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1187-108.
4. Following Wayne Grudem, I also note, “It is possible that the ‘rib’ was accompanied by other material substances taken from Adam’s body, for Adam himself says, ‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh’ (Genesis 2:23). My overall argument is not affected by that difference.” Wayne Grudem, “Theistic Evolution Undermines Twelve Creation Events and Several Crucial Christian Doctrines,” in Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique, ed. J. P. Moreland and others (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2017), 785-837.
5. Georges Bonani and others, “Radiocarbon Dating of Fourteen Dead Sea Scrolls,” Radiocarbon 34 (1992): 843-49.
6. William D. Edwards, Wesley J. Gabel, and Floyd E. Hosmer, “On the Physical Death of Jesus Christ,” JAMA 255 (1986): 1455, https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.1986.03370110077025.
7. Rebecca L. Cann, Mark Stoneking, and Allan C. Wilson, “Mitochondrial DNA and Human Evolution,” Nature 325 (1987): 31-36, https://doi.org/10.1038/325031a0.
8. Jim Wainscoat, “Out of the Garden of Eden,” Nature 325 (1987), https://doi.org/10.1038/325013a0.
9. Monika Karmin and others, “A Recent Bottleneck of Y Chromosome Diversity Coincides with a Global Change in Culture,” Genome Research 25 (2015): 459-66, https://doi.org/10.1101/gr.186684.114.
10. Even this, however, was quickly disputed. His analysis of transspecies variation did not properly account for convergent evolution. A full analysis of his work, however, is beyond the scope of this book. A technical discussion can be found elsewhere. S. Joshua Swamidass, “Heliocentric Certainty Against a Bottleneck of Two?,” unpublished paper, February 28, 2018, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1328247.
11. See for example, Grudem, “Theistic Evolution Undermines”; Deborah B. Haarsma and Loren D. Haarsma, Origins: Christian Perspectives on Creation, Evolution, and Intelligent Design (Grand Rapids: Faith Alive Christian Resources, 2011); Jerry A. Coyne, “Adam and Eve: The Ultimate Standoff Between Science and Faith (and a Contest!),” Why Evolution Is True (blog), June 2, 2011, https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/06/02/adam-and-eve-the-ultimate-standoff-between-science-and-faith-and-a-contest/.
Chapter 3: Genetics Is Not Genealogy
1. See online appendix 3.
2. See, for example, Scot McKnight and Dennis R. Venema, Adam and the Genome (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2017); F. J. Ayala et al., “Molecular Genetics of Speciation and Human Origins,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 91, no. 15 (1994): 6787–94, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.91.15.6787.
3. Eviatar Zerubavel, Ancestors and Relatives: Genealogy, Identity, and Community (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
4. DNA is one way that traits are passed to our progeny, but it is not the only way. For example, language is usually passed on by cultural inheritance. Carl Zimmer, She Has Her Mother’s Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity (New York: Dutton, 2018).
5. James D. Watson, The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA (New York: Penguin, 1997 [1968]).
6. David Reich, Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past (New York: Vintage, 2018); Adam Rutherford, A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes (New York: The Experiment, 2017); Christine Kenneally, The Invisible History of the Human Race: How DNA and History Shape Our Identities and Our Futures (New York: Penguin, 2015).
7. Garrett Hellenthal and others, “A Genetic Atlas of Human Admixture History,” Science 343 (2014): 747-51, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1243518.
8. Carsten Wiuf and Jotun Hein, “On the Number of Ancestors to a DNA Sequence,” Genetics 147 (1997): 1459-68, www.genetics.org/content/147/3/1459.
9. Davidson discussed possible earlier dates as well, though requiring faster rates of genetic mutation than observed today. Gregg Davidson, “Geneti
cs, the Nephilim, and the Historicity of Adam,” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 67 (2015): 24-34; see also Andrew Ter Ern Loke, “Reconciling Evolution and Biblical Literalism: A Proposed Research Program,” Theology and Science 14 (2016): 160-74, https://doi.org/10.1080/14746700.2016.1156328.
10. John K. Pace and Cédric Feschotte, “The Evolutionary History of Human DNA Transposons: Evidence for Intense Activity in the Primate Lineage,” Genome Research 17 (2007): 422-32, https://doi.org/10.1101/gr.5826307.
11. Rebecca L. Cann, Mark Stoneking, and Allan C. Wilson, “Mitochondrial DNA and Human Evolution,” Nature 325 (1987): 31–36, https://doi.org/10.1038/325031a0.
12. Jim Wainscoat, “Out of the Garden of Eden,” Nature 325 (1987), https://doi.org/10.1038/325013a0.
13. Monika Karmin and others, “A Recent Bottleneck of Y Chromosome Diversity Coincides with a Global Change in Culture,” Genome Research 25 (2015): 459-66, https://doi.org/10.1101/gr.186684.114.
14. Scot McKnight and Dennis R. Venema, Adam and the Genome: Reading Scripture After Genetic Science (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2017).
15. Wayne Grudem, “Theistic Evolution Undermines Twelve Creation Events and Several Crucial Christian Doctrines,” in Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique, ed. J. P. Moreland and others (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2017), 785-837; S. Joshua Swamidass, “Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical and Theological Critique,” Themelios 43 (2018).
Chapter 4: Ancestors of Everyone Today
1. S. Joshua Swamidass, “The Overlooked Science of Genealogical Ancestry,” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 70 (2018).
2. The terms are pluralized to emphasize that this is a large group of individuals. They are in lowercase letters to emphasize that they are not all “Adam” and “Eve.”
3. I am grateful to Jonathan Burke for directing me to Kendall. Henry Kendall, “Natural Heirship: Or, All the World Akin,” Popular Science Monthly, January 1886, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume_28/January_1886/Natural_Heirship:_Or,_All_the_World_Akin; Henry Kendall, The Kinship of Men: An Argument from Pedigrees; or, Genealogy Viewed as a Science (Boston: Cupples and Hurd, 1888).
4. Joseph T. Chang, “Recent Common Ancestors of All Present-Day Individuals,” Advances in Applied Probability 31 (1999): 1002-26, https://doi.org/10.1239/aap/1029955256.
5. Joseph T. Chang and others, “Reply to Discussants: Recent Common Ancestors of All Present-Day Individuals,” Advances in Applied Probability 31 (1999): 1036-38, https://doi.org/10.1239/aap/1029955258; Peter Donnelly and others, “Discussion: Recent Common Ancestors of All Present-Day Individuals,” Advances in Applied Probability 31 (1999): 1027-35, https://doi.org/10.1239/aap/1029955257.
6. Richard Dawkins, The Ancestor’s Tale (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004).
7. Steve Olson, Mapping Human History: Genes, Race, and Our Common Origins (Boston: Mariner Books, 2002).
8. Press release, Mapping Human History, by Steve Olson, www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/booksellers/press_release/olson/olson_mapping.pdf.
9. Jotun Hein, “Human Evolution: Pedigrees for All Humanity,” Nature 431 (2004): 518-19, https://doi.org/10.1038/431518a.
10. S. Joshua Swamidass, “A Genealogical Adam and Eve in Evolution,” Sapientia, Carl F. H. Henry Center, June 26, 2017, https://henrycenter.tiu.edu/2017/06/a-genealogical-adam-and-eve-in-evolution/.
11. S. Joshua Swamidass, “The Overlooked Science of Genealogical Ancestry,” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 70 (2018).
12. For example, Graham Coop explains many of the concepts in this chapter in a blog series from 2017. “Genetic Genealogy,” blog archive, The Coop Lab (blog), https://gcbias.org/category/genetic-genealogy/.
13. Rohde, Olson, and Chang, “Modelling the Recent Common Ancestry”; Douglas L. T. Rohde, “On the Common Ancestors of All Living Humans,” unpublished paper, November 11, 2003, https://tedlab.mit.edu/~dr/Papers/Rohde-MRCA-two.pdf.
14. Chang, “Recent Common Ancestors.”
15. The identical ancestor point arises in about 1.77 log2 N generations.
16. Kees Klein Goldewijk, Arthur Beusen, and Peter Janssen, “Long-Term Dynamic Modeling of Global Population and Built-Up Area in a Spatially Explicit Way: HYDE 3.1,” The Holocene 20 (2010): 565-73, https://doi.org/10.1177/0959683609356587.
17. Chang, “Recent Common Ancestors.”
18. J. Kelleher, A. M. Etheridge, A. Veber, and N. H. Barton, “Spread of Pedigree Versus Genetic Ancestry in Spatially Distributed Populations,” Theoretical Population Biology 108 (2016): 1-12, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tpb.2015.10.008.
19. Rohde, “On the Common Ancestors”; Rohde, Olson, and Chang, “Modelling the Recent Common Ancestry.”
20. Joseph Lachance, “Inbreeding, Pedigree Size, and the Most Recent Common Ancestor of Humanity,” Journal of Theoretical Biology 261 (2009): 238-47, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtbi.2009.08.006; Rohde, Olson, and Chang, “Modelling the Recent Common Ancestry.”
21. Lachance, “Inbreeding, Pedigree Size.”
22. Jotun Hein, “Human Evolution: Pedigrees for All Humanity,” Nature 431 (2004): 518-19, https://doi.org/10.1038/431518a; Donnelly and others, “Discussion”; Chang and others, “Reply to Discussants.”
23. Carsten Wiuf and Jotun Hein, “On the Number of Ancestors to a DNA Sequence,” Genetics 147 (1997): 1459-68, www.genetics.org/content/147/3/1459; Kelleher and others, “Spread of Pedigree.”
24. Simon Gravel and Mike Steel, “The Existence and Abundance of Ghost Ancestors in Biparental Populations,” Theoretical Population Biology 101 (2015): 47-53, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tpb.2015.02.002; Wiuf and Hein, “On the Number of Ancestors.”
25. Kelleher and others, “Spread of Pedigree”; Chad D. Huff and others, “Maximum-Likelihood Estimation of Recent Shared Ancestry (ERSA),” Genome Research 21 (2011): 768-74, https://doi.org/10.1101/gr.115972.110.
26. Michael C. Whitlock and David E. McCauley, “Indirect Measures of Gene Flow and Migration: FST≠1/(4Nm+1),” Heredity 82 (1999): 117-25, https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.hdy.6884960; Jinliang Wang and Michael C. Whitlock, “Estimating Effective Population Size and Migration Rates from Genetic Samples over Space and Time,” Genetics 163 (2003).
27. Kendall, Kinship of Men.
28. “His [the ancestor’s] part in the building up of any human fabric rapidly becomes insignificant.” Kendall, Kinship of Men.
29. “Every individual living before Christ who has descendants at all has them in us.” While the most recent universal ancestors arise 2,000 years ago, the universal ancestor point for everyone alive was closer to 3,000 or 4,000 years ago. Kendall, “Natural Heirship: Or, All the World Akin.”
30. This is a turn of a phrase that does not require that Adam exists or that there was a Garden. Instead it refers to those outside a universal ancestor’s line.
31. M. Gallego Llorente and others, “Ancient Ethiopian Genome Reveals Extensive Eurasian Admixture in Eastern Africa,” Science 350 (2015); Jason A. Hodgson and others, “Early Back-to-Africa Migration into the Horn of Africa,” PLoS Genetics 10 (2014), https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1004393.
32. Alan R. Templeton, “Human Races: A Genetic and Evolutionary Perspective,” American Anthropologist 100 (1998): 632-50, https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1998.100.3.632.
33. Templeton, “Human Races”; Alan R. Templeton, “Biological Races in Humans,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 44 (2013): 262-71, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2013.04.010.
34. Rohde, Olson, and Chang, “Modelling the Recent Common Ancestry.”
Chapter 5: Genealogical Adams and Eves
1. David Opderbeck, “A ‘Historical’ Adam?,” BioLogos, April 15, 2010, https://biologos.org/blogs/archive/a-historical-adam.
2. In this early engagement, however, Garvey inappropriately focuses on the “most-recent” universal ancestor, because Adam and Eve need not be the most recent universal ancestors. Jon Garvey, “A
dam and MRCA Studies,” The Hump, February 27, 2011, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1336741.
3. Kenneth W. Kemp, “Science, Theology, and Monogenesis,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 85, no. 2 (2011): 217-36, https://doi.org/10.5840/acpq201185213; Gregg Davidson, “Genetics, the Nephilim, and the Historicity of Adam,” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 67 (2015): 24-34; Andrew Ter Ern Loke, “Reconciling Evolution and Biblical Literalism: A Proposed Research Program,” Theology and Science 14 (2016): 160-74, https://doi.org/10.1080/14746700.2016.1156328.
4. Objections I have heard often closely matched those in this article: Davis A. Young, “The Antiquity and the Unity of the Human Race Revisited,” Christian Scholar’s Review 24 (1995): 380-96.
5. See, for example, Scot McKnight and Dennis R. Venema, Adam and the Genome: Reading Scripture After Genetic Science (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2017).
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