@BruceAlderman I understand the idea. The link with the graphics helped some. What remains unexplained is what caused the extinction of the first species. If the advantage is not great enough, then the adaptation would dissipate back into the original population, unless we assume these hominids didn't intermingle. And if they didn't intermingle, then the success of one over the other only affects geographic areas where they coexist.

Otherwise, we need another event to explain what happened to them. Where did they go?

@BruceAlderman This is a mischaracterization of what I've said and what me or creationists think when we "set evolution as alternative answers to the same question." It appears to be a condescending message. Please afford me some intellectual courtesy.

@LeeWoofenden Where are you getting the idea that I'm only receptive to creationist theories of origins? I've said close to the opposite just a few messages earlier in our exchange.

@LeeWoofenden That's not the problem. We're all, for the most part, imaginative enough to fathom your figurative interpretations of just about anything. The issue is that in most cases there is little reason to believe that the original authors meant to convey your figurative meaning over the literal one.

When I see someone telling me some questionable part of the Bible is figurative, my response is not just "That's not what it says", but also, "there's little reason to believe the original author meant what you are saying."

For example, you've gone so far as to tell us that the second coming of Christ is figurative and has already happened too, right? Well, that's great and all, but when I read the Bible I read from an author that seems pretty convinced Jesus will return in flesh, robed in Divine Glory, with the "blast of a trumpet" (meaning announced and obvious), and very soon.

So, my response to you is, "Nonsense. There doesn't seem to be a reason to believe the authors of the Bible believed that and meant to convey that in their writing."

I don't have a problem understanding the idea that any story, doctrine, prophecy, event, or whatever is figurative and/or spiritual. That's the easy part. I have a problem with this eisgesis practice of insisting that blatantly wrong passages are figurative instead of taken at the value the author has already given us.

@fredsbend Based on the information in the article, I don't think we can answer that question. The researchers on site may have additional information they haven't released--or they may uncover something later that offers an explanation. Regardless, the information we have at this time is enough to fill in a rough outline. Just because we don't know everything, that's no reason to dismiss the entire field of paleontology.

@fredsbend It's not just "my figurative meaning over the literal one." The bulk of Christianity today does not take the Genesis account of creation literally. That view is confined largely to evangelical Protestants, who represent perhaps 20-25% of the total Christian population worldwide.

@fredsbend There's even less reason to believe that the original authors meant their writings to be taken as scientific and historical accounts, as we conceive of those things today. "Bronze age nomads" just didn't think that way. Treating their writings as scientific and historical treatises is both anachronistic and nonsensical.

Further, for most of Christian history the Bible was commonly seen as having multiple layers of deeper meaning. It was only after the Protestant Reformation that any major segment of Christianity began rejecting that. And it's only been in the last two centuries that a subset of Protestants has insisted upon a highly literal interpretation of the Bible. And that happened in response to the scientific revolution.

So the reality is quite contrary to what you are asserting. The case for the Bible not being a scientific and historical treatise to be taken literally has a much longer history than the current literalism among evangelical Protestants, it has a much stronger basis in scholarly analysis of the Biblical texts, and literalism remains today very much a minority position in Christianity.

@fredsbend I'm aware that some Christians resort to figurative interpretation only when a literalist position is untenable--and therefore as a last resort. That, however, is not my approach, and I believe it is a very weak approach. My approach is to read all of scripture as figurative, and some of it also as literal.

@LeeWoofenden I wasn't referring so much to Genesis as being read historically and scientifically as I was more or less referring to you specifically. Your own words saying that you read all of it as figurative, appears to me to be an extreme position. Considering the room we're in, this miscommunication is my fault.

Regarding Genesis though, I think we are on the same page. You are probably right that the ancient people who read it and for whom it was written did not understand it in that way.

@BruceAlderman I didn't mean to paint with a broad brush, though that is was I did with my first message. A generalization, but not an accusation. People dismiss entire fields all the time, especially on the internet. You gotta have a thicker skin than that.

From what I can glean from what you've told me or linked for me, it does make a bit more sense now, but still seems a bit odd. It doesn't seem like what we should expect, but I guess that is the point of the article.

But am I not right to be skeptical of surprising findings and conclusions?