How much is too much evolution?

*Wow!  Young earth creationists usually reject any suggestion of an Ancient Near East background to Genesis, but apparently even some YECs are acknowledging the evidence, like in this article in the 2013 Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism (*not saying I trust the article, though, and the author tries to argue in reverse--that the Genesis accounts came first and influenced Egyptian sources, which is all but impossible):

Egypt's Hieroglyphs Contain a Cultural Memory of Creation and Noah's Flood

*Ha!  The article does cite a number of the sources I've mentioned in relation to Genesis and Egyptian creation accounts similarities.  In fact, this YEC article actually goes much further beyond my modest claims, to include a connection with Noah's family tree and the flood. 

***OK, if even YECs are accepting the basic premise of a cultural connection between Genesis 1 and Egyptian creation accounts, then surely that should allay any fears, concerns or reticence some might have to accepting what I've been saying.  

From the intro & conclusion:

"I will review Egypt's earliest creation myths to find any points of contact that may reveal
consistency with the Genesis account, and Egypt's preservation of it. I will show that Egyptian
mythology has suffered 'theological compression', whereby the Creation and Flood accounts have been conflated. Once the connections are recognized, and teased apart, more evidence will quickly follow."

"Egypt had several creation theologies, including the Ennead (nine/ten) gods (Heliopolitan
Theology) which had Atum as its chief deity, who sprang from the Primaeval waters of Nun and
generated nine, possibly ten gods. The Hebrew Adam by its semantic range and phonetic value is the equivalent of the Egyptian Atum. Egyptian mythology surrounding Atum includes the idea of the curse of the serpent, which has some striking similarities to the Biblical Fall narrative. Atum(tm) also had a female consort and the female equivalent of Atum (tmA.t) who's name meant 'ancestress, mother'. The Heliopolitan Theology therefore seems to be a parallel of the Biblical creation narrative.

The Hermopolitan creation theology, may well be Egypt's Flood myth. I have shown that the Ogdoad family tree including Nu and his three sons Amun, Kek, Heh, and their wives, share
strong semantic parallels with Noah, Shem, Ham and Japheth. Egyptian Ogdoad iconography
includes images of Nu holding his Solar bark aloft out of the Primaeval Waters holding the other Ogdoad members, strikingly reminiscent of Noah and his Ark of eight persons. That Nu
becomes Osiris is certain within Egyptian mythology, and Osiris' son is Horus. Horus seems to
replace Kek within the Ogdoad. Horus had four sons Hapy, Imsety, Duamutef, Kebhsenuf which
share semantic parallels with Ham and his four sons; Canaan; Mizraim; Put and Cush. I have
also shown the Biblical names of Noah and his sons and Ham and his sons are all thoroughly Egyptian names. It is my contention that their names, character, and experiences affected the very building blocks of the Egyptian language.

Egypt's hieroglyphs can be seen to testify to the historical accuracy of Genesis' account of
Creation including Adam and the Fall, and Noah and the Flood, and his descendants through
Ham as they populated the earth post-Flood, and founded Egypt. When presented with the
correct Biblical glasses, Egyptian mythology, though hopelessly corrupt and pagan, may come
into sharper focus and be shown to reflect shards of truth, even if ever so dimly. However liberal scholarship wedded to the DH will by no means take up the idea that Genesis is a re-hash of Egyptian (rather than Babylonian) mythology. [*Ha!  They already have!] That is far too near the bone, as it comes too close for comfort to an historic Moses and Israel in Egypt.

When Noah's family tree through Ham is compared to Nu's family tree through Horus the
relationships are the same. The semantic range of each Hebrew name maps onto its Egyptian
counterpart in an almost perfect cognate match. This is powerful evidence that the Biblical
account of the Flood and its Patriarchal family is witnessed in the Egyptian hieroglyphs and creation myths. It seems that the Hermopolitan theology is a recasting of the Flood story, but due to theological compression of the first creation with the Flood account due to pagan degeneration the links at first may not have been obvious. It is this author's hope that this research paper will break wide-open Egypt's earliest mythology and language to further the creation-Flood model and spur other creation researchers o find more links and evidence in Egypt supporting the Genesis Creation and Flood/Post-Flood accounts."

Out of curiosity did the above article help anyone who's been skeptical of what I've been saying about a connection between Genesis 1 and Egyptian creation accounts?  Did the article help anyone become less skeptical of what I've been saying...or even just a little less skeptical?

What verses in chapter one make you think a common ancestor is part of the Biblical narrative that should be seen because they are there.

None whatsoever

Okay, what about those that go against the theory of common ancestor, any of those?

None

So there is none that go against common ancestor and none that support it?

Wait you didn't count me!!!!!!!

Correct.  Genesis 1 is not a scientific treatise, but a theological polemic against pagan Egyptian theology.

The situation is analogous to the Jeremiah 10:1-5 example.  On the surface, the plain, straightforward meaning of Jeremiah 10:1-5 seems to be a clear, unmistakable prohibition of Christmas trees, but it's not.  It has nothing to do with Christmas trees.  Similarly, it seems so clear and obvious to us that Genesis 1 is teaching us scientific-type facts about the biological world that life was created as discrete kinds without evolutionary relationship, but it's not.  It has nothing to do with modern science, but is a theological polemic and refutation of pagan theology that presupposes a *pre-scientific* view of the world, where order is brought to primordial chaos, and where the daylight is created on the first day while the sun is created separately because they did not think the sun was the source of daylight, and where the oceans below are separated from the heavenly cosmic oceans above by a solid barrier firmament, with the sun, moon and stars in the earth's atmosphere below this heavenly cosmic ocean.

Earlier I pointed out there are no such things as religious truth and scientific truth; there is only truth and error. I also pointed out that if we have two different topics, the subject matter makes it possible to have different things that can be true about different subject matters. In this discussion, when we have the same topic, we cannot hold conflicting views discussing the same point of reference. You seem to be doing this now with a common ancestor and the Biblical text they both talk about life's beginning holding to conflicting narratives.

Then I guess I'm doing the same thing with Jeremiah 10:1-5 saying it doesn't prohibit Christmas trees when it actually does, huh?

Or, maybe instead such a view is mistaken and Jeremiah 10:1-5 has nothing to do with Christmas trees even though on the surface it looks like it does.

We seem to be going in circles now.  

I've already agreed with you that IF Genesis 1 was meant to communicate scientifically factual information, then yes, there is a conflict.

Now surely you see the truth of what I'm saying too that if Genesis 1 is not meant to communicate such information then there is no conflict, and modern science and Genesis 1 are apples and oranges that have nothing to do with each other.  Surely you recognize the truth of that 'if' statement too, yes?

A few questions for you:

(1) You keep assuming that Genesis 1 interacts with modern science and that they are talking about the same topic without demonstrating that.  So what is your evidence/rationale for why I should accept your assumption over the clear Egyptian background of Genesis 1?

(2) Why should I believe you that Genesis 1 was meant to convey scientifically factual information to its original audience some 3,000 years before modern science existed?  Such scientific information would not only have been useless to an original ancient audience, but meaningless as well.  Does God's revelation apply to everyone or only people in modern times?

(3) If you want to talk about prima facie similarities then when we compare science with Genesis, and Genesis with Ancient Near East creation accounts, Genesis has far more similairites with the latter than it does with the former, so in light of that why *shouldn't* we interpret Genesis 1 in the context of those Ancient Near East similarities?  Why should we just ignore that relationship? 

(4) Even YECs are now recognizing that there's evidence of a connection between Genesis 1 and Egyptian creation accounts.  Are you still going to continue to deny that there's any connection?

(5) If Genesis 1 is a factual account of material origins, then what does the light that was created on Day 1 correspond to today?   If God replaced that light with the sun on Day 4, then what happened to the original light on Day 1?  Did it just cease to exist???

(6) If Genesis 1 is a factual account of material origins then what do the cosmic/heavenly waters above the firmament sky correspond to today?  What part of our material world do they represent?

(7) If Genesis 1 is a factual account of material origins, then how did land appear on Day 3?  A lot of YECs say that on Day 3 God caused land to rise above the surface of the ocean by either supernatural means or by using plate tectonics.  But that can't be true, because that's not what the Bible says.  God didn't make land rise above the waters.  The Bible says land appeared after God 'gathered the waters' together.  So if God didn't cause land to rise above the surface of the waters, then how did land come to be above the waters?  How does 'gathering the waters' together cause land to be above the oceans? 

(8) The ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts and Coffin Texts which predate the Exodus by nearly 1,000 years tells us that "Now the world was undifferentiated formlessness [töhu wävöhu « Hehu], and darkness [höSek « Keku] was over the surface of the primordial watery deep [tëhôm « Nun]; but the divine wind [rûah 'ëlohîm « Amun] was hovering over the primeval waters [hammäyim « Nun]."  The similarities with Genesis 1:2 are unmistakable:

"And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters"

In light of this, why *shouldn't* we interpret Genesis 1:2 as referring to the chaotic, primeval cosmic waters so predominant in the thought of Ancient Near East creation accounts?  Why should we just simply ignore these clear similarities and pretend they don't exist?  What justification can you provide for doing that?

(9) And while we're at it, with regard to Noah's flood, Genesis tells us that God 'sent a wind' to blow away the flood waters.  That's what it LITERALLY says--the flood waters receded due to wind that God sent.  If we're going to stick to the so-called 'true' literal meaning, then please explain to me how wind causes flood waters to recede.

*Even 'literalists' don't adhere to their own standard of so-called 'literal' interpretation

Yes, exactly. As an example, Adam being made by 'God' from a handful of dust and Eve from one of Adam's ribs.

In many contexts such claims would be self-evidently metaphorical but is that necessarily so in the case of acts of creation attributed to an all-powerful deity? Why shouldn't a being vested with almost infinite powers be able to create a man from a handful of dust or a woman from one of his ribs?

Should it be at all obvious to the untrained reader that such claims are not to be understood literally?

"If a 450 ft long wooden ark seems so outrageously improbable (and therefore non-literal) to us in light of the longest wooden boat on record being only 350 ft long, then how much, much, much more improbable would that seem to an Ancient Near East audience with average length boats of 10 ft!? Do we really think that THEY would have thought a boat could LITERALLY be that long?"

We're wandering up a side path here but wasn't Noah supposedly given directions or guidance on exactly how large to build his vessel? And if such direction came from an immensely wise, knowledgeable and powerful deity, might it not be possible for human builders to then build a boat out of wood that surpassed any that men had hitherto built?

Let's bear in mind that the Egyptian pyramids were thought by some to be utterly beyond the ability of any people in the Bronze-Age to construct. Some people still believe that and cling to the idea that some alien civilisation must have been involved. My point being that people might well have reserved judgement about what men could or couldn't achieve, especially when they were divinely inspired.

I find it quite difficult to understand why the author of any story would go to the trouble of giving precise details of any construction, when they knew that their audience would dismiss such details out of hand. Isn't it more likely that the author believed those details to be literally true?

What are we supposd to make of a story that is beyond credibility from the moment it's written down?

***I find so much irony in conversations like these, where people say the meaning of an ancient text is 'obvious' and that anyone who tries to 'read-in' a cultural context or idiom or motif that was in use in said ancient times is just trying to make the text say something different to avoid the 'clear, obvious' meaning....I find it highly ironic that such 'literalists' fail to recognize how all languages and cultures--including ours--are so highly saturated with idioms and expressions and cliches and memes and abbreviations and on and on and on that we use so frequently and so often in our everyday common speech and writing that we *don't even realize* we're doing it.   We don't notice how highly symbolic and coded (and foreign, alien-sounding!) our language actually is.  Indeed, we don't even give it a second thought, because it's so 'clear' and 'obvious' to us.  But that's only because we all share a collective understanding of said idioms, catchphrases, expressions, and so on.  But give it a few centuries (or millennia)--enough time for memory to fade--and it all becomes obsolete and very strange, odd speech indeed to future generations.

I can see it now.  A thousand years later some archaeologist uncovers some transcript communique recording a conversational exchange that took place in our time.

"Give me the 411", it reads.

'Aha!'  Says a group of bystanders.  'The clear, obvious meaning is that someone was asking for four-hundred and eleven of something....maybe four-hundred and eleven items or objects....who knows.  But it's 'VERY CLEAR' that whatever it was someone else had those four-hundred and eleven things and this person was asking for them to be returned."

"No", the archaeologist says, "In order to properly understand we have to read and interpret the communique within the cultural context of the time.  And we know that 'Give me the 411' was an idiom they used back in ancient times that meant 'give me or provide me information', 'report, tell me what is occurring,' or as they would say, 'tell me straight-up'--not meaning tell me while standing or sitting up straight but tell me directly, or, 'give me the 'scoop'--not a literal scooping tool--but another idiom they would use that meant 'tell me what's going on'."

"That's crazy!"  The bystanders reply, "How do you possibly get 'report, tell me what's going on' from the number four-hundred and eleven?  There is absolutely no sense or logic to it.  Why wouldn't they just ask for a report?  Why use 'four-hundred and eleven' when it has absolutely nothing to do with reporting?  Why change the clear meaning of the text and try to make the number symbolic?"

"Well, we don't actually know why they did that or why they chose the number four-hundred and eleven.  I can't make sense of it either.  But we do know for a fact that for some unknown reason they used 'Give me the 411' idiomatically in precisely that way....Oh, and also even though they wrote it '411' they wouldn't say 'Give me the four-hundred and eleven' but would say 'Give me the 'four-one-one'."

"But if that's true then why didn't they just write it that way 4-1-1 instead of 411?  Do you really expect us to believe that they didn't say things the way they were written, or mean what they literally wrote?  That's ridiculous!  Theoretical, scholarly mumbo-jumbo.  Why on earth would you try to complicate, twist and distort something that is so simple in meaning, when the plain, clear, obvious truth is that it means EXACTLY what it says: 'Give me four-hundred and eleven of something'?  It can LITERALLY mean nothing else, so you're wrong and rejecting the clear truth!"

***And the rest, as 'they' say, is history....

I'm not going in circles; however, one of us seems to be doing massive grammatical gymnastics at the moment. Frankly, what you are doing with Jeremiah has nothing to do with a common ancestor and six days of creation, as it is clearly written. Your adding qualifiers to terms like "scientifically factual information" muddies up the only thing that matters: is factual? It can be factual, and science could miss it due to its built-in blinders limiting how it can measure weight.

Are you now suggesting that Genesis 1 does not intend to promote the words used to describe the beginning as written? All readers really need to know what Egypt history had to say about the beginning to grasp the meaning God gave to Moses about what God did during creation!? It couldn't be that God just shared with Moses what He did to dispel Egyptian beliefs and modern science among all other man-made theories, hypotheses, best guesses, and so on? God, who is timeless, isn't just concern with the myths of the day but throughout all time. If this were just a man-made document written up to contrast theories, why do we credit God with playing a part?

1. I'm not assuming anything; modern science cannot tell us about what God did, could do, would do, why He would do it. God has His only plan, and ours plans will always fall short of His no matter how noble we think we are. If you think God borrowed Egyptian historical information to share with Moses, I disagree; either God spoke to Moses, or He didn't. If He did, He wasn't concern about anyone's story out there.
2. You can believe whatever you want, you can believe half the Bible is true in a sense the things described actually occurred as written, or you can believe they were just mixed in borrowed history from other cultures. That thing about Jesus being the Word of God, among other things, is all just part and parcel of the whole. The Bible says God created us male and female, even that is being questioned now. The way of man is always, did God really say?
3. I want to talk about what is in the text; if you want to make word comparisons to other stories, feel free. I'm of the mind we learn the truth by studying it; those whose job it is to discover counterfeit money study the real thing, so they spot what isn't. 
4. I don't study YEC websites.
5. Light, no
6. No idea
7. Supernatural God was acting; what else could it be?
8. I'm not a fan of what people think about the distant past; that is not my plumbline for truth; we get things wrong, and we have to change our minds when confronted with new information that makes what we thought in error clearly understood. So such dating I take with a grain of salt, some dating with more than a few grains.
9. Let us stick to one chapter at a time.

For me, this is very simple; there are no alternate cultures involved, no multiple timelines, no concerns about ages. Did God create life in the specific way scriptures state it happened or not?

Looks like we will have to agree to disagree then about how the Bible should be properly interpreted.  I didn't know you rejected the Protestant historical-grammatical approach to hermeneutics.   It's pretty standard fare and what every pastor learns in seminary when it comes to how to interpret the Bible correctly.  But ok then, so it is.

Pretty much every pastor learns that approach. Literally, every pastor/theological major I have talked to about Genesis affirms the ANE interpretation about it. Kind of funny considering I live in the south, where YEC is almost the standard.

Yes, I'm a fan of keeping it simple read what is there, and trust that, you...well, if you know this that and the other thing the words are not really that important.