I dont “beleive” in evolution because it requires no belief. I accept evolution because of the overwhelming evidence for it. Belief for me comes into play for my religion. I choose to beleive in many aspects of mormonism because beleif and mainly hope is all I got when science cant answer religious questions.
Too often we get tied up in mental headgames because a past church leader made a statement which conflicts logical scientific evidence. We’ll consequences be damned, I think we should think rationally, treat each other kindly and without discrimination. O.k. Ill stop here before I get carried away into preaching!

Not only do I posit that Mungo Man may not have been Man, I positively don’t want Mungo Men in my children’s schools, or Mungo Men riding on the bus with me, or Mungo Men serving in public office. I do, however, really like the Mungo Men’s groovy disco beats.

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That’s not true. Frankly I am surprised you would think that’s what I want. We know each other.

We have a skeleton of Mungo. That alone is a huge fact and piece of evidence. We have no such thing for Adam, nor am I implying that we do. I am not suggesting that we have any kind of view of historical Adam gleaned from scripture at all, much less a more secure one than we have about about Mungo.

I believe that the three things on offer — homo sapiens bones / very old homo sapiens bones / Australia as island — are facts. The fourth thing — that the ancestors of these very-old-Australian-homo-sapiens-bones sailed to Australia — must also be a fact.

But I suppose it’s possible that they were put there by the devil and/or UFO’s. It’s also possible that the inferred factuality of my existence is in fact an error and that I am, in fact, living in a pod somewhere with my mind plugged in to the Matrix.

I know what you want — to persuade me that our scientific “facts” of early human existence are no more secure than our view of a historical Adam gleaned from scripture. On this you won’t persuade me though, but please believe what you will.

For me, this seemed to sit will with the time frame of Adam.

So, I would have a hard time completely lumping Mungo man with contemporary homo sapiens.

For me, I’ve come to think of Adam as being the first spiritual son of god, rather than the first man. But this brings up the whole question of inter-breeding with others living at that time.

Second, last week BCC carried several posts on the ban on priesthood ordination of blacks. The party line was that this was all a result of Brigham Young’s racist heart, that race and lineage couldn’t possibly have any meaning to God. Now, several commenters on this Mungo Man post have speculated that there were homo sapiens that were not Man. You, Ronan, have accorded Mungo Man all the respect you would any historical personage, but you haven’t seen any need either to denounce others’ notions of homo sapiens lacking the spirits of Men. Also, back on that Elder Nelson thread, you seemed to be angling for some distinction in the meanings of “homo sapiens” and “Man”.

Third, Mr. Head, in addressing me, you, of all people, should be playing up the prestige of a JHU degree. Or, for someone with as prestigious an M. Phil. as yours, will the Hopkins doctorate be a step down in the world? [This last paragraph is a joke, just to be explicit.]