In the present thread, I wish to clarify and discuss something.
First, I cite the record that I have in mind:
In the locked thread that I started on Genesis 1 (http://discussions.godandscience.org/vi ... =7&t=41201), B.W. had said to me:
to which I had replied:B.W. wrote:Your statement makes it sound like God was seeking in some manner for land animals as man's procreating partners
Daniel Pech wrote:I don't mean that at all, but you can't have it both ways. The fact is that the account (Gen 2:20) says 'no suitable mate was found for Adam.' Your reply, at least in effect, presupposes that the account was written or dictated by God, and that this as record of the most cluelessly simplistic intention on God's part.
to which B.W. replied
---B.W. wrote:Again you state that you did not mean that at all and then next say can't have it both ways...
That is a logical contradiction. Are you aware of that or did you mean something else as I know that writing on an open forum one's meaning can be hard to express at times.
Now, the thing I want to clarify here is as to the subject that I meant when I said "you can't have it both ways." What is the 'it" that you can't have both ways?
That "it" is a bit nuanced, at least for me. So now I shall attempt to articulate the identity of that "it"; that subject:
Genesis 2:18-20 does not, I repeat not, spell out that God Himself had a clue as to what sort of creature would be suitable for Adam as a companion, mate, and co-worker. Yet we do not therefore---in the way of a reductively literalistic interpretation---presume that God therefore must have been clueless in that department.
So we all are in basic opposition to such a reductively literalistic interpretation as to what God was thinking of in bringing animals to Adam so that Adam could name them. We do not think that God was clueless.
---
But, for B.W.'s part, it seems to me that B.W. espouses a view on that with which I, at least currently, disagree.
___First___, it seems to me that B.W. espouses the view that Adam did not have, and could not have had, any (any) sense of his own calling until he had seen and named every last kind and species of land animal (excluding bugs). That is, is seems to me that B.W. espouses the view that not only did:
(A) God bring to Adam everything from mice and moose to kangaroo mice to musk oxen,
but also:
(B) Adam at that time named every last variety of those animals.
Either in this first pair ((A) and (B)) seems to me unnecessary either for God's own basic concern or for Adam's own sensibilities.
But, ___Second___, and as a nuance on the first, B.W. seems to me to espouse the view that Adam himself was clueless as to his own calling until after he had named every last variety of those animals.
The nuance here is this: One, I doubt that B.W. actually thinks this. Two, nevertheless, my point is that it appears to me that B.W. has not thought it through this far. That's why I bring it up:
One can picture a cartoon in which an absurd cartoon version Adam of is thinking to himself, "Western field mice are not my kind. What about kangaroo mice? Ah, here are the kangaroo mice now. Nope, they aren't my kind either. What about striped Japanese mice?"
Such a cartoon then goes on for however many days or weeks or months that it would take a person to "name" every last variety of every last kind of land animal that one may wish to imagine existed then.
--
Implied here is my sense that, in order for the YEC ordinary-day interpretation of Genesis 2:18-20 to be valid, there need be no original reduced set of varieties.
So, this is a separate question from that of the YEC position on species and kinds in Noah's ark, and of speciation that can have occurred since all those ark animals were let out of the ark.
...
To conclude:
To my often too-foggy brain, the only normatively rational question as to whether the YEC position on Genesis 2:18-20 is valid is whether that particular text requires that Adam have spent both:
(X) anything remotely like equal time, and this a considerable amount of time, naming every variety/kind, and
(Y) actually naming every last variety of a given kind.
One, I do not see how either (X) or (Y) is necessitated by the text. Two, I do not see how the position rationally can be maintained that "Adam was essentially clueless about it all until he had "named" every kind, much less every variety of ever kind."
And, if we find that this lattermost, underlined, position is grossly overly simplistic (as I think it should be found), then we are facing the rather complex, and far more generally human, question of what all did Adam sense, when did he sense it, and in response to all what, if anything, he sensed it. If he was not clueless of his calling, then he must have taken for granted some sense which the text does not spell out.
In short, the text is not, I repeat, not, a Complete Martian Idiot's Guide to What All That God and Adam Thought. Rather, it is a human account, and it is addressed to humans.
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