Prominent Christian apologist William Lane Craig’s name is most often associated with his ministry organization Reasonable Faith, the name of his most famous book and also weekly podcast.
While cosplaying as a conservative Christian voice and leader, he is more philosopher than theologian, and his recent spate of biblical pronouncements show.
William Lane Craig Says ‘Adam’ Was Genetically Mutated Caveman That Lived 750,000 Years Ago
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Famous Christian Apologist: Refusing to Consider Neanderthals the same as Homo Sapiens is ‘Dehumanizing’ and ‘Racist’
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During a recent podcast episode, after arguing that Adam and Eve were members of the archaic pre-Homo sapiens species Homo heidelbergensis that lived 750,000 years ago, Craig insisted that it’s “AN OUTRAGEOUS FORM OF RACISM” and “species egoism” to suggest that Jesus didn’t die for the sins of Homo Heidelbergensis and Neanderthals, which were just as human as Homo Sapiens.
Question: If Adam and Eve had lived 900,000 years ago, they belonged to the species I believe Homo heidelbergensis. And many people could now argue, can a Homo heidelbergensis be a human in the theological sense? So the image of God with a soul and inherent dignity and so on. Some would argue that that is reserved for the Homo sapiens. What would you say to that?
Craig: Well, it’s clearly not reserved for Homo sapiens because as I say Neanderthals exhibited the same sort of modern cognitive capacities that Homo sapiens do. And that would I think include symbolic thinking and even probably language use, so that’s difficult to establish archaeologically.
But the archaeological remains of Neanderthal culture indicates that these people had a cognitive capacity similar to ours.
He continues:
Question: Now, that would, I think imply that if there are also other hominids that were humans, that Jesus died for them too, like for us, right? And that seems, I think that sounds very strange for many Christians. Do you think it’s just a kind of ‘species egoism’ that we cannot imagine that?
Craig: I do think that. I think it’s almost a kind of [racism] frankly. When you look at Neanderthal culture and the sophisticated tools and so forth that they developed and used, to try to write them out of the human race and say these were just beasts, not human, I think is, as I say, really almost an outrageous form of racism.
If we can get used to saying that all of the different peoples of the world today, from Australian Aborigines to Finnish Laplanders with their fair skin, are all human, why can’t we say that Neanderthals and Homo heidelbergensis were human as well?
And so in the book I talk about this, I think that we may well see some of these people in heaven, because I think that Christ died for every person who’s ever lived on this planet to redeem them and bring them into relationship with himself.
