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.
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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.
3 responses to “Apologist William Lane Craig Says Denying Jesus Died For Neanderthals is ‘Racism’”
He can’t hide his technocratic humanism and atheistic mindset. Now he’s essentially implied that salvation is dependent on a certain level of cognitive ability. I wonder whether or not he could be saved according his own standards. The man makes no sense.
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The reason God made a relativly flat earth is so people would know what a mountain is when they came to one . also we would get awfuly tired walking up hill all the time . if God made every thing up hill. The creation now being thousands of years old. Yes when examed looks much much Older because God created age into it . for example He created mature trees bearing fruit thay Would have had many years of annual rings right after God created them.. He created adam to be a young man . rocks also would have age built into them during creation i would think and science claims many are really realy.old after examining them . Lutheran science institute and answers in Genesis are some fun places on the web to poke around and check out. News and media wels is a lutheran news site you can also check out .
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