RE: Search for the Historical Adam

Here's the letter I wrote to Christianity Today in response to their recent cover article, "The Search For the Historical Adam" -

Dear Editors,


I was surprised that your cover story failed to mention a single one of the DNA studies from the past 3 decades on human origins. A study of mitochondrial DNA, published in 1987, concluded that all human beings alive today are descended from a single woman, dubbed "Mitochondrial Eve." Numerous molecular anthropology studies since then, reported in such journals as Science and Nature, have corroborated these findings, similarly concluding that humanity originated from [at most] a very small population in a single location. The scientists you quoted made it sound as if the historicity of Adam and Eve is in direct conflict with science, but the published data indicate the opposite.

Here is the response I received:

An earlier draft of the story actually did have a brief section on that discussion, but we cut it both for space and because there was too much he-said/he-said back and forth in the article as it was. 

For what it's worth, here's what Biologos says about Mitochondrial Eve: http://biologos.org/questions/the-mitochondrial-eve I'm not sending it along as an endorsement, but just as an indication of why we didn't go deeply into the mitochondrial-Eve/y-chromosome-Adam discussion.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for writing!

Ted Olsen
Managing Editor, News & Online Journalism
Christianity Today

With all due respect, shouldn't the readers have been given the opportunity to hear both sides of this  "he-said, she-said" argument? I realize that CT is not a science magazine, and the primary point of the story was to explore the theological implications of the subject, but it was misleading to imply that the scientific debate was over. (Who Was Adam by Hugh Ross and Fazale Rana presents a thorough and convincing case for the pro-historical position; perhaps someday the theistic evolutionists will respond in kind).  In fact, the entire story quotes only a single scientific fact - the similarity between human and chimpanzee DNA - and otherwise only quotes the opinions of scientists which, although worthy of serious consideration, should not be confused with science itself.