The Rev Richard Dawson, of the Leith Valley Presbyterian church, has written an article on eternity for the Faith and Reason column (Opinion, January 31).
He stressed that: "This life is preparation for another life, a life with God." His "belief in eternity makes my attitude towards others far more important, because they will share an eternity with me".
This contribution reminded me of a medieval painting I saw last summer in Vienna. It shows corpses emerging from their graves. Some are being herded by demons towards the terrifying gates of hell, while others are seen enjoying life eternal with Jesus and God his father up above.
Just as every human society known today has its own creation story, so the belief in eternal life is shared with virtually all other world religions.
A recent survey taken in the United States found that 48% of Christian respondents believe that humans were created by their god within the past 10,000 years. Doubtless they all look forward to eternal life too.
I have a series of questions for Richard Dawson and indeed any reader convinced by his belief in eternity, of life after death. I assume that his definition of eternity in this context means forever, however long that might be. If this is so, and we are destined in his view, to share our eternity with others, does that mean that we will be able to see our deceased friends and relatives again?
If he is assuring us of this, it must be a great comfort to those who go to pray and commune in his church.
His point of view leads on to a series of other questions for which a brief summary of research on the human story is relevant. In a previous Faith and Reason (December 8, 2024), the Rev Ed Masters referred to Genesis 1:26 thus: "All humanity is made in the image of God". Evidently, God said: "Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness."
Searching the Bible for the facts needed to date the creation of Adam, Archbishop Ussher (1581-1656) placed it at 4004 BC. Since then, generations of scientists and thinkers have defined and expanded the information for a very different model of human origins.
John Frere (1740-1807) observed stone tools emerging 4m deep in a quarry in Suffolk, and wrote about this to the Society of Antiquaries of London. His letter, read to the society on June 22, 1797, declared the stone tools to be " ... weapons of war, fabricated and used by a people who had not the use of metals ... The situation in which these weapons were found may tempt us to refer them to a very remote period indeed, even beyond that of the present world. . ."
This was just the tip of the iceberg. Subsequently, Charles Lyell’s (1797-1875) great work Principles of Geology opened the floodgates to the recognition of deep time. His contemporary Charles Darwin provided the scientific basis for the evolution of species to replace the Christian model of divine creation of humans.
More recently, the recognition of the structure of DNA, the building blocks of life, and its propensity to mutate has been uniquely important in identifying the origins of life and the timing and evolutionary pathways followed by humans and our remote ancestors. And now we have a battery of dating methods to chart our evolution.
We share 98.8% of our DNA with chimpanzees, and 98.3% with gorillas. Knowing the approximate rate of mutation places our last common ancestor with chimpanzees at about
7 million years ago. In other words, they are our closest surviving relatives, our cousins in fact.
Numerous scientific expeditions over the past century have recovered fossilised primate remains in dateable geological contexts. Seven million years ago, for example, a primate named Sahelanthropus looks very like a potential common ancestor of we humans and chimpanzees.
From there we can trace and date key changes in the physical form and behaviour of our human ancestors. Walking upright came early and the first stone tools were being used by 3.3 million years ago. A sharp stone knife could carve meat from animal kills, and meat is a rich source of energy to feed a growing brain.
By 2 million years ago, an ancestor called Homo erectus migrated out of Africa as far as China and Southeast Asia. Then, 450,000 years ago, DNA from human bones in a Spanish cave reveal that its occupants were ancestors to both Neanderthals and Denisovans.
The earliest humans looking like us today lived in Africa by 300,000 years ago, and from about 100,000 years ago they too began migrating out of Africa. They met and interbred with Neanderthals, but by 40,000 years ago, all other human species, those with whom we shared remote ancestry, were extinct, probably at the hands of our direct ancestors, for Homo sapiens was on its pathway to hijack this planet.
The first farmers lived from about 10,000 years ago and the first states followed from about 3000BC.
The records from those early states reveal that all had their creation myths, gods, revered ancestors and life after death. Christianity is but one of these.
Harmonising this incredible, 7 million-year human history with a single belief in the Christian God’s creation of humans and their life eternal is like squaring a circle, and however hard I might try, I cannot make it work.
Hence my questions addressed to Richard Dawson. Is the promised eternal life restricted to we anatomically modern humans or did our near cousins and part ancestors, Neanderthals, also enjoy eternity?
If so, how far back in time do you have to travel before the door to eternity was barred to our remoter ancestors? How about Australopithecus, or the genius who chipped the first stone knife? Indeed, do chimpanzees have any prospect of eternal life?
If I am proved wrong, and I find myself, hopefully, in the Elysian Fields rather than the horrors of hell, will I be able to meet and talk to my long dead friends and relatives?
I would love to chat with my great grandfather, and my ancestor who fought with Nelson at the Battle of the Nile. How far back in time could I travel? Fancy being able to discuss extinction with a Neanderthal.
Richard Dawson encourages us to be nice and polite to others because we will all share eternity together. Surely, one doesn’t have to be a Christian believer to be caring and compassionate?
■ Charles Higham is an emeritus professor archaeology, University of Otago.
