Did Adam exist?

[PaulDA]

This is an offshoot from the Fantastic Four thread.
It seems to me that many Christians, at least on message boards, believe in theist evolution, or even if they don't believe in it, they say it is a possibility.
If we in fact did evolved over billions of years, then are you saying that Adam did not exist, that Genesis is just symbolic or something?
Because if we did evolve over billions of years then there would have been no Adam or Eve.
How do you explain that the Bible says that Adam NAMED each animal, if we evolved over billions of years??
And how, if you believe in macro evolution, or if you say there is a possibility of this, do you rationalize it with God saying through Paul:
1 Corinthians 15:45
So it is written: "The first man Adam became a living being"??
The only way to deny these scriptures as literal fact is to say Adam never existed.

[Vlad!]

[PaulDA]

[Vlad!]

[adriftconscious]

Agreed. I don't swing with Macro-evolution, but what you just said, Vlad, is pretty much the way I approach the differing views on creation.

[phaith]

Most of the OT especially the Pentateuch is very poetic, so it is hard to know what is real and what is symbolic. I am comfortable with theistic evolution myself, and don't believe in a literal 6 day creation. That being said...did Adam exist? Who named the animals? I have no idea, and it means nothing to my salvation, nor how I conduct my life in the everyday so I don't worry about it too much.

So what does it mean to 'original sin' if there is no Adam?

Augustine (whom formed much of our current theology and was a catholic, which most people seem to forget) coined the phrase and the theology of "original sin" and I honestly don't care much for most of his opinions...he was a guy who needed to 'beat himself up' because of his deplorable lifestyle so his theology seems to be formed from these life experiences.

What do we have instead of an "original sin" theology? There are lots of things that I have been thinking about, but nothing concrete enough to post, yet I know God thinks better of us than we think of ourselves...and better than what most of the current evangi/fundi theologies state.

[Tom]

here is my 2 cents; bearing in mind that i am not a proponent of theistic evolution.

it is essential that God literally fashioned Adam out of the dust of the ground, just as Genesis records.

why?

because my theory is that is where man became a tripartite (body, soul and spirit) being.

when God created everything else in creation: the universe, the earth, animals et al He simply spoke them into existence.
with Adam, God got His hands dirty if you will. when He formed him from the dirt. this "dirt man" has similarities to the Jewish legend of the golem. he was a clay man, but he had no soul, no spirit.

the Bible says that God breathed life into Adam, making him no longer a lifeless golem, but Adam, the first man.
no other creature does the Bible say God breathed into to give it life.

i believe this act is what made man set apart from the animals, and gave him his spiritual nature that has an eternal need for God.

theistic evolution doesn't allow for this IMO. plus theistic evolutionists are basically saying, "Moses didn't really mean what he wrote in Genesis. What he actually meant is..."

one reason theistic evols have trouble with the 6 literal days of creation is the vastness of space. to their credit, they are absolutely correct when they say that the light from the most distant stars would not be visible to us if the earth isn't billions of years old.

UNDER NATURAL CIRCUMSTANCES.

they simply don't believe in a God Who is greater than the laws of physics that He set in motion. why on earth would physics be a limitation on the God who made it?

it is just as absurd as to believe God is bound by time, when in fact He is timeless.

anyway, that's my 2 cents.

*Disclaimer* i don't dislike or hate theistic evolutionists. the above statements are what i believe to be true, and it just so happens that they are quite different from TE beliefs. but i have nothing personal against them. this is a spiritual difference of belief.

[PaulDA]

Do any of you realize that the only reason you are even implying that macro eveolution may have happened is because of what scientists have come up with in the last 2 hundred years? If this discussion was held 200 years ago, these theories would have been laughed at by BOTH creatioists and scientists.
Up until about 200 years ago, both Christians AND scientists believed the universe was very young.
I believe we should ALWAYS try to fit science into the Bible then try to fit the Bible into science.
Macro evolution is trying to fit the Bible into science.
If this 'theory of evolution' had never transpired, there would be NO Christians today even thinking that Genesis was not literal. Do all of you realize that? But because Darwinism had permeated our culture day in and day out, in schools, ion books, on the news, on TV, some Christians have begun to try and shape what the Bible says using Darwinian theories.
We should never do that. The Bible is what is true. We should always try to fit science into the Bible.
So, to me, if God said He created everything in 6 literal 24 hour days, as He does in Genisis, that is what I am going to believe. I am NOT going to try to change the Bible to fit into Darwinism.

[phaith]

Actually the vast majority of the Jews believe that Genisis is poetic...and they have had the book longer than Christians have.  

[Josh]

Do any of you realize that the only reason you are even implying that macro eveolution may have happened is because of what scientists have come up with in the last 2 hundred years? If this discussion was held 200 years ago, these theories would have been laughed at by BOTH creatioists and scientists.
Up until about 200 years ago, both Christians AND scientists believed the universe was very young.
 

Likewise, 600 years ago, BOTH scientists and creationists would have told you that the Earth was flat. The fact is, our scientific methods become more and more reliable the more advanced our civilization becomes, and to disregard new information just because they didn't have it (and couldn't have it!) 200 years ago is just ignorant. The logic just doesn't follow.

[Tom]

funny thing that had those Bible thumpers of ancient times, (who argued that the earth was flat) been paying attention they would have realized the earth was not flat by reading Isaiah 40:22. the Hebrew language has no direct correlation to our word "sphere" but circle should have tipped them in the right direction. and Job. 26:7 would have been an excellent hint at the earth's location in space.

[Vlad!]

[murlough23]

Interesting. I was actually going to start a thread on something similar before I saw this one. A few thoughts:

On the topic of reading the Bible "literally", I've come to believe that this, in and of itself, is a fallacy. The Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic languages have limitations that English doesn't have. English has limitations that these languages didn't have. There are also figures of speech and other things that don't translate - at least, not literally. Any English translation, in my view, is going to give us, at best, a pretty good idea. Enough to know the essentials of the faith, I'm sure, but on touchier issues, a little study into language and culture is necessary to get the full gist of it, I think. I don't believe that doing this is in anyway questioning the Bible, or writing parts of it off as "not true", or making it so that we can make the Bible say whatever we want it to say. It's simply an acknowledgement that human language is limited.

Furthermore, even if we were reading these things in the original language as people who lived in those times and spoke the language, there would still be figures of speech and other things in certain places that our culture had a certain understanding of. Reading those things "literally" wouldn't make any more sense than it would if you took me literally when I said "It's raining cats and dogs". That's a common figure of speech that everyone understands, and knows not to take literally, but translated into a foreign language, or said to someone who didn't come from a culture where English speakers ever used that phrase, it wouldn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense.

Another issue is that people back in Moses' time didn't have nearly the understanding of the way the universe worked (the Earth being round and revolving around the sun, things which no one disputes today, being good examples) that we do today. To explain it all in scientifically technical terms would have completely gone over everyone's heads - it wouldn't have even made sense to the author. I guess it goes back to the issue of whether you feel Scripture being God-inspired meant that God dictated every single word, or just inspired them to write on certain subjects, or whatever. I don't think God would have given Moses a highly technical explanation of Creation. It would have made sense to absolutely no one at the time, and the purpose of Genesis was not really to explain the nuts and bolts of how God created the universe, but rather to establish God's power and creativity in doing so.

Now I'll agree that it's not wise to take every new scientific theory (and yes, evolution is still a theory) and try to twist the Bible around to fit it. However, I think it's natural that when we humans have believed something for so long, and some evidence comes up that appears to contradict it, that we look into it and find out if there really is a contradiction there. If there are contradictions that keep both things from not being true, then either (a) the religious belief is false, (b) the scientific theory is false, © both are false, or (d) the beliefs on one or both sides aren't being stated clearly and accurately. It's not wrong to ask the question, "Could the Bible support this theory?" It might cause us to read a little more carefully and weed out some beliefs that were just assumptions on our part, or the part of those who taught us. Again, the example of the Earth being round is a great one. Does it ever say in the Bible that it's not round? OK, then why did people assume it wasn't round for so long?

Having said all that, I can accept micro-evolution (we've seen observable evidence of that), but I have a harder time with macro, for reasons similar to why Paul brought up this thread. If apes evolved into humans, then Adam could still have been the first human, but others would have been born from different lineages, and we wouldn't all be children of Adam and Eve. (Though that would resolve the issue of where Cain's wife came from, if you don't want to go the incest route.) Unless only two apes actually reached the evolutionary point of becoming humans, I guess. I don't know - I guess this isn't an air-tight defense against it, but it seems fishy. So I have to ask myself, is it actually theologically necessary to believe that Adam and Eve were the first and only humans at the time, and that all humans descended from them? Does the Bible explicitly state that anywhere that can't be interpreted any other way?

Another issue that I have lies in the concept of a soul. Humans have 'em. Animals apparently don't. We have the capability of knowing right and wrong, and making moral decisions, and comprehending the concept of God and worshiping God or running from God. Animals, to our knowledge, don't have that. And we've been told that man has dominion over the animals. We kill them for food and even when they're just being annoying sometimes (rats, for example). If animals had souls, I'd think that not killing them would be a commandment for the same reasons that we're not supposed to kill people. So I have a hard time believing that animals have souls. However, if that's the case, how does a being without a soul, such as an ape, magically evolve into one that does? At what point does the changeover occur?

(As a side note, the issue of artificial intelligence raises similar questions, at least in a sci-fi setting.)

My overall conclusion regarding marco-evolution is, I don't know, and I'm definitely skeptical about it, but I'm not going to 100% write it off, because I don't understand enough to definitively say, "I know this didn't happen". I've seen Christians argue against other scientifically provable facts throughout history, only to be eventually proved wrong and then see that the Bible never actually contradicted what science was now observing. At the same time, science needs to not get too cocky. We may observe certain patterns, but they may not necessarily have been that way the entire time. For all we know, God could have created the Earth to look, according to our current dating methods, like it was millions and billions of years old. After all, Adam and Eve weren't necessarily created as babies, so they'd look like grown adults because we know all other grown adults had to have existed for a few decades in order to reach that stature. That raises questions of why God would deceive us as to the age of things, but then again, it's not God's fault what assumptions we make when we observe apparent patterns in the universe.

So, long story short, I believe macro isn't very likely to be true, but I'll wait for science to discover more before I completely write off the idea.

NP: "Night Drive", Jimmy Eat World

[PaulDA]

Actually the vast majority of the Jews believe that Genisis is poetic...and they have had the book longer than Christians have.

What does that mean?
With all due respect, the vast majority of Jews who have lived after Jesus came to Earth as a man have died and gone to hell because they didn't accept Jesus as Lord.
And the vast majority of Jews who are alive today are heading in the same direction.
Why should Christians believe something because the Jews believe it?

[PaulDA]

funny thing that had those Bible thumpers of ancient times, (who argued that the earth was flat).....

Another issue is that people back in Moses' time didn't have nearly the understanding of the way the universe worked (the Earth being round.....

It doesn't matter what ignorant Christians said years ago, it matters what God says, and God said in the Bible that the earth was round:
Isaiah 40:22
He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth......
By the same token, you can't compare 'Bible thumpers' to the actual Word of God, and the Word of God says that He created the universe in 6 literal 24 hour days.

[Vlad!]

[Tom]

It doesn't matter what ignorant Christians said years ago, it matters what God says, and God said in the Bible that the earth was round:
Isaiah 40:22
He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth......
 

i already quoted Isaiah 40:22 to make the same point Paul. but hey, repetition can be useful. we're on the same page there my friend.

a good verse to bring now i think would be: Hebrews 11:1 "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

we believe little because our faith is little.

as far as the 6 literal 24 hour periods of time to create the universe thing goes, i think it COULD be more open-ended than that. for one thing, the sun and it's current distance from earth by which we measure time may not have existed the first day. and after all it does say that "a day to the Lord is as a thousand years." i don't know for sure either way, but there is something deeper than this comparatively superficial discussion at the root of our little debate.

the question i want to pose is this: why is it so hard to believe that God DID create all there is in 6 literal 24 periods? to indicate that God needed to use macro-evolution in order to achieve His full ends of creation implies something less than an omnipotent God.

and further, i do agree that Scripture has multiple applications in just about any passage. that is part of what makes it the inspired Word of God. but to write off God's hand in creating the universe as described to Moses in Genesis as being subjective and mostly metaphorical takes us into dangerous theological territory. it implies, without directly stating it that either God is (A) a liar (B) intentionally withholding information by deceit © He simply doesn't care if we trudge on in error.

i repeat: Hebrews 11:1 "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

if the Bible is in error, then i'd conclude that it is not the inspired Word of God. now before anyone jumps on the bandwagon, i know there are errors in our modern translations of the Bible. typos happen. only the Autographa (which sadly isn't extant) is error free. but i do believe that God preserved His Word enough that all the passages and narratives are completely true. man is trying his best to corrupt the Word of late especially. but this isn't a discussion about translations.

i'll come to the point. 2 Timothy 3:16-17 "16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work."

if that is not true, then our faith in God is nothing more than a wishful fantasy. if the Bible's message is not completely true, then it is not something you want to trust your eternal soul to.

many people claim to believe IN God. that's great. James 2:19 "You believe that God is one. You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder."

what takes true faith is Believing God. if God isn't trustworthy then Christianity is a sham.

[PaulDA]

[PaulDA]

the question i want to pose is this: why is it so hard to believe that God DID create all there is in 6 literal 24 periods?

The reason some Christians now find it hard to believe that God crreated the heavens and Earth in 6 literal days is because they have been brainwashed since they were born about the theory of evolution. Science becomes more important to them than what God says. Whether you know it or not, everything you see and hear stays with you in your mind. You can't turn around without seeing or hearing something about this 'FACTUAL' evolution.
These Christians don't even realize they have been slowly brainwashed by Satan in this area and will continue to argue (some of them to their last breath it would seem) that we evolved from apes!! They don't realize they are helping to promulgate a theory that is causing millions to never even consider that there is a God, and therefore were doomed to spend an eternity in hell.
For every Christian who says "God could have used macro evolution to create" there are 10,000 pagans who say "macro evolution is proof that there is no god."

[Josh]

Paul, once again I am forced to step in and ask you to remain civil. You're free to argue the point all you want, but accusing your opponents of being brainwashed? That's uncalled for, dude.

[PaulDA]

Paul, once again I am forced to step in and ask you to remain civil. You're free to argue the point all you want, but accusing your opponents of being brainwashed? That's uncalled for, dude.

If you look up the word 'braiwash' you will see that it simply means, from dictionary.com:

1. Intensive, forcible indoctrination, usually political or religious, aimed at destroying a person's basic convictions and attitudes and replacing them with an alternative set of fixed beliefs.
2. The application of a concentrated means of persuasion, such as an advertising campaign or repeated suggestion, in order to develop a specific belief or motivation.

The 2nd definition would apply here, although the 1st one also applies in terms of being forced to hear about it in school. I stand by what I have said. There is nothing uncivil in what I have said. When people are subjected to the same thing over and over since they were born, hearing and seeing it day in and day out, everywhere they go, that is a form of brainwashing.
Brainwashing can be a positive thing. When a person comes to Christ, for instance, they are 'brainwashed (washing the brain) into learning new things and discarding the old.

 '

[bloop]

Now I'll agree that it's not wise to take every new scientific theory (and yes, evolution is still a theory) and try to twist the Bible around to fit it.

In science, it's my understanding that "theory" is somewhat stronger than the entirely semantic arguement that Paul and other's present would contend it is, but weaker than an absolute fact.  

In any event, I'm a theistic evolutionist, but I don't care that much about it as it has no bearing on the way I live my life.  So, "tool of Satan" it is, I guess.  I'd rather be called that than a complete anti-intellectual, especially considering the former charge seems to have no basis anyway, while the latter charge often applied toward opponents is, sadly, largely based in reality.

So, while I agree that we shouldn't mold our beliefs to the claims of science without careful consideration, we also shouldn't take the Bible as being a scientific text.  That is neither the genre nor even a lesser purpose of the Bible.

[PaulDA]

So, while I agree that we shouldn't mold our beliefs to the claims of science without careful consideration, we also shouldn't take the Bible as being a scientific text.  That is neither the genre nor even a lesser purpose of the Bible.

That's where I completely disagree.
The Bible is the greatest scientific book ever written.
Anything it says is true.

[murlough23]

It doesn't matter what ignorant Christians said years ago, it matters what God says, and God said in the Bible that the earth was round:
Isaiah 40:22
He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth.....

Circles are 2-dimensional, Paul.

Now you'll probably brush that off as me playing semantic games or whatever, but hey, I'm reading literally, and apparently your version of reading literally is not the same as my version of reading literally, because you still interpreted it to mean a sphere. If everything in the Bible, as it ihas been translated into English, is literally true, then the Earth should be a disc, not a sphere. Otherwise, we have either a translation problem (i.e. a word in Hebrew that could have meant either "circle" or "sphere"), or a metaphor, or just a simplification for the sake of the people who would read that when it was written.

So, let's revisit this issue of reading literally, because I'm still not convinced that it's possible to read the Bible, or much of anything else, 100% literally without some sort of conscious or subconscious interpretation going on. We all think differently and we all read into things, whether we realize it or not.

[bloop]

The Bible is the greatest scientific book ever written.
 

Well, you're wrong, but I don't care as it seems self-evident that this isn't true.  Again, I don't think there's even a part of the Bible whose purpose is primarily scientific.  Example: parts of the Bible are very poetic in describing phenomenon and technically wrong in the scientific sense, but that's not the point of those passages.  Thus, I wouldn't normally point to those things as being wrong, but as higher truth.

Let's look at what's been thrown out there so far.

Isaiah 40:22
He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth.....

Subject - "He", referring to God.  The apparent point of this passage is not to explain the fact that the Earth is an oblete spheroid, but that God reigns over it.

[murlough23]

Example: parts of the Bible are very poetic in describing phenomenon and technically wrong in the scientific sense, but that's not the point of those passages.

I'd like to see some examples of this, just because if both sides of the argument keep throwing out these claims without a whole lot of examples, we're not going to get much of anywhere. Statements may be self-evident to you or to Paul, but some of us need a little help grasping why they're so obviously true.

I'm generally on your side here, bloop, and I realize you don't have all the time in the world to go hunting for examples, but if we all tried to be a bit more careful about stuff like that, I think we'd find that fewer of these discussions would devolve into rehashes of the same general principles. It seems like we have to establish whether metaphor and/or poetry are used in Biblical accounts of things such as Creation, before we can really get on with the specific discussion about Adam and evolution.

NP: "Shekina", Blindside

[Brenden]

the Word of God says that He created the universe in 6 literal 24 hour days.

It says He created the Earth in six somethings, but the Hebrew word (yom) means a period of time that is at least one day. It could mean a week, a month, 1000 years, a couple million years, the point being merely that the word is too vague to determine how long creation took by it.

[bloop]

[PaulDA]

It says He created the Earth in six somethings, but the Hebrew word (yom) means a period of time that is at least one day. It could mean a week, a month, 1000 years, a couple million years, the point being merely that the word is too vague to determine how long creation took by it.

As I stated, the context here is a literal 24 hour day.
The word yom, as I've read, always means 'a 24 hour day' when it is used in the same context that it was used in Genesis. Otherwise, what does "there was morning and there was night, the first day" mean?

[Brenden]

As I stated, the context here is a literal 24 hour day.
The word yom, as I've read, always means 'a 24 hour day' when it is used in the same context that it was used in Genesis. Otherwise, what does "there was morning and there was night, the first day" mean?

note the lack of "one morning and one evening". In two days, there is morning and there is evening, one yom. Maybe you can supply a source for this.

[PaulDA]

As I stated, the context here is a literal 24 hour day.
The word yom, as I've read, always means 'a 24 hour day' when it is used in the same context that it was used in Genesis. Otherwise, what does "there was morning and there was night, the first day" mean?

note the lack of "one morning and one evening". In two days, there is morning and there is evening, one yom. Maybe you can supply a source for this.

What??
There is morning and evening in ONE 'yom', not two 'yoms'.

[murlough23]

But, all of that isn't the point of that passage, now is it?

Probably not, but since the "point" of the passage isn't self-stated, I don't think you'll get much of anywhere saying what you think the point of it was (even if I agree with you on that point).

[Brenden]

As I stated, the context here is a literal 24 hour day.
The word yom, as I've read, always means 'a 24 hour day' when it is used in the same context that it was used in Genesis. Otherwise, what does "there was morning and there was night, the first day" mean?

note the lack of "one morning and one evening". In two days, there is morning and there is evening, one yom. Maybe you can supply a source for this.

What??
There is morning and evening in ONE 'yom', not two 'yoms'.

morning and evening don't specify how many morening and evenings.

[murlough23]

As I stated, the context here is a literal 24 hour day.
The word yom, as I've read, always means 'a 24 hour day' when it is used in the same context that it was used in Genesis. Otherwise, what does "there was morning and there was night, the first day" mean?

Paul, please cite a source so we know that "yom" actually means this, and nothing else, in this particular context.

[bloop]

Probably not, but since the "point" of the passage isn't self-stated, I don't think you'll get much of anywhere saying what you think the point of it was (even if I agree with you on that point).

Well, this is something that you can get from the verse itself from what I can tell - from the structure of the sentence itself.  The roundness of the Earth doesn't seem to be the emphasis (if it was, it would say something to the tune of "God made the Earth round").  However, if that isn't enough for you, surrounding passages are almost always helpful to understand where an author is going with a particular statement.  A wider view:

22 It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in; 23 who brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.

That's as strong as I really need the textual support to be to show that the point is not the roundness of the Earth.  My claim on the meaning seems to be textually supported, especially in light of the larger picture, while an assertion that this is a scientific statement has little to no basis in the text itself, so I've done my homework to the best of my ability as I can't talk to the prophet to make sure that's exactly what he was aiming to get across.

The first thing I thought about for artful Biblical literature that isn't really technically true scientifically is also in Isaiah, specifically 55:11-12 (trees don't have hands - Sufjan made me do it).  Anything that assigns human attributes to plants, phenomenon, or animals is technically inaccurate, but the verse isn't trying to teach that trees have hands.

[PaulDA]

I hope everyone understands that I am very adamant in my beliefs but I do realize that I may be 100% wrong in many things, so please take that with a proverbial grain of salt when I dig in my trenches on certain doctrines and beliefs.
As Steven Curtis Chipman said: "God is God and I am not....."  
 

[PaulDA]

That's as strong as I really need the textual support to be to show that the point is not the roundness of the Earth.

The context doesn't matter in this instance because God used the Holy Spirit to influence Isaiah to say "circle" matter of factly, because God knows the Earth is round.

[bloop]

Revelation 7:1.  Four corners?  Why didn't God do the same favor for John, then, Paul?

More important to me is why does context all of a sudden not matter to you?  I've made as strong a case that I can make from the text itself, and there the brick wall goes up with you, just sticking to the old standbys.  Either way, the earth is not a 2 dimensional object where all points are equidistant from a fixed point called the center (a circle), and it's too irregular to even say that it is all points in 3 dimensional space equidistant from a fixed point (a sphere), so if that was the point, then God did a rather scattershot job inspiring Isaiah to perform the most important task of informing the public of the Earth's shape.  

The absurdity of it all is laid out for you already.  It is not an essentially scientific statement, that is, the purpose of the passage is not scientific and any other conclusion than the one I've reached on this one isn't supported by the text itself, nor the surrounding texts.  Some things are difficult debate material, but this is just back to grammar school's "main idea".

[PaulDA]

Revelation 7:1.  Four corners?  Why didn't God do the same favor for John, then, Paul?

More important to me is why does context all of a sudden not matter to you?

We still say 'four corners of the Earth' today as an expression to mean the 'whole world.' That doesn't mean we think the Earth isd suare.

I didn't say context doesn't matter per se, but in this case it doesn't.
For instance, if I said " the pigeon is sitting on the round basketball", the context is where the pigeon is sitting, not the object it is sitting on. However, that doesn't negate the fact that the basketball is round.

[Vlad!]