Works for me. But is the Adam story part of the main point too? If not, we could dispense with all this GA stuff.
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I think the GA approach is more sophisticated and also more honest than just trying to find a better way to make Adam āfit.ā I think, and I speak from a fairly conservative standpoint, that even if you donāt have a literalist approach to Genesis, there are still a lot of questions about the nature of man that you are left with. I donāt think a Christian who wants to be consistent can just ignore Adam.
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Consistent with what, and why canāt you?
I would be interested in hearing/seeing his comments. How could he assert what you are saying and still claim young earth? Perhaps he believes in some sort of accelerated nuclear decay? YECs have not gotten that to āworkā, though they will claim otherwise, their hypotheses are not credible. Are you able to cite Wise in what you think he said? No challenge. Just asking. Curious.
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You use the phrase ābiological evolutionāā¦
Do you oppose the idea that God uses Evolution, now and then, to create the kinds of creatures He wants to have on Earth?
If so? Why would you insist that God couldnāt use mutations to make changesā¦ or natural selection to weed out changes made from an earlier time?
Yes, I oppose that idea. God created life. Life is beautiful and complex, robust and fit to survive. Plus we must factor in a deleterious advantage/disadvantage due to the introduction of sin. So now we have
Beautiful, complex, robust, fit to survive, and deleterious advantage/disadvantage
I believe that list can explain everything we see without evolution - and without Godās continued involvement. So, absolutely, yes - mutations and natural selection would come into play.
I deliberately do not study evolution because I donāt have to. It is not necessary to explain everything we see. So if you try to draw me into an argument about details and the latest and greatest evolutionary finds, I will just yawn.
Life (God) created life. Life finds a way. As it finds its way, it becomes incredibly varied and beautiful. That is what our science should be about. Not to mention fighting diseases and the inevitable virulent detours life can take.
If you deliberately close your eyes to the intricacies of Godās work, you will never fully understand God.
For many examples, the Book of Job is full of examples of God remaining in constant engagement in the natural world!
And if we turn to two my 2 favorite couplets in the Bible, they are both in Genesis 1!
Genesis 1:20-21
Genesis 1:24-25
Both verse couplets have God commanding nature to create lifeā¦and then when it happens, the couplet ends by re-stating Hod did the creating, even after it clearly stating it was nature thst responded:
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Gen 1:20 - And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
Gen 1:21 - And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantlyā¦
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2nd Couplette
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Gen 1:24 - And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
Gen 1:25 - And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kindā¦"
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Now if we were discussing something hypotheticalā¦ something that might not ever existā¦ like a time machine, or faster-than-light travelā¦ i could understand your reticence.
But the cross-referencing evidence for the age of the earth, natural selection, and a pervasive and general pattern of common descent (at least in the specific kingdoms of life), present the same general Truth that the Book of Job does:
"That the evidence is ample that God is engaged in the natural wonder that is Evolution, and that even though Evolution may nit be Godās only method if creation, it is evident that God uses it frequently, guiding evolution all along the way!
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Macro world perhaps. He also sustains everything by the word of his power and gives breath to every living thing. But it doesnāt say anywhere that he moves evolution along.
Ah, no.
Laughing.
Good luck.
The brittle ideology you assert does not bear witness to Godās ability to perform any number of natural tasks without āpuffs of smokeā, āmagic incantationsā or āinexplicable processesā.
See Book of Job and Behold.
Then explain your inconsistency. Here you invoke the text to say God created land animals from the dust of the ground
Gen 1:24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
Gen 1:25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kindā¦"
But the text also says he created man from the dust of the ground. How is it then that you say he created man from animals?
In the first instance you want to use the text to identify the source for the animals, but then you want to deviate from the text when it comes to the source of dust for the creation of man.
Explain your inconsistency.
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The sequence of animal creation and the creation of man and woman are different in Genesis 1, compared to Genesis 2. So the inconsistency is actually in the first 2 chapters of Genesis.
Genesis 1 is about the humans he made from the Great Ape branch of the animal kingdom.
It talks about Male and Femaleā¦ it talks about them bearing the image of God.
It talks about them as complete and finished by the end of Genesis one, with no mention of Eden or the Tree of Life.
Genesis 2 THEN introduces the idea that there will be a special gardenā¦ and it names animals, but not all the animals of the world. There is no mention of whales and so forth in Genesis 2.
That is because God is going to create 2 humans especially for Eden.
When they fail and they are cast out, they join the humans that God has already created via Evolution.
But have you forgotten that you are not arguing with a YEC? The creation did have to happen during a week of consecutive days as they insist. Apparently you have forgotten fiat creation where on day three God can command vegetation, shrubs, and trees to come into being - yet because of the undisclosed gaps of time between creation days, the creation of man can actually occur before a tree or shrub ever appears?
And the appearance of land animals can actually follow rather than precede the appearance man?
Since I am not bound to an overly strict YEC analysis of Gen 1 & 2, I easily find perfect reconcilement between the two chapters without any need to invoke your evolutionary storyline.
Well then ā¦ thatās a marvelous bit of circularity!!!
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The reason YECās argue that you canāt change the 6 day sequenceā¦ is because then you might change other things.
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So YOUR solution to get around that is to CHANGE your interpretationā¦ and so you arenāt bound to the same criteria that YECs are.
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ABSOLUTELY! But it also means you have less reason to oppose Evolution!!!
You have managed to paint yourself into a corner where you reject the YEC interpretation (which I donāt think is a problem)ā¦ AND REJECT MILLIONS OF YEARS OF EVIDENCE at the same time (which I DO think is a problem).
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I am not changing the 6 day sequence. Where did you get that impression?
Evidence of what? That man and animals both came from the same source and so you see patterns in their DNA and whatnot? Big deal. No surprise.
It doesnāt really matter what you are doingā¦ you say you are different from YECā¦ and I think to myself, sure, barely.
The point of Genealogical Adam is:
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To stop throwing all of science out of the window in order to preserve a figurative Genesis discussion of creation.
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To accept all the natural evidences that God provides us that science is valid, and that Evolution is valid, but that Adam and Eve could very well have been created by God in a poof of smoke!
See my last post. I am not throwing away science. But youā¦you are making up stories.
If you believe in six days of creation, you are throwing away science.
The common descent of Humans from the Great Apes branch of the Animal Kingdom is almost beyond question.
The reality that God can guide Evolution to create Humans is poorly understood by most Creationists.
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Really? This is your argument? And all along I was led to believe you really had something to contribute.
Is there some confusion here? @r_speir are you saying that you accept the six days sequence but reject the literal six-day, young earth position?
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