It came from my brain.
The NatGeo headline is a bit click-baity. Here’s a link to the scientific article, but the main thing is in the pic below – a 300,000 yr old throwing spear from Schöningen, Germany. Also found was a much longer and thicker “thrusting” spear. It appears small bands of ancient humans (heidelbergensis) were working together to hunt and butcher horses.
Is it possible God chose “people” at a certain time in their evolutionary development and endowed them with a soul?
I understand the author of Genesis 1 probably didn’t understand anything like the modern concept of a soul, but it’s how I vaguely see the “breath of life.”
Genesis 1 plainly narrates humans are made in the image of God and are stewards or rulers of creation.
So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
Mankind is in the image of God. Animals are not. There is something about us that is distinct. An “otherness” to humans. We are more than just beasts.
I see no way of avoiding that, regardless of how liberal you interpret the text, without just flushing the first creation story down the drain.
Vinnie
Well I’m easily do it without flushing it down the drain. But how very creationist of you.
Back to the OP
It was a garden world long before we showed up. In the world of Genesis 1, expanding the garden meant expanding God’s goodness and presence throughout the earth. I absolutely agree that entailed some form of stewardship that we failed to perform.
Regarding God’s presence in the Garden, you see that in the description of the New Jerusalem. It’s the shape of a cube, just like the Holy of Holies in the temple/tabernacle, yet its dimensions can’t be literal else it would look like this on the globe:
Sorry for the semi-digression, but that image always cracks me up. The idea is that if humanity had fulfilled its vocation and never “fallen” away from God’s good purpose, we would have expanded God’s goodness to encompass all of creation.
Anyway, a few scientific points:
It’s debatable whether early humans had control of fire as early as 1 mil years ago. There’s some sporadic evidence, but the logical progression is hominins learned to take advantage of naturally occurring fires before they learned how to start and control fire on their own, which may have been much more recent. Hearths don’t proliferate in human campsites until ~500-700,000 years ago.
Also, cooked food makes more calories available for digestion. The big brains of even erectus require far more calories than a chimp-sized brain, which is why the control of fire and ability to cook food seemed essential to explain erectus success in the first (failed) pulse of humans “out of Africa.” That mystery is mostly explained by the fact that rotted meat, whether buried or scavenged, is just as digestible as cooked meat. The first humans were mostly scavengers and gatherers. Hunting came along later.
On humanity’s ecological impact, I think it was negligible until recent centuries. Hominin populations were relatively small until the invention of agriculture and cities, and we had a tendency to go extinct prior to that. At what point did humanity become a negative ecological factor? I can make a guess, but who knows for sure?
Addendum, cuz there’s always an addendum when I’m involved: Humans have always been creators of niche ecosystems
I was trying to explain this process to my wife, and here’s the simplest thing I came up with:
Early hominin scavengers venture into an area burned by grass or forest fire. They run across burned wildlife and eat it. Hmmm. That tasted good, and I had a good poop today. (Normal stuff.) They have no idea how to start a fire, but they keep a close eye out for wildfires from then on. Eventually, they start to experiment by taking pieces of burning grass or brush and trying to keep it going to cook meat already scavenged. It’s a huge leap from there to learning to start fire on their own, involving thousands of millennia of learning that science can’t yet explain, but you see where I’m going.
From what I’ve read, humans were using fire with woody mushrooms well before hearths. I don’t believe the world was a garden state, but wilderness and that a garden is a place of civilization and wilderness overlapping and within Judaism it was an overlap of heaven and earth. I think if humanity would have developed in a way that was good for all, animals included but instead like many kingdoms, the rulers look out for themselves.
The same word for image is the same word as idol. If anyone looks at the development and design of idols, they will notice they don’t reflect what the thing actually looks like. The same fertility goddess could be made into an idol as a grain, a curvy woman, a pregnant woman, a mushroom or a cow. The point was the image conveying the attributes of God.
So for us to be the image of God has nothing to do with how we look. It has to do with how we are supposed to reflect God. Just like Christ did. With other humans it looks like things like buying their groceries, or helping them with a bill, or picking up their books after they were tripped, or standing with them against an oppressive power. With butterflies it looks like pesticide free native plants that they coevovled with to lay eggs in in their specialist caterpillars can eat. For animals at the shelter it looks like volunteering to play ball with them, pet them and love on them.
Caring for the environment, as previous episodes have shown, is not just love for wildlife but love for the marginalized communities around the world. Poorer people in third world countries will struggle with climate change more than poor people in America on average and those will struggle more than the rich Americans. “The Silent Spring” shows how mismanagement of pesticides affect not only the water and animals but also people.
I don’t believe God just started with speaking people a few thousand years ago. Our emotional intelligence, cognitive processing and ability to choose good and bad separates us from other animals. May have even separated from species of humans by it. Modern humans today may be different with what we can achieve this way from humans 500k uses ago.
As we evolved, prior to what we see now, we had roles in nature just like birds. We specialize in surviving almost any variables we came across.
Dude, I said hearths were late. I’m trying to give you solid info, but do go on about the mushrooms …
Don’t know why I bother with BL anymore, honestly. Time for a good long break.
I’m not sure why you thought I was saying anything to counter you. I was agreeing with you. Then pointing out that prior to the date you gave for hearths, humans were also using mushrooms to carry around embers.
Nothing I said under minded anything you said. I was agreeing with you, and sharing more info about what I’ve read concerning how humans used fire as technology. That possibly before they even knew how to recreate fire, they would collect embers and carry them around in woody mushrooms and keep small embers alive by feeding it bits of dry grass and so on.
The only part I disagreed with was that I don’t think the opposite of civilization is garden, but wilderness and that the garden was supposed to be a place of community not tied up into the walled city aspects that Tim Mackie has been recently talking about.
Which is why I brought up the time frame I did in the original post. To me, it seems like almost everything we as humans are doing now as stewards is post civilization. All the environmental organizations are here to counter something we’ve caused.
Why do we preach use native plants? Because we’ve fragmented wilderness and brought over invasive plants making it harder for wildlife to live.
Why do we fight for the American chestnuts? Because we’ve made them functionally extinct because of rootstock of Chinese chestnuts.
Why do we have river watchers? Because of the pollutions we’ve poured into the waters, the dams we’ve built messing up breeding paths of fish.
Why do we want to use less plastic? Because we created it and it’s everywhere, even micro plastics inside of us.
So everything in stewardship that we talk about now is to counter all the crap we’ve caused.
So my question is, how would managing wildlife look in ancient humans well before civilization begin. What’s any of the archeological or fossilized evidence of humans displaying love 50,000k years ago, a million years ago?
I posted this question in part here to see if by any chance someone came across evidence of acts of love in ancient humans. We know that earlier Neanderthals did not seem to have burials but later Neanderthals did. To me that seems to be an example of love. Just like with elephants.
But I was trying to hear the discussion more towards things like were there any known fruits that humans helped propagate in an ancient world.
You can only strip so much theologically before the account breaks for most people. That has nothing to do with being a creationist but I happily accept that label. God is most certainly my Creator. The mere fact that you would say “how very creationist of you” only serves to demonstrate how far gone and detached from mainline Christian reality your theology is.
Vinnie
Or it just goes to show how you’re acting like a typical creationist, who thinks that if someone does not see the story like you do then surely they are detached from the faith……
For example what did God create? Did he stitch your together in the womb of your mom? Or is he the missing piece to abiogenesis? Which law did he create? Is the the origins of energy?
Not hard to type the word “create” into an online Bible.
You’ll find verses, in addition to the obvious ones in Genesis 1 like Isaiah 45:12
12 It is I who made the earth
and created mankind on it.
My own hands stretched out the heavens;
I marshaled their starry hosts. — God
Revelation 4:11 “You are worthy, our Lord and God,
to receive glory and honor and power,
for you created all things,
and by your will they were created
and have their being.”
Jesus calls God creator:
“because those will be days of distress unequaled from the beginning, when God created the world, until now—and never to be equaled again.“
Jesus is also Creator
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.
Ecc 7:29
This only have I found: God create d mankind upright, but they have gone in search of many schemes.”
Deut 6:42:
Ask now about the former days, long before your time, from the day God create d human beings on the earth;
Amos 4:13
13 He who forms the mountains,
who creates the wind,
and who reveals his thoughts to mankind,
who turns dawn to darkness,
and treads on the heights of the earth—
the Lord God Almighty is his name.
Romans 1:25 God is Creator
They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served create d things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
Eph 3:9 God made all things
and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who create d all things.
And for Good measure, Jesus again in Matthew 19:4
“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’“
I could keep going and find a ton of other verses. We can type in “maker” instead. It’s all over the Bible from cover to cover. This is not a point of contention for Bible based Christianity. God is our Creator. Period. Full stop. Anyone suggesting otherwise is offering non-Christian ideology. It’s literally in the first line of the Nicene Creed:
I believe in one God,
the Father almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all things visible and invisible.
You ask me what God created and I honestly can’t tell if the question is serious or not. The only correct answer is as Scripture claims over and over again, everything. Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is also our Creator.
Our views are a little bit similar… I see the breath of life as inspiration and what it did was bring the human mind to life.
But on this I suppose I take a somewhat middle position. I think all living things are made in the image of God to some degree. We are simply the better image of God… very good rather than just good. But I also agree more with Mi than adam on what this means… more an expectation than an entitlement. And thus it is something we lost for the most part in the fall, something in need of restoration. We need to be recreated in the image of His Son.
Indeed. We are not just distinct, but a whole new form of life. Language rivals and surpassed DNA in its representational capacity and thus become a medium of life in own right. We are indeed more than just biological organisms. We have a whole other life in the human mind with its own needs and its own inheritance passed on to the next generation.
Except you take too much meaning from what it doesn’t say. There are many things it doesn’t say God created. Does that mean God didn’t create them? So just because it doesn’t say that other living things are created in the image of God doesn’t mean this is not the case. This is not to say that the fact it does say we are created in God’s image is not significant. We are made far more in the image of God than they are – much more God’s children made for an eternal parent-child relationship. But the point is that as significant as the difference may be, the line also isn’t quite so black and white as you make it.
So again.
What exactly did god make? Did god make the trees literally? Did god literally stitch you together in the womb? You think anyone here does not know how the Bible works or how to do a word search? That’s not issue. The issue is being able to recognize symbolism, metaphors and avoiding concordism. Not confusing scripture for science.
It’s not seeing “stitched together in the womb” and ignoring biology.
So when I called you a creationist. It was not a compliment. It was not saying you believe god somehow somewhere was involved, like almost everyone in this group thinks. It was highlighting the fundamentalistic approach you were displaying on “either believe like me or reject the Bible” and that’s just simply a stupid approach to theology. It went so far over your head that now we are where discussing this.
So yeah. Take it serious as a question. Can you tell me how God helped to specifically create you? I’m sure even you understand the biology behind reproduction. So just tell me the magical supernatural aspect of your creation event?
( I made a separate post for this subject )
As for the distinction between us and other animals…… it’s just evolution. It’s not humans were made with a splash of magic. We were not this hairless ape in the grass land that a cosmos force fade down and was blew magic inside of us and suddenly, wham, bam, I think therefore I am.
As we evolved along with other animals, for tons of reasons, we begin to develop larger brains that allowed us to think about and hold onto more things. Language arose. It was not god having a classroom on earth and we learned language. In a few more years we will have more info about it. In a few more years we will have more info about. But what we don’t generally do is look at a gap and just stuff it full of supernatural intervention.
We discuss accommodation in here all the time. Accommodation vs concordism.
The Bible says he made Adam out of dust. But we know humans were not these formed lifeless golems. We know women did not show up over a few hours after a man was chipped in half. We recognize it’s not literal. It’s an accommodating concept.
So when I see created I know that’s also an accommodating view. I know God did not literally make me. If my parents never had sex, I would not just have magically appeared in the garden like Timothy Green.
When it says God created the world. I know he as not literally building this planet as if a bunch of mice paid him to do it. It says Jesus went to heaven to build up mansions. I doubt Jesus is up there with angels chopping down cloud trees and sawing them and using magic metals and so on.
Time, gravity and so on. We have ideas about how those came about.
So when we read of God making everything we can argue concordistically that there is some intelligent design to life and a fine tuning to the universe , a cosmic watch maker, or we can look at it as some sort of accommodating view that gave ancient Jews a mythology to argue from that said the world was made out of love and not the byproduct of gods and goddesses battling each other and eyeballs falling down from war becoming mountains and blood drops becoming people and so on. Men and women being made to be kings and queens over this earth and not its dictators or slaves to other gods.
It seems one of the views around at that time was that humans were made as slaves to the gods. Judaism says that we were made to corule over the earth with God like angels “ hosts of heaven “ coruled over the heavens with God.
So if you think being made in the image or God was a magical event that supernaturally set us apart, just ignore this post. Like I told Adam. If your beliefs make it impossible to answer a question about the ecological value humans brought to this world between 20,000 and 1,000,000 years ago then ignore it. This did not have to be some stupid debate. This was not some
Tough theological question. It was a science question no different from asking what was the ecological value of beetles a million years ago. Or better yet, it’s like asking what was the ecological significance of beetles 125mya to 275mya before the evolution of angiosperms.
Let’s just say, being made in the image of God was a magical event that happened sometime 6-10k years ago or where ever it is you want it to have happened. Let’s say Homo sapiens were the best reflection of the image of God, even more so than Neanderthals or “the upright man “. That human is not a genus name but something extra. As humans evolved, beast-humans they would have learned and developed instincts just like other animals, why would I not presume that those played a foundational role in how God expected is to be stewards of the land.
If birds tomorrow suddenly were made in the image of god like humans, and God told them to be stewards of the land, i would expect part of them being stewards of the land would be to keep caterpillars in check and to disperse seeds throughout the world creating more native plants. Maybe God would forbid them from eating invasive fruits and spreading those seeds. I would not presume part of their role as stewards to suddenly be keeping zebras in check or even something like carrying algae to the sand to dry it. I would presume their role would be something that got with the way they evolved. Maybe they get some
Extra roles like helping lost hikers head in the right direction of safety or something.
But it’s a pretty basic premise to find ways that before beast-human became divine-human how did beast-human contribute to being something other than an all consuming Wendigo.
This question again, for the love of god, should not be some theological battle. No matter what your faith or theological positions are, if you accept science including the natural history of human evolution, you should be able to answer this question in a way without diving into the specifics of what you think creation means or image of god means. Those terms are just religious jargon to build a gap between science and faith with a science question.
But I get it. No one in here seems to really know about ecological niche roles of humans like “the upright man” outside of generalized statements like…… hunted animals and so we worked as predators…… potentially spread spores of mushrooms versus known associations with specific mushrooms other than some of us being aware of the relationship with polypores and so on.
So I guess I’m going to just pull out of my own question, skim and ignore any post not relative to it. I’ll post natural history questions for now on to atheist forums.
( I made a separate post for this subject )
[1] Everything. [2] Yes. [3] Yes. As countless scripture teaches.
Absolutely I think that considering how so many here ignore large portions of what it narrates over and over again, page after page, book after book. Most of these discussions and opinions are given on this forum with zero recourse to Biblical texts.
No, you are seeing Biology and ignoring God. You are thinking Geology replaces God. Plate tectonics is how science explains mountain formation. But that does not preclude the idea that God literally makes mountains nor does biology negate the fact that God sustains all creation, is in all things and stitches us together in the womb. Your view of God is foreign and distant to me. You keep asking how God stitched me together in the womb. Again, you’ve drank the enlightenment Kool Aid and have philosophical naturalism dictating how you see the world. My best guess is through the processes outlined by reproductive biology.
I have a book on my shelf by John Hick called “The Myth of God Incarnate.” At the end of the day the entire Bible, from cover to cover, calls God Creator, says He made us and it’s in the first line of the Church’s most famous and centering Creed (Nicene). I said nothing wrong or incorrect when I pointed out your views are way outside mainline Christianity. This view is also endorsed by our Lord and Savior.
I am aware. That is what sparked my response. I simply urge you to take up your complaint with the majority of the Biblical authors, the vast
majority of the Church and Christian creeds. This is taught page after page in the Bible. If it’s not true you might as well embrace Hick’s view of Jesus as a metaphor. Because Christianity does not support your deistic conception of God.
You are rejecting the Bible. You are rejecting It, Paul, Peter, Isaiah, Genesis, John, James and so many others —most importantly Jesus—who all teach God is our Creator. What is a “stupid approach” to theology is disagreeing with what the Bible plainly narrates page after page, book after book, author after author, in the mouth of Jesus and our most binding Creed, and then claiming you aren’t rejecting Biblical Revelation.
Vinnie
I think it was both. God calls us good and specially created in His image. Even as the “better image of God” we are special and entitled, not for our own sake but simply because God sees us so. Being an image bearer also comes with tremendous responsibility and it also means everyone is an image bearer, even the people we do not like. Our enemies so to speak, who Jesus told us to love and pray for. It’s very easy to pay lip-service to that idea but living it is extremely difficult. Our role as stewards means we have responsibilities. As Jesus said: To whom much is given, much will be required (Luke 12:48). Or as Spider-Man said, with great power comes great responsibility…
Heavens and earth is pretty comprehensive for a 2500 year old book. It goes through land, water and firmament and the creatures living on each. And there are plenty of other things attributing all things to God.
The narrative thrust of the story is that we are specially made in God image and given dominion over the other things. I see this as implying they are not created in the image of God the same way we are otherwise they would have that authority. Do they reflect God in some way? Of course. It’s His creation. They are given to us though. Much of the creation narrative sets the the stage for our arrival.
I am not embarrassed by this anthropometric teaching. It seems some people are now. Everything has to all be the same and equal. That is not how the world works to me. It has never been that way. We are the crown Jewel of God’s creation. I am grateful for this teaching, not intellectually embarrassed by it or thwarted by an origins of man chart from biology class. I am quite happy to have special purpose and meaning. The Imago Dei has been an extremely important part of Christianity for many centuries. God the Son stripped himself of divinity and died on a cross for me which is all the confirmation of this I will ever personally need.
I’m not ignoring God or the Bible. I’m not buying into your literalistic interpretation of it. I’m rejecting a vain attempt of weak philosophical concordism in favor of a less literal view of accommodation that does not undermine reality.
Take the mountain.
How did God create the mountain? What exactly was his role in the geological development? Let’s say with Mountains in general, if that’s to ambiguous then let’s say the Appalachian mountains.
There is nothing literal about my view. Accommodation doesn’t mean man-made text. It means God speaks through the background knowledge of the time. That is a truism. We would not understand Him otherwise. What it intends to teach though is still accepted as true.
People worshipped astral deities. The Bible tells us they are just part of God’s creation. Unlike Marduk, God doesn’t need to engage in a battle against Tiamat. He sorts of the sea with a word, the leviathan is just a big fish and part of his creation.
For me the theology of what Genesis 1 intends to teach is quite clear and has been accepted by Jesus and Christians after him, including the Nicene Creed for 2,000 years. Just because you think plate tectonics replaces God and have fallen into the traps of philosophical naturalism, this is not going to change.
You seem to think “accommodated” means you can reject the whole of what it intends to teach or that it means not inspired by God.
Again. And again. And probably several more times. You’re confusing rejecting your musings for the Bible. So when you say I’m replacing…. You’re just lying and intentionally so since I’ve corrected you several times. You’re not the mouthpiece of God. To reject your personal understanding and acceptance is not the same as rejecting God or the Bible. Asking you to clarify statements instead of just making them is not the same as doubting the Bible. Again… seems a lot like what literalistic fundamentalists say. My way is Gods way and to disagree when me means to disagree with god…….
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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