I think the names of those two trees in the Garden of Eden shout symbolism louder than anything else in the Bible, BUT I think all of Genesis is meant to be taken as essentially historical. So…
- Original Sin: Yes this is a story about the fall of man and our separation from God. But no, not the beginning of the homo-sapiens species.
- God made us from the stuff of earth, but there was no language for atoms and molecules, only the word “dust” and that was sufficient for the story being told. But through most of the Bible the “breath of life” means the word of God, and so instead of magic animating golems, the story I see being told is one of God speaking to those he adopted to raise as His children.
- I do not see Adam as a metaphor but as a real person. But while the middle east may be the home of the first civilization, the species migrated from southern Africa.
- The virgin birth is not inconsistent with science, we know very well that pregnancy only requires fertilization not sexual intercourse. And as for the resurrection I am with Paul who takes great pains to explain in 1 Cor 15 that this is a bodily resurrection to a SPIRITUAL body and definitely NOT a physical body.
- There is really only one substantial difference between man and the animals and it is not in the genetics or the brain but in the use of an abstraction capable language. That could well have come directly from God when He spoke to Adam and Eve.
- Sin is a matter of bad habits which are destructive of essential things like our freedom of will and our willingness to learn. But the real problem was the no-win situation we created which made God’s presence in our lives do more harm than good – it is really the only thing which can drive a wedge between a parent and his children. By blaming God for what happened we turned God from our best helper to the perfect scapegoat by which we could avoid all responsibility for our own lives.
- Physical death was always a part of life even in the Garden of Eden story where God told them that they would die if they ate the fruit. And I do say that the death which resulted was a spiritual death, for if your spirit is dead then when you die what is left of you but dust? You can suppose there is shadow or a ghost, but without life, how is that really any more than a badly blurred photograph.
- Evolution is about the origin of the biological SPECIES. But I do not equate that with humanity. If we only consider biology then we are just one of the animals. It is the mind which makes us human and that comes from very different inheritance than the DNA of biology – it is from all the media of human communication, meme life rather than gene life. As for the human spirit, I am again with Paul in 1 Cor 15 who says the physical body is first and THEN the spiritual body, which can be loosely connected with the existentialist maxim of existence (body) before essence (spirit).
- There is no direction inherent in the mechanism of evolution except that of survival, but the environment and its changes does impose some requirements. Obviously the great diversity of the species means this is very far from any kind of unitary direction. But none of this means that God did not have an objective, though that objective was likely very far from any narcisistic/racist anthropomorphic obsession with the homo-sapiens form. His objective was more likely to be simply someone to communicate with so he could share a heritage of love and goodness with them.
- I think making this “image of God” stuff into something about our physical form is pathetically anthropomorphic. Personally I believe the real image of God is already there to a great degree (good) in the nature of life itself: our infinite potentiality to His infinite actuality. The reason is, this makes for a perfect relationship of love where we can receive all that he has to give. But then you can say the image only comes into focus (very good) when we are capable of communication so that God can share of Himself with us more directly.