Of course, the YEC way of looking at it is a bag of dirt was nailed to the cross. Either way, it shows the sacrifice and willingness of God to lower himself to become flesh in order to save us from sin. So, it can be be very meaningful to think of ourselves as apes, and humbly accept our place in creation.
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For humans, no. It’s against Scripture. For the rest of God’s creation, animals, birds, fish I have nothing against evolution.
Apes were not made in the image of God. Humans were,
That is not my view however. The biological taxonomic classification is just our bodies. It is not who we are. Is a person with genetic and biological defects a defective person? Not in my view.
In my view Adam and Eve are human and those that went before are not human because humanity is not a biological species. I believe the human mind is a living organism in its own right made from linguistic information/inheritance much in the same way that our bodies are made from a DNA inheritance of information – meme life rather than gene life. AND I believe this inheritance came directly from God speaking to Adam and Eve, giving birth to the human mind and making them literally His children. But as far as the body goes, the apes and the rest of life on the planet are our bretheren. So in that sense I am having it both ways – child of God (not magical golems of dust and bone) AND child of the apes, one foot in dust of the earth and one foot in the kingdom of God.
So I believe Adam and Eve were different but not genetically and thus this doesn’t buy into and carry with it the racist nonsense that would see those with a different genetic inheritance as sub-human.
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Indeed, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. [1:27]. Not by evolution but as special creation, not by natural selection but as a supernatural act of God. 2 full adults, everything in place fit for the purpose they were created. No apes as common ancestor in the creation story.
It’s the opposite, accepting human evolution from apes makes the creation story a caricature.
If we start to reject the first 2 chapters of the Bible that God created Adam and Eve as a special creation act then what more can be rejected? It’s obvious from Gen 5 that Adam and Eve are portrayed as historical persons. Also not compatible with evolution theory. Where do we end?
It is not about rejecting anything. Its about whether you read the Bible as a fairy tale comic book Walt Disney movie with talking animals, magical fruit, and golems of dust and bone, OR you read this book like the parables of Jesus as having something to do with real life. There is absolutely no reason to believe that Adam and Eve were not historical persons. The conflict with evolution doesn’t come from that! The conflict comes from insisting that they are the sole genetic progenitors of mankind, when this doesn’t even agree with the Bible, simply because you WANT the Bible to contradict the objective scientific evidence. BUT there IS reason to treat elements of the story in Genesis as symbolic – oh yes there is! The Bible itself treats the tree of life as symbolic over and over and over again. The talking snake is revealed in the Bible to be an angel cast out of heaven. And Adam and Eve are shown in the Bible to be FAR from the only people on the planet. So if you don’t desperately WANT the Bible to contradict science then it doesn’t have to – not if you actually read the book for yourself.
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Meaning you believe Adam and Eve are historical persons as Gen 5 portrays them?
And according the Scriptures they are.
Sorry friend, that’s a wrong assumption of you.
Allow me some questions because it’s unclear to me what you actually believe:
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Was there ever a Garden of Eden at all?
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Did God really say - You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die [2:16-17]? and to whom?
Interpreting the passage as something other than literal history is not rejecting it.
For many people the mere fact that a name appears in an ancient genealogy is not proof that a story referencing the same name, a name that means humanity, and a story which includes talking snakes and trees with fruit that break the world if eaten, is meant to be taken as unembellished literal history.
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Humans are, indeed, male and female. Evolution doesn’t contradict that.
There are several possible interpretations of the early chapters of Genesis. For example, Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 could be talking about separate things, with humans in general created in chapter 1 and special creations of Adam and Eve in chapter 2. I personally am undecided about whether Adam and Eve were specially created or born. There is so much figurative language being used, that it’s entirely possible that it’s a figurative telling of a historical event (much like Revelation). But I certainly believe a de novo creation of Adam and Eve is also entirely possible. They just wouldn’t be the first people ever, and Cain’s story suggests there were other people not related to him.
The Bible isn’t an exhaustive account of every single thing that ever happened. There are many mysteries in Genesis. Where did Melchizedek come from, for example? We have no account of him being born or what his lineage is. We have a very bare mention of him, and yet Jesus is a priest of the order of Melchizedek. Where Melchizedek came from doesn’t affect the message of the Bible. Likewise, whether God created humans in a miraculous event or used evolution to create them (from earth materials, which is entirely consistent with evolution and Genesis 1-2) - it doesn’t affect the message. The dust language used throughout the Old Testament denotes mortality. Adam and Eve were created mortal, and they would die without access to the tree of life. We, too, will spiritually die without access to the tree of life via Jesus.
I believe Adam and Eve are historical people that probably lived around 6000 years ago. I don’t know exactly how everything happened, but the spiritual message is abundantly clear, and what it’s telling us about God and His relationship with us is also abundantly clear. If you are going to Genesis 1-2 to find out exactly how God created things, I think you’re asking the wrong question. The point of those chapters is to tell who and why, not when or how. Evolution isn’t mentioned, because that’s not what the passage is about. Germ theory and gravitational theory aren’t mentioned either, and yet I still accept those as well. 
For me, the alternative (humans being specially created without any evolution) makes God deceptive, since the genetic evidence all points very strongly to humans and other species being related - especially when looking at broken genes, ERVs, differences between species, etc. If God has made us look evolved, then we must be evolved. God wouldn’t lie in his creation. And when I look at the Bible and see so many clues that the YEC interpretation is not the intended interpretation, I realize the Bible and creation are not in conflict at all. It’s just one interpretation that conflicts, and that interpretation very well could be wrong. There is enough poetic and figurative language in those chapters to suggest that the “plain, literal reading” is not the correct way to read it, just like the highly figurative language in Revelation suggests the same. That doesn’t make Genesis “myth”.
(Some here do see Genesis 1-11 as myth… I’m not one of them)
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My thoughts are along the same line @Boscopup, though I lean more towards the epic myth rather than historical Adam and Eve, though really don’t care either way as the message I get from it is the same, and I have some questions to ask Adam if I see him in heaven. Although that wasn’t his real name, so may be tough to find him in heaven. I guess he will be the one without a belly button.
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Meaning I don’t read Genesis as a fairy tale comic book Walt Disney movie with talking animals, magical fruit, and golems of dust and bone, but like the parables of Jesus as having something to do with real life. That is the difference between reading stories about George Washington or Julius Caesar as compared to reading the Lord of the Rings. I only take the fantastic magical elements literally when it is Lord of Rings, because that is not about real life. But I certainly do not believe Washington chopped down a cherry tree, had dentures made of wood, or that Julius Caesar was a god.
Incorrect. The scriptures make it clear that the world is filled with people whom Cain was afraid would kill him. And the scriptures makes it clear that it is from these other people that the sons of Adam and Eve take their wives. It is only if you desperately want the Bible to contradict science that you invent sisters not in the Bible and have them indulge in incest which is also not in the Bible. So in the Bible there is an explicit explanation that Adam and Eve ARE NOT the sole genetic progenitors of the mankind.
It is not an assumption to read the Bible for yourself. It is an assumption to simply believe what other people have told you is in the Bible.
The Earth is a garden and full of places which people constantly describe as paradise. But if you are imagining a traditional English garden then you are deranged.
Sure and God was speaking to Adam and Eve who were not golems of dust and bone but real historical people born of woman and who grew up as children as all must do in order to be human (just as Jesus did, by the way). But it is clear to me that “tree of knowledge of good and evil” does not refer to a species of fruit bearing tree any more than in the parable of the sower Jesus was talking about the process by which plants reproduce. And although you may believe the serpent that God was lying, I do not, for Adam and Eve did die that day for it was a death of the spirit, something that Jesus spoke of also in Luke 9:60 “Let the dead bury their own dead.”
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Prodeo you forget something. If genesis is to be taken all literally with no level of symbolism then how would you explain that Adam in Hebrew is a noun and means “human”. Not even a male or female distinction just human.
I have an idea for those who reject evolution to consider: what if the “Old Man” being referred to by Paul in Ephesians 4:22 is the animal in us? That living for the flesh is basically behaving as an animal would, but to reject the animal and reach out to God is the next step in human evolution. This would assume that evolution has a purpose: to culminate in beings capable of developing a life in the spirit so as to prepare us for the next life with God.
Hear me out, please. During the Old Testament times, God gave us the Moral Law. Man discovered the capacity to do things contrary to the flesh, but needed it spelled out for them through the law. It wouldn’t be until the time of Jesus Christ that humanity was capable of comprehending and taking the next step forward in communion with the Holy Spirit. He introduced the next stage of God’s plan to us, and Paul extrapolated upon it in his letters.
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Easiest thing in the world.
People and things are named after all kinds of things. Was Adam named after man or was man named after Adam? Could be either way, right? Just because a story talks about an indian named “Red Cloud” doesn’t mean the story was actually about a red cloud.
The point is that the theory of evolution is about the development of species and not about whether a couple of people told about in a story may have existed 6 to 10 thousand years ago.
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So you think humans living in AD 30 had more moral/spiritual/mental capacity because of biological evolution than humans living in 500 BC? I think that is pretty dubious. That is saying someone like Confucius was not morally evolved enough to handle the Holy Spirit, but poor illiterate fishermen in Galilee were? Plus the Holy Spirit was “poured out” on people for specific tasks in the Old Testament.
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I’m still trying to work out the bumps of the road between Adam and Jesus. The main point is the idea that putting off the Old Man is rejecting the animal nature still in us. And moving forward in evolution would be putting on the mantle of the Holy Spirit.
I just don’t think the science supports any evolutionary distinctions between humans in the OT era and humans in the NT era. That is way too close for there to be a difference at the level of the population as a whole.
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So maybe it was just a matter of when man was ready to learn from Jesus after taking in all the lessons of the Old Testament?
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I don’t think it is right to make “animal nature” and “sin nature” parallels. Humanity’s sin was putting themselves in God’s place and rejecting his rule. It was a reach up to the divine, not a reach down to “lower animals.” Idolatry and pride, the roots of sin, aren’t “animal-like” traits. There is no element of rebellion against God in a lion killing an antelope or a male chimp copulating with multiple females.
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