Natural selection but Adam and Eve

Faith & Science Conversation
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I did not say anything about extreme inbreeding. Adam lived 930 years and he with Eve had more offspring other than Cain, Abel and Seth. Even with a small average number of 5 children then after 4 generations the genetic pool is 5x5x5x5=625 and incest is no longer an issue.

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What you have described is the meaning of extreme inbreeding – no new input into the gene pool for 4+ generations, with the smallest possible gene pool to start with.

The point is that you choose to edit the Bible to add sisters to the story in order to make people survive by incest and extreme inbreeding, ignoring the parts of the Bible which contradict this, just in order to make the Bible conflict with the findings of science. According to the Bible, the world was so full of people, Cain feared for his life wherever he might go. And then the Bible explains that the sons of Adam (children of God) took wives from the daughters of men and not from sisters at all. Science agrees with the Bible and not with your fairy tale revision of it.

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New species diverge from populations as a population, and the lines between individual members of the ancestor species and individual members of the new species are fuzzy if you look for them at specific a moment in time. All offspring are the same species as their parents. No new species are the result of a single couple who are a “new species” compared to their parents and whose offspring interbreed, at least not with a common descent framework.

This is my major issue with people who claim that Adam and Eve descended from a population but were the first humans in some biological, evolutionary sense. Either you have to use human to mean something other than their species (some spiritual sense) or you have to have them specially created to look exactly like a product of common descent on the genetic level, which seems like a version of the omphalos hypothesis to me.

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Leviticus 18:25-25 talks about the Canaanites being removed from the land because of the sins enumerated earlier in the chapter, including incest. That suggests to me that incest was a sin prior to the giving of the Law of Moses.

New species occur at the population level, not individual level. No incest would need to occur for a new species made via evolution.

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No animal species. Plants do something like that, but plants are . . . different.

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Worf voice

We do not speak of it with outsiders.

/Worf voice

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This misconception is so widespread. As @Christy has said, species form as populations over time. It’s as misguided to say that new languages form when two people start speaking something different.

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That’s not “sharp” so much as tainted by a problematic bias, assuming that it’s a response to the science and history of biological evolution. This bias is clearly indicated by the presence of the word “advanced.” In the context of evolution, humans are not “advanced” apes. We belong to the taxonomic family of primates known as Hominidae—that is, apes. Whether one taxonomic family is more “advanced” than another is not a scientific question. Granted, we are so very different from other species and in more ways than I could list, but to say that this marks us as “advanced” betrays a peculiar conceit that I don’t think is relevant or useful.

This strikes me as a deistic watchmaker point of view. God wasn’t waiting, he was quite busy the entire time.

Correct. Only a specific ape was made in the image of God, namely, humans.

Welcome to the discourse here at BioLogos, Zachary. A pleasure to meet you.

I am likewise working through the “bumps” between Adam and Jesus in a world where evolution happens. I look forward to ironing these things out alongside you and others. As for your Old Man scenario, I take a slightly different and clearly Augustinian view of things. I would say that the old humanity “in Adam” is not an animal state but a fallen state in covenant relationship with God (whereas no covenant relationship exists between animals and God). On my view—such as it is for now—humans existed in that sort of animal state prior to Adam, and that dramatically changed when God established a covenant relationship with mankind through Adam, our representative and federal head (singling out humans now as imago Dei). Thus marked the dawn of redemptive history, a divine light that spilled into the world after 14 billion years of natural history. Such an animal state was no longer relevant to humans.

In the context of redemptive history, those who are “in Adam” belong to the old humanity that experiences condemnation and death, while those “in Christ” belong to the new humanity that experiences salvation and life. If there was a pre-Adamic animal nature (and I believe there was), we won’t learn about it in Scripture, which constrains itself to the narrative threads of redemptive history. That which is not connected to redemptive history and the people of God is not included. (Ever notice how Scripture doesn’t mention Gentile nations apart from their connection with the people of God? For example, not a single word about Japanese people exists anywhere in Scripture. They also have no interaction with the people of God throughout canonical revelation.)

As far as I can tell, it would seem to follow from the biblical witness that there is no such thing as “sin” apart from a covenant relationship with God. Humans alone are capable and culpable of sin. Chimpanzees, earth worms, ravens, whales, these and all other creatures are neither capable nor culpable of sin, despite the fact that many creatures demonstrate characteristics of moral agency. Arguably, this state describes mankind prior to a covenant relationship with God (before Adam), capable of wrongdoing despite the fact that sin at this point is a meaningless term, just as it is for chimpanzees. But once that covenant relationship was established, sin became a potential—but it was not an actuality until Adam disobeyed God (thus Adam’s state of posse non peccare et posse peccare is maintained).

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Psalm 139 might be instructive here:

Is a Christian forced to reject the field of embryonic development where humans develop in the womb through genetic mechanisms? Is our discovery of a natural explanation for how babies develop a problem for accepting the Bible?

I am also reminded of a well written essay here at BioLogos:

https://biologos.org/articles/atheistic-meteorology-or-divine-rain

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Ard A. Louis underscored that same point in a Scholarly Essay, “How Does the Biologos Model Need to Address Concerns Christians Have About the Implications of Its Science?” (n.d.; emphasis mine):

Our modern concept of “Nature” as an entity independent of God cannot be found in the Bible. Instead, the creation passages emphasize a God who “sustains all things by his powerful word” (Heb 1:3). That is why, for example in Psalm 104, the point of view fluidly changes back and forth from direct action by God—“He makes springs pour water into ravines”—to water acting on its own—“the water flows down the mountains.” Such dual descriptions are two different perspectives of the same thing. Within a robust biblical theism, if God were to stop sustaining all things, the world would not slowly grind to a halt or descend into chaos; it would simply stop existing.

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Thank you Christy and BTW, I am definitely not YEC (any longer) :smiley:

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Do you always receive newbies who are wrestling with human evolution this way? Not exactly an invitation to continue talking.

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Okay, I apologize for using word “advanced” but if I replace it with the word “descended from apes” the meaning remains the same.

I willing to believe that but I am not convinced (yet).

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I am not interested in hearing more talk about evolution being against scripture and incompatible with the Bible. That is just nonsense. A change to talk about " wrestling with human evolution" sounds good to me. After all, the former is usually a preface to saying scientists, like me, are agents of the devil, when the truth is that they are best examples of faith in modern times, listening with open ears and seeing with open eyes all the data that God is sending us from the earth and sky to honestly seek the truth in all its complexity. To be sure, there are atheists like Dawkins and Hawkings who are not helping, when they leave the evidence and the science to spout their theological opinions. Those are not examples of good faith or good science – not when they do that! Which is not to say that they have not done any good science. They certainly have.

Going back to the “wrestling with human evolution,” since we have dealt with the Bible part of this, is there anything else? There certainly is for me! My biggest problem is the identification of humanity with a biological species. To me it is abundantly clear that human beings are not primarily driven by biological needs and instincts. So it looks very much to me that there is another sort of life altogether in human beings. And then there is the typical explanation of evolution in many tv and book presentations as being a product of purely random mutation only, which simply isn’t true. It is not that the mechanism of evolution cannot work by purely random mutation. It is demonstrable that it can. But it doesn’t! Not for most of the history of evolution it has not.

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Well, no, that doesn’t work very well: “God waited 4 billion years for humans to evolve and then held the [descended from] apes responsible for sin?” In order to be coherent, you would have to put it that God “held those evolved apes responsible for sin.” And while that is at least coherent, it is not very helpful, because it raises the predictable question: What apes? For God did not hold Hominidae (apes) responsible for sin, but rather just one species thereof. So you have to specify that you mean humans, and one is left wondering why you didn’t just say so from the start. In legal-speak, your choice of wording is not probative but rather prejudicial, and simply not helpful.

Yes, humans are apes—our species belongs to the taxonomic family Hominidae. But that’s just taxonomy. It’s not remarkable, it’s not even scandalous. More importantly, it is not our identity, it’s not who we are. Our identity is determined by our Creator who chose us as his image-bearers. That is our identity, that is the take-home message—and that ought to be the real scandal. But we callously take it for granted, almost as if we’re entitled to this identity, like it is not a shocking gift of extraordinary grace.

An open mind is a refreshing encounter.

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Sure.

Something about what you said earlier:

Is that a theory or a fact?

And with fact I mean as proven in the lab.

A counter example would the inbreeding in the Amish community. They are still around.

And related:

Adam lived 930 years and some of his offspring even longer. More resistant to inbreeding? Could the inbreeding caused the decline in age to 120 years max [6:3] ?

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There is no proof or evidence that any person has ever lived this long.

Genesis 5:5 says: “So all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years; and he died.”

The enlightened view of this statement is that all of Adams lives totaled 930 years, but never that he lived that lone in one life. The YEC belief is that you can count up these “ages” to arrive at the 6,000 year old earth. EC are not at all in consensus as to how to interpret these ages to show that “Adam” occurred more that 100,000 years ago.

I have quoted a logical theory above, but no one here has dared to comment on it. I wonder why?

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Adam had multiple fragmented lives ?

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It would be tough to do in the lab, but in nature extreme bottlenecks lead to species that struggle, with problems like those seen in cheetahs, Tasmanian devils, and such. Concerns with food supply due lack of diversity are seen with bananas, etc. and susceptiblity to disease.
The Amish are thriving due to large families, and while inherited congenital problems are more common, they are not a closed population. In fact one article I looked at predicted at current growth rates, the world population will be totally Amish at some point in the future. It was tongue in cheek of course, but shows the error of projecting growth rates indefinitely.

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This is how they are listed sequentially in the Bible.

And all the days of Enos were nine hundred and five years: and he died.
And all the days of Cainan were nine hundred and ten years: and he died.
And all the days of Mahalaleel were eight hundred ninety and five years: and he died.
And all the days of Jared were nine hundred sixty and two years: and he died.
And all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and five years: And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.
And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty and nine years: and he died.
And all the days of Lamech were seven hundred seventy and seven years: and he died.
And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died.
And all the days of Seth were nine hundred and twelve years: and he died.
And all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years: and he died.
Genesis 5:5,8,11,14,17,20,23,27,31,9:29 (KJV)

Why did the Bible author list Adam nearly last?