What if heaven-where God dwells-was on the face of the earth as he dwelt with Adam and Eve.
Have you read the book to see if it is supported with math and physical evidence? If you haven’t read it you should as you have an interest in the subject of natural history. If you haven’t read it you are not in position to make a judgement. Reading others views of it doesn’t give you any knowledge of the theory. Every critical review I have read or watched either does not understand the theory, does not understand physics, or does not accurately apply physics.
In this forum, qualified people who understand the theory, understand the physics, and accurately apply the physics, have made clear its failure.
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What’s your background in physics?
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I listen to and read those who are smarter than I am. As with most things it comes down to who you trust and the viability of the alternative theories. Agreement on many issues is something we won’t ever have this side of heaven.
My problem with this approach is that you’ve said that everyone negatively reviewing the book has gotten the physics wrong, but you don’t have the background to determine whether that’s true or not.
As I’ve posted earlier in this thread, I think a scenario of mass ejection of the asteroids from the Earth requires completely impossible physics just on energy grounds. According to you, Brown’s model would require even more energy and would accordingly be even less plausible. How does Brown deal with the energies involved and the resulting high temperatures?
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Just a clarification here: The water in epsom salt, or in plaster/gypsum, is actual water molecules that are a part of the crystal structure. Heat the crystal enough, and the water escapes as steam, leaving a powder behind as the crystal structure has been broken. Add water and you can re-create the original crystal type. (Water of crystallization - Wikipedia will give further entry into the topic, if needed.)
Ringwoodite, in contrast, can have some -OH groups attached. That’s not actual water in the crystal. Rather, it’s stuff that can make water, and probably once was water, but it isn’t currently water. It would take much more chemical effort to produce water. All the headlines about there being an ocean down there are extremely misleading; almost as if they said there are billions of automobiles down there and failing to clarify that it’s actually enough iron to make billions of automobiles but no actual cars.
The presence of “water” down there is of interest for understanding details of how plate tectonics works and other aspects of the earth’s interior, but it is quite irrelevant to floods at the surface.
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Brilliant analogy!
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It depends on how literal you want to get with counting up the years in the genealogies … but yeah, if you’re looking at the start of the agricultural revolution, I would agree with 12k.
That’s a really good point! I hadn’t considered that …
Being “fully God and fully man” is definitely one of the “great mysteries” of the Christian faith … To me, it’s up there with understanding how the trinity works—which is also beyond human comprehension … and then, Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit … so, yes, I agree with you that Jesus was not omniscient, but … He knew things like the past sins of the woman at the well, so … clearly the Holy Spirit was feeding Him information that He could not have known naturally … So, the extent to which He understood the Genesis account and whether or not it was more literal or more allegory … that’s just not something which we’ll ever know on this side of heaven. The best we can do is speculate poorly …
I lean towards allegory over literal Adam and Eve—though it’s possible. I just doubt it …
Who would they have been? If I’m remembering my biology correctly, homo sapiens have been around for 200,000 years. Homo erectus is about 2 million years old. Were Adam and Eve members of the homo erectus species? That might be possible …
Our closest extant evolutionary cousins are chimpanzees, which have 24 pairs of chromosomes. Humans have 23. At some point in the past, two of our chromosomes fused together, giving us 23 from 24. When did that happen? Apparently between 0.75 and 4.5 million years ago. Denisovans and Neanderthals co-existed with modern humans for a time, and we could cross breed with them, so that should mean that they too had 23 pairs of chromosomes …
I bring this up, because I find it to be very compelling evidence for us descending from apes. If Adam and Eve were literal, how would that work?
In evolutionary biology, there is a concept of a “scientific Adam.” He’s called “Y-chromosomal Adam.” According to Wikipedia,
“In human genetics, the Y-chromosomal most recent common ancestor (Y-MRCA, informally known as Y-chromosomal Adam) is the patrilineal most recent common ancestor (MRCA) from whom all currently living humans are descended. He is the most recent male from whom all living humans are descended through an unbroken line of their male ancestors.”
So, there is going to be one guy who was the father of all modern humans … but he would have been living in a group of proto-humans. If you’re considering a natural explanation, his female partner (or partners) would have come from the tribe or group he was living with. All of his progeny would have been human like him. He would have had contemporaries (maybe denisovans and neanderthals or whatever species or subspecies he arose from), but all of their male progeny (and male DNA line) would have died off. Modern humans have 2-4% neanderthal DNA (depending on the person’s ancestry), so inter species breeding occurred … but how does a literal Adam and Eve work in that context? I just don’t see how.
If you go with a “special creation” scenario, then when did that happen? Are you going to go back to the homo erectus days? If you go with the “first homo sapien,” then how do you account for the other subspecies of humans that were interbreeding at the time? Is that how Cain found his wife? God made the first homo sapiens which were Adam and Eve, they lived in the garden, and then when they left, they interbred with other species of humans? … Humans which were also intelligent and possessed free will and were living in a world with death and disease that was corrupted by sin?
But if you’re God, why give Adam and Eve 23 pairs of Chromosomes? Why not 25—to make it clear that humans are a separate and distinct creation from the apes? The simplest explanation as to why we have 23 pairs chromosomes is because we descended from apes who have 24 and a pair of ours fused … I don’t know how the YECs respond to that fact, but I find it very compelling that we evolved and were not specially created …
So where do a literal Adam and Eve fit in with our current scientific understanding? I don’t see any good place where we can slot them in. Trying to integrate a historical Adam and Eve into the picture we get from evolutionary biology and archaeology … it just creates so many problems and introduces even more questions … and if you believe they were specially created, that just introduces different questions … but if they arose naturally, then the story is wrong, because they weren’t the first people, and there were other humans living at the time … and for this, I can’t even call it a “myth”, because a “myth” is based on “real events” most of the time … and then you get the question of “When?” Say “literal Adam” was “Y-chromosomal Adam.” Then this story was passed on for 200,000 years orally? There’s just so much that doesn’t fit … I can’t figure out a way to have it all make sense …
So, that’s why I go with “allegory.” The situation becomes too strained and complicated and unresolvable with current scientific evidence …
… and, the reason that people want a “literal Adam” is mostly for theological reasons. People who want to believe in original sin need a literal Adam. “The world was perfect, and then Adam sinned.” The theology becomes much cleaner if Adam literally existed. It gets a lot more messy if God created a “perfect and good universe” which started off with death and decay—and sin—which, if you subscribe to the science, then the world was NOT perfect before man, because evolution requires death and suffering in order to occur. People don’t like that. You have to change up your theology and the way you interpret the Bible. You have to add some asterisks in Genesis. “This is what the Bible states explicitly, but we don’t believe that. Here is how we interpret it in light of modern science.” Most theologians don’t do that. They want to stick with the Bible and not have to deal with extrabiblical outside sources. So, if there’s a chance for a literal Adam and Eve, they are going to advocate for that possibility, because it makes their jobs much easier …
But I don’t go for that. I don’t think “original sin” is a necessary doctrine. (Whether sin came through literal Adam or not changes nothing about what Christ did on the cross.) Sure, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” I believe we’re all born with “original sin,” but I don’t believe it came through Adam. “If sin always existed, was the world perfect when God made it?” Meh. I don’t know. Sure—why not? Humans weren’t around. James says in chapter 1 verses 14 and 15: “Temptation comes from our own desires, which entice us and drag us away. These desires give birth to sinful actions. And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death.” You just have to accept some gray and be willing to say, “I don’t know,” when it comes to those absolutist questions about a “perfect creation” or “Did God create sin?”
Do unrepentant animals go to hell if they sin? I would say probably not. I don’t think they have the mental acuity to comprehend morality. I don’t think God holds dogs and dolphins accountable in the same way He holds modern man accountable for his actions. Then, at what point did pre-humans cross over from being “animals” to “spiritual beings with souls” who would be held accountable for their actions? I don’t know—but I trust God to sort out all of that. He’s just. He’s good. I’m sure He’s up to the task of figuring all of that out … I’m fine embracing a bit of uncertainty and ignorance in my theology—but not everyone else is.
You have to choose. I embrace “the science”, but by doing so, I’m introducing uncertainty into my theology. Things become muddied. They are a lot less clear. There is a lot of work to do to answer all of those new theological questions … but, for most people who embrace and advocate for a “literal Adam,” they want “clean theology”—so they are willing to leave a big mess with uncertainties and questions in their science … neither position can ever be fully worked out. No one can answer all of the questions. It’s just a matter of where you are comfortable leaving your open questions … for me, I take my cues from the science. I think it’s fine for our infinite, all-powerful God to create these natural processes—such as evolution—to play themselves out. Then, when He feels the species is sufficiently advanced, He decides to step in. There is NO support for this position in the Bible that I know of—by the way—but … I think it makes sense. When I get to heaven, God can answer all of my theological questions then. Until then, I’m fine with a little be of “not knowing” and trusting that He has worked it all out even if I will never fully know …
I just try to invoke divine action as infrequently as possible. God-of-the-gaps reasoning has a terrible track record, and trying to work out a “literal Adam” seems to go down that road in my mind …
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I agree with that, but so many others do not … but, while not “unitary,” I think the various sections do have to be “non-contradictory.” If God is perfect, then He will not contradict Himself. If the scriptures come from God, then they should not be contradictory(, or at least we need to seek an interpretation/hermeneutic which harmonizes them).
Agreed! Well put …
Also agree, but, the Bible still needs a certain amount of cohesiveness to it—if it all came from the same divine source … but then, we have that pesky problem of trying to figure out the underlying truth of how to join up the stories with the eye witness accounts … and then many historical facts from the Old Testament stories can be verified—and many more from the New … It is a challenge to create an all-encompassing perspective which correctly interprets and extracts the various truths in their various forms from the disparate parts of the Bible … Thank God He has given us His Spirit to assist in this task!
Please read my above post where I discuss “literal Adam.”
Would you say that Adam and Eve were prokaryotes? Homo erectus? Homo sapiens? Specially created, or a random pair of specially chosen ape ancestors? You’ve clearly thought about these things deeply, Joel … I’m very curious to read your perspective on this …
I agree with this …
No, but we can achieve scientific consensus, which … that of course never gets to 100%. (There are people who are astronomers who reject the Big Bang Theory, for example.) Einstein died having never accepted quantum mechanics. (Although his skepticism and debate with Bohr no doubt furthered the theory. Today, the evidence for QM is overwhelming. I’m sure Einstein would accept it if he were alive today.) Scientific consensus shifts with the amount of available data … but, in many cases, one can easily rule out “alternative theories.”
I’m not an astronomer. I couldn’t tell you why there are those who remain unconvinced on the Big Bang Theory and what their alternative explanation is, but … that’s cosmology. There is SO MUCH that is just totally unknown and not understood … There is LOTS OF ROOM for conjecture …
… but geophysics is another story. Our understanding of the basic laws of physics is pretty good. Yeah, we don’t fully understand black holes (because they are weird, and we can’t probe them), but normal matter—we have a pretty robust set of theories which accurately describe how it behaves … I think I briefly took a peek at hydroplate theory. If I recall correctly, it was originally put out by a legitimate scientist some time in the 90s (Someone with a PhD in geology.), but … I’m not surprised to hear it has been “debunked.” I’m not going to spend time scouring the Internet right now to confirm this, but … if you do a search, I’m sure you will be able to find in-depth articles explaining the problems with it … but I don’t think this is a “We’ll find out when we get to heaven,” sort of issue. We can evaluate the strength of hydroplate theory pretty well—right now—with our current scientific understanding and instruments …
Ah, yes! I missed that detail!
I think my overall point is still correct—that you have to consider the “chemical form” that the water is in (And I forget how NileRed extracted the water from the Epsom salt … I’m pretty sure it was much more involved than simple “boiling” [though what he did was at STP {more or less} and not “deep within the earth” conditions])—but … yeah, it’s even more fraught and misleading to claim that OH- groups are “water” …
I agree with St. Roymond; you characterized that situation very well …
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That’s the sort of word game that quite dependably leads to trouble. The biggest issue is that it is based on forcing ancient literature to fit a present worldview, a method that is insulting to the ancient writer and his audience as well as to the Holy Spirit Who inspired the particular literature.
“Heaven” in the passage means what the original audience would have understood by the term, and it cannot mean something that is down on the face of the Earth.
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This is not true: reading reviews by people with actual degrees in the fields provides a better judgment than reading the material without such useful knowledge.
This is especially true when the author is not educated in the field while the reviewers are.
Even when the reviewers are here:
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They weren’t the first anyway, despite that popular view: the Adam and Eve story is a different account than the opening Creation account where God created humans, male and female.
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I was more looking at “When did the Persian Gulf fill back in?”, but agriculture would apply as well.
Note that everything I say on my views below is speculative and uncertain.
The first humans (biological sense) to be morally culpable, perhaps?
As guesses, I would put them as probably physically real; maybe specially created, maybe not; post-dating modern-style language; and not necessarily, but possibly, physical ancestors of all living humans. If they are physically ancestral to all humans, they probably lived at least 30,000 years ago. If not, then I would say that descendants of theirs have at least interacted with ancestors of all modern humans.
In answer to the earlier part, I would guess that Adam and Eve go along with that. The rest, I certainly agree with. As I already said, a literal Adam and Eve is for me an inclination, and not a certain one.
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I’m confused … I’m going to need some more explanation on what you’re saying …
I understand there are two “accounts” of creation in Genesis. There’s Genesis 1:1 through Gen 2:4, and then there’s a second that starts in Genesis 2:4b that details Adam and Eve … Do you accept the first, but reject the second?
In Genesis 2:7-8, it states,
"7 Then the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person.
8 Then the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east, and there he placed the man he had made."
Then, in Genesis 3:20, it states,
“20 Then the man—Adam—named his wife Eve, because she would be the mother of all who live.”
I’m missing the part in the second story where it alludes to other people. God created Adam. Adam impregnates Eve. Eve is the mother of all. Where are the other people? I’m not seeing it … please explain!
If you take the first story on its own, sure … but then how do you harmonize that with the second story? If Eve is the mother of all, how can there be people who preexisted before her? If you’re going with a literal Adam interpretation,
- How do you harmonize the two stories?
- Where in the second story does it suggest there were other people before Adam and Eve?
- If Adam and Eve aren’t the first people, how do you deal with original sin?
- Where did Adam and Eve come from? Were they specially created as the story suggests? Were they the same or a different species of human from the ones which predated them? Is the story wrong and they were just chosen from among the other people that were already there?
I know you view the Flood as “myth.” If you view Adam and Eve as myth as well, and the “myth” was based on a literal Adam, what’s your take on how it all transpired? I’m very curious, especially how the “myth” played out vis-a-vis the fact of evolution and there being multiple species of humans all living at the same time …
I like that … I’ve run through a bunch of scenarios on this topic in my head. (Obviously.) “First morally culpable humans” is also one possibility I have considered … it kind of makes sense to me …
Aside from biology, another aspect to consider in all of this is the role of culture and socialization. Have you ever heard of stories of feral humans—children raised without parents? They don’t develop correctly. They don’t have language and reason fully developed in the same way that a normal child does. In that sense, they have much more in common with animals than they do with humans. I’m not sure they can be “morally culpable” in the same way you or I can. These individuals are exceedingly rare, but … essential socialization and brain and language development is just missed, and they’re just … different. Contrast that with a being such as Coco the gorilla, who learned language … fully sentient, intelligent—but not human … Is Coco morally culpable? Her level of development and socialization SURELY exceeds that of some “feral humans” … that puts an interesting wrinkle on it … Does Coco have a soul? What about those feral humans? How do they all get judged? Working out the theology of “morally culpable” is quite interesting …
So, yeah, homo sapiens have been around for 200,000 years, but … if we’re looking at the first “morally culpable” humans … sure, 30,000 years might work for that—and “literal” Adam and Eve (as being the first morally culpable humans) could work for that … but then none of that really matters if they were specially created … and the story implies they were specially created, but … I don’t see why one must necessarily believe they were—unless you really want the story to be true …
But I think it’s more of a story—a part of the Hebrew creation myth. As Joel wrote,
I think the point is to communicate theology and provide answers to people in a time before science.
I’m still having trouble with how they could be literal … If they are literal and we believe the story, then they were specially created … but then why would God go through all of this trouble to set the universe in motion, create the laws of physics that allow stellar and planetary formation, abiogenesis, a process of evolution that can naturally create intelligent life that can eventually become morally culpable … and ALL of that can happen and be set into motion and left to develop on its own after God says, “Let there be light” … and then—just as humans were mentally ready to comprehend morality and God—at that moment—He just goes ahead and short circuits all of that work and specially creates Adam and Eve—which He could have done at any point before then …
If you’re going to specially create, just specially create … Why all of these natural laws which can produce intelligent life naturally when you’re just going to come in at the end and specially create anyway? That doesn’t make sense to me … it seems much more likely that it’s a story than literal. Why go through ALL of that trouble NOT to special create only to special create … but then I think most people go with the special creation route because they want the story to be “true” … but if the point of the story is theology, then it does not need to be literally true …
So, that’s where my inclination for it not to be literally true comes from … along with all of the difficulty of trying to work out in which ways the “myth” actually happened … and I can’t be certain of my position, either. God very well could have specially created Adam and Eve. It’s certainly within His power, and it’s prehistory—so we’ll never know …
… but my feeling is that He tried very hard NOT to specially create intelligent life—and succeeded. I think the story of Adam and Eve is not myth based on real life events but simply allegory … as per above, I just have a LOT of trouble trying to work out what those “real life events” would have been in order for literal Adam to be real and also NOT specially created …
And how does your take on original sin factor into this, Tim? Many people need a literal Adam to make original sin work with their theology. Was there “sin and death” before Adam and Eve? Was the world “good and perfect” before Adam fell? It’s all allegory for me, so … I’m not concerned about answering those questions … curious to see if it is a concern for you or not since you lean towards literal Adam …
It’s possible to get water out of Epsom salts, plaster, epidote, or other compounds that have water of crystallization simply by heating them to the appropriate temperature. To make the release of water obvious, a common approach is to stick some in a test tube and heat it; water condensing on the inside of the tube away from the heat gives a visual confirmation in addition to changes in the appearance of the substance. But I imagine one could make it look more impressive with some additional steps.
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Prokaryotes are incapable of surviving in any 3D format. Eukaryotes can do this; the first such seems to have lived 2 billion years ago, but the first 3D form to fossilize (a sponge) was about .8 billion years ago.
That sole male from whom all males descend is from well after the time that Homo sapiens passed that mythical line in the sand that says “From here on, y’all are all Homo sapiens.” Ditto mitochondrial Eve. The species stabilized, but after that point it had to endure some severe bottlenecking events, which had to play a gating role in which male got to be Y-Chromosome Adam. I also saw a reference (soprry, no link) alleging that there were about four female mitochondrial lines, all evidently selected from the broader pool by a bottleneck of some kind.
Long after the Even and the Adam individuals there were successful cross-breedings between Homo sapiens v. sapiens and Homo sapiens v. Neanderthal and v. Denisovan. Why did none of those matings inject mitochondrial DNA other than Eve’s? - and why did none inject any novel Y chromosome? The puzzle has answers, but I doubt they are fall-off-the-tree simple.
Datapoint -the San people of the Kalahari diverged close to 300,000 years ago.
Datapoint - there are a few isolated parts of Africa where the Y chromosome is much older than the one traced back to Y Chromosome Adam. Simple answers seldom resolve complex questions. 
I am simply uncertain on special creation, and, as it generally makes little difference to my theology, tend not to think about it very deeply. Was there sin before the fall? No. Death? Yes, but not eternal death. Death among morally culpable humans? No. Was the world good? Yes, and it still is. Perfect? I’m really unsure of how to define perfect in regards to natural processes.
These are less speculative than my earlier comments, but still not hills I would die on.
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Right – so in the Creation account God already made humans, male and female. Then in the Eden account He makes a specific pair.
The second story doesn’t mention it, but the Creation account already has humans created.
First, “Mother of all living” is presented as Adam’s understanding when they’d just been booted from the Garden, so it isn’t necessarily the case. Second, it has to be taken in the context of what just hadn’t happened: they’d been told that in the day they ate of the fruit they would die, but that hadn’t happened; they were still walking and talking – they were chayim, living ones, indeed still living, and they’d just been admonished about childbirth, which meant that not only were they not dying but they would have offspring. This has also been taken that it was their descendants alone who could be spiritually alive.
Assuming some historicity here, I’d go with the first option: this was Adam’s view given before their family had encountered other humans, which seemingly doesn’t happen until after they had a couple of sons. But the second and third view taken together fit with Paraleptopecten’s view:
At any rate, my point was that if you’re taking it as anything historical, there are other humans around before Adam and Eve.
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I think the standard view from people who treat Adam and Eve as literal in that framework is that Adam and Eve were the first humans endowed with a spiritual nature, and that this was done at a strategically important moment. Of course that has other problems, but it does handle the matter of Adam as the original sinner.
This is one of my problems tackling the Genesis 2 & 3 narrative: scholars love to call it myth, but the trouble with that is that myth is our category, not theirs, and among all the papers calling it myth I still haven’t found one that addresses what kind of literature the original audience would have considered it to be. Of course there is a shortcut that skips what kind of literature it was intended as by recognizing that it was a retelling of Mesopotamian stories and the purpose was to take the meaning from those and transfer it to YHWH-Elohim, but that isn’t really satisfactory because it leaves unanswered the question of how the original audience would have understood the Mesopotamian versions. Unfortunately I can’t just walk over to a university library any more and search the journals, and doing that online would require multiple memberships I can’t afford.
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