Those who believe in the de novo creation of Adam vastly underestimate the amount of learning that takes place during childhood. Just consider what occurs with brain development. The brain is only 28% of its adult size at birth. In the first year of life, the brain grows tremendously fast, and social interaction is crucial during this phase. Throughout childhood and into adolescence, the brain continues forging new connections and pruning away others, and all of this late brain development takes place in the content-rich environment outside the womb (unlike primates or early Homo). Take away those years, and I don’t know what you have, but it wouldn’t be a “normal” human being in any sense of the word.
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Right, I totally agree, and this is one of the (many) reasons I personally do not agree with the de novo view. No matter how you slice it, de novo involves some element of the Omphalos hypothesis. I think the “immediate” creation of Adam and Eve is a literary device, like everything else in the story. It becomes absurd if you push it too far or ask the wrong questions about the text. I talked about this a bit in my recent article about Adam and Eve.
It strikes me that humans actually have no way of fully conceptualizing an event that does not involve a prior process. Everything in our reality involves process. (This is just a musing, not a broad theological statement.)
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Come on guys. This isn’t as complex as your making it. Maybe Adam was a baby. Maybe he was specially created in a woman’s womb (perhaps observed therefore as a virgin birth). This objection does not apply to the whole class of special creation scenarios. Moreover the importance of the objection is entirely predicated on a presupposed theology. There are a whole range of reasons that might be offered for why God did this including simply, “well God does surprising things like send His only son to suffer and die, so I’m not going to pretend my objections matter much to what I think he is clearly telling me happened.” (Though I would dispute that this is what Scripture is clearly telling us).
To this day, there is no agreed upon and unquestioned understanding of the Virgin Birth, even though most Christians believe it. I think (some one can verify) the Virgin Birth is in the Belief Statement too. We take it as a confession, without agreement on how to understand it, and for many people de novo creation is a similar confession.
Not that I understand. There is no false appearance anywhere that we observe in the evidence. There need not even be maturity at that time.
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I don’t understand what you are saying here. If a tree is supernaturally created with one ring, or with fifty rings, it’s Omphalos either way. Can you explain your response further?
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You just made it much more complex.
Omphalos is a speculative (and oddly specific) scenario purposfully constructed to dismiss overwhelming evidence for an old earth. Drawing analogy to a speculative bellybutton, the argument is that God created a world with “maturity” so it would be “immediately useful” and as a “test of faith”, and then we misunderstand that maturity as old age ( Is apparent age biblical ). The “Deceitful God” objection (DGO) argues that this means placing a false story in the evidence. This is most obvious in things like distant starlight (where we see, e.g., supernovae that could never have happened), and other artifacts that appear to have no reason deriving from the “immediate use of the world”. The “test of faith” argument is suspect too, and has generally speaking been roundly dismissed (even by YECs) even though there is no replacement “purpose” offered.
Even then, from a theological point of view, there may be some reasonable rejoinders that give better purposes than “test of faith”. The 100 Year Old Tree A Lutheran’s Artistic Tree and more recently John Sanford’s Designed Ambiguity. I do not necessarily endorse these points of view except to point out that this is under considered.
Regardless, the only reason to invoke Omphalos, historically, is to dismiss overwhelming evidence contradicting one’s hypothesis.
DGO has never been meant to imply that perceptions always match reality, especially our perceptions of miracles in the moment they occur. Applied the way you are using, DGO would be valid objection to Jesus creating wine from water, because this presents a “false history” the created wine, as if it used to be a grape, etc. DGO would be valid objection to the Resurrection, because it would give the appearance Jesus was never dead. DGO would be a valid objection to anything outside the natural order, and it puts an odd requirement on God to declare all His movements that we as limited humans have access to immediately without any confusion. DGO, therefore, really needs a clear delimiting principle, or it can be applied to just about everything, including valid science and just about anything we personally find surprising.
Because their is absolutely zero evidence for or against the de novo creation of Adam, it is not valid to equate it with the Omphalos argument or invoke DGO. The problem with Omphalos is not primarily about Adam’s development (which should be considered on its own merits), but rather the use of this speculative scenario (as I read it, Genesis says nothing about bellybuttons) as a reason to reject the evidence for an old earth. As @Jon_Garvey has often pointed out, a de novo created mature Adam would be essentially no different (in terms of DGO) as the water to wine miracle.
Perhaps there are valid objections to a mature Adam being created de novo, but those objections are distinct from DGO, and have to be considered on their own independent of the overwhelming evidence for an old earth.
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Not objecting to the whole class, but the whole class has a bad case of the “maybes,” as in “Maybe this …” and “Maybe that …” My overall impression is of a bunch of ad hoc arguments cobbled together. It goes back to my original statement: None of the recent Adam proposals are parsimonious. All of them are convoluted and illogical. I couldn’t believe in a recent, literal Adam if I tried. Sorry. Nothing against you. Even as a kid, I didn’t believe Noah’s ark really happened. Just the way I’m wired, I guess.
One of the examples Philip Henry Gosse used in his book “Omphalos” was a tree created with a scar already on it. I think it could be argued that the human genome carries those same types of scars and evidence of both history and common ancestry. ERV’s are probably the most commonly cited example which are genetic scars caused by past retroviral infections in common ancestors shared with a host of primate species. God wouldn’t need to put all those hundreds of thousands of retroviral insertions into a genome that he created de novo, nor would God be limited to using the same introns as those found in other humans since in many cases any old sequence will do for the bulk of the intron. So why use the same introns that carry the signal of evolution if these genomes were not the product of evolution?
Those are some of the criticisms I can think of.
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Except that now you’re talking about a human being instead of inanimate matter. A de novo Adam requires that God insert memories into his mind; otherwise, Adam would be unable to walk, or run, or speak, or etc., without God pre-wiring that into his head. This is a step beyond Omphalos, in my opinion.
This would be a reasonable use of the DGO objection.
Some might argue that God chose to do this for some reason as rejoinder. E.g. perhaps the “way” he created was by copying then editing, so the history is not false (this is similar to the RTB answer). If a reason is plausible, it should be considered. I have not been convinced by what I have heard.
Regardless, even if a reason is offered, we still have to concede that it “looks” like we evolved, so science is justified in saying we evolved, and disproving evolution was never God’s design goal. [adding, so why is it your goal?] Evolution is the plain reading of genomes.
Just as an aside, I have always found this to be an interesting theological position. It makes sense for humans to copy and edit because we lack time and resources. However, God is often described as being all powerful, all knowing, and having endless time and resources, so it would seem that it would be just as easy for God to start from scratch as it would to copy and then edit an existing human genome.
That is more of an observation than a point of contention, but I thought it might be worth mentioning here.
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@vjtorley has interesting thoughts on this.
I would say that my best case for editing/copying mechanism (on behalf of a position I do not hold) is that disproving evolution was never God’s goal; he was just making art. This is just his style, which we also seen in human artists too. He is just playing variations on a starting theme that is evolving forward, not because he is restricted to this by lack of power, but because variations from a living starting point that carries history is fun and interesting, like a conversation. This interaction makes for good art. Many artists and theologians would agree. A Lutheran’s Artistic Tree
That, to me, seems at least plausible, and I like it because it pushes the one making this argument out of the fixation on anti-evolution arguments. It also describes God’s nature in a way that is theologically sound. Though I do not hold this view of origins, I do think this rejoinder is reasonable.
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I am enjoying the discussion, lots of thought provoking ideas. I suppose the problem I have with a specially created Adam, is that God would be responsible for not only his physical being, but his growth, education, and development. God would then be responsible for his moral decisions and and failings, ( though I realize I am not responsible for all my kid’s decisions so know that is not entirely a valid position, but then I do not claim to be a perfect parent).
In any case, a representative or archetypical Adam makes the story make more sense without a lot of complications, though you have to deal with how to handle the New Testament references.
I tend to embrace the imagery of God planting a garden, of God creating land and sea and having them bring forth life without pre-ordaining the end result thus giving free will to Adam and us, and making us responsible for our sin, instead of trying to shift the blame to whoever our Eve may be.
I see no problem if a unique biological Adam is what one has to have to make sense of things, but agree with Jay that for some of us it causes more problems than solutions.
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Though, let me remind you, maybe that is false. Maybe instead it is genealogical transmission of original sin (rather than representative), which would not be subject to this objection.
Once again, I am not arguing for this as much as saying that there is so much to imagine here. Don’t miss out on the fun. =).
Except this has never been about Jay, you, or even me. We already affirm mainstream science and have come to terms with it. I’m not trying to change your mind. Instead, this is about the empty chair, those who could be here but are not because of their own objections.
This will sound like I’m lampooning the theory, but I’m not: If we postulate a specially-created Adam & Eve whose children then interbred with non-Adamic nearly-humans, there is nothing to say that Adam & Eve weren’t in fact raised by those nearly-humans, so that they could get some sort of nearly-normal socialization experience.
Of course, come to think of it, Adam would also have to be a decent number of years older than Eve, because it wasn’t until Adam had named all of the animals in his environment that Eve was formed from his rib…
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Thanks for reminding me. We do get caught up in what we think, rather than looking at it as Paul did in saying," …I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings."
That is not to say that good theology is not important, just that it is not the main focus.
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You are not =). You are engaging in a modern midrash, filling in the ellipses for the fun of it. This is the inviting way forward that can fill the empty chair.
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If they were raised by nearly humans, Adam and Eve would’ve been just as nearly human as their parents. I met quite a few kids like this in juvenile detention. It’s called “the apple and tree syndrome.” haha. But, what’s another work-around? Throw it on top of the pile with the others!
How about you give us a workaround? There are several.
I’ll just reach into my top hat and … Voila! Haha.
Far better minds than mine have struggled to fit a literal Adam somewhere into history and come up short, I believe. That’s not an eretz I want to plant my flag on. I’m taking the easy way out …