Why Adam was not an ape

Faith & Science Conversation
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  • Adam was formed by God from the ground. Apes are not, and anything born from monkeys or apes is not.
  • The other creatures were all brought to Adam and named by him (including apes if there were any)
  • Woman was made by putting the man to sleep and taking a bone from him, not by any reproductive process or method
  • Man was created male and female and it was from the man that woman came so the first woman came to exist on earth by something other than a birth canal

It is not possible to fit this with evolution. Therefore either the theory of evolution is a lie, or the Scripture is a lie.

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Being wrong is not necessarily being a lie.

Your post is unnecessarily slanderous.

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? If the whole story of where we came from is false and not true, and the theory of evolution were actually true, that is a fact we should be able to note without being called names. For the purposes of this thread, people can simply admit that one or the other is true and can be true. Apparently shedding that sort of direct light on the issue is a problem for you?

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You know what? I like this concept, really. Let’s apply that rule (namely the wooden literalism you like so much) consistently, though.

Scripture says the following about God:

  • “Smoke went up from His nostrils, and devouring fire from His mouth.” (2 Samuel 22:9)

  • “The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma.”(Genesis 8:21)

  • “He will cover you with His feathers, and under His wings you will find refuge.”(Psalm 91:4)

  • “The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth.” (2 Chronicles 16:9)

  • “The Lord God was walking in the garden in the cool of the day.” (Genesis 3:8)

So if we read all of this in the most literal way possible, the picture of God becomes… quite something indeed…

A gigantic being with feathers and wings, eyes sprinting around the planet, smoke blasting out of His nostrils, fire shooting out of His mouth, strolling through gardens in the evening, and apparently sniffing the smell of burning animal flesh to enjoy the aroma.

That starts sounding less like the transcendent Creator of heaven and earth and more like some kind of cosmic dragon-bird hybrid with a barbecue hobby. :laughing::laughing::laughing::face_with_hand_over_mouth::face_with_hand_over_mouth::face_with_hand_over_mouth: Not even Lovecraft would come up with something like this.

I don’t know about you, but I find Nyarlathotep much more reassuring. https://lovecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Nyarlathotep :face_with_hand_over_mouth::face_with_peeking_eye::rofl:

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Humans did not come from monkeys or apes. You need to brush up on evolution.

or your wooden, literal interpretation of Genesis is wrong and you miss the actual message intended.

Dad have you not yet noticed that trying to beat people on the head with your human, fallible interpretation doesn’t produce the result are you looking for?

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I believe in an historical Adam and Eve and I believe in the Fall, and I also accept the evidences regarding evolution and the age of the earth. You are proposing a false dilemma because you don’t want to accept that your authoritative (…) interpretation of the Bible is wrong.

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Unless the pleasure he gets from provoking BioLogos members is the result he’s looking for. :laughing:

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Or God parading the animals in front of Adam like a cosmic matchmaker as he tries to see if any are a suitable mate for him.

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2 Samuel 22 Sounds to me like a prophesy of the end when Jesus returns to rule. Like many other prophesies it also has a component that was historical and fulfilled in people like David. The last part of the prophesy for example “He reached down from on high and took hold of me;
he drew me out of deep waters.
18 He rescued me from my powerful enemy,
from my foes, who were too strong for me. That applies to David. God helped him with enemies in a real way.

Other parts of the prophesy as I see it must refer to the end time period.

The earth trembled and quaked,
the foundations of the heavens[c] shook;
they trembled because he was angry.
9 Smoke rose from his nostrils;
consuming fire came from his mouth,
burning coals blazed out of it.
10 He parted the heavens and came down;
dark clouds were under his feet.
11 He mounted the cherubim and flew;
he soared[d] on the wings of the wind.
12 He made darkness his canopy around him—
the dark[e] rain clouds of the sky.
13 Out of the brightness of his presence
bolts of lightning blazed forth.
14 The Lord thundered from heaven;
the voice of the Most High resounded.
15 He shot his arrows and scattered the enemy,
with great bolts of lightning he routed them.
16 The valleys of the sea were exposed
and the foundations of the earth laid bare
at the rebuke of the Lord,
at the blast of breath from his nostrils.

Many of these things are key phrases in prophesy and well known events that will happen. That all did not happen in David’s day. His word created this universe. His word will slay enemies in the end in a real way. The earth will shake. He will fly down with angels from heaven. There will be some consuming fire used on enemies. etc etc. Prayers do go up like smoke and reach heaven. There was incense representing that in the temple of old. God does have eyes that see all over the world all sorts of angels and maybe people and an ability to see everything. And Angels have wings. I see no problem with God being portrayed as having them also, which protect us etc. Nothing here is unreal. Jesus did walk with Adam in the garden He made for him. Not sure why it all seems unreal to you. The prophesy and other verses does not mean that we can wave Genesis away. Sorry.

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He brought all animals (from each kind) to the man to be named. That is clear. Believe it or not.

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I accept evidence as well. Life does evolve and adapt. That is not evidence for God not creating them in the first place. There are isotopes wit ratios etc. I do not look at these as if they created themselves or were created by natural rather than spiritual causes. The clear statements from God about the first man and woman make the theory of evolution an impossibility. Both cannot be true. You must choose what you believe. Adam cannot be created and Personally formed from dirt and have been born of some ape thingie as well. Eve cannot have been made from a bone taken from a man and also be born of some monkey creature. Obviously.

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They say man is an ape. They also say his ancestors were ape like thingies. Be honest. That means the first woman could not have come from the man and man could not have come from being formed by God. One or the other. Never the twain shall meet

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Ok, now picture the scene, though,

Adam is standing there.

God begins presenting candidates.

“Lion?”

“No.”

“Horse?”

“No.”

“Giraffe?”

“Still no.”

“Otter?”

“…Cute, but no.”

“Right. Give Me a minute.”

Apparently the first version of humanity’s matchmaking system was:

Meetic: Eden Edition™

No profiles.
No photographs.
No compatibility questionnaire.
Just God repeatedly handing Adam wildlife until something works.

Swipe left on the ox.

Swipe left on the camel.

Swipe left on the hippopotamus.

Eventually God looks at the catastrophic engagement statistics, shuts down the beta version of Divine Dating™, puts Adam under anesthesia, and launches the premium service: Eve.

But this is nothing, remember that, as noticed, He also walks around gardens in the cool of the day (Genesis 3:8).

Which is rather charming, although it does raise logistical questions once we discover that He also uses the entire Earth as a footstool (Isaiah 66:1).

Apparently God can both stroll casually through a garden and rest His feet on the whole planet.

Don’t ask for scale consistency, that way madness lies.

He has a face, a back, and Moses is allowed to see one but absolutely not the other (Exodus 33:20–23).

He has ears (Psalm 34:15).

He has everlasting arms (Deuteronomy 33:27).

He has hands large enough to measure the oceans in His palm (Isaiah 40:12).

So we are now dealing with a feathered, winged, fire-breathing dragon/humanoid of such extraordinary dimensions that the Pacific Ocean is basically a slightly inconvenient amount of moisture in His hand.

And yet those same hands also contain engraved names (Isaiah 49:16).

So yes: God has tattoos.

But it gets better.

Clouds are the dust of His feet (Nahum 1:3).

But clouds are also apparently His chariot (Psalm 104:3).

So the same material is simultaneously:

  1. dirt from His sandals,
  2. a vehicle,
  3. weather.

This is the sort of engineering only omnipotence can get away with. Sometimes, however, He doesn’t bother with the cloud-mobile and simply rides a cherub and flies (Psalm 18:10).

Which means God has wings…but occasionally rides another winged creature anyway. Perhaps divine wings are for short distances. For longer journeys, take the cherub, BUSINESS CLASS ONLY

His nostrils are so powerful that the blast from them piles up the waters of the sea (Exodus 15:8).

This means that a divine sneeze is not a minor respiratory event, it is a regional hydrological catastrophe.

I assume that somewhere in heaven there presumably exists a warning sign: PLEASE DO NOT GIVE THE LORD PEPPER NEAR COASTAL AREAS.

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Being in the same family as the great apes doesn’t mean we “came” from apes. We just have a common non-ape ancestor.

That is closer to the truth, but the “thingies” weren’t apes in the modern sense.

My understanding of Genesis and evolution do meet, but you can’t see it.

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One does wonder if this is a bit of a trolling from non YEC.

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One also wonders whose father dad is? Couldn’t be mine because mine are dead.

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Listen daddy, why don’t we talk about Numbers 11?

This may be the most aggressively unhinged catering response in all of Scripture.

The Israelites complain about manna and say they want meat, and God’s response is not: “Of course. Let’s vary the menu.” Nope, not even close.

God’s response is essentially: “Oh, you want meat?” “Fine.” “You will not eat meat for one day.” “Or two days.” “Or five.” “Or ten.” “Or twenty.” “You will eat meat for a whole month—until it comes out of your nostrils and you are sick of it.”

That is not a meal plan, that is is a threat.

Then God sends quail. But, notice…not a tasteful amount of quail, not a symbolic amount of quail.

An absolutely catastrophic, horizon-darkening, bird-based overreaction.

Then the people start eating, and while the meat is still between their teeth, God strikes them with a plague.

So the whole episode reads like this:

  1. Israel: “We’d like something besides manna.”
  2. God: “Certainly.”
  3. Israel: “Oh, thank yo—”
  4. God: “YOU WILL EAT SO MUCH MEAT IT COMES OUT OF YOUR NOSE.”

And then, just when everyone thinks the situation has perhaps peaked in absurdity: PLAGUE.

So the lesson of Numbers 11 appears to be something along the lines of “never complain about the menu to an omnipotent being with anger issues and access to industrial quantities of quail”.

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I hope so, because I’m literally having the time of my life.:laughing::laughing::laughing::laughing::joy::joy::joy::joy:

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Why sexual reproduction is a lie:

  • Isaiah teaches that every person was formed by God from clay (Isaiah 64:8). Job knew God shaped him, like clay, from dust (Job 10:9). Elihu knew God made him from a piece of clay (Job 33:6). No mention of parents having sex.

  • The other creatures are, like humans, made from dust and given the same breath (Ecclesiastes 3:18–20; Psalm 104:27–30).

  • David was made by God knitting him together in the depths of the earth (Psalm 139:15), not by any reproductive process or failed rhythm method.

  • Paul knew that just as woman came from man, man comes through woman (1 Corinthians 11:12), not through two parents who have sex. The very idea of a dad is a joke.

It is not possible to fit this with sexual reproduction. Therefore the idea that human babies come from parents who had sex is a lie.

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I think you’re being far too conservative here.

If we’re reconstructing human sexuality exclusively from a maximally literal reading of Scripture, we need to consider all the available scientific data.

For example, 1 Samuel 18:25–27 establishes that the appropriate way to obtain a wife is apparently to provide her father with 100 foreskins.

David, being an overachiever, brings 200, and the Bible specifically tells us that they counted them.

So somewhere in ancient Israel there was apparently a man whose job, at least briefly, was…yes, Royal Foreskin Auditor.

“198… 199… 200. Excellent, sir. Your marriage application has been approved.”

This raises serious problems for modern theories of courtship, none of which adequately explain why Tinder has no field marked: FORESKINS COLLECTED: ____

But the real difficulty for modern sexual biology is Ezekiel 23:20, which informs us of lovers whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.

Obviously, therefore, modern anatomy is a lie.

The Bible clearly teaches that the correct scientific unit for measuring male genitalia is the donkey, while seminal output is measured in horses.

Thus:

1 donkey = unit of biblical length

1 horse = unit of biblical emission

I don’t know why secular biology textbooks suppress this. Wake up, sheeple. Sex education has been corrupted by Big Reproduction.