Evolutions "transitional forms"

[Mike Flynn]

In Genesis, Adam was an intelligent man not a pre-historic man. Evolution does away with man's fall into sin. It also does away with man's uniqueness as created in the image of God.

Not at all. Evolution might falsify your interpretation of Genesis, not the theology of Genesis. And your interpretation is certainly fallible greeker.

Here's an alternative perspective:

1. Adam could simply refer to man at a certain intellectual stage of development. He has become able to be aware of God. Adam could represent all humans at this stage of development. In fact, the theology goes much deeper than that.

2. The fall refers to spiritual death that comes from disconnection from God. Physical death is irrelevant for Christians, correct? Is not eternal life referring to a spiritual context in the bible?

3. Man is unique...but it has nothing to do with what we 'look like'. IOW, the 'image of God' has to do with man's unique abilities that set him apart from the animal kingdom (creative power, consciousness, God-aware, etc)...qualities that are a pale reflection of God's power. I believe it has nothing to do with physical appearance (a theologically void notion altogether).

In short, evolution does not disqualify any theology in Genesis...it only disqualifies your interpretation of it (according to you anyway).

 

[Mike Flynn]

". . .(Evolution: The Fossils say No!, Duane T. Gish.

I am sure lucaspa and others will have plenty of things to say in refutation to this post.

Let me ask you a couple of questions:

1. How did God create the species if not by evolution?

2. Do you have any evidence to support your assertions beyond a narrow interpretation of Genesis 1?

3. Is your interpretation of Genesis 1 fallible?

 

[ObbiQuiet]

No one laughed at my strawman joke.

I spent a lot of time fixing that up, you know. :o

I chuckled at it.

 

[Vance]

If a person laughs at his monitor, is there anyone who can hear it?

[well, doesn't quite have the same ring as the tree in the forest bit]

Actually, I thought it was very funny.

 

[Vance]

Greeker, that is the problem with Creationists, they take quotes out of context and then use it as an "aha!". Ask that paleontologist whether he believes humans evolved and you will see that his statement obviously, in his mind, does NOTHING to weaken the concept of the evolution of humans. All he is saying is that there is no single feature which defines the hominid line. Most use bipedalism as a dividing line, but that is not hard and fast.

Check out the recent Scientific American, dedicated exclusively to the issue of human evolution. In it you will find that the idea that there are just fragmentary jaw bones quite a bit outdated. We have MUCH more than that, and the more complete skeletons simply bear out the hominid lineage by showing additional "mixed" features. Hominids with leg and hip bones which show a clear mixture of features that we find in modern humans ONLY and modern apes ONLY.

 

[greeker57married]

Dear Mike Flynn,

I sense venum in your statement, are you a Born again Christian. If you are why attack me.

1. Luke in his Gospel gives a genealogy of Jesus, in it he list individual historical people that existed. He included in this list Adam. Because he evidently knew Adam was a historical person. (Luke 3:23-38) The genealogies in The Bible refer to Adam as a real person. who had real childern. In Genesis 4:25-5:32 show the genealogy beginning with Adam. In Genesis 4:25 The writer of Genesis said Adam had relation with his wife and gave birth to a real live son "Seth."
The genealogy in Gen. 5 ends up with Noah being a descendant of Adam. Jesus mentions Noah as a real person. Jesus is also a descendant of Adam. Is Jesus not a real person? I sense you may not believe in the historicity of the first eleven chapters of Genesis. I believe the whole Bible. It is all the Word of God.Adam was also a fully intelligent man because he named the animals that God brought to Him. Gen. 2:18-20.

2.Evolution says man evolved from lower life forms over millions of years. It does not acknowledge man's uniqueness made in the image of God. It says man is just an animal. To take that theory and try to apply it to Scripture is a condradiction. In Genesis 2:7
it says God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into Him the breath of life. Which is a miracle of God.

3. the Bible says he created the universe and matter by fiat creation. That is He spoke it into existence. The Hebrew Word "bara" means to create out of nothing. So he made man out of the dust of the earth. He instantanously gave man spiritual life. Which did not evolve. He made his physical body and spiritual nature at the same time.

 

[Jet Black]

Dear Mike Flynn,

I sense venum in your statement, are you a Born again Christian. If you are why attack me.

1. Luke in his Gospel gives a genealogy of Jesus, in it he list individual historical people that existed. He included in this list Adam. Because he evidently knew Adam was a historical person. (Luke 3:23-38) The genealogies in The Bible refer to Adam as a real person. who had real childern. In Genesis 4:25-5:32 show the genealogy beginning with Adam. In Genesis 4:25 The writer of Genesis said Adam had relation with his wife and gave birth to a real live son "Seth."
The genealogy in Gen. 5 ends up with Noah being a descendant of Adam. Jesus mentions Noah as a real person. Jesus is also a descendant of Adam. Is Jesus not a real person? I sense you may not believe in the historicity of the first eleven chapters of Genesis. I believe the whole Bible. It is all the Word of God.Adam was also a fully intelligent man because he named the animals that God brought to Him. Gen. 2:18-20.

2.Evolution says man evolved from lower life forms over millions of years. It does not acknowledge man's uniqueness made in the image of God. It says man is just an animal. To take that theory and try to apply it to Scripture is a condradiction. In Genesis 2:7
it says God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into Him the breath of life. Which is a miracle of God.

3. the Bible says he created the universe and matter by fiat creation. That is He spoke it into existence. The Hebrew Word "bara" means to create out of nothing. So he made man out of the dust of the earth. He instantanously gave man spiritual life. Which did not evolve. He made his physical body and spiritual nature at the same time.

you seem awfully sure of yourself, were you there?

 

[Vance]

Yes, man is unique. Yes, God, as part of His creative process did something poetically described as "breathing" life into Man (Adam means "mankind") which made man unique, giving Man the soul that the rest of God's creation lacks.

But you need to undestand about ancient cultures and their approach to history and genealogies. They were not as picky as we are today between what is historical and what is allegorical. Whether, it be the ancient celts with their clan lineages running from themselves to their distant supernatural hero ancestors, or Caesar, who regularly proclaimed his families descent from a goddess, to a new testament writer providing Jesus' lineage, they simply thought about such things differently than we do.

For us, with our scientific minds and our intense knowledge of the true facts of so much of our history, it is vitally important for us to distinguish between real historical events and non-historical events. But in ancient times, this was not at all essential. This is VERY difficult for us to get our heads around these days, but it is simply the truth.

Caesar most likely knew that his lineage from a goddess was not literally true, but the implications from this lineage were VERY true and important to him. So, for him it was true and not true at the same time, in a way we can hardly concieve with our modern minds, especially our Western minds.

 

[David Gould]

Exactly, Vance. Things can be myths and true at the same time. It all depends on how they were meant and how they are looked at.

Indeed, given Hebrew midrash tradition it is likely that the Hebrew's knew that their story was not true in the literal sense. I think that literalism imposes things on the text which were never intended to be there.

For example, 'bara' means 'to create out of nothing' (I will accept that it does, not knowing any Hebrew). So? If the Genesis story was intended to be read non-literally it would still use that word - like when I tell a parable, I talk about vine-growers owning vines, even when there are no real vine growers and no real vines. I do not say 'metaphorically own'. I simply use the word 'own'.

 

[Jet Black]

good point vance. The Chinese emperors had lineages going back to the dragon, and the Japanese Emperors are decended directly from the Sun God I think... one of the gods anyway. Lineages seemed somewhat flexible back in the days, though it would be nice to find that I am a descendent of Loki or Odin.

 

[LadyShea]

I want to know why no creationist ever takes a crack at my "What kind is it" pictures. Not once, in my year or more here, has anyone identified my pictures

 

[Jet Black]

I want to know why no creationist ever takes a crack at my "What kind is it" pictures. Not once, in my year or more here, has anyone identified my pictures

Morton's demon I'm afraid. I thought they were very nice pictures though, thankyou

 

[Vance]

To put it even more straightly, if God created the universe billions of years ago and his method of creating the diversity we see on the Earth today was evolution and Adam was not a single individual, but a type or an allegory, and the Cain and Abel were types as well, etc, etc, if all this was true, and God wanted to tell us all that He DID create the world and all that was in it, and that Man had been dealt with in a special way to create a unique relationship with him, but had failed to follow God's rules and had forfeited intimate communion with Him, it is ENTIRELY CONCEIVABLE, no, actually PROBABLE, that He would tell those truths in a form just like we see in Genesis 1 and 2.

AND, even if the genealogy from Adam to Jesus was not wholly accurate, but at some point linked real lineage to figurative or symbolic lineage, the writers of the time WOULD HAVE written it just like a literal lineage. And God would have let them! And they would think this entirely right and proper, and not at all 'incorrect" or deceitful. They would have been puzzled at our anally retentive insistence on literal facts and historically accurate presentations. For them, the past, both historical and legendary, was ALL tinged with mystical and semi-legendary status. Drawing such disinctions was a foreign concept to them. Their story was told in many forms, but it was all their story, and it was all Truth, whether literal or not.

 

[Data]

Morton's demon I'm afraid. I thought they were very nice pictures though, thankyou

Pictures? What pictures! I don't see any pictures!

 

[Jet Black]

you have ph33r on your shoulder, not a demon

 

[Mike Flynn]

Dear Mike Flynn,

I sense venum in your statement, are you a Born again Christian. If you are why attack me.

It wasn't an attack. All I am saying is that there is more than one way to interpret Genesis...and probably all of them are fallible. I am just making the argument that evolution does not falsify Genesis...only particular interpretations of it. I'm sorry if you see these statements as an attack, they are not meant to be in any way.

1. Luke in his Gospel gives a genealogy of Jesus, in it he list individual historical people that existed. He included in this list Adam. Because he evidently knew Adam was a historical person. (Luke 3:23-38) The genealogies in The Bible refer to Adam as a real person. who had real childern. In Genesis 4:25-5:32 show the genealogy beginning with Adam. In Genesis 4:25 The writer of Genesis said Adam had relation with his wife and gave birth to a real live son "Seth."

And there may have been a historical Adam and a historical Eve (accounting for the geneology). But what if every man is Adam and every woman is Eve (even today)? Could this be why we suffer the same consequences as outlined in Genesis? Is it because we also choose the fruit over God every day? Adam and Eve might have been two historical characters, but its clear that they also represent the entire human race. So it could be that all humans at that time went through the same transformation away from God and embracing sin...and Adam and Eve are singled out as a particular example in Genesis to keep things simple.

Alternatively, I would suggest that its possible that the characters in Genesis are indeed metaphorical and the geneology is there so that the primitive mind would associate the concept of family with the entire human race. IOW, God is saying that we are all brothers and sisters, decendant from God's original creation. Luke doesn't realize that Adam represents all men because he wouldn't be able to associate human lineage with abstract notions like evolutionary theory. No doubt, many of the characters are indeed historical in that geneology, and others are metaphorical. I believe that it is quite common for God to use metaphor in the Bible so that people can connect with meaning and theology (which is really what Genesis is all about).

Here are a few questions to consider: Who was Cain's wife? Who were the others that would kill Cain after he murdered Abel? Where did these people come from? When you answer that question are you not filling in your own assumptions that are not part of the Bible? I believe that these are indications that the text is not meant to be taken as literal history.

Adam was also a fully intelligent man because he named the animals that God brought to Him. Gen. 2:18-20.

As I said, Adam could represent man at a certain stage of development where he could connect with God consciously and name the animals etc, this passage does not falsify that interpretation. In fact, we are still naming the organisms in God's creation to this very day (like I said, we are all Adam).

2.Evolution says man evolved from lower life forms over millions of years. It does not acknowledge man's uniqueness made in the image of God. It says man is just an animal. To take that theory and try to apply it to Scripture is a condradiction. In Genesis 2:7
it says God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into Him the breath of life. Which is a miracle of God.

Evolution says that animals and man share a common origin...and nothing more. Its obvious that the process of evolution has given rise to a unique organism in the form of a human being. And how were the animals formed? Does the Bible say specifically? Could they have also been formed from the 'dust' of the gound? The fact that we are formed from dust is confirmed by evolution in a very real sense. And if both animals and humans are formed from the dust then this confirms the common lineage as described by evolution.

As I have said, evolution contradicts your interpretation of scriptures, but that interpretation could be flawed, correct?

3. the Bible says he created the universe and matter by fiat creation. That is He spoke it into existence. The Hebrew Word "bara" means to create out of nothing. So he made man out of the dust of the earth. He instantanously gave man spiritual life. Which did not evolve. He made his physical body and spiritual nature at the same time.

Well, many formulations of the Big Bang say that the universe was indeed created out of nothing (quite literally actually). You say that God gave the man spiritual life and formed his body instantly. Can you point me to the scriptures that say *instantly*, please?

Look greeker, I won't pretend to have all the answers. I could be wrong about all of this. All I am saying is that you could be wrong as well, correct? One thing is certain: our interpretations of this passage have nothing to do with Christian salvation anyway. They are not worth getting tripped up over.

I will finish with this thought: Certainly the Bible can tell us everything we need to know about man's relationship with God...but it tells us very little about God's creation itself, correct? The best way to study God's creation is to look at it directly. If we understand that creation well, it cannot conflict with scriptures. We may find that God's creation itself may tell us something about how we should interpret Genesis 1.

As I said, you and I can both accept Christ and have different opinions on this. Lets not trip each other up, or anyone else for that matter. IOW, don't imply in your posts that accepting evolutionary theory contradicts Christianity...If you are a Christian then you shouldn't pass judgements and tripping others up with your arguments.

 

[lucaspa]

Geeker, you ignored all the transitionals I posted. Gish is very good at making strawmen. Ramapithecus is 2 million years earlier than A. afarensis.

"These evolutionist believe that Ramapithecus was in man's lineage because the incisors and caanine teeth (the front teeth) of this animal were relatively small in relation to the cheek-teeth(as is in the case of man); they believe the shape of the jaw parabolic, as in humans, rather than u-shaped, as in most apes; and because of some other subtle anatomical distinctions found for the jaw fragments. The face is also believed to have been foreshortened, although no bones of the face or skull have been recovered.

Thus all of the evidence linking Ramapithecus to man is based solely upon extremely fragmentary dental and mandibular (jaw) evidence. Recent evidence apparently invalidates even this.

Now, you can use jaw and teeth to determine relationships. They are among the most diagnostic of all the bones. And human and chimp jaws and teeth are very distinct. Notice that the authors are only claiming that Ramapithecus is in the lineage leading to humans. But evolution is a bush, and there are lots of twigs. The entire genus Paranthropus is also in the lineage leading to Homo, but is a more recent side branch. Or look at Homo neandertalis. Now it is recognized that H. neandertalis (Neandertals) is a sister species to H. sapiens but not our direct ancestor. Yet neandertals are in the general lineage.

Recently Dr. Robert Eckhardt a paleoanthroplogists at Penn State, pulished an article headlined by the statment:

Amid the bewildering array of early fossil hominoids, is there one whose morphology marks it as man's hominid ancestor? If the factor of genetic variabiliity is considered, the answer appears to be no.

The range of varation in the chimpanzee populations was actually greater than those in the fossel samples for 14 of the 24 measurements, the same for one, and less for 9 ofthe measurements. Even in the minority of cases where the range of variation of the fossil samples exceeded those in the living chimpanzees, the differences were very small. Thus, in the tooth measurements made, there was greater variations among living champanzees or a sinngle group of apes, than there was between Dryopithecus, a fossil ape and Ramapithecus, which is suppose to be a hominid. . .(Evolution: The Fossils say No!, Duane T. Gish.

This is the shell game. BTW, you didn't include Gish's quote marks so we don't know where Eckhardt ends and Gish begins. Also, we don't have a citation for the Eckhardt article to see if Gish quoted him correctly. Gish has a documented record of misquoting people to make them seem to be saying exactly the opposite of what they really are saying. Gish is so aware of this capability that he now insists the people quoting him quote the entire paragraph.

Hidden in this is also a very subtle but important claim. Notice the phrase "among the bewildering array of early hominid fossils". Notice that "early"? Gish is talking about 4-7 million years ago. This lets him ignore the fossils from now back to 3 million years ago where we do have transitionals. But Gish makes it seem like we are talking about all the hominid fossil record, doesn't he? So you aren't refuting the data I posted, you and Gish are ignoring it and going to a different time and hoping I don't know the difference. Apples and oranges.

Now, there are two claims being made and they are interchanged.
1. Genetic variability among chimps. Most genetic variation does not show up in morphology. That is because many of the base substitutions are silent and don't change the amino acid composition of the proteins.
2. Variation by itself does not deternine difference. It's a combination of variation + differences in the mean. You can have overlap of your bell-shaped curves and still be different. Gish is saying the curves have to have no overlap.
3. Most important, Gish is comparing chimps and two species close to the split that led to chimps and humans. Now, if evolution is true, we would expect those species close to the common ancestor to differ very little and to have a lot of ape-like characteristics and a few of what would later be human characteristics. So the data is exactly what it should be for evolution.

OTOH, if Gish's version of special creation is true, the ape lineage and the human lineage (there isn't one according to Gish) should always have been completely distinct, with humans always being completely like they are now. There should be no species with mostly ape-like characteristics and some human like characteristics -- not even the "minority of cases".

So what Gish has nicely done is falsify creationism. Should I send him a thank-you note?

 

[lucaspa]

Dear Mike Flynn,

1. Luke in his Gospel gives a genealogy of Jesus, in it he list individual historical people that existed. He included in this list Adam. Because he evidently knew Adam was a historical person. (Luke 3:23-38)

Matthew lists a different geneology. The Greek kings listed their geneologies too, and they included historical people and then people such as Hercules. Does that make Hercules historical? More importantly, does it make Hercules' father Zeus historical and existing?

So, we don't decide the historicity of people based on their inclusion in a geneology.

The genealogies in The Bible refer to Adam as a real person. who had real childern. In Genesis 4:25-5:32 show the genealogy beginning with Adam. In Genesis 4:25 The writer of Genesis said Adam had relation with his wife and gave birth to a real live son "Seth."

Again, Hercules is said to have had relations with his wife and to have given birth to real live children. Is Hercules historical?

Geeker, a good general rule to evaluate the validity of criteria is to take them out of the particular case you are using the criteria for and see if you still use the criteria. If you don't, then the criteria isn't valid. In this case, historicity has to be determined by other means than mention in accounts and geneologies.

Now, Luke could have thought that Adam was historical. That doesn't matter; we know better now. What is important is not whether Adam was historical but whether Adam not being historical matters to Christianity. It doesn't. The theological messages in Genesis 2-5 don't depend on Adam or any of the kids being real people.

Let's take another case. Think of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Does the message about love transcending politics and family disapproval depend on Romeo and Juliet being real historical people?

I sense you may not believe in the historicity of the first eleven chapters of Genesis. I believe the whole Bible. It is all the Word of God.

Do you? How about Luke 2:1. Do you believe the whole world was enrolled? Were Japanese, Sious, and Zulu enrolled? If not, why not? It's in the Bible? How about Job 26:7, I Chronicles 16:30, Psalm 93:1, Psalm 96:10, and Psalm 104:5? Each of those verses says in plain Hebrew that the earth does NOT move! So, does the earth orbit the sun (and thus move) or not? It's in the Bible and part of the "whole Bible".

I submit that you allow extrabiblical evidence to tell you how to interpret that Bible. The difference is not in our belief in the Bible, but in whether you are willing to accept the extrabiblical evidence to change your interpretation of Genesis 1-11. You accept extrabiblical evidence to change the interpretation of other passages, but simply refuse to do so here.

2.Evolution says man evolved from lower life forms over millions of years. It does not acknowledge man's uniqueness made in the image of God. It says man is just an animal.

Evolution doesn't comment at all on whether man is made in the image of God. It can't. What is wrong with being "just an animal"?

However, think about this: Why are we special to God? You say it is something inherent in us because God made us that way. I say we are special to God only because GOD CHOOSES to regard us as special! This fits in with evolution and the rest of the Bible. Why were the Hebrews God's Chosen People? Because of anything inherent in them? No. It was purely God's choice. Same here. I don't think you like evolution because it means we are totally dependent on God to be special and your human pride doesn't like that.

In Genesis 2:7 it says God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into Him the breath of life. Which is a miracle of God.

And in Genesis 1:26-27 it says that God spoke men and women into existence! Which is it? Formed from the ground or spoken into existence? That God allowed 2 contradictory creation accounts into the Bible is God's way of telling us that neither of them is literal history.

3. the Bible says he created the universe and matter by fiat creation. That is He spoke it into existence. The Hebrew Word "bara" means to create out of nothing. So he made man out of the dust of the earth.

Again, not in Genesis 1, did He? Didn't He "bara" in Genesis 1 for humans? For someone who reads the "whole Bible" you have remarkable tunnel vision.

He instantanously gave man spiritual life. Which did not evolve.

But evolution doesn't address the "spiritual". Let me answer this as Darwin did. Don't you believe that sometime during human embryonic development God infused you with a soul? Exactly when does He do that? Does this mean there is somehow a gap in developing your human body from a single fertilized cell to the complex body you had when you were born? Does this mean we don't understand the material process of that development?

Same thing with soul and evolution. Somewhere in human evolution God infused the first soul into the first baby (ies). Does it matter when He did so as long as He did so?

 

[lucaspa]

I want to know why no creationist ever takes a crack at my "What kind is it" pictures. Not once, in my year or more here, has anyone identified my pictures

Nice to have an unanswerable argument to falsify creationism, isn't it?

 

[lucaspa]

But you need to undestand about ancient cultures and their approach to history and genealogies. They were not as picky as we are today between what is historical and what is allegorical. Whether, it be the ancient celts with their clan lineages running from themselves to their distant supernatural hero ancestors, or Caesar, who regularly proclaimed his families descent from a goddess, to a new testament writer providing Jesus' lineage, they simply thought about such things differently than we do.

For us, with our scientific minds and our intense knowledge of the true facts of so much of our history, it is vitally important for us to distinguish between real historical events and non-historical events. But in ancient times, this was not at all essential. This is VERY difficult for us to get our heads around these days, but it is simply the truth.

Very good! Excellent point.

One of the rules of interpretation is to use the context of the time the document was written. Scholarship then was not as it is now. The same applies to "prophecy". It was quite acceptable to take an event that had already happened and then have it "prophecied". To us this is dishonest. But not to them.

One of the tragedies of Biblical literalism is that, in trying to impose their man-made theory of creationism on the Bible, they lose the very important theological messages the authors were really trying to get across.

Caesar most likely knew that his lineage from a goddess was not literally true, but the implications from this lineage were VERY true and important to him. So, for him it was true and not true at the same time, in a way we can hardly concieve with our modern minds, especially our Western minds.

I think we can conceive of the "true and not true at the same time". As long as we let the Bible speak to us and not impose what we want on the Bible.