I can not grasp the fact on how sin enter into the world without the fall of Adam and Eve (Or rather their existence).
Dose anyone care for elaboration?
Dose anyone care for elaboration?
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If TE is true, then how did sin enter the world?
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Most evolutionary creationists don't deny the reality of the Fall. However, there need not have been a literal Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden for humanity to have become sinful.
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laconicstudent
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I think that Adam and Eve were either:
A.) The first individuals to reach sentience, or self-awareness and cognition on levels that would be considered human today.
B.) Adam and Eve were allegorical and represented the first communities of primitive Homo sapiens.
Either way the Fall still occurred. It probably was just groups of people instead of individuals.
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Here's a thought.
About 350 years ago, Blaise Pascal, a great thinker, an early scientist, and a Christian, wrote this in his famous Pensées (translation by W. F. Trotter):
Pensées is a defense of Christianity. In a lot of it, it is hard to make sense out of what he is saying (at least for me). But it is full of nuggets, like this, that make the slog through it, well worth the trouble. The quotation here led to an "aha" moment for me.
Think of it. Throughout our evolutionary history, from slug to modern consumer, we looked after ourselves first. We had to. We could not survive without it. But we were not, at first, sinners. We were not sinners because, to be a sinner, you have to have knowledge of good and evil - you have to have a conscience.
So, whether you view Eve's eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil as something that literally happened, or as a metaphor for the awareness of morality which humans acquired, and which animals do not have, it makes sense that the fall was synonymous with understanding good and evil.
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lucaspa
Legend
First, the Adam and Eve story is an allegory. You have 2 characters -- Dirt and Hearth -- who get cut off from God. They are meant, like most allegorical characters, to stand for a much larger group. In this case, all humans.
Second, how did Dirt and Hearth get cut off from God? By disobeying Him. Why did they disobey? Because they placed their desires above God's desires. IOW, they were selfish.
Well, guess what? Natural selection leads to selfish individuals. Remember, the unit of natural selection is the individual and natural selection picks individuals that do best in the competition for scarce resources. Any cooperation must also result in a benefit to the individual. Any individual that only does what other individuals want, to the detriment of itself, cannot be selected. Instead, helping other individuals will cause that individual to do less well in the competition for scarce resources and it will die without offspring. Any alleles for pure altruism are going to be weeded out of a population.
The "Fall" -- selfishness -- is embedded in our very genes by the process God used to create us. We are programmed to put our interests and needs above those of God.
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ChristFollower2009
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I personally believe that Adam and Eve were the first two people to reach sentience. Therefore, they were the first to sin since they were the first who were capable of sinning. The fall of mankind really did happen, just not exactly in the way that Genesis says it happened. You have to realize, the Genesis creation story is just that, a story!
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A
AForestOfStars
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Wow, I have never heard it put like that before. Good point...it's possible I think.
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lucaspa
Legend
Thank you. Jesus is asking us to rise above our selfishness and "love our neighbor as ourself". However, he also couches that in "selfish" terms when he wants us to "do unto others as you would have them do unto you". Your altruism has a self-interest component in that version.
Also, Jesus is asking us to go beyond our evolutionary programming in extending our altruism to those not related to us. There can be altruism under natural selection, but that works only if the altruistic gene is saving copies of itself in relatives that are saved by the action of the altruistic individual. IOW, if a mother sacrifices herself for her offspring, if there are 2 children, one of them is going to have the altruistic allele that just caused the mother to sacrifice herself.
But Jesus wants us to be altruistic to complete strangers. We are to use our intellect and relationship with God to go beyond what evolution has programmed into us.
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Adam's flesh was the same before and after the "fall". What changed is his consciousness of his flesh. When he realized his flesh was hostile toward God, he fell from fellowship with God. Whether Adam and Eve truly existed as such is not so important. The spiritual understanding of the story is, and it fits perfectly with evolution. Evolution compliments Christianity and serves to explain our sin problem. I am a being of spiritual understanding, trapped in the body of a primate!
Consider that Adam became "sinful" after receiving the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The knowledge of Good and Evil most likely represented the commandments of God manifesting in his conscience. By the commandments of the Law, I understand what is good and what is evil. This was one of Paul's central tenets when discussing original sin.
Romans 7:7: . . . Indeed I would not have known what sin was except through the law.
Romans 7:8: . . . apart from the law, sin was dead
Romans 4:15: . . . for where there is no law, there is no transgression
Romans 513: . . . sin is not imputed where there is no law.
1 Cor 15:16: The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.
Genesis 2:17: " . . . but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.
Romans 5:12: . . . Therefore just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin,
Romans 7:9: I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died.
Genesis 3:7: Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.
Romans 7:18: For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells.
Genesis 3:22: Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil"
Romans 7:10: And the commandment, which was to bring life, I found to bring death.
Before Adam ate from the tree and gained the knowledge of good and evil, he had no consciousness of any law against his flesh. How could his mind be seared with sin, with no law? When he ate from the tree, he received consciousness of the law, but the commandments that were to bring life, he found to bring death, because of the natural enmity of his own flesh towards the commandments. He was then trapped in sinful flesh, and trapped into an evil conscience before God, unable to meet the requirements of the good found in the newly revealed law, but only to be enslaved to the evil.
This understanding is the precursor to understanding Liberty. Jesus, representing the perfect man in the flesh, was sacrificed. He was the commandments in living form. To accept that he was given up by God is to lose consciousness of law against your flesh.
masqed.blogspot.com
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Sin is just part of the nature of the beast, as it were. There was never any "Fall", a clear dividing line on which side there is no sin, and on the other, all is sinful. Sinful nature is implicit in humans as a result of our evolution, and we achieve righteousness by overcomming it.
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The Lady Kate
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I guess you're right... in any case, in order for sin to exist, that would mean that we would have to be at a point where we were able to comprehend God's instruction for us, and be able to choose not to follow them.
By that definition, a literal Adam is hardly necessary.
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Zivka
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G'day lucaspa,
You noted (in post 5) that:
To Lighthorseman,
You said:
There was never any "Fall", a clear dividing line on which side there is no sin, and on the other, all is sinful. Sinful nature is implicit in humans as a result of our evolution, and we achieve righteousness by overcomming it.
See the comment above as this applies to your post as well. Additionally, I'm not exactly sure why there is a need for a Saviour. Without a life fallen into sin terminated by death, what purpose is there to Christianity?
Out of curiosity, please allow me to continue playing the devil's advocate and ask if you could elaborate further on some of the following points that are causes of confusion for me given your apparent views:
Sorry about the questions, but I'm curious as to how you reconcile what seems to be clearly written in the Bible with your apparent belief system.
You noted (in post 5) that:
The "Fall" -- selfishness -- is embedded in our very genes by the process God used to create us. We are programmed to put our interests and needs above those of God.
No offense, but that makes no sense. Why would God, who wants to have a relationship with mankind, create people who are, as you say, "programmed" by God to rebel against Him? That's pure nonsense, straight and simple.
To Lighthorseman,
You said:
There was never any "Fall", a clear dividing line on which side there is no sin, and on the other, all is sinful. Sinful nature is implicit in humans as a result of our evolution, and we achieve righteousness by overcomming it.
See the comment above as this applies to your post as well. Additionally, I'm not exactly sure why there is a need for a Saviour. Without a life fallen into sin terminated by death, what purpose is there to Christianity?
Out of curiosity, please allow me to continue playing the devil's advocate and ask if you could elaborate further on some of the following points that are causes of confusion for me given your apparent views:
- how do you explain that sin and death is an intruder into this world (see Romans 5:12) and that death is described as an "enemy" (see 1 Corinthians 15:26)?
- how this world is "very good" in the sight of God (see Genesis 1:31)?
- what is the restoration of all things (see Acts 3:21, also Isaiah 65)?
- why did Jesus have to die, that is, have His bloodshed, for the remission of sins?
Sorry about the questions, but I'm curious as to how you reconcile what seems to be clearly written in the Bible with your apparent belief system.
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I don't believe in a literal Genesis.
Humans are imperfect, because we are the result of an imperfect process. I believe God gives us credit for trying actively to overcome our imperfections and better ourselves. How the ressurection fits in and how Christ's sacrifice works if there isn't a "original sin" as such, I don't know. Maybe its more complicated than the Bible makes out? Maybe Christ's sacrifice helps us overcome those imperfections I was talking about.
I don't know. So far as God is concerned, I have faith. But I don't believe a literal reading of the Bible, and taking it at face value is necessarily the best way to further that, and I certainly don't believe that the Bible was ever intended to be, let alone functions as, a scientifically valid text.
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Z
Zivka
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Good evening again Lighthorseman,
You stated (in post 16):
As for the rest, fair enough, everyone to their own I guess.
You stated (in post 16):
I believe God gives us credit for trying actively to overcome our imperfections and better ourselves.
That is something that I think I can agree on, if I understand what you're saying rightly. I was playing Star Wars Knights Of The Old Republic II The Sith Lords on the computer some time ago and Kreia (who is your mentor throughout the game) notes that when we do things for other people that fixes their problems that though they strengthen us, they ironically weaken those who we "fix," cheapening the experience for them. She goes on and on about it, but the more I think upon her words, the more I can see that this may be why God allows us to experience such trials and imperfections in who we are and doesn't snap his fingers to fix them. I believe that He helps and gives us the grace needed, but I don't believe that He will usually fix us. When we battle through by God's grace we become stronger for it.
As for the rest, fair enough, everyone to their own I guess.
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something like that, yes. Would all the high points of human achievment and hapiness be at all remarkable if we didn't have negative things to contrast them with?
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It would make no sense in a world without evolution where God created each species separately;but it makes sense when we realize that what God did was allow life to evolve so that we are the outcome of a process of evolution and bear the marks of an evolutionary history. If the survival of our ancestors required a level of "selfishness" then indeed it is embedded in our very genes by the process God used to create us.
Does it make any difference to our need for a Saviour if the fall is a process rather than an event with a specific temporal coordinate?
Hmmm. For some reason quote tags and list tags don't work simultaneously.
Death per se is not an intruder into the world as nothing in scripture tells us that plants and animals did not die. Indeed the fact that God provided food for humans indicates that humans had to eat in order to live; God created us mortal. And it indicates that what they ate had to die in order for them to live.
Sin, however, is an intruder, but as Paul points out, where there is no law, there is no sin. Acts which would be sinful in a human (e.g. cannibalism) are not sinful in animals, since for them there is no law against it--and in any case they don't have the capacity to understand law. Their "law" is written into their instincts and they cannot choose to disobey it.
So sin is revealed when we have human beings who can receive a law and choose to disobey it. As Paul says again "if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. . . . I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died,..." Romans 7:7b, 9a And in another place, he says "The sting of death is sin."
It is the intrusion of sin, which comes about through our human capacity to resist the law, that death becomes an enemy.
In a world without sin, death is not an enemy and the world is very good. We even see this the restoration passage in Isaiah.
"Never again will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his years; he who dies at a hundred will be thought a mere youth; he who fails to reach a hundred will be considered accursed." Isaiah 65:20
Isaiah is describing the new heavens and the new earth, where the wolf and the lamb will feed together and the lion eat straw like an ox, yet he includes a peaceful death in old age as part of that vision.
So death is not the problem;sin is the problem, and Jesus died for the remission of our sins.
It is not how God worded Genesis that would have to change, but how God created the earth. It is the evidence in the earth itself, evidence that could only be part of what God created, that tells us it could not have been literally created in six days. If God had made the heavens and earth look like they had been created in six days there would be no doubt that He really did create in six days.
Even if God created a mature world, with an appearance of age, he could still make it clear in the earth's geology, when its history began. For example, if all animals were created in just two days, there should be no part of the fossil record where some animals are totally absent. We should not only find human remains with dinosaur remains, but both with trilobite remains. If all plants were created on one day, we should not find remains of huge forests of mosses and ferns without a single flowering plant.
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lucaspa
Legend
Who said anything about "rebel"? Is a child taking a cookie from the cookie jar "rebelling" against her parents? Of course not. She is just putting her interests above obedience to her parents. "Rebel" means to overthrow and replace the object you are rebelling against.
People aren't "programmed to rebel". We are programmed to be selfish. That results in occasional disobedience of God when our interests and His are in apparent conflict.
What God wants are creatures who can communicate with Him, love Him, and whom He can love. He doesn't want robots who just obey Him. Where did you get the idea God wanted creatures like that? The message of Genesis 1 is that God creates people for their sake, not for God's. If God created us so that we were always obedient, where is free will? Where is love? If you are programmed to "love" God, is that real love? No. That's artificial. Real love can only come by choice.
What's more, God loves us so much that He wants our lives to have meaning. That means 2 things: we have to have a universe where the future is not determined. This is necessary so our actions have meaning. That is, what our choices have real consequences, both for good and for bad.
To get that we need a real history where actions in the past have consequences in the future. What's more, using natural selection as the immediate designer means that God is not responsible for all the bad designs in us. And we are real -- both the good and the bad in us. And our actions -- including disobedience -- have real consequences.
Also, if you want a real radical idea, by letting natural selection be the immediate designer, God may have gotten a creature that can communicate with Him, but that He did not understand. That's what happens when humans use natural selection to design: the object does what we want but we don't understand how it works. God got a creature able to communicate with Him, but one whose inner workings -- including the ability to disobey -- He may not have understood.
First, the "death" referred to is spiritual death, not physical. We were always going to physically die. What the story implies is that we would not necessarily be cut off from God. But since Adam and Eve stand for all of us (it's an allegory), the story tells us that each of us, at some point in our lives, will be cut off from God and, thus, suffer spiritual death. Jesus made that absolutely certain when he made thoughts sins, not just actions.
Second, since we all fall into sin, we all need a Savior. Remember, Christ died for your sins. Not Adam's. YOURS. Why do you commit sins? Because Adam did? Nonsense. Adam isn't forcing you or causing you to sin. You are doing that on your own.
The questions is: why? Why do we all sin? Again, Adam and Eve (altho they didn't really exist) would be long dead. How can they force you to sin? Also, why would God punish you for something they did? That would make God irrational, and that is nonsense.
No, there must be something inherent in us that causes each of us to disobey God. Selfishness due to natural selection is an answer.
1. Paul is talking about spiritual death. I would say that our tendency to be selfish that gets us cut off from God is an "enemy". We must fight it all our lives.
2. Genesis 1 was contrasting with the other religions of the day. In those the physical universe is evil, and is used by the gods to trick humans into doing bad things. Genesis 1:31 is a denial of this. Notice the text is "very good" and not "perfect". And the world is very good, isn't it? Most people are good most of the time. Sunsets are beautiful. Nature is beautiful and full of wonder.
3. Think about what happens when try to get forgiveness from another human being. Not only do you have to say "I'm sorry", but you need to change your behavior. Often forgiveness means sacrificing something in your life to make it right with the other person. Say your girlfriend is upset because you are late for an event that was important to her. Part of forgiveness is sacrificing what you want to do on future days that are important to her so that you can be on time. Depending on your personality, that is a small or large sacrifice. What sacrifice would we have to make to make up for the upset we cause God? Instead of each of us making a sacrifice, God says that He will accept a huge sacrifice from one person. That sacrifice will now suffice for each of us when we beg God for forgiveness. I tend to think it is more symbolic and necessary for people, rather than God.
First, Genesis 2:4 should not state that the heavens and earth (which took 4 days in Genesis 1) were created in a single day. There should not be the other contradictions between the 2 creation stories in Genesis 1-3.
Second, God's second book -- Creation -- should look like He created in 6 days. You focussed only on scripture, forgetting God has another book. If the earth and universe had looked like the following, we could conclude that God created in 6 days:
1. No or very few fossils.
2. All the remains would be those of contemporary organisms. Skeletons of ALL organisms mixed together in the sediments.
3. Light from some stars and galaxies should not be arriving at the earth. You propose that God created all the stars and galaxies at different distances from us at the same time. But for the light from all of them to be seen from earth, that means that creation must have happened a very long time ago (13 billion or so years ago). But then the earth would also have to be 13 billion years old, and the data says it is only 4.5 billion.
4. At some point the oldest of geological features would all have to date to the same time: because all the earth was created in 6 days. But instead we get rocks and ages that are separated at that 4.5 billion year mark by several million years.
What we have is God leaving us evidence that contradicts an interpretation of scripture that God created in 6 days. Therefore another interpretation must be the right one.
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