My Genesis Enigma

[cleminson]

Part 1.
Most of the readers of this paper will have very fixed ideas of their own on the subject of the creation of life on this Earth and its supporting doctrines and theories. Some beliefs will be rigidly held, having become central to the readers lives, while others will be flexible expanding and contracting as science expounds new theories. Though most of the secular world accepts that not all scientists agree on each and every point as to how life started and then developed on our planet, it still puzzles many why several religions steadfastly and sometimes aggressively reject modern scientific theories, continuing to promote their own ancient religious creeds.
Some Governments are concerned about this and are trying to find ways of teaching evolutionary theory in schools without offending the parents and children belonging to these various religions but more importantly, without compromising their own evolutionary curricula. This marriage of what appears to be opposite ideologies is proving to be extremely difficult and it is this conundrum that is one of the reasons that have inspired me to write this paper. That is, in searching for a way to align the Christian, Jewish and Islamic “Creation dogmas” to the possibility that some form of creative progression could have taken place. The nub of the challenge in doing this is that traditional Creationism is fundamentally important to all three of the monotheistic doctrines.
To unravel this enigma, I have had to break away from all the normal lines of reasoning and think outside the box. I have had to try to study the Book of Genesis, without any preconceived ideas; however this was extremely difficult, as I had been taught traditional doctrine from these Scriptures both in school and later in Church. My question was, “Is it possible to believe in the total historical accuracy of the Genesis Creation account, as these religions do and yet also see that those same scriptures could have allowed for a creative process to have taken place?”
While trying to find an answer to this dilemma from my own Christian perspective, it became increasingly clear to me that for a person to believe in Jesus Christ and understand why He died on the Cross, it is essential for him to also understand why Christians need to believe in the literal account of Adam and Eve’s existence. Attempting to deny the Biblical account of Adam’s existence raises huge doctrinal problems for Christians. The Scriptures supporting this observation are best read in Romans 5:17-19 where it says, ”For if, because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous”. There are many others and in fact the whole tenet of the New Testament is about Christ’s redemption of mankind from the spiritual death caused by Adam’s sin. Those Scriptures undeniably and unavoidably, tie Adam and Jesus together within the Christian credo. Yet to many, the simple acceptance of Adam and Eve’s existence, as portrayed in the traditional Creation story, is totally bewildering, unimportant and irrelevant.
Amongst the three monotheistic religions there are a number of interpretations of the Biblical creation account. There are the “Traditionalists” who believe that God created the Universe and all life over six, twenty-four hour days, about five thousand eight hundred years ago. They would reject out of hand any idea that evolution could have taken place.
The “Day-age” creationists interpret each creation “day” as being a long period of time, possibly even longer than a million of years for each “day”. They also notice a similarity between the Biblical Creation account and the theories behind the evolutionary sciences.
“Progressive Creationists” accept most of modern scientific theories regarding the creation of the Universe, seeing the Big Bang as part of God’s creative process, yet they have a problem with most evolutionary theories. They believe that God created life in sequence, as displayed in the fossil records, saying that each species was created as a separate genus. Also that each genus was not only individually created but multiplied and existed as a separate species for its allotted time, maybe millions of years before it went into extinction. Therefore the various different fossilized species found today are not related to one another.
“Theistic Evolutionists” contend that there is no conflict between science and the Biblical book of Genesis. They claim that God used evolution as his creative process but disagree as to whether God intervened in each stage of the development of each genus or whether He started with the first seed of life and then left it to develop through a modification rather than mutative evolutionary process. This “modification evolution” continued until, as an on going process, until life arrived at where it is now. They also believe God created man who was lifted above the rest of creation when he received his soul. This theory is popular amongst many mainline Churches today, including the Roman Catholic Church.
In 1950 Pope Pius XII wrote in his work “Encyclical Humani Generis”, “There was no opposition between evolution and the doctrine of the faith about man and his vocation, on condition that one did not lose sight of several indisputable points…” Then on the 22nd October 1996, in support of Pius XII, Pope John Paul II, said, “Pius XII stressed this essential point: if the human body takes its origin from pre-existent living matter the spiritual soul is immediately created by God”. “The moment of transition into the spiritual cannot be the object of this kind of observation, which nevertheless can discover at the experimental level a series of very valuable signs indicating what is specific to the human being… while theology brings out its ultimate meaning according to the Creator's plans”. Finally in support of Theistic Evolution, it was reported in April 2007 from Paris that Pope Benedict elaborated his views on evolution for the first time as Pontiff, saying that science has narrowed the way that life’s origins are understood and Christians should take a broader approach to the question.
All of these concepts are expounded by people within the three monotheistic faiths, yet most of these people, except for the “Creation traditionalists”, also have considerable doubts about the long-established interpretation of Adam’s existence and therefore the concept of “first sin”. As we have seen this disbelief in Adam and his “first sin” leads Christians into a real doctrinal problem. To overcome this dilemma, it seems that they have two choices; one is to “fudge” the concept of “first sin”, ignoring its doctrinal ramifications. The other is to somehow persuade themselves that Adam was a real person, who actually lived, committed the first sin against God and immediately died spiritually. They also need to believe that because of his wrongdoing, all of his children and their subsequent generations lived under that same spiritual death, until finally, many generations later, his offspring were able to receive redemption, through grace given to us by Jesus Christ. Thus, as that single trespass against God led to condemnation for all subsequent men, so a single act of righteousness led to the opportunity of justification and life for all men.
If Christians cannot accept this, then their Christ had no reason to die on a Cross and their version of Christianity becomes a “religion of attempted emulation”, rather than one of worship. Not believing that Jesus was part of the Godhead, they suppose that He was only a good man, whose honesty, humility, good works, charity and sacrifice should be imitated by us. However, because of this, they are described in the Bible as “most to be pitied”, for by choosing to believe that Christ is only a role model, they find themselves fated by the following verses from 1 Corinthians 15:19, “If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied”.
So it would seem that it is impossible for Christians to believe that any form of long term creation could have taken place, because, according to the most modern theories, if Adam was created nearly five thousand eight hundred years ago, as Creationist scholars aver (as of 2008), and if evolution also occurred, he would have been one person, probably somewhere in the fertile crescent, amongst many thousands of men and women of different races, living their lives, spread out over each of the Continents. They claim that as of 3800 BC (i.e. 5800 years ago), Neolithic period was in full swingHence it would seem to be grossly unfair for God to punish everyone alive both then and in the future, for Adam’s isolated transgression.
It therefore appears that if one is to believe in a long term creative process, it is impossible to believe that Adam was the first man, thus it becomes impossible to accept that all the Scriptures are accurate, especially some of the Genesis Scriptures. If on the other hand like I do, Christians do believe that all the Scriptures are literally accurate, then the theory of evolution becomes a complete anathema because it challenges Adam’s very existence. It is for this reason that certain Churches uphold the traditional Creation account of the Genesis Scriptures, as the only valid way that the Earth could have been created.
People therefore have three choices as to how they regard the Creation Scriptures. The first two are obvious but the third choice is what this paper is written about.
The first choice is to simply accept the Creationist view of how our world came into existence, without ever concerning oneself as to whether evolution actually took place and many Christians are able to do so and there is nothing wrong with this.
The second choice is to simply reject the Biblical account of Creation and accept the many alternative religions versions or the evolutionary theories as being the most logical alternative. I include in this group some of the Christian evolutionists, who try to get around the “Adam and Eve” quandary, but find themselves, assigning the Creation Scriptures to the allegorical. Some go even further and doubt the veracity of those early Genesis verses but in doing so, they are in danger of having to disagree with many other parts of the Bible.
This paper deals with the third choice, which is for those people like myself, who have massive problems with the evolutionary “mutation” theory, and who have also tried very hard to believe in the traditional Creationist views but find themselves troubled by both. I We strongly support the belief in Adam and thus some of us have tried to find scripturally accurate ways of aligning the Biblical account of creation with these old Earth creative theories but in attempting to do so have created our own Genesis Enigma.
The study I have done while producing this paper, has solved the problem as far as I am concerned and I hope that it will also solve the quandary for the readers too; laying an acceptable foundation for them not to be troubled with the possibility that some form of ancient creative process could be the same Creation account laid out in the first few chapters of Genesis.
This manuscript finds a way of aligning my acceptance of the accuracy of all the Creation Scriptures with recognition of the likelihood that some sort of long term Creation could have taken place. It recognizes that both viewpoints should not be contrary but could in fact be the same “creative happening” viewed from two different positions.
However, before I can weld the two different concepts together, I need to challenge Creationists to answer a difficult question. What if the first three chapters of Genesis are literally the true account of how mankind came into being, not poetic or allegorical literature, but that our time-honored understanding of what those Scriptures are actually telling us, is based on historical dogmatic tradition, based on Judaic traditions, rather than on what is in reality written in those verses regarding the Gentiles?
As I have mentioned, during its history, the Church has certainly made other dogmatic mistakes in erstwhile areas of perceived doctrinal importance, like its insistence in the not too distant past that the Earth was flat and that it was also the center of the Universe. In those days these “facts” were not just light topics of interest but fundamentally important doctrines, as important to them as Creationism is to Christians today. We now understand the Scriptures in a different way from our forefathers, who used them to support their innocent misunderstanding of the Universe and our place in it. So, could an alternative understanding of Genesis 1:26, Genesis 2:4 and Genesis 5:1, lead us to different but Biblically accurate interpretation of Creation; that would allow for a God centered and powered creative process to have taken place? Will future Christians look back at today’s traditional Creationists in the same way that we look back at our flat Earth and geocentric believing forefathers?
Though I realize that my conclusions offer a wildly alternative perspective on Biblical Creation, I have decided to present them to you for your acceptance, criticism or rejection, because I am not the sort of person to put aside a thought for fear of man’s wrath.
Would you like me to continue?

 

[HypnoToad]

So far, there really isn't anything against "creationism", so there really isn't much problem to continuing.

One suggestion, you might want to make your font one size smaller, and put a blank line in between paragraphs. The way you have it now is really a pain to read.

 

[juvenissun]

before I can weld the two different concepts together, I need to challenge Creationists to answer a difficult question. What if the first three chapters of Genesis are literally the true account of how mankind came into being, not poetic or allegorical literature, but that our time-honored understanding of what those Scriptures are actually telling us, is based on historical dogmatic tradition, based on Judaic traditions, rather than on what is in reality written in those verses regarding the Gentiles?

I don't see a question in this IF.

Would you like me to continue?

Sure. Please.

 

[cleminson]

Part 2.

In 1976 I became one of three founder members of what has grown from a handful of people to become one of the largest Churches in the UK with over 800 spirit filled, fundamentalist, Creationist members (large in the UK). I believe that God created all life; however, starting over twenty years ago there was still conflict in my mind regarding “creationist science” versus “evolutionary science”. Which led me to the question, What if the traditional way that I had been taught the Christian version of Creation was not accurate? If my Biblical education on how the Earth and life was created was mistaken, then where would my beliefs stand? From this premise I asked myself the single most important question, what would happen to my faith if I accepted that some form of God driven, long term creative process actually did take place? I hated the concept of evolution and still do because it avers that life got to where it is today because of a mutation process in genes. Mutation! Our God is not a mutationist!!!

I quickly realized that there was a real problem if a long-term creative process was a reality. Because then it was seemingly impossible or highly improbable, that Adam and Eve could have been the first humans alive on Earth. Therefore, were Adam and Eve just part of a greater worldwide population or even worse, was there a possibility that they did not live at all? My biggest fear was that they did not exist. For if their existence was just a myth made up by a primitive people trying to understand where mankind came from and if we did not all descend from Adam, thus inheriting his rebellious sin nature, then there was no need for Christ to have died on the Cross to save us from sin and yet His Crucifixion is at the hub of all Christian belief.

I believed that the answer to this question must lie somewhere in the Scriptures but the assertion from well meaning Christians, “Don’t be led astray by this kind of thinking. Only believe in the scientifically proven, traditional and Biblically correct Christian teaching on Creation”, was just not good enough.

Something was wrong, Could it be the Churches rejection of the evolutionary sciences? No! Because my heart, mind and soul were telling me that the Bible could not be wrong. I then wondered if Scripture could actually support this “blasphemous” science, without us being aware of it, even though all of the historical Church teaching went against it?

As I sought for the answer, I was comforted when I noticed that the leap in my new thinking was potentially no bigger than the jump that the Church had finally made when they accepted the principles of a “globe shaped Earth”, as well as Copernicus and Galileo’s heliocentric theory as being valid works of science and not anti-scriptural blasphemies.

At first I was troubled with what I was gleaning in Genesis, because I found that I was uncovering too many uncomfortable questions. This caused me to stop studying that part of the Bible and move on to more conventional and “safer” areas. However, I found that I could not put aside the doubts about the age of the Earth and found myself returning time and time again to those difficult scriptures, to confront the battle raging between my heart and mind about the Church’s teaching on creation. “There is nothing new under Heaven or Earth, why has this not been part of Church credo in the past”? Or “The Church has thrived for over two thousand years and this has never come up before?” or “Why bring out this theory at a time when the Church is under attack from anti-Creationist teachings?” I hope to answer these questions and show that a “God driven, long term creative process” could never be an attack on the Word of God. Any genuine discovery that man can make will be confirmed by or at least not conflict with scriptures.

Which leads me onto how I came into my theory. In 1986 I stumbled upon a verse in Genesis that I had read many times before but which suddenly leapt from the page and stopped me in my tracks; it just did not seem to make sense. This verse was Genesis 2:4-7, “These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created in the day that Jehovah God made the earth and the heavens. And every shrub of the field was not yet on the earth, and every plant of the field had not yet sprung up, for Jehovah God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no man to till the ground. But there went up from the earth a mist and watered all the face of the ground. And Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul”.

These verses seemed to state that a man was created by God before He created vegetation and they appeared at first to contradict Genesis 1:26, where mankind was created by God as the last act of creation, on the sixth “day”, after He had created the vegetation. How could Adam have been created before the plants, when according to Genesis 1:11-13 the plants were created on the third “day”? “And God said, Let the earth bring forth tender sprouts (the herb seeding seed and the fruit tree producing fruit after its kind, whose seed is in itself) upon the earth; and it was so. And the earth brought forth tender sprouts, the herb yielding seed after its kind, and the tree producing fruit after its kind, whose seed was in itself. And God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the third day.”

God created plants on the third “day”, but according to Genesis 2:4-7 He seems to have created Adam in the same time period that he created the Heavens and the Earth and certainly before He created the plants and animals. Therefore according to this Scripture, it seemed to me that Adam was created at the beginning of the third period of creation? Yet in Genesis1: 27-31 scripture tells us that man was created on the sixth “day”, “And God created man in His image; in the image of God He created him. He created them male and female. And God blessed them. And God said to them, be fruitful, and multiply and fill the earth, and subdue it. And have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the heavens, and all animals that move upon the earth. And God said, Behold! I have given you every herb seeding seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree seeding seed; to you it shall be for food”.

These people seem to have been created after there was already vegetation and animals on the Earth and the command given to them by God to fill the Earth was different to the command that God gave to Adam to tend the Garden. Why did there appear to be a conflict in these Scriptures? Was it poetic license as some Christians teachers suggested or was there a real difference between Adam who had been formed when God, in Genesis 2:7 “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul”, and the humans created on the sixth “day”, where we read in Genesis 1:27, “And God created man in His image; in the image of God He created him”?

Is there a difference between the “living soul” in the Adamic lineage formed in Genesis 2:7 and the human beings (He created them male and female) described as “man” in the human lineage, created in Genesis 1:27? After all, we are told in Genesis 3:20 that Adam “called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living”. Does this mean that she was the mother of all living creatures including the animals, for they are surely living? Certainly not! But, if she was not the mother of all living creatures, what does “living” mean. Does it mean that she was the mother of all mankind only and that the other living animals were not really alive? Or does the fact that the Bible calls her the mother of all living, mean that was she the mother of a “spiritually living”, separate people, who had the “breath of God” in them and had “spiritual life”, who could walk and talk to Him, have companionship with Him and therefore differed from all the other life forms, including the rest of mankind, who themselves differed from the animals in that they had souls?

In 1 Corinthians 15:45 we are told, “So also it is written, the first man Adam became a living soul. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit”. The life that Christ gives mentioned in this scripture, is given to people that are already “alive” but is different from the life that we receive at conception. It is this second “life” that is the same as the spiritual life that Adam had before the fall.

Adam and his offspring were so different from the rest of mankind that God only had dealings with these “chosen people”, right through the Bible from Genesis to the New Testament, from Adam until after Jesus’ death on the Cross. Why if God’s chosen people were the whole of creation, do we only get a profile of the Israelites and those who impacted upon them? Was it because He wanted His people, His “chosen race”, to be the vehicle whereby the rest of mankind should be brought to Him? The Jews still believe today that they are that vehicle and what is more, Jesus also believed it in His time on Earth. He believed that the Jews were God’s chosen people but also that He, Jesus, was that vehicle, whose sole purpose for being on the Earth, was to become the final sacrifice that God would make to give back to the Jews and finally the Gentiles, the opportunity of Eternal Life, which was lost when Adam rebelled against God in the Garden. The Jews and gentiles that accepted his “new life” are the new children of God.

I still have quite a way to go to prove my theory but it will not all fit into one thread.

May I continue?

 

[juvenissun]

Do I create a new thread each time I post a new section of my Creationist theory or do I stich with the original thread?

I think that will depends on the theme of your "theory" or argument. And it is the question I have so far. Just in this second post, I see at least several points of discussion. But I am not sure which one to take. So, one thread or several threads, it would depends on the focus of your theory.

What if the traditional way that I had been taught the Christian version of Creation was not accurate? If my Biblical education on how the Earth and life was created was mistaken, then where would my beliefs stand?

Well, that is the stake we have to take. There is no free lunch. I am in academics and in science for my whole life. And I stick to the literal reading of the Scripture. So far, I have only question to what's said in Genesis (a lot of questions, in fact). But I have no doubt, not a single one. The gracious God has not disappointed me yet on my stand. I think I am in much better shape than those TE people regards to the theology of origin. In comparison, a literal reading on the Genesis makes more sense. In fact, your worry is more likely the one for them, not for us.

May I continue?

Do you mean that we have to exhaust the discussion on what you have posted in order to continue? If so, then we might stay on this second post for a very long time.

 

[cleminson]

Part 3.
This work comes from a number of Bible studies that I have undertaken over 22 years. I am clearly not a TE because I do believe in the literal Adam and Eve. The problem is that I believe that the Bible allows for a longer than six day creation. I also believe that Adam was created on the third "day" and mankind on the sixth.
However the classic TE problem occurs here, for if when Adam appeared on this Earth there were other people present, then how could God have punished all mankind for one man's transgression?
It has been the application of the first sin doctrine that caused me so much time and I now believe that I have an answer to it.

I will cut to the chase and give you the differences that I have found between the Adamic line and mankind. These differences are real and prove that Adam and mankind were two different creations at different times.

Plants were created in the third period as written in Genesis 1:11-13, and yet in Genesis 2:5-7 Adam was created before the plants. “And every shrub of the field was not yet on the earth, and every plant of the field had not yet sprung up, for Jehovah God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no man to till the ground. But there went up from the earth a mist and watered all the face of the ground. And Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. “

However, mankind was created at the end of sixth period. Genesis 1:26-31 “And God said, Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the heavens, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over all the creepers creeping on the earth. And God created man in His image; in the image of God He created him. He created them male and female. And God blessed them. And God said to them, be fruitful, and multiply and fill the earth, and subdue it. And have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the heavens, and all animals that move upon the earth. And God said, Behold! I have given you every herb seeding seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree seeding seed; to you it shall be for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the heavens, and to every creeper on the earth, which has in it, a living soul every green plant is for food; and it was so. And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day”.

Adam was formed out of the dust of the earth and God’s breath. He had God’s breath of life in him and that made him a very special individual, a living soul, as in Genesis 2:7 “And Jehovah God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it.”

Mankind however was told to populate and subdue the entire world, in Genesis 1:28-30. “And God blessed them. And God said to them, be fruitful, and multiply and fill the earth, and subdue it. And have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the heavens, and all animals that move upon the earth. And God said, Behold! I have given you every herb seeding seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree seeding seed; to you it shall be for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the heavens, and to every creeper on the earth which has in it a living soul every green plant is for food; and it was so.”

Adam was alive when God created the trees in the Garden of Eden including both the Tree of Life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Genesis 2:9 “And out of the ground Jehovah God caused to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food. The tree of life also was in the middle of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.” Mankind was created long after the trees were created in the world and they had no contact with the trees in the Garden of Eden.

Adam was given a restricted diet and told not to eat the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, as mentioned in Genesis 2:17 “but you shall not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. For in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” Adam was also given instructions for a vegetarian diet, which applied to all his descendants until after the flood, whereas mankind was already eating meat.

God further draws our attention to the difference between Adam and mankind when He puts the dietary restriction on Adam regarding the Tree of Life but allows mankind to eat every fruit that grew from plants, as seen in Genesis 1:29-30, “And God said, Behold! I have given you every herb seeding seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree seeding seed; to you it shall be for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the heavens, and to every creeper on the earth which has in it a living soul every green plant is for food; and it was so.” In summary Adam was not allowed to eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, whereas mankind was commanded by God to eat from all the trees.

Adam was created alone to be a witness to God’s creation and at first his only companion was God. Genesis 2:18 “And Jehovah God said, it is not good that the man should be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” However, when God created mankind, He created male and female at the same time, as seen in Genesis 1:27 “And God created man in His image; in the image of God He created him. He created them male and female.”

Adam was created before all other living creatures; in fact he was asked by God to name them in Genesis 2:19 “And out of the ground Jehovah God formed every animal of the field and every fowl of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name.” I

In comparison, mankind was created after the animals. Genesis 1:25-26, “And God made the beasts of the earth after its kind, and cattle after their kind, and all creepers upon the earth after their kind. And God saw that it was good. And God said; Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the heavens, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over all the creepers creeping on the earth.” Whereas mankind was the last part of His creation and all that he had created before, was for their benefit. He was very pleased with his final part of creation as we read in Genesis 1:31 “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.”

Eve was made from Adam’s rib long after Adam was formed. Genesis 2:22 “And Jehovah God made the rib (which He had taken from the man) into a woman. And He brought her to the man.” In comparison mankind’s women were made at the same time that their men were. Genesis 1:27 “And God created man in His image; in the image of God He created him. He created them male and female.”

The following passage shows a very important difference between Adam’s offspring (the sons of Adam) and the rest of mankind. If all of mankind had come from Adam, then the following passage in scripture does not make sense, because all mankind would have been called “sons of Adam” and we would have all had the same inheritance. Deuteronomy 32:8 “When the most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.” From what did He separated the sons of Adam? It could have only been from Mankind for if Mankind came from Adam they would also have been the sons of Adam and the separation would have been impossible.

The sons of men did not start calling out to God until at the time of Seth’s son – Enos, as seen in Genesis 4:26 “and to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enos, then began men to call upon the name of the LORD.” So there was another difference between the “sons of God” and the rest of mankind. The “sons of God” should have had a constant relationship with their Heavenly Father, through an existing inherited relationship but the rest of humankind did not start calling out to the true God until after Enos was born.

The sons of God were a unique group of people; they lived much longer than the rest of mankind. Methuselah lived to be nine hundred and sixty nine years old. On the other hand, as far as archaeologists can tell, humankind lived for about fifty years.

Adam was created at first to get his companionship from God but when God saw that Adam needed other friendship, He created animals of both sexes as companionship for Adam. In Genesis 2:20 we are told “ And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found a help meet for him.”

It was only after that God saw that Adam was still needed a helpmeet, that he formed Eve from one of Adam’s ribs, whereas mankind was created male and female from the beginning, so that they had companionship with one another from the start.

When creating mankind, God uses the word “make” to describe the creation method which is Hebrew is ‛aśah or aw-saw’meaning; to do or make. However, in Genesis 2:7, when God formed Adam, the word “formed” is used, which is “ya tsar” or yaw-tsar’in Hebrew, which has a meaning of squeezing into shape.

These differences are crucial to the understanding of the differences between Adam and mankind

 

[HypnoToad]

Plants were created in the third period as written in Genesis 1:11-13, and yet in Genesis 2:5-7 Adam was created before the plants. “And every shrub of the field was not yet on the earth, and every plant of the field had not yet sprung up, for Jehovah God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no man to till the ground. But there went up from the earth a mist and watered all the face of the ground. And Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.“

You seem to assume there were NO plants - that's not what the text says. It states, "every shrub wasn't there ... every plant wasn't there."

Why read that as "no" plants at all? Suppose you go to a meeting, it's about time to start, so you ask someone, "should we start the meeting?" They reply, "not yet, everyone isn't here yet." Does that mean there is NO ONE there? No, it only means SOME aren't there yet. Likewise, "every plant wasn't there," only means some, not all, were absent.

Further, do you notice what is present in chap.2 that isn't in chap.1 in regards to these plants? The phrase "of the field" - this is specifically about a certain group of plants being absent, not all plants - only the cultivated plants, the plants used for crops weren't growing yet. This is also shown by the reason given that they hadn't grown yet - no rain and no man. What do crops need? Water and a farmer to grow/cultivate them.

The description given is clearly about crops, not all plants, so there's no reason to read any discrepancy here between chs 1 & 2.

Adam was alive when God created the trees in the Garden of Eden including both the Tree of Life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Genesis 2:9 “And out of the ground Jehovah God caused to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food. The tree of life also was in the middle of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.” Mankind was created long after the trees were created in the world and they had no contact with the trees in the Garden of Eden.

Again, ch.1 is about the earth as a whole, ch.2 is about trees of the garden.

Adam was given a restricted diet and told not to eat the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, as mentioned in Genesis 2:17 “but you shall not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. For in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” Adam was also given instructions for a vegetarian diet, which applied to all his descendants until after the flood, whereas mankind was already eating meat.

On what Scripture do you base "mankind was already eating meat"?

God further draws our attention to the difference between Adam and mankind when He puts the dietary restriction on Adam regarding the Tree of Life but allows mankind to eat every fruit that grew from plants, as seen in Genesis 1:29-30, “And God said, Behold! I have given you every herb seeding seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree seeding seed; to you it shall be for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the heavens, and to every creeper on the earth which has in it a living soul every green plant is for food; and it was so.” In summary Adam was not allowed to eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, whereas mankind was commanded by God to eat from all the trees.

You are confusing a general rule with a universal rule. Again, ch.1 is the big picture. Ch.2 is simply more specific.

Adam was created before all other living creatures; in fact he was asked by God to name them in Genesis 2:19 “And out of the ground Jehovah God formed every animal of the field and every fowl of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name.” I

In comparison, mankind was created after the animals.

You are forcing the text into too narrow a view. The language of ch.2 does not force animals being made after man. A perfectly allowable rendering is, "and God HAD formed out of the ground and NOW brought them ...."

Consider the statement, "my father built a model car and showed it to me when I was twelve years old."

Now, according to that statement, when did my father build the model car?

The answer - unknown. The sentence doesn't specify when it was built, it only specifies when it was shown. The same principle applies to the statement about animals in Gen.2 - it doesn't specify when they were MADE, it only specifies when they where SHOWN.

Eve was made from Adam’s rib long after Adam was formed. Genesis 2:22 “And Jehovah God made the rib (which He had taken from the man) into a woman. And He brought her to the man.” In comparison mankind’s women were made at the same time that their men were. Genesis 1:27 “And God created man in His image; in the image of God He created him. He created them male and female.”

Again, ch.1 is the whole picture - talks about the creation of man and woman as a whole. Ch.2 is just giving more precision as to the sixth day.

Suppose Thursday at 9:00 am I bake a loaf of bread, and then at 4:00 pm I cook steaks.

I can say, "on Thursday I ate bread and steak." I can also say, "Thursday morning I ate bread; Thursday evening I ate steak." The two statements are equally true and do not contradict each other.

The following passage shows a very important difference between Adam’s offspring (the sons of Adam) and the rest of mankind. If all of mankind had come from Adam, then the following passage in scripture does not make sense, because all mankind would have been called “sons of Adam” and we would have all had the same inheritance. Deuteronomy 32:8 “When the most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.” From what did He separated the sons of Adam? It could have only been from Mankind for if Mankind came from Adam they would also have been the sons of Adam and the separation would have been impossible.

Why read it as "separated from others", rather than "separated from each other"?

The sons of men did not start calling out to God until at the time of Seth’s son – Enos, as seen in Genesis 4:26 “and to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enos, then began men to call upon the name of the LORD.” So there was another difference between the “sons of God” and the rest of mankind. The “sons of God” should have had a constant relationship with their Heavenly Father, through an existing inherited relationship but the rest of humankind did not start calling out to the true God until after Enos was born.

They "should have"? You are just speculating with this one.

The sons of God were a unique group of people; they lived much longer than the rest of mankind. Methuselah lived to be nine hundred and sixty nine years old. On the other hand, as far as archaeologists can tell, humankind lived for about fifty years.

More speculation, there's nothing in Scripture giving any kind of age difference between godly and ungodly people.

When creating mankind, God uses the word “make” to describe the creation method which is Hebrew is ‛aśah or aw-saw’meaning; to do or make. However, in Genesis 2:7, when God formed Adam, the word “formed” is used, which is “ya tsar” or yaw-tsar’in Hebrew, which has a meaning of squeezing into shape.

At most, implies a different writer, not different events. Have you heard about the Tablet Theory? Very interesting as to who (possibly) wrote ch.1 and who wrote ch.2. It's possible that Adam wrote portions of Genesis, including the ch.2 account of creation, and that the ch.1 account was written by God Himself (in the same manner He wrote on stone tablets for Moses).

 

[Molal]

Please keep to the same post and don't start a new thread for each section. It fills up the forum quickly displacing other threads.

Thank you guys.

 

[cleminson]

Part 4.
Thanks Molai, will do.

To answer Hypnotoad, I first need to give some background to myself. I have been involved in UK politics at constituency level for a few years and have become aware of the desire amongst politicians of different flavours and in different countries, to find a way of getting round the problem of teaching evolution in schools to pupils who come from fundamentalist backgrounds in the three monotheistic religions; without compromising their own evolutionary curricula.

I sent all my four children to one of the best private schools in the UK (very expensive but worth it), where Christian fundamental doctrine was preached with a strict adherence to the traditional 24 hour, six day creation. This did not bother me even though I was starting to lean towards the possibility that each “day” might in fact be eons. I have spent 22 years studying Genesis and have spoken to professors in some of the largest and most well known Bible colleges in the USA and the UK about my beliefs; none have said that my thoughts are blasphemous or anti-scriptural. Some disagree and have said that they do not find my thinking convenient.

I have been asked to précis a 76 A4 page document that I have written and give it to senior politicians for their perusal, from it I hope to speak to them about the possibility that when evolution is taught in schools in this country, teachers do not teach that evolution happened through “gene mutation” but that certain religions believe that God either created everything in six days or that God created it all through a process that might have taken billions of years. As long as the words “gene mutation” is used it will anger the three monotheistic religions.

Now to get back to your questions I do not believe that the vegitation first created were in this world but in Eden a spiritual place, so getting into discussions on this subject needs to wait until you see what I have gleaned from scriptures over 22 years.

Here is a possible scenario that I am drawing closer to: This is what I have gleaned from my search through the Bible.

Before the first period of creation, Satan and his hosts committed an act of rebellion and were cast out of God’s spiritual Heaven into a lower and separate place, a place partly spiritual and partly physical matter (earth but not the earth we know), especially created for them. This physicality bound them from entering the purely spiritual place that is God’s abode. This new part physical mysterious dimension was a prison of chaos and darkness, where the fallen angels were locked in chains until judgment day. These could be literal chains or they could refer to their new partly physical state. Only two places existed, Heaven, which is purely a spiritual place and Satan’s jail, which was a mixture of matter (earth) and spirit, made up of shapeless, chaotic, dark and raging deep waters. A place that God called earth, not our Earth but a place that is invisible to us but was to be situated on, within or roundabout our purely physical Planet.

So there exists three plains of existence, firstly God’s Heaven, which is purely spirit. Secondly, that first earth, which is a mixture of spirit with matter and is Satan’s prison but also the “place” where the Garden of Eden exists. The third place was not created until the forth period of creation and is purely matter, consisting of our Universe, within which we exist in our physical forms on our planet Earth.

Going back to the creation of the second of God’s heavens (partly spirit and partly earth), we are told that God’s spirit moved on this prison, the formless chaotic waters; Light came and darkness was separated from the Light. Satan’s jail was subjected to God’s Light and his area of imprisonment shrank as Light took up a spatial position on this special place and God brought his regenerative and creative powers to act upon the chaos. He was to change a part of the shapeless dark morass, inhabited by the devil and his cohorts, into the Garden of Eden. For some reason Satan was still allowed to wander about within this place (his prison) in his new spiritual form but his minions, the fallen angels, were chained up and lost all power except for that which we give them through our own ignorance and fear.

This place existed before our universe was created; it was a spiritual and physical place, created to be a prison but was possibly to become the “seed of the Universe”.

God then continued with creation until the beginning of the third period of construction, when, with His breath and with the dust of the earth, he formed a partly spiritual Adam. He also created a spiritually protected Garden to the East of Eden, which was to be Adam’s home and our Paradise. No length of time is given for how long it took God to create Adam but after his forming he was told to work and keep this Garden.

So this part spiritual Earth at this time was both a spiritual prison for Satan and his hosts but within the safety of the Garden of Eden, where God’s Light was dominant, was a Paradise for Adam to look after. From his higher dimension Adam could have watched God create a lower physical Earth and could have witnessed God commanding the “mayim” to bring forth life, leading to all of creation. He could have seen the formation of the sun, moon and stars and seen the creation of all other life forms and watched and named the different life forms and observed as God changed the species until finally they resembled the creatures that inhabit our Earth today.

Then in the sixth period of creation, mankind came into existence, either possibly by a God driven creative process or on the other hand, an instant creative process. Until it is proved that Mankind came from a lower life form, I am willing to accept that they might have been created in an instant but I am not willing to accept that this period of Creation was when Adam was formed. However, whatever process God used to create mankind, during the sixth period of His Creation, God decided to call them both male and female and the Bible at this point says that God thought that His creation was very good.

Do not be surprised that Adam lived for so long before mankind appeared. Christians believe that they will live forever in heaven after they die physically, if this is possible, why could Adam not have lived for a mere few billion years before he fell? Time in God’s order can have no meaning to our carnal minds; our concept of time is limited by our restricted lifespan but Adam did spent a huge period of time in the Garden of Eden without any thought of his own mortality. What period of time it took for God to go from the third period of time, when He put Adam into the garden, to the time of Adams rebellion, we do not know at the present but during this time, he would have watched the Earth being changed from chaos to the more benign Earth that is our home.

After an unknown period of time, Adam rebelled against God’s commandment not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the “knowledge of good and evil” and after he had sinned, both he and Eve died to the innocent place they both had with God. This woman was not the Mitocondrial Eve mentioned earlier in my paper because mankind had already existed on the Earth for about one hundred and fifty thousand years before this and the mitochondrion gene comes from those people who were created at the end of the sixth period of creation. However, Adam and Eve were both driven from the Garden and access to the Tree of Life was removed from them, but awaits us in Heaven, Revelations 2:7 “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.”

They were forced out of Eden and descended to join mankind on Earth, an Earth where they needed to strive, hold together as family unit and work to survive. God did not cut off Adam and his offspring from fellowship with Himself but slowly the sons of God turned away from Him and their hearts became wicked. So God destroyed all the sons of God except for Noah, his sons and their wives.

Unfortunately we are told in Genesis that mans heart was still evil even after the Flood, in Genesis 8:21 scripture tells us “And the LORD smelled a sweet savor; and the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done”. Along with the good attitude towards God, some wrong attitudes survived the flood, through one of Adam’s sons; because of this the “bullies” of the pre-flood period came back into existence and remained until King David’s time.

Abraham, who was one of the sons of God, had such a close relationship with God that he naturally recognized Jehovah when He and two angels visited his tent before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham even tried to stop the destruction by arguing with Him.

The Law was given in Moses’ time, so there was a way into atonement and forgiveness for the children of God, the Israelites, but the law was not Gods final way for dealing with his peoples Adamic state and nature. He wanted to restore the “sons of God” life back to them and to do this He needed to sacrifice His Son so that that original Life could be restored to those of His people that responded to Him.

Before this could happen, God commanded them to maintain the purity of the original “sons of God” spiritual bloodline but this close relationship with God was slowly diluted as the sons of God amongst the children of Israel took wives outside of their faith and lineage.

As the children of Israel came closer to the time of Jesus Christ, John the Baptist and his family were close enough to God to hear His words on the imminent arrival of the “canceller” of Adams rebellion, the restorer of Life, the Messiah. Because of this, God used John to call the people to prepare the way for Jesus’ coming.

Later as the final act of making a way for the whole of mankind to come to Him, God used the Jews to crucify his only Son Jesus on the Cross. He had decided to do this difficult thing long before the Earth was formed because He knew that Adam would sin and die, causing rebellion against God to be part of the nature of the sons of God.

The crucifixion needed to be originated by the High Priest because that was the way that that He, through Moses, had decreed the act of sacrifice. So for Christians to blame the Jews for crucifying Christ is ridiculous, as it was God’s will that Jesus was to be sacrificed and like all important sacrifices, it had to be sanctioned by a Jewish High Priest.

I have expounded a Biblical account of all creation from Adam to mankind, showing two types of “sons of God”, the Old Testament sons of God who had varying relationships with their heavenly Father and like their father Adam, some chose to rebel against Him. In comparison the New Testament sons of God, are brought into a relationship with God by Jesus Christ and by God’s grace. The difference between the first sons of God and ourselves is that though we are capable of sin like them, we have Jesus who acts as our Advocate before God.

From this we can see God’s great love for mankind, showing that there is a way into His presence, though we are not necessarily from the original lineage of the sons of God. He spent hundreds of millions of years creating a scenario that He knew would result in the death of His only son. What His ultimate plan is, I do not know. However, He is drawing an unworthy people to Himself and in doing so, calls them “sons of God”. We are a people that were chosen and called to Him by his perfect Son, Jesus Christ to be lights in this world.

I hope that this explains where I am coming from and it would help if you could read the whole document which is unfortunately too long to fit into a thread (150,000 characters).

 

[HypnoToad]

Well, I see no basis for nearly everything you say about creation from the point, "this is what I've gleaned ...," onward.

 

[cleminson]

Part 5
Hi Hypnotoad. My last posting was part of the conclusion in a 76 A4 page paper, to let the readers know where I was going. I will now post 2 x 150,000 character postings per day onto this thread so that you can read and judge the whole.

Chapter One - The second posting in this Thread starts off Chapter one, so I will start where I ended.

What about the other great gentile civilizations of the world? None of them look upon Adam as their forefather. The Hindus belief probably started in the Indus Valley in India and goes back at least 5,000 years, more or less to the time that Adam died. Surely for a religion this old, if Adam had been their root, it would have appeared in their beliefs.
Buddhism, which is about two and a half thousand years old, has no belief in Adam and they also do not believe that God created everything in seven days.

These accounts of various creations differ all over the world and are mankind’s attempt to understand where they came from. As ancient as these various versions are, none, other than the Babylonian account, have any resemblance to the Genesis creation narrative. The way that the Jews and some of the people in the Middle East were originally created is different from how most of western mankind was originally created and yet we are all human beings. The Genesis account of Adam’s formation tells the historical narrative of some of the peoples in the Middle East first ancestor. It is unique to the Jews and some of the Islamic people, telling of their heritage. The story of Adam and Eve only becomes applicable to the rest of mankind as they recognize God’s calling and respond to the sacrifice that Jesus made first to give his people new life, then to the people in the rest of the World.

I do recognize that Adam and Eve were the original forefathers of the Jews, I also recognize that Adam fell from the spiritual place that was and is the Garden of Eden and at that moment he became a man. But the Adamic clan, though very special, was one of many tribes of humans alive on Earth. So much so that when Cain had to leave his home and enter into his banishment, he was frightened that some other tribe would kill him and so God put some sort of mark on to him that stopped his murder. The difference was that the Adamic line would give the rest of God’s created humanity a Savior, who would offer redemption to the whole of mankind, not only the Jews. Many of us Gentiles have taken the “Adamic” creation account on the third creation period as being our own, whereas our forefathers were created on the sixth period of Creation. This might seem controversial but we will delve deeper into this as we go into this paper.
We now need to address one of the main points of this manuscript; the great debates that have raged between religion and science over the years, with the ones about the Earth and its place in time and space being the most discordant.

As a young man, I had reservations about the veracity of the Creation scriptures and as a result, foundations for further doubt were laid in my mind about the accuracy of the rest of the Bible.

I can state categorically that since I have completed this paper, these doubts have gone. I have found a resolution to those uncertainties, which is not only scripturally acceptable but also reasonable and I am now persuaded that elements of the evolutionary sciences are not opposed to a different but possibly more accurate understanding of the Biblical Creation account.

This paper also declares that we should not be unhappy that scientists are delving into all the various aspects of God’s Universe, endeavouring to understand some of the physical attributes of His Creation. Remember how Pope John Paul II defined what a theory is, “A theory is a metascientific elaboration, its validity depends on whether or not it can be verified, it is constantly tested against the facts; wherever it can no longer explain the latter, it shows its limitations and unsuitability. It must then be rethought”.
These scientists will make mistakes in their theories but with so many individuals working on the various challenges, some will ultimately unravel the quandaries and in doing so, “discover” new aspects to His natural laws. Importantly, once one of these breakthroughs occurs, those scientists strive to find applications for it, which are of help to mankind.

During the Reformation, Galileo made a profoundly Christian statement in his great work the “Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems”, when he stated, “I conclude from this that our understanding, as well in the manner as in the number of things understood, is infinitely surpassed by the Divine; yet I do not thereby abase it so much as to consider it absolutely worthless. No, when I consider what marvellous things and how many of them men have understood, inquired into, and contrived, I recognize and understand only too clearly that the human mind is a work of God’s, and one of the most excellent.” As we know today, even though this conclusion was correct, some of Galileo’s other conclusions were incorrect; one of which was that he believed the Sun to be the center of the Universe. Yet despite what the Church thought at that time, he still made an enormous contribution to mankind and science.

I hope this manuscript touches those people that have sadly built a barrier inside their hearts against the Biblical Creation account. They would believe that they have made a logical choice to accept as true the evolutionary theories, which seemed to be a more likely option than Creationism.

I most certainly do not aim to bring confusion to those Christians who are secure in their own beliefs on Creation, nor cause division in the Church and upset people by offering Christians yet another alternative to the traditional Creation account. Christianity has survived for two thousand years believing in a six-day creation. It also survived for sixteen hundred years believing that the Earth was flat and seventeen hundred years, at least, believing that the Earth was the center of the Universe. It did not destroy the Church when they finally accepted the reality.

I therefore do not believe that conviction or lack of conviction in a six-day creation is going to destroy the Church either, as long as the Church continues to believe in the principles behind Adam’s death. Christians will either cling on to Creationism wholeheartedly or if they have grown up within the Church, they will simply “fudge” their beliefs rather than give up on the Church altogether. However for new converts, it can be perceived as a real violation of their intelligence to be expected to reject secular evolutionist ideas and accept traditional Creationist doctrines. Therefore, if belief in a six-day Creation is crucial before people can become Christians, then the Church is guilty of turning many away from Christianity, for outdated inaccurate doctrines. If Scripture can be shown not to disagree with parts of evolution, should not the Church rather accept the possibility that God used a type of evolution in some form or other as His creative process, thus making it easier for non-believers to accept the Gospel? Or has belief in Creationism become a badge of salvation?

Believing that the Book of Genesis is literal and factual, is a critical part of the Christian credo and the struggle that I had believing it, led to me read Genesis repeatedly, until suddenly Genesis 2:4-7 struck me as being slightly odd. It was that moment over twenty years ago, when the literal reality of those verses set in motion the epic study of the Scriptures that finally led to this paper. Through it all, I was wondering if the Bible would corroborate my theory, that some form of evolutionary process could have been God’s method of Creation. I am now totally convinced that it is very possible that this was how God chose to create our Universe over many billennium and if I am honest, as I searched scripture to find proof for my theory, I knew that I would find it; I had known from the very outset that the answer was there. My interpretations might not be popular to most but they have led me to a different and very contented understanding of the way that mankind came into being and more importantly, my beliefs are not threatened by my thought processes any more.

Leading on from this, I do not regard this paper as a revelation but rather a slow methodical process of scriptural elucidation that I went through over many years; line upon line of research, leading to precept upon precept, some being confirmed by Scripture and some going up “blind alleys”. This paper might be accused of being an interpretation that expresses my own ideas of Scripture, rather than the actual meaning of the text (eisegetical). I would respond to this charge that, though this paper is certainly different in its understanding of the Genesis Scriptures, I have not veered one iota from the actual meaning of the texts.

If the reader feels however that veering from the traditional interpretations that the Church has put on Scripture is always the wrong thing to do, I would remind them that, if this was the case, then Christianity; Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant, becomes foolish, because we would still be believing or trying to believe in the ridiculous doctrine that the world is flat and that all the Planets and Stars orbit this Earth, like our Christian forefathers did.

Remember it was not too long ago that our forefathers vehemently railed against all doubters, that “the accepted meaning of Scriptures” proved that the Earth was flat and that it was the center of the Universe; further more many also believed that the Heart was in fact the “center of thought” and the brain was just one of the organs that cooled the blood. In those not too distant days, these beliefs were fundamental to both Science and the Churches doctrine, with the real truth being anti-scriptural, lurid blasphemy and too shocking to contemplate.

Most Christian today, including myself, would think that an Earth centric Universe was ridiculous, even though there are no scriptures that deny this theory and appear to be sixty-seven that support it. Yet we turn our backs on the “simple minded” interpretation of these Scriptures and stretch our “righteous and intelligent” indignation to assign both Christian Tychonian theories and Christian evolutionist theories to perdition, even though there are at least thirty Scriptures that support the theory that God could have used evolution as His creative method and only tradition and poetic license that supports traditional Creationism.

Dare we consider ourselves to be better Christians than our forefathers or are we just more educationally enlightened? Remember that if any of our present great Creationist preachers, were taken back to Galileo’s time to stand in front of the leaders of either the Catholic or early Protestant Churches, he would have been scorned, called a blasphemer, they would have certainly doubted his salvation and he would have been told to renounce the theory that the Earth orbited our Sun. If he had continued in his “error”, telling people that he knew that the Earth really was not flat, that it was a globe and that it orbited the Sun, he would have probably been excluded by both the Catholic and Protestant Churches and his ability to communicate with the public would have been removed. If he had used Scriptures as we understand them today, to promote his theory, he would have been told that he was “twisting” the Word of God, veering from all scientific and Church tradition and he would have been scornfully treated for his beliefs. Is this not the same way that derision is contemptuously handed out to those Christians today, that dare to believe that Scripture allows for the possibility that evolution could have perhaps been used by God as His method for building the various life forms that we know today.

We should not be afraid to break with Christian traditions, if those traditions are no longer aligned with God’s Word or actions; after all, if those early Christians did not question the Churches firm belief that the Earth was flat and that the Sun and Stars circled the Earth, where would we Christians be today, with anatomy, astronomy, mapping and navigation?

Having said all this, I believe that it is right for the Church to be very wary of any new ideas, especially when they appear to go against all current teachings. I therefore present this theory, in the knowledge that it must be contested, but in the expectation that it is robust enough to challenge and then change thinking. I hope that this hypothesis will release Christians to see that it is possible that some form of evolution was the Creative process that was instigated by God, releasing them from the needless time and expense spent warring against the evolutionary theories, so that we can take all our scriptures forward with pride into the next millennium and onwards.

 

[HypnoToad]

All opinion. What you need to do is EXPLAIN how you come to your conclusions. The simple fact that "other religions don't mention it" is sorely lacking evidence. We believe them to be false religions for a reason.

I've already demonstrated that your objections to the Gen. text aren't really valid, and I've shown that you HAVE, in fact, "veered from the actual meaning of the text".

 

[cleminson]

Part 6.
Hypnotoad, the last thread was a piece of the conclusion in a 76 page document. I hope to show that my theory is a distict possibility.

Christians believe that Jesus required them, (previously the non-living) to become “new creatures”, and to become “new” they need to go through the process of coming into this “life”, through a process described by Jesus as “new birth” and in being “born again”. Once they have accepted Jesus as their redeemer, they become part of the “spiritual living” and therefore “children of God”. In John 3:3-9 we are told, “Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus saith unto him, how can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother's womb, and be born? Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water (natural birth) and of the Spirit (new birth), he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit. Nicodemus answered and said unto him, how can these things be?”

Jesus clearly says here that there are two types of people, those who are born only of the flesh and those who go on to be born of the Spirit; He even says that “normal” mankind did not know Him until He made them into a new type of human, a son of God. In John 1:10-13 we read, “He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”

My question was, if Jesus talked about two species of mankind, with the “born of God version” being a child of God, then could there have been two types of human beings from the start; the sons of God and the rest of mankind, those who came from the Adamic line and those who came from mankind?

The search for an answer was the beginning of a very exciting journey through the Scriptures, asking, could the Genesis scriptures be actually telling us that Adam, forefather of the chosen people, was created as a part spiritual being in the third period of creation but lived in a spiritual place called Eden and the rest of mankind created at the end of the sixth period of creation but living on our physical Planet? From this study came the conclusion that the original “chosen people” could have been created a completely separated race of human beings, different from the rest of mankind because they had come from a root that had once had “God’s Breath” as part of their makeup and had the ability to have fellowship with God.

Sadly over time most of these people rebelled against God and over generations lost relationship with Him, until finally it was only Abraham that was told by God to leave his own tribe, kindred and home and move to a Promised Land. Yet to assure as much purity in the Adamic line, Jacob was still told to return to Abraham’s homeland to get a wife from that original people.

Though today the Jewish people do not think of themselves as coming from a different lineage to the rest of humankind, the fundamentalists amongst them still regard themselves as the only “chosen race”. Jesus supported this premise and in his teachings He only preached to His people, the Jews. The rest of mankind could only be grafted onto the olive tree, at the time of their spiritual rebirth becoming new creatures as in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “So that if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new!” but this was only made available to us Gentiles after He returned to Heaven, as we can read in Romans 11:17, “And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a wild olive tree, wert grafted in among them, and with them partakest of the root and fatness of the olive tree; boast not against the branches.” Meaning that as certain parts of the Jewish nation had turned their backs on God and had therefore been severed from the original sons of God lineage, so those Gentiles that had been grafted on to the tree in place of the lost, should not boast to the branches that had always been there. Which is what we do when we assume that we also came from that original Adamic lineage.

It was wrong for the early Christians to believe that the “sons of God” did not exist amongst the Jewish people, because Paul tells the Roman Christians that they had been grafted onto an already living tree. Elijah thought that times were so bad that he was the only person in Israel that still followed God but God said that even though it looked bad, there were still seven thousand people left in Israel that still worshiped Him, as seen in 1Kings 19:14-18, “And he said, Being zealous, I have been zealous for Jehovah, God of Hosts for the sons of Israel have forsaken Your covenant; they have thrown down Your altars, and they have slain Your prophets by the sword; and I, I alone, am left; and they seek to take my life. And Jehovah said to him, Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus, and you shall go in and anoint Hazael as king over Syria; and you shall anoint Jehu the son of Nimshi as king over Israel; and you shall anoint Elisha the son of Shaphat, of Abel-meholah, as prophet in your place. And it shall be, he who escapes from the sword of Hazael, Jehu shall kill; and he who escapes from the sword of Jehu, Elisha shall kill. And I have left in Israel seven thousand, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him”.

The whole of the Old Testament are about the “children of God” and how they gradually turned away from Him forming new tribes. Like the Samaritans, who had fallen away from their relationships with God. Christ then came to save His people, the remnant of the original tribes, now called the Jews, from going further away from God.

We Gentiles have adopted this part of the Bible as our own Scripture and as such we assume that it is written for all of mankind; it was not! It was inspired by Him, but written for and by a people descended from a remnant of the original Adamic tribe, and the Laws and principles only become relevant to us Gentiles when we become Christians and therefore “new sons of God”. It was Paul who stood against the rest of the Disciples to proclaim that salvation was also for the Gentiles and then he took the message of Salvation them.

What about the other great gentile civilizations of the world? None of them look upon Adam as their forefather. The Hindus belief probably started in the Indus Valley in India andgoes back at least 5,000 years, more or less to the time that Adam was supposed to have been created. Surely for a religion this old, if Adam had been their root, it would have appeared in their beliefs.

Buddhism, which is about two and a half thousand years old, has no belief in Adam and they also do not believe that God created everything in seven days. The Buddhist view is that everything emanates from the Primordial expanse of Openness Clarity Sensitivity and what we see is actually an illusion. Buddhists would have no problem with life having evolved, as long as it was understood as a kind of unfolding of an illusion.
Adam and Eve have their counterparts in many beliefs, for example the Norse had Ask who was a tree and Embla who was a vine, before the gods changed them into a man and a woman. In the ancient Egyptian creation story, the Sun god Ra created mankind from his tears. In the Mayan creation story - Popol Vuh, created people out of corn. In the Babylonian account of Enuma Elish, humans were formed from the blood, veins and arteries of an executed god.

These accounts of various creations differ all over the world and are mankind’s attempt to understand where they came from. As ancient as these various versions are, none, other than the Babylonian account, have any resemblance to the Genesis creation narrative. The way that the Jews and some of the people in the Middle East were originally created is different from how most of western mankind was originally created and yet we are all human beings. The Genesis account of Adam’s formation tells the historical narrative of some of the peoples in the Middle East first ancestor. It is unique to the Jews and some of the Islamic people, telling of their heritage. The story of Adam and Eve only becomes applicable to the rest of mankind as they recognize God’s calling and respond to the sacrifice that Jesus made first to give his people new life, then to the people in the rest of the World.

I do recognize that Adam and Eve were the original forefathers of the Jews, I also recognize that Adam fell from the spiritual place that was and is the Garden of Eden and at that moment he became a man. But the Adamic clan, though very special, was one of many tribes of humans alive on Earth. So much so that when Cain had to leave his home and enter into his banishment, he was frightened that some other tribe would kill him and so God put some sort of mark on to him that stopped his murder. The difference was that the Adamic line would give the rest of God’s created humanity a Savior, who would offer redemption to the whole of mankind, not only the Jews. Many of us Gentiles have taken the “Adamic” creation account on the third creation period as being our own, whereas our forefathers were created on the sixth period of Creation. This might seem controversial but we will delve deeper into this as we go into this paper.

Though this manuscript is written from a Christian perspective, it also reaches out to people of the Jewish and Muslim faiths, offering an alternative understanding to those Creation Scriptures in Genesis. It also declares that we should not be unhappy that scientists are delving into all the various aspects of God’s Universe, endeavouring to understand some of the physical attributes of His Creation.

These scientists will make mistakes in their theories but with so many individuals working on the various challenges, some will ultimately unravel the quandaries and in doing so, “discover” new aspects to His natural laws. Importantly, once one of these breakthroughs occurs, those scientists strive to find applications for it, which are of help to mankind.

A couple of thousand years later, during the Reformation, Galileo made a profoundly Christian statement in his great work the “Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems”, when he stated, “I conclude from this that our understanding, as well in the manner as in the number of things understood, is infinitely surpassed by the Divine; yet I do not thereby abase it so much as to consider it absolutely worthless. No, when I consider what marvelous things and how many of them men have understood, inquired into, and contrived, I recognize and understand only too clearly that the human mind is a work of God’s, and one of the most excellent.” As we know today, even though this conclusion was correct, some of Galileo’s other conclusions were incorrect; one of which was that he believed the Sun to be the center of the Universe. Yet despite what the Church thought at that time, he still made an enormous contribution to mankind and science.

I hope this manuscript touches those people that have sadly built a barrier inside their hearts against the Biblical Creation account. They would believe that they have made a logical choice to accept as true the evolutionary theories, which seemed to be a more likely option than Creationism.

I most certainly do not aim to bring confusion to those Christians who are secure in their own beliefs on Creation, nor cause division in the Church and upset people by offering Christians yet another alternative to the traditional Creation account. Christianity has survived for two thousand years believing in a six-day creation. It also survived for sixteen hundred years believing that the Earth was flat and seventeen hundred years, at least, believing that the Earth was the center of the Universe. It did not destroy the Church when they finally accepted the reality.

I therefore do not believe that conviction or lack of conviction in a six-day creation is going to destroy the Church either, as long as the Church continues to believe in the principles behind Adam’s “first sin”. Christians will either cling on to Creationism wholeheartedly or if they have grown up within the Church, they will simply “fudge” their beliefs rather than give up on the Church altogether. However for new converts, it can be perceived as a real violation of their intelligence to be expected to reject secular evolutionist ideas and accept traditional Creationist doctrines.

If Scripture can be shown not to disagree with a God centered creative process that might have taken hundreds of millions of years to take place, should not the Church rather accept the possibility that God used this method as His creative process,thus making it easier for non-believers to accept the Gospel? Or has belief in Creationism become a badge of salvation?

 

[cleminson]

Part 7.
Hypnotoad, I will continue with the paper so that the readers may see the full theory. Hopefully it will become clear we as we go on.

Believing that the Book of Genesis is factual is a critical part of the Christian credo and the struggle that I had believing it, led to me read Genesis repeatedly, until suddenly Genesis 2:4-7 struck me as being slightly odd. It was that moment over twenty years ago; when the literal reality of those verses set in motion the epic study of the Scriptures that finally led to this paper. Through it all, I was wondering if the Bible would corroborate my theory, that some form of God driven long term creative process could have been God’s method of Creation. I am now totally convinced that it is very possible that this was how God chose to create our Universe over many billennium and if I am honest, as I searched scripture to find proof for my theory, I knew that I would find it; I had known from the very outset that the answer was there.My interpretations might not be popular to most but they have led me to a different and very contented understanding of the way that mankind came into being and more importantly, my beliefs are not threatened by my thought processes any more.


Leading on from this, I do not regard this paper as a revelation but rather a slow methodical process of scriptural elucidation that I went through over many years; line upon line of research, leading to precept upon precept, some being confirmed by Scripture and some going up “blind alleys”. This paper might be accused of being an interpretation that expresses my own ideas of Scripture, rather than the actual meaning of the text (eisegetical). I would respond to this charge that, though this paper is certainly different in its understanding of the Genesis Scriptures, I have not veered one iota from the actual meaning of the texts.


If the reader feels however that veering from the traditional interpretations that the Church has put on Scripture is always the wrong thing to do, I would remind them that, if this was the case, then Christianity; Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant, becomes foolish, because we would still be believing or trying to believe in the ridiculous doctrine that the world is flat and that all the Planets and Stars orbit this Earth, like our Christian forefathers did.


Remember it was not too long ago that our forefathers vehemently railed against all doubters, that “the accepted meaning of Scriptures” proved that the Earth was flat and that it was the center of the Universe; further more many also believed that the Heart was in fact the “center of thought” and the brain was just one of the organs that cooled the blood. In those not too distant days, these beliefs were fundamental to both Science and the Churches doctrine, with the real truth being anti-scriptural, lurid blasphemy and too shocking to contemplate.

We should not laugh too loudly at this for in 1975, the world-renowned astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle, threw an intellectual spanner into the works when he with “tongue in cheek”, appeared to support the theoretical possibility of a geocentric Universe, when he made this observation in his work “Astronomy and Cosmology”, "We know that the difference between a heliocentric theory and a geocentric theory is one of relative motion only, and that such a difference has no physical significance."

Most Christian today, including myself, would think that an Earth centric Universe was ridiculous, even though there are no scriptures that deny this theory and appear to be sixty-seven that support it. Yet we turn our backs on the “simple minded” interpretation of these Scriptures and stretch our “righteous and intelligent” indignation to assign both Christian Tychonian theories and Christian evolutionist theories to perdition, even though there are at least thirty Scriptures that support the theory that God could have used evolution as His creative method and only tradition and poetic license that supports traditional Creationism.


Dare we consider ourselves to be better Christians than our forefathers or are we just more educationally enlightened? Remember that if any of our present great Creationist preachers, were taken back to Galileo’s time to stand in front of the leaders of either the Catholic or early Protestant Churches, he would have been scorned, called a blasphemer, they would have certainly doubted his salvation and he would have been told to renounce the theory that the Earth orbited our Sun. If he had continued in his “error”, telling people that he knew that the Earth really was not flat, that it was a globe and that it orbited the Sun, he would have probably been excluded by both the Catholic and Protestant Churches and his ability to communicate with the public would have been removed. If he had used Scriptures as we understand them today, to promote his theory, he would have been told that he was “twisting” the Word of God, veering from all scientific and Church tradition and he would have been scornfully treated for his beliefs.


We should not be afraid to break with Christian traditions, if those traditions are no longer aligned with God’s Word or actions; after all, if those early Christians did not question the Churches firm belief that the Earth was flat and that the Sun and Stars circled the Earth, where would we Christians be today, with anatomy, astronomy, mapping and navigation?


Having said all this, I believe that it is right for the Church to be very wary of any new ideas, especially when they appear to go against all current teachings. I therefore present this theory, in the knowledge that it must be contested, but in the expectation that it is robust enough to challenge and then change thinking. I hope that this hypothesis will release Christians to see that it is possible that some form of evolution was the Creative process that was instigated by God, releasing them from the needless time and expense spent warring against the evolutionary theories, so that we can take all our scriptures forward with pride into the next millennium and onwards.

Chapter Two​

The Great Debates

Over the years I have come across several ways that people interpret, what to many are, the Bible’s enigmatic Genesis Creation Scriptures and generally the various credos and theories fall into four main groups.


The first group consists largely of people who believe that God created the Earth and all life, somewhere between four and seven thousand years ago. But vitally, that Creation took place over a six-day period and that each day was a traditional twenty-four hour length of time.


The second group consists of people who believe that God created the Earth over a much longer time period and that the Hebrew word “Yom”, sometimes translated as “day” in the various Bible translations, should have been translated as “periods of time” (in the creation story), not twenty-four hours in length but much longer eras of time. They would further state that each of these incorrectly translated “days” were in fact, tens of thousand, possibly millions and even perhaps billions of years in length.


These first two groups of believers would have doctrines that insist that today’s human, animal and plant life did not evolve but are now the genetically identical offspring of the various species that God created originally, in the beginning and on the relevant “day”.


The third group includes the supporters of Intelligent Design (ID), which is criticized by evolutionists as being a version of the first two groups differing only in that it avoids any mention of the “Biblical God”. Interestingly, ID adherents agree with both of the first two groups, in that they also believe individual species cannot have arisen from random chance and natural selection, because of their complex structures.


They therefore believe that each species alive on earth today, must be the result of deliberate design by some sort of super intelligence. Supporters of ID are free to accredit this “super design function” to the God of the Bible, to any other god, to spacemen or to any other form of higher intelligence. The supporters argue that ID represents a legitimate scientific alternative to evolution and should therefore be taught in schools.

However, in December 2005, a US court decision to ban the teaching of “intelligent design” in schools, was hailed by anti-creationism campaigners. In this ruling, the Judge rejected claims by former members of a school board (Dover, USA), that the theory of intelligent design was based around scientific rather than religious belief. He said, “Our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach “intelligent design” as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom.”


This sad and expensive court case is one of many that have taken place over the years and is the result of ideological and scientific clashes between two sets of people, who believe passionately in opposite sides of an argument.


According to a recent Harris pole, only 22% of adults in the USA believe that humans evolved from earlier species, and though it is improbable that this would be reflected in a worldwide survey, it is this worldwide group that makes up my fourth and final group who include, the “aware evolutionists” and the evolutionary scientists and the theistic evolutionists. People in this group have their own understandings of how first life appeared on this Planet but most agree on the basics of evolution. Amongst this group there is a certain amount of disagreement as to the “how” and to a degree, “when” it all happened but most of this group would believe that the traditional Genesis creation account portrays a primitive peoples understanding of how our Earth came into existence. At best a quaint story, blatantly not to be taken as a factual account of what really took place.


The Creation dispute has been raging for over a century and a half, in Churches, homes, classrooms and courtrooms. A time of court case upon court case, thrust and counter thrust, discovery and rebuttal. In this time, more and more people have aligned themselves with the secular perceptive in this fray. Although if polls are considered accurate, then the anti-evolution work that Christians are carrying out in the United States is having a significant effect on the way that Americans are thinking. A telephone poll taken by Harris in June 2005 from a sample of one thousand Americans, submitted that 54% of Americans do not believe that humans evolved, which is up 8% from the survey taken in March 1994, when it was 46% and also as already stated, 22% of adults in the USA believe that humans evolved from earlier species. What the Harris pole clearly shows us is that there is considerable confusion in many people’s minds about the facts of the Creation account in the Bible. Looking at the results I suspect that there are many thousands of people who do not wish to believe that they “evolved from apes” but at the same time do not believe in Adam and Eve.


I hope that this paper will help clarify the uncertainty, as it describes an alternative option, a fifth possibility and one that incorporates both Scripture and evolution as the theistic evolutionists believe but goes further by stating that Adam was initially created a spiritual person and was not made of matter as we are, only becoming physical after his dismissal from Eden.

This paper is based on a limited but sympathetic understanding of the evolutionary science as well as an in-depth and caring search of the Genesis Scriptures and has taken over two decades to formulate. It has led me to conclude that a different nevertheless Biblically supportive theory of the Genesis Scriptures that controversially expounds the possibility that a “God centered creative evolution”, could have taken place. This hypothesis is based on the supposition that our historical understanding of these Scriptures could be as mistaken, as it was for Christians in the 14th and 16th century, when they misunderstood the Scriptures regarding the shape of the Earth (flat Earth) and the Earth being the center of the Universe. A different interpretation of the Scriptures could in fact support an alternative understanding of the Creation account. After all, any manufacturing or creative process takes time, so why should God not have enjoyed using evolution as His creative process, taking many billennium, rather than six days to build this wonderful Earth that we live on? Many will answer, “NO, that could not have happened, the Bible says it happened in six days”; but does it?

 

[HypnoToad]

well, I'm done - if you can't address my statements much more simply than making read through your whole essay, I'm not interested, I'm not going to read all that

 

[cleminson]

Happy Birthday Hypnotoad. I am sorry that you will not stay with me on this one, and I hope that you will change your mind. Over the 49 years that I have called myself a spirit filled born again Christian, I have listened to and read the works of at least 30 world renowned preachers on the Creation story, I am known personally to a few.

Some of us are searching for ways of adhering to the literal reading of the Genesis Scriptures and my theory adds “spice” to the debate.
If it were possible to find a coherent solution to the first few Genesis Scriptures by arguing over the meaning of individual verses, I believe we would already have consensus. What I have done is ended up with 76 pages of theory that is all dependant on the whole, the whole is made up of 5 different Bible studies, the first on the time of Satan’s fall, the second on YE theology vs. OE theology, the third on Adams physical or spiritual creation and its timing, the forth was on the Original sons of God and finally the fifth was on the Land of Nod. I have spoken over the years to world renowned Christian and Jewish theologists and because it breaks away from the traditional doctrine except my total belief in Jesus and his saving grace, I have had silent support for my work. It is a theory not a doctrine and I have tried to précis it without making it boring but It is difficult.

I need to explain a total picture to make my theory seem rounded. And so to argue each element is irrelevant to the total picture. Only when all come together does it make sense. So when Hypnotoad quite rightly asked me about vegetation in creation as a support for my theory that Adam was firstly created as a “spiritual” being during the third period of creation, I cannot answer without looking at the sons of God and the Light that came on the first period of Creation and the Land of Nod. In other words I use the whole of Scripture to develop my theory and the theory only gathers strength and cohesiveness when the whole is read.

So I humbly ask that Hypnotoad will stay with me because he is a super moderator and I would value his final judgement, even if I might disagree with him in the end. At worst this work will give Bible scholars food for thought.

 

[cleminson]

Part 9.
Some Creationists are taking great notice and comfort from the arguments that ferment between the various evolutionist factions and their differing theories, about the creation of life on our Earth and the formation of the Universe. However, I would say to the Creationists that in every field of science there are always groups of scientists vying to prove that their theory is the correct one, this usually continues until eventually one is proved to be correct or a consensus is arrived at. So looking to justify Creationism because of an “argumentative science” is not a valid cause.

The first great debate about our Earth was between traditionalists and new thinkers, on the subject of whether the Earth was a globe. This was an issue in the 3rd and 4th centuries because, in support of the flat Earth theory, an early Church theologian named Lucius Lactantius (A.D. 260—330) who had probably converted to Christianity from paganism at the time of Emperor Constantine, asked in his work “Divine Institutes”, “How is it with those who imagine that there are antipodes opposite to our footsteps? Do they say anything to the purpose? Or is there any one so senseless as to believe that there are men whose footsteps are higher than their heads? Or that the things, which with us are in a recumbent position, with them, hang in an inverted direction? That the crops and trees grow downwards? That the rains, and snow, and hail fall upwards to theearth? And does any one wonder that hanging gardens (he alludes to the hanging Gardens of Babylon) are mentioned among the Seven Wonders of the World, when philosophers make hanging fields, and seas, and cities, and mountains? The origin of this error (an orb shaped Earth) must also be set forth by us. For they are always deceived in the same manner.” So there must have been people suggesting a globe shaped Earth for him to make this erroneous argument.

His doctrine stated that all humans were of one origin, all descended from Adam and Eve and all were capable of redemption by Christ, who was the Second Adam. The Bible did not say that the antipodeans existed, but the accepted theory at that time stated that if they did exist, then they would be impossible to get to because the sea was to too wide to sail over and that the equatorial regions were too hot to pass through. Logic further stated that because there could not therefore be a genetic connection to a people living there with Adam and Eve, it was impossible for anyone to live there.

Later in the seventh and eighth centuries when people debated a round Earth again, brilliant people in the Church declared that it must be flat. It could not be round because how could people living on the antipodean side of the Earth see the second coming of Christ. In the 6th century an Irish priest named Virgil, (or Ferghal in Ireland) had become Abbot-Bishop of Salzburg. He had a disagreement with a priest called Boniface (later St. Boniface) regarding the validity of a particular baptism he undertook, when the Latin used to perform this baptism on a converted pagan was not quite right. Fergal won this confrontation in the Pope’s presence, but this laid a foundation of mistrust in Boniface towards Virgil. In his earlier years in Ireland, Fergal had been recognized for his knowledge of astronomy and mathematics. His knowledge in a world where little was known about our physical Earth, far outstripped his contemporaries. He was sure that the Earth was round and that it was very possible that people lived on the far side of it. This theory of his was common knowledge in Salzburg, but in 748 Boniface, saw his chance to get his own back and miss quoted Virgil on one of his “round Earth” theories. Accusing him before Pope Zachary of vague and false teachings about men living on the far side of the world who were not of a race that was descended from Adam and that Christ could therefore not redeem them. Virgil was cleared and amazingly, Pope Zachary (who was Pope from 721 – 752), concluded that it might be possible that the Earth was indeed an orb but pronounced that if the Earth was round, it was not possible for people to live on the opposite side of the Earth to Jerusalem, because if they did, they would miss the second coming of Jesus Christ.

In the beginning of the fifteenth century, a senior Spanish theologian named Tostatus, one of the great “brains” of his time, pronounced as “unsafe” that the world was an orb. Born in Madrigal, Castile, about 1400, he entered the University of Salamanca, where he studied philosophy, theology civil law, canon law, Greek and Hebrew, as well as the other subjects in the curriculum of the university. He had a brilliant mind and an unusually retentive memory, to the point that his contemporaries called him “the wonder of the world”. He paraphrased St. Augustine by stating “The apostles were commanded to go into all the world, to preach the gospel to all mankind”. In his logic based on the traditional acceptance of Scripture, he stated that because the apostles did not go to a place on the far side of the Earth to preach, the antipodes (place at opposite side of the world) could not exist. So at that time it can be seen that incorrectly understanding Scriptures followed logical intelligent customs based on the Ptolemaic traditions and was not just the domain of the foolish.

The second great debate was about whether the Earth was the center of the Universe and whether the Sun, stars and planets orbit the Earth. As early as the ninth or eighth century BC the ancient Indian “scientist” Yainavalka recognized that the Earth was spherical. He further believed that the Sun was “the center of the spheres”. He stated “The sun strings these worlds – the earth, the planets, the atmosphere – to himself on a thread.” He also understood that the Sun was much larger than the Earth and that the relative distances of the Sun and the Moon from the Earth was 108 times the diameters of these orbs, which is unbelievable close to our modern measurements 110.6 for the Moon and 107.6 for the Sun.

In the west, during the sixth century BC, it is thought, though not proven, that Pythagoras and Philolaus could have suggested the Earth and planets rotated around a central fire, the Sun. Three centuries later however, Aristarchus of Samos, a Greek astronomer and mathematician was met with the first antagonism between tradition and science, when he claimed that the Sun and not the Earth was at the center of the Universe. Archimedes’ brought a charge of error against him through his work “The Sand-Reckoner” and similar criticisms were made by learned men of that time.

This “heavy weight” reaction brought six hundred years of virtual silence in the west on this issue, until in the fifth century AD, the heliocentric theory re-emerged with Martianus Capella’s thoughts in his Eighth Book where he describes a model of heliocentric astronomy in which the Earth, Venus and Mercury orbit the sun.The theory seems to disappear again in the west until in the fifteenth century, when once again it re-emerged in the writings of Cardinal Nicholas de Cusa (1401–1464). De Cusa’s astronomical views are scattered throughout his many idealistic expositions. They broke away from traditional thoughts of that era and so were not founded on any form of accep ted science for that or this time. They were based on the symbolism of numbers, combinations of letters, and other such theories, rather than optical observations of the Universe. He thought that the earth was a star like all other stars and as such was not the center of the universe.

After de Cusa, it seemed to go quiet for a time but reappeared a few decades later in the sixteenth century with Copernicus’ work. I am sure that had Copernicus (1473-1543) been aware of de Cusa’s declarations, he would have included a reference to it in the theories in his own work because he did mention the older findings of Martianus Capella, in his first volume of his work, the “De revolutioibus orbium coelestium”, unless he felt that de Cusa’s work was too fanciful.

Following on from Copernicus, came Galileo’s theory and the final scientific proof with his observations through the telescope. Though even with this irrevocable truth, the Church still managed to claim that it was a falsehood, because the Bible said otherwise, or so they thought.

Theological reasoning’s, backed by the erroneous application of Biblical texts and all the traditional Church and scientific concepts, demanded that the Earth was the center of the Universe. The Church was firmly attached to the Ptolemaic view of the Universe, so much so that the system was considered by both science and the Church to be invulnerable to attack and any attempt to question or assault it was considered a great blasphemy.

We can now look at our reaction to these great scientific theories and are uncomfortable that our forefathers should have had such a narrow view of our Universe. However, comparing the Flat Earthist’s and the Geocentrist’s of the past, to the Creationist’s of today, we can see that all three of the proponent groups show anger at what they have considered to be mistaken science and theology. All three generations of Christians have desired to help purveyors of the opposite and “false theories” to return to the “religious and scientific truths”.

The Third Great Debate regards the age of the Earth and the veracity of Adam and Eve’s existence. This dispute has raged since 1859 when Darwin first published his theory on the origin of man and continues to bluster on today as much as it did then. This is because the three great monotheistic religions need to defend their traditional beliefs on one of the foundations of all three faiths, the Creation story. As I have said the traditional Creationist view is fundamental to all three of the main monotheistic religions but it is also essential to two, because unlike the Moslems; Christianity and Judaism believe that mankind inherited their sinful natures from one man – Adam.

Judaism believes that because of Adam’s sin, the whole of mankind lives in an imperfect state and is attributed with evil inclinations that compete with good intensions, these intensions are responsible for the battle inside people and are ultimately responsible for many of mankind’s problems. They believe that we live in an unredeemed world and it is their responsibility to redeem mankind and prepare the right conditions on Earth for the Messiah to come. Judaism’s view on the Messiah differs from the Christian perspective because the Jewish Messiah does not remove personal sins, as the Christian Messiah does.

Islam believes that people cannot be held accountable for someone else’s mistake. The Koran states: “That no burdened person (with sins) shall bear the burden (sins) of another”. They maintain that Adam was a Great prophet and agree that Adam sinned but repented and only had to spend his life on Earth and then return to Paradise. They differ from the Christian view because they do not agree that his offspring inherited Adam’s sin, thus negating the need of a savior.

Christians believe that Jesus Christ died to save mankind from sin, which came into the world when Adam first sinned in the Garden of Eden. Thus, if the evolutionary theories were true, then Adam could not have existed as the first man and there was therefore no need for Jesus to die for mankind’s sins. Therefore, Christians would have to agree with Peter Martyr (1206 – 1252) who said that if this was true then “all the promises of Christ fall into nothing, and all the life of our religion would be lost.” Of course it is not true but I invite all three monotheistic religions rethink their understanding of Creation and the Fall.
Each of the three Main monotheistic religions, Christianity, Judaism and Islam believe that they alone have the true way into God. All three believe that the most important spiritual tribal difference that exists between humans today is that between their own religion and the non-believers, i.e. Christians and non-Christians, Jews and non-Jews, Moslems and non-Moslems.

From the Christian perspective, they believe that their Credo is based on those who by faith believe that sin came into the world by one man – Adam and that salvation by grace was made available to them by the willing sacrifice, death and resurrection of God’s only Son; Jesus Christ. Non-Christians are those people who do not to believe this. Two types of people, Christian believers and unbelievers; that is all. Importantly however, the unbelievers are loved by God and have a chance to accept His Grace while they live and in doing so inherit a place in God’s Kingdom and become sons of God.

Some people would say that the positions that the three monotheistic religions take are arrogant, unjust and simplistic views. They would say that it is not fair, and surely one does not have to believe in Adam to be a believer. However, it is vital for Moslems, Jews and Christians to believe in the scriptures and I repeat that it is doubly vital that Christians should believe in Adam and the concept of first sin, to make their belief in Jesus Christ the Savior valid.

 

[cleminson]

Part 10.
The possible truth that the world was not created in six days and that dinosaurs did walk the Earth many millions of years ago, does not disprove Adam’s existence or his fall. Neither does it negate the fundamental truth and need of Christ’s sacrifice to give mankind a way back into a relationship with God.

As we have just seen, most Christians today passionately hold on to their belief in Adam and the six-day creationist ideology, in the same way that 15th century Christians held on to their beliefs in a geocentric Universe, even though science seems to indicate a completely different scenario. However, we should be very slow to criticize their stance because until they are assured that there could be a different scriptural interpretation that does not violate their beliefs, they will throw all of their might and resource to fight the new theory. Even then the acceptance of the new ideas will happen gradually, because belief is a very complex issue that can vary in structure and intensity from person to person; very often depending on Church leadership and their attitude to the theory.

Most would correctly state that it is a compromising falsehood to say that the first eleven chapters of Genesis are an allegory not to be taken literally. Some would state that if you are going to believe in the Bible, you cannot start discarding bits of it because they do not suit your life style or beliefs. They would go on to say that external “theories” that attempt to repudiate their own interpretation of scriptures are wrong because their traditional and historically accepted understanding of the Bible is correct and therefore infallible.


Most Christians would maintain that all Christians should believe in Adam and Eve and the six-day creation because it is so inextricably woven into their lives and traditionally way of thinking. They have built up massive barriers against evolution to protect their doctrines. Many Christians genuinely believe that the theories of evolution, an ancient Earth or any other theory that questions Creationism; violates scriptures, is wrong and does not explain the formation of the Earth, solar system and Universe, as it is today.


They believe that though evolution is presented as scientific “fact,” there are too many holes in the theories and therefore no sincere scientist should accept evolution and violate known scientific principles. They argue that the “Big Bang” theory is unproved and impossible, as the source of the original mass and energy required for the explosion, has not been adequately explained.


There have been times however, when the Church has rejected so called secular discoveries and history has shown that the Church, by staunchly holding on to what it has always believed to be the truth, has made mistakes. We need to address an area were the Church could be making another mistake, an area where its interpretation of Scripture could be wrong. Not “God angering” wrong but wrong all the same and in an area that is causing a huge waste of time, energy and Church funds.


For many years as I had wondered whom it was that Cain married? Who were the people in the Land of Nod? Who were the “sons of God”? I found that some of the Churches existing teachings on biblical creation and from that, the personalities that sprung up from the relationship between God and man, needed a great deal of “faith” to accept.


A tremendous battle took place in my mind as I wondered whom these characters were and if they were somehow tied into the fact that I was sure that the world had taken hundreds of millions of years to create. Yet, all the Bible teaching that I regarded as good and sound went contrary to this view. So for years I fought against my intellect and tried to accept the current teachings of the Church on these issues. But, how could the teaching of the Church be so far from what was so obviously the truth about creation? Where did the Bible fit into a “hundreds of millions of year’s creation”, as opposed to a six-day creation? Some of my secular friends argued that, “If the Bible was so wrong on this subject, where else was it wrong?”


I knew that somewhere in the scriptures the truth must have surely been staring us in the face. Where was that truth? God would not hide it. The truth about creation must be obvious, but where in scripture was the answer? Was the answer to be found in a particular translation of the Bible? Were any of the translations faithful to the original Hebrew and Greek and if they were not, would a correct interpretation give us the answer?

I found that all the main Christian and Jewish translations of the Bible are very similar in their renditions of Genesis and the location of the solution to creation is found in all of them. The Bibles might differ in style but the truth remains the same.

The different versions of the Bible are basic style and translation judgments made by humans. If a person’s or group’s interpretation is correct, it will illuminate the meaning of the text; if it is inaccurate, then it will only act as a platform for the translator’s bias and their personal interpretation of the text. In the various translations of the Bible that I have studied, the early chapters of the book of Genesis are translated in a similar fashion with style and language being the only difference.



The problem that we have with all the translations of the Bible is that they were translated with the best of intensions and much prayer, but when an area of translation does not seem to make sense, it is first put into the context of the scriptures surrounding it and then translated with the preconceptions of the people doing the translating. If then it still does not make sense, it is translated accordingly to the perceptions of the translators.

The final judgment as to the personal preference of a particular version of the Bible tends to come down to which Church we attend and/or which version the preacher uses in his sermons. However, most of us live in a free society and have other versions in our homes that are called on to provide enlightenment in our Bible studies.

There are many explanations given for the rise of so many translations of the Christian Bible but I would like to look at what I consider to be the two main reasons.


Firstly, some translators question the originality of certain parts of the King James Version. In 1881 two British scholars published a Greek New Testament that was based on the most ancient of the manuscripts then available. This text made several departures from the Byzantine Greek text, which was used by the King James translators. It was shorter because the older manuscripts did not contain certain passages like the longer version of Mark’s gospel in the King James Version of the Bible (KJV).


Secondly, some translators have thought it better to translate the Bible into an “every day” language type. Since 1895 many pieces of manuscript have been discovered on archaeological sites, which have given insight into some of the words translated by the KJV scholars. The single most important discovery was that of the Egyptian papyri in 1895 by Adolf Deissmann. He concluded that the New Testament in Greek was written in a common form of Greek, the every day language of the day and not in an educated Greek that only the most learned could understand. Since then, some translators have tried to translate the New Testament into every day language.


Though these early Greek manuscripts missed out some precious scripture, they also gave us a new understanding of certain words that the KJV translators struggled to interpret. For example, in the KJV of John 3:16, the Greek word translated “only begotten” really means “one and only” or “unique”. Many people today prefer other translations to the KJV because they are written in easily understandable English; others believe the majesty of the KJV gives it the upper hand. The irony about this difference in style is that when, after seven years of hard work, the KJV was first published in 1611, some churchmen complained that it was too easily understood! So though today it may seem difficult to read to some, we must remember that when it was translated, it was into the every day language of the time.


The modern translations seem to have cut out many of the most precious lines of Scripture. Those end Mark’s Gospel at the 8th verse of chapter 16; leaving out the mention of the angel stirring the waters at the pool of Bethesda, that is mentioned in John 5:4; and sadly they remove the great forgiveness account, of the woman caught in adultery in John 8. There are many other omissions and textual changes in comparison to the KJV. For example, in I Timothy 3:16, the KJV says, “God was manifest in the flesh,” in comparison most modern translations read, “He was manifest in the flesh”. A bigger difference comes in Revelation 22:19 where the KJV mentions the “book of life” while most modern versions translate it as the “tree of life.” Altogether, there are hundreds of textual changes between the King James and modern translations.


Most of the differences in the modern translations do not have an effect on our doctrine regarding the deity of Jesus Christ, the virgin birth and sin coming into the world by one man and salvation by grace made available to us by the death of one man Jesus Christ. Different Church leaders will swear by one translation or another and there is a certain amount of playful banter that goes on between preachers who mock one another about which version is the best.


By reading these various translations of the scriptures with a different perception, I am totally comfortable with my understanding of Genesis and its portrayal of an evolutionary creation, rather than the view held by creationists. I read the Bibles account of Gods creation with the knowledge of the evolutionary theories, and see how they favorably compare, but more importantly, my understanding of whom Jesus Christ was has not altered.

If we are happy with the translation of the Scriptures and we are still not happy with the answers we are finding, then we need to ask ourselves if our acceptance of what we take to be the literal meaning of Scripture is always the correct interpretation. Are there scriptures in the Bible that if read afresh could stop this eternal bickering between secularists and Christians regarding creation? Could the great stumbling block to many minds be removed and acceptances of the Bibles truth become a possibility even to the anti-creationists?


If Christians truly wish to be fundamentalists, then we need to remove traditional blinkers and read the first few chapters of the Book of Genesis again to see if there are ways that science and our understanding of Creation can meet. God is not hiding the truth; in Genesis the actual truth about creation must be staring us in the face and I hope that this manuscript illuminates those possible scriptures and sets you on the way of your own Bible study on this matter. I have had to think “outside the box” but I hope that the Church starts to see that there might just be an alternative but acceptable Christian answer to the creation conundrum.


We will ask the question as to whether Adam was formed on the third day and whether the rest of mankind was created on the sixth day? We know that as far as Christians are concerned there are two types of people now – Christians and non-Christians. Were there two types of people then – Adam’s offspring who were the sons of God and the rest of mankind? If this is scripturally true, then what does it mean for Christians and the rest of humanity?


As I read the Old Testament, I am aware that God regarded the children of Israel, as a “separated people” and the scriptures portray both an historic and narrow view of only those chosen people. Scripture was written originally, under Divine guidance, by and for these people within the Adamic and finally children of Israel lineage. Scripture occasionally gives us tantalizing views of other races and peoples but only when they came across or impacted on His people. It could be argued that Noah’s lineage was all of the Adamic line and therefore all part of God’s people. This would include all the people living in the “fertile crescent” at the time of Abraham. Genetically most of them were, but it seems that God was only concerned with the lineage that had a spiritual relationship with Him. It was from this lineage that Abraham and ultimately Jesus were to come. God was very concerned about the purity of his people, not wanting them to mix with other tribes. Why was He only concerned with one tribal nation, when he had created all of mankind?

 

[cleminson]

Part 11.
Chapter Three - The Great Battles​

The battle between Christianity and Science, Art, Philosophy, History, Law, Medicine and now even Mathematics has been raging since the early days of the Reformation, as Christians have justifiably fought against what they perceived to be attacks against God’s Word. Various learned men have written hundreds of millions of words to support their own theories and damning the opposition’s opinions. The various Bibles have become a book of proof to some, an object of scorn to others but still remains the principal tool for the three main monotheistic religions to verify or refute countless theories.

From the scientific perspective even amongst Darwinists there are various factions including “Group Selectionists” who believe that individually unfavorable characteristics within man, including aging, can evolve if they have a benefit to a sufficiently large group and their disadvantage is sufficiently small to an individual. Another group is made up of those who believe in “The Selfish Gene Theory” who suggest that some individually unfavorable behavior (but not aging) can be explained genetically. A third group believe that the “Evolvability Theory” is the answer and propose that organisms must be able to evolve, separately and this must be separate from the ability to survive, which they claim would allow for aging and some behavior patterns to occur.

As of 2008, evolution does not yet attempt to claim that it knows the origin of life but claims that it understands the process that finally led to the formation of man, after life was formed. Darwin never attempted to explain how the first primitive organism appeared, he was happy that the origin of life was a separate subject from the origin of species. Even today there is no scientific consensus regarding the origin of life in our Universe and Darwin as a deist, was certainly content with the idea that it was possible that a God created the original life form.

Discussing the origin of life, the great astrophysicist Professor Sir Fred Hoyle, who took a stance against Darwinism, said in a dramatic phrase, “In a popular lecture I once unflatteringly described the thinking of these scientists (Darwinist’s) as a “junkyard mentality”. Since this reference became widely and not quite accurately quoted (often by Christians) I will repeat it here. A junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a Boeing 747, dismembered and in disarray. A whirlwind happens to blow through the yard. What is the chance that after its passage a fully assembled 747, ready to fly, will be found standing there? So small as to be negligible, even if a tornado were to blow through enough junkyards to fill the whole Universe.”

He intended this statement to counter what he believed was the Darwinist’s concept of the spontaneous appearance, in a single step, of a complex life form complete with thousands of enzymes and multi-cellular formations, capable of manufacturing, using and managing structures made out of hundreds of thousands of different types of protein molecules. However, most Darwinists agree with Sir Fred Hoyle that a single-step random selection of complex molecular structures cannot be the mechanism that ultimately generated the complex forms of life that we have today. They argue that it is possible that one or more “single cells” were formed and as there was no competition, they could have split, possibly “melted” together with different looking cells to form a more complex structure and then after many of these cells had formed, Darwin’s theory of “Natural Selection” would have taken place, until these “joined cells” evolved into the complex life structures that we now have on Earth.

Sir Fred passed away in 2001 and in his final years he wrote a phrase, seemingly accepting the possibility of a primordial soup, saying, “Suppose that on the early Earth two or three very primitive enzymes (did) appear and come together in a primordial soup of amino acids formed at random, an occurrence perhaps not beyond the bounds of possibility…. etc.”, sadly however, the row continues between his colleagues and disciples and the evolutionary Darwinists.

The international Human Genome Project (HGP) has completed a preliminary sequencing of the entire human genome genetic code. Results seem to show thatthe Earth was formed about 4.5 billion years ago, that the Earth was capable of sustaining simple life about 3.8 billion years ago, that all life evolved from one or a few single cell organisms which lived about 3.5 billion years ago, that all humans and some monkeys share an ancestor which lived about 7 million years ago, and that finally, all humans are descended from a person who lived approximately 270,000 years ago. These scientists would possibly also agree that the origin of the first primordial organism is impossible to understand, therefore the biological equivalent of the “big bang theory” and as a result,more in the realm of philosophy and religion than in the scientific arena. Thus there emerges the possibility of a creative God in some of their thinking.

Up to now there has been little room for a God centered creation in all of these scientific theories and though a God centered creation cannot be proved as scientific fact, the Bible relates God’s creation of the whole.

Most Creationists would not have too much of a problem with the idea that Greyhounds could have been developed by selective breeding from much slower and wolf like dogs, over several thousand years because we have seen new breeds emerge within a few generations. Yet they have huge problems with the thought that all life on Earth could have developed in a similar way over billions of years from perhaps a God created single cell organism in a primordial liquid and that by the effects of a very slow God driven natural selection through cell mutation, could cause a process of beneficial metamorphosis that has brought life on Earth to where it is today.

The conflict between Creationists and Evolutionists is not the only one that Christians face, as believers are challenged by the philosophical sciences regarding the existence of God and His qualities, the unity of the Godhead, His personality, the nature of His eternity and infinity, as well as the freedom of the human will and its place with the laws of nature.

In the sciences of Language and History, areas of conflict with Christians have included the historical unity of the races within mankind and the roots of Genetics and language. Debates on the subjects such as the history of the Patriarchs, the Israelites, and their Messianic belief, the history of Christ and His Church and the authenticity of the various Books of the Bible, have gone on within the Church and are of very little interest to most of those outside the Church.

In the science of ethics and its byproduct The Law, heated debate has taken place over the issues concerning the origin of human right and service, the authority of governments, the marriage contract and divorce; the rights of parents and children, the rights to own personal property, to have freedom of religion but also whether we should tolerate of other religions and the separation of religion and state. These are ongoing issues and are argued from different positions by people from within and without the Church.

Though the understanding and acceptance of spiritual subjects are outside the remit of the medical and biological sciences, some of the scientists in this area of study have all the same tried to throw doubt onto the existence of the human soul, thus attacking its spirituality and immortality. They have deliberated on how human and animal personalities differ, the physiological similarity of the varying races that make up humankind, the justification of abortion, contraception and the unnatural termination of human life.

The exact sciences of mathematics and experimental sciences, have also got involved in the fray, though these sciences have no relevance whatever with faith. Except for possibly the mathematics in Mitochondrion Eve, which is a hot topic for those whom are interested and will be discussed later in this manuscript? These so called exact sciences are also trying to throw doubts on the mathematical probability of the celestial wonders like the star of Bethlehem and the stars falling from heaven before the Last Judgment. All these wonders fall into the miraculous realm, so trying to judge and disprove them by using the laws of science and nature is pure folly.

Finally, in the natural sciences, especially natural philosophy, the great war rages over the creation of the world and of man, the materialistic doctrines, eternity of matter, the necessity of natural laws, impossibility of miracles, Darwinian origin of man, the Flood, its existence and geographical extent.

To all of these groups that do not believe in the present interpretation of the Genesis creation Scriptures, I would say that The Bible is very accurate in the way it presents creation as long as it is understood in the way that I have expounded in this manuscript.
The compatibility between the modern scientific theories and the ancient scriptural texts is the theme of this work, not the issue about belief in God. As a personal warning to those who may try to “invalidate” Christianity with clever words, the great Albert Einstein, a Jew and a Deist said in an interview, ”Jesus is too colossal for the pen of phrase-mongers, however artful. No man can dispose of Christianity with a “bon mot”... No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life”.

Though the Church has not always proven infallible with its doctrinal stances against science, for instance when many parts of the Church prior to the 19th century incorrectly supported the old geocentric theory; in the 20th century they did however realize their mistake and finally accept the “new” science and by doing so came out of their confusion into a stronger and more confident position.

These areas of conflict with science will be addressed more fully later, but in the 17th century, the Roman Catholic and early Protestant Churches had the inviolate belief that the Earth was the center of the Universe (the geocentric theory). It was important to them because they believed that as the Earth was created first, and the Planets added later, the Earth was therefore the single most important planet. Both arms of the Church in that time defended their positions with erroneous scriptural gusto, which was based on the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic theories. These theories had become the Churches traditional foundations for the way they wanted to understand the Bible and they were therefore forced by non-Christian traditions, into attacking the Christian scientists that dared to suggest that the Earth was in orbit around the Sun. This heliocentric science was an anti-scriptural impossibility to the Church at that time and those who promoted the so-called “blasphemy” were considered heretics. For some Churches, the acceptance that the Earth was not the center of the Universe, took a further three hundred years to become accepted, but now gladly, most Christians can look at the fact that the Earth is not the center of the Universe without having their faith shaken.

Evolutionists might acknowledge this change of view by the Church as proof of the Churches fallibility in all things and argue that if some Creationists wish to think that the world was created in six days, four and a half thousand years ago, why bother to address their stupidity? Especially as it is not the first time that the Church has got it wrong. I would advise any evolutionist who thinks along these lines, that most Creationists are not stupid; they take their seemingly nonsensical stance against evolution, because they are defending their religion and their Holy Scriptures against a perceived attack that is aimed at the very foundations of their beliefs. There is no other option for the YE Creationists but to preserve their traditions, for it seems to them that if the present understanding of the Biblical account of the Creation story is not true then the whole of Scripture appears to become vulnerable, powerless and just another religious theory to be accepted or rejected.

Christians are therefore forced to make a choice to either reject their Creationist religious doctrine, thus neutering their religion or to defend their historical beliefs and interpretations of the Scriptures and reject evolution. They are for this reason forced to regard the theory of evolution as a direct attack on the traditional understanding of the Creation story, consequently an attack on the Bible, therefore anti-God and evil. This Creationist doctrine is fundamental to the three main monotheistic religions and will remain so until they are certain that Scripture can be proved to show otherwise.

 

[cleminson]

Part 12.
This Creationist doctrine is fundamental to the three main monotheistic religions and will remain so until they are certain that Scripture can be proved to show otherwise.As I studied the Bible to find this different way of understanding the Scriptures, the myriad of conceptions flying around inside my head gradually developed into one huge picture. I now find myself at the point where I need to have my conclusions studied by others more qualified than I. Organizing these Bible studies into one work and deciding where to put the “bombshell” statements, without offending the reader, has been very difficult and time consuming – my intention is not to offend but to offer a possible solution to what I know is an issue to other Christians.

Copernicus’s and Galileo’s books in the 16th and 17th centuries were seen as vile heresy by their Christian and scientific critics. The vast majority of the Church, sincere and well-meaning people, incorrectly used Scriptures to support the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic theories that were the basis of religious, scientific and philosophical thought at that time. This combined Christian and scientific thought was used to prove incorrectly that the Earth was the center of the Universe and many believed that it was flat.

As late as 1935, in Zion, Illinois, USA, a Christian radio evangelist Wilbur Glenn Voliva gave Biblical infallibility as defense of the primitive concept of a flat Earth. He propounded the biblical view of the world’s flatness over modern astronomy and photography. Quoting from Isaiah 11:12 “And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.” He expounded that if the Earth was round how did it have four corners? If he had just looked at his concordance he would have seen that the old Hebrew word “kaw-nawf” translated as “corners” in the King James Version should have been translated as “quarters” and you can quarter a ball or globe.

It would have been just as easy to find a round Earth in scripture by reading Isaiah 40:22, where it says “It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in”. The “circle” of the Earth is clearly mentioned but because it did not conform to the doctrine of the time, this scripture was conveniently over looked.

Some Christians continue to defend the belief that the sun moves around the Earth and they base their doctrine on the same words and scriptures that Father Lorini used back in the 17th century. In 1971 a Christian society based on the teaching of a geocentric Universe, called The Tychonian Society was formed and it still exists though it is now called “The Biblical Astronomer”. It defends the theory of a geocentric or Earth centered Universe, “scientifically and Biblically proving” a stationary Earth.

Are we hanging on to old-fashioned creation beliefs, in the same way that these geocentric supporters are doing? For they surely view themselves as fundamentalists and more true to Christianity than most.

Can you imagine the horror that would take place in our Churches, if a flat-Earth evangelist started preaching that belief in a round Earth was evil? There would be an equal furor in our Christian schools if a flat-Earth teacher started teaching that a round Earth was an evil pernicious concept, that went against scripture and then produced the scriptures that support the flat Earth theory? The flat-Earth parents would be thrilled with his appointment, until the relevant teacher was fired and then in turn, be furious when the teaching swung back to the round Earth concept.

Some of the flat Earth parents would probably move their children into other schools, while others would crusade against the “indoctrination” of their children. They would definitely ask that equal time be given to both round and flat views and be outraged if it was not forth coming.

Most Christians would agree that it would be totally negligent; to allow the flat-Earth view into the geography curriculum, because the hours wasted on teaching about a possible flat Earth would be a total misuse of time. It would be academically unfair to leave the “easily influenced” scholars with the idea that the flat-Earth view is a serious contender along side the round Earth view.

Similarly, any Church that sought to provide accommodation for every erroneous outlook would end up in total confusion. The choice not to support the preaching of the flat-Earth theory would be a popular one amongst most Churchgoers, as would the re-education or dismissal of the flat-Earth teacher from the school. Could the same argument be used to describe the secular stance to creationist teaching in schools?

Today most people are aware that neither the Earth, nor as Galileo supposed the sun, are the center of the Universe, however, Copernicus’s and Galileo’s findings set mankind on a road that puts us today in a more enlightened state. Christians and scientists alike have accepted their books, as being vital works of science for their time, though it must be said, that it took many Christians centuries before this scientific truth was accepted. The incorrect interpretations of scriptures were finally overcome by the vast majority of the Church and their work recognized as a very important scientific step towards our present day knowledge of the Universe.

In the same way, Darwin’s work is not deemed 100% accurate in its entirety, as secular as well as Christian scientists have criticized his theory of the chemical origin of life, but the tenet of his work has led people to understand our world and its age in a different way.

Most anti-creationists are not Christian and would be proud to say that they are certain that Adam could not have existed. Most would also be happy to be described as “anti-Creationism” rather than anti-Christian and so the war is hotly pursued through courts and publications, with millions of dollars being sucked into court cases and books.

If scripture cannot provide us with an alternative understanding to the creation debacle, then we need to continue our battle with the anti-creationists with all our hearts, minds and finances. If however there is a scripturally based alternative to our present understanding of the creation scriptures, we need to study it and not throw it out because it does not fit our traditional views. As long as it expounds the truth of Adam’s existence and his rebellion against God and also the truth of Jesus’ sacrifice to give us a way back from Adams sin, then we Christians have a responsibility to take a fresh look at the Scriptures and examine this unconventional solution to the problem? We need to tackle some of our possible misconceptions without fear and at the same time reaffirm the validity of the Bible and it’s timelessness in today’s changing world.

Until now in secular terms, Christianity has not been able to defend its interpretation of Genesis and Adam and Eve, against the volumes of scientific evidence suggesting an ancient planet undergoing continuous changes. There are many books and articles trying to do so but they only convince those who are supporters of creationism and have a vested interest in the survival of the traditional concept. These Christians have raised the drawbridge and make a stand on a six-day creation, declaring that what seems to be opposing science is wrong.

Some Christian scientists argue the inaccuracy of the science of carbon dating, radiometric dating, bacterial evolution, biogeography (distributions of plants and animals) and homology (sameness), and have written many pages supporting the traditional view of Creation. In their attacks on the anti-creationists, Christians have put forward scientific claims to prove that the Earth is only between four and six thousand years old, based on theories like the rate of the shrinking sun; the rate at which cosmic dust accumulates; the existence of short-period comets; the present thickness of topsoil; erosion rates limit Niagara Falls; the incredible pressure found in oil and gas wells; the size of the Mississippi River delta divided by the sediment accumulation; the Earth’s rotation is slowing down; the rate of sediment transport into the ocean by the world’s rivers; the age of the largest stalactites and flowstones; the expanding Sahara desert; the rate of salt influx to the oceans; the current population of Earth could have been generated from 8 people in less than 4000 years; the oldest coral reef is about 4200 years old; the oldest tree in the world is 4300 years old; the oldest historical records go back less than 6000 years; the receding Moon; the U-236 and Th-230 isotopes on the Moon; the eroding Continents theory; the Poynting-Robertson effect on space dust; the volume of lava on Earth divided by its rate of efflux yields; the amount of helium in the atmosphere divided by its formation rate, the speed of the retreating Moon and finally the “argument of arguments”, the dates in the Bible add up to the Earth being between four and six thousand years old.

Included in the creationist’s arsenal of “proof” of a young Earth, are the considerable quantities of strange discoveries like Malachite Man and The Taylor Site “Man Tracks”. However, all of these findings and arguments about the creation of a young Earth have very persuasive and valid counter arguments regarding the accuracy, validity, authenticity and age of these so called creationist proofs. The argument supporting each of these points could take a full tome in their own rights and the arguments against another tome, so I am not going to expand these debates, though it is possible to read both arguments on the web.

One of the more recent “proofs” that creationists produce is that of the theory concerning mtDNA and Mitochondrion Eve; where genetic science has proved that both male and female humans inherit their mitochondrial chromosome from their mothers and that all mankind came from one woman – whom for the genes sake has been called “Eve”, presumably after the Biblical Eve. Though recent research has largely discredited the idea of a single Eve mitochondrial chromosome, some scientists believe that it is more likely that modern humans descended from a small population, of perhaps five thousand early individuals.

Certain scientists have hypothesized this ancient woman’s existence by analyzing DNA taken from living sources and isolating tiny loops of genetic code known as mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA. In recent years, scientists have used this mtDNA to trace the evolution and migratory movement of humans, though there has been considerable debate over the validity and value of their findings.

Some Christians rejoice at this discovery, because they say that it proves that we all came from this one woman called Eve. What they fail to recognize is that these new findings on mitochondrion genetics are also based on mathematics and mathematically this early mitochondrion genetic source lived at least twenty thousand years ago but more probably two hundred thousand years ago. Whichever date is accurate, they totally disprove the possibility of a four and a half, to seven thousand-year-old creation.

Genetically, the Mitochondrion first lady was the most recent person from whom everyone now living on Earth has inherited their mtDNA but this certainly does not mean that she is the ancestral mother of all who came after her. During her time and even before her time there could have been many women and men who contributed to the nuclear genes we now carry. Those other women’s DNA was lost to us because somewhere in history, they did not pass on their mtDNA because they either had no children or only had sons and sons do not pass on mtDNA, except in very rare cases. Or perhaps God allowed mankind to evolve into the beings that we now are now but with different color and features and when in the sixth period of Creation, all of our mtDNA was identical; He then decided to call us Man – both male and female.