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I've been doing some thinking and reading lately, and I'm really curious about something. With all the evidence and theories supporting evolution and the scientific explanations for the origins of life, I'm wondering how the story of Adam and Eve fits into this. I know this story is a fundamental part of many religious beliefs, and I'm genuinely interested in how people who are knowledgeable about both science and religion reconcile these seemingly different perspectives. Is it seen as purely metaphorical, or is there another way of understanding it that harmonizes with the scientific view of human evolution? Would love to hear your thoughts and learn more about this!
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As I wrote in another comment elsewhere:
The ancient Near Eastern Bronze Age nomads who first told the Creation story around the campfires thousands of years ago (even another one to two thousand years before Jesus) weren't interested in Original Sin or the literal, scientific origins of the universe. Those questions were completely outside their worldview and purview. If you look at it from more of an ancient point of view, the creation account is a fascinating argument for what a god is and what they're for.
If you look at other creation stories of the time, gods are basically just super powered human beings who are still kind of giant jerks. The world is created out of divine warfare or strife or sexual intercourse, and the gods are simply powerful over certain domains - the sky, the sea, etc. Moreover, they're subject as well to what Kaufman calls the "metadivine realm" - that which the gods arose out of or came from, and predates them. It can oppose or overcome their will.
Conversely, Yahweh is all-powerful over all creation, because He created it in an ordered fashion by the power of His word. God is an architect, not subject to outside forces; His Spirit hovers over the face of the waters (He predates and is above that example of a metadivine realm). Moreover, He is not simply a superpowered human, He is a moral being, and the embodiment of the highest conception of morality that humans (of the ancient Near East) could come up with. The humans He creates are not slaves (as in other narratives), they are good creatures made in His own image, breathing the breath He gave them. They are stewards - responsible caretakers - of His creation. They do not exist as slaves, they exist to be in relationship with Him.
One other unique thing about the creation/fall story is that while many creation stories have a "tree of life" analogue, only the Genesis account features a Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The Fall is an etiological story (like a just-so story) about how humans went from being morally innocent to morally responsible creatures. To the ancient Israelites who first told this story, it's not about how Adam did a Bad Thing and now we're all screwed for it, it's about how we are all responsible for our choices, and how we can make good or bad ones.
If you want to hear more on this, I highly recommend Dr. Christine Hayes' Yale lectures on Intro to the Old Testament with transcripts.
Biologos is another good resource, as well as the work of John Walton, like The Lost World of Genesis One. You can also check out Loren Haarsma's discussion on Four Approaches to Original Sin.
And if you get later into the Old Testament, you start realizing that the stories aren't just historical narrative, that they match up with later events in curious ways, and then you realize that the OT stories are actually kind of like MASH or The Crucible.
Ultimately, when you take into consideration the historical, cultural, religious, and literary contexts of the books of the Bible, and understand that interpretation, reinterpretation and rereinterpretation is a fundamental part of the tradition, it stops being a boring book of rules and starts being a challenging look at life and morality throughout the ages.
Edit: I would also add, if you read the text carefully, you'll see that Adam was created outside the Garden and then placed into it, and he lived there until he and Eve sinned against God, whereupon they were cast out and their relationship with God broken. So the question you should ask is, to what degree is Genesis 1-3 about the literal, scientific origins of humans as a species, the exile of Israel and Judah, or the propensity of humans' sin to break their relationship with God?
Thanks for this awesome response of information.
If anyone wanted to read that M*A*S*H link, here's an archived copy since the original seems to have been taken down: https://web.archive.org/web/20170406093112/https://peteenns.com/what-is-genesis-about-the-big-idea-that-cleared-it-up-for-me/
Oh no, thanks for updating that, I'll update my link.
By either saying the story is allegory or by science denialism and anti-intellectualism as can be seen in the comments here.
Well Adam didn’t write Genesis nor did Abraham or Noah. This story was told for many many generations before it was written down. Have you ever played telephone?
There are a lot of ways to interpret Genesis and who’s to say what’s the right way. I don’t look to Genesis for scientific answers just as I don’t seek scientific study’s for spiritual guidance. That’s just my take.
Well said. Faith, like many other feelings, have little scientific basis. Doesn't make them any less real to the personal experience.
Such coherency!!!!!! Amen...why is it so hard to understand this?
God himself dictated it to Moses. I think that an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient God who exists outside of time, could relay the facts accurately for Moses to write.
Yes he could! But is that the case?
Either one believes it or they don’t. Scientists weren’t around billions of years ago when they claim an orderly universe happened due to an explosion, yet they expect people to believe that…
No humans were around to write down the events in the garden either.
Scientists are at least able to present the data and the processes that led to their conclusions. Christians who believe in a literal Genesis are left with saying that a being that no one can demonstrate exists told a guy about it a few thousand years ago, and it passed along by word of mouth for centuries before it got written down.
False dichotomy pal.
It's the general view that Genesis with the rest is a literary work that has patches of history, myth, and legend in it.
That's how they would have understood these writings, and how they wrote them.
To think and interpret otherwise is just uninformed and uneducated thinking.
They either don't, like staunch evangelicals who believe in the Bible's inerrancy, or they do reconcile it and see it as a parable or as a symbolic story.
Me personally, I am not a believer in Biblical inerrancy for many reasons-- one example is how one of the most used translations by proponents of biblical inerrancy was compiled at the behest of a British King (James I of England, VI of Scotland) in the 17th century for political reasons because the Geneva Bible, which was most favored by the Protestants in England, Scotland, France, etc, was less favorable to monarchs. So I don't have any issue believing that Evolution is not contradictory faith or especially the teachings of Jesus.
Genesis isn’t a natural history text. Evolution is a scientific narrative based on various observations in nature. They don’t contradict because neither was written to usurp the other.
Honestly this thread is a bit yikes. For a non science denialism, fundamentalist answer.
Adam and Eve as the two literal ancestors almost certainly didn't exist. There is no sign of a population bottleneck that extreme.
My understanding is some Christians accept that Adam and Eve were more metaphorical than literal. Either a population of humans evolved into the first soul-bearing humans, or there were an Adam and Eve somewhere in the genealogy that passed down their capacity for souls.
This has poor implications for the original sin story as given in Genesis, but many Christians believe that the explicit snake/apple story isn't necessary for original sin to exist. There are other passages that indicate the existence of original sin (Romans 5:12-21), and some believe that human nature is just inherently sinful.
I think if as Christians we really value the Bible we also need to study its origins and History. After all we are not supposed to worship the book but the God who inspired it. Yes it will shatter some of our old convictions. It will bring questions and doubts but what is wrong with that? Our faith ought to be strong enough to accept reality and let go of ancient dogmas. Otherwise it means we have never trusted God but only human doctrines.
The genesis creation account is a religious account of creation not a scientific one. I tend to hold a fairly traditionalist view on creation but if I were to find out that we got here by evolution it would do very little to change my theology except for maybe original sin. I think an original man in some form is important for the theological concept of original sin, but other than that the Bible doesn’t really give timelines for when or how long things happened or how long man was in the garden. It’s entirely theoretically possible Adam and Eve were in the garden for millions of years. There’s many Christians who hold old age earth views or even evolutionary views as well they aren’t mutually exclusive. The word for day in genesis can mean long period of time which means it comes down to a translation issue rather than a credibility of the Bible issue.
Read the enduring word commentary on genesis. It was so helpful to understand the actual science at play. It’s an amazing app. The way I understand it is, a day to god is a thousand years to us, we should take it literally and it is in the right order. Nobody said a day was 24 hours and fish and birds were first! Things that crawl on the ground, man was last. We came from a small group of people, from what I understand. I believe it and then the earth was repopulated by Noah and his sons and their wives. I’m not the best at articulating myself on this. I hope you understand!
Science and the stories in the Bible have dramatically different perspectives. The Bible stories are ancient tales passed down from generation to generation, whereas science is a methodical study of the universe based on empirical evidence.
It isn’t reasonable to expect these two things to match up. It isn’t reasonable to expect the Genesis account to be validated with scientific evidence.
However both perspectives can have value, each serving as a prism through which we can look at the human experience and try to understand it.
By misinterpreting it.
The concepts of evolution and the special creation of Adam & Eve can reach concordance via the pre-Adamite hypothesis explained below:
“People” (Homo Sapiens) were created (through God’s evolutionary process) in the Genesis chapter 1, verse 27; and they created the diversity of mankind over time per Genesis chapter 1, verse 28. This occurs prior to the genetic engineering and creation of Adam & Eve (in the immediate and with the first Human souls) by the extraterrestrial God in Genesis chapter 2, verses 7 & 22.
When Adam & Eve sinned and were forced to leave their special embassy, their children intermarried the “People” that resided outside the Garden of Eden. This is how Cain was able to find a wife in the Land of Nod in Genesis chapter 4, verses 16-17.
As the descendants of Adam & Eve intermarried and had offspring with all groups of Homo Sapiens on Earth over time, everyone living today is both a descendant of God’s evolutionary process and a genealogical descendant of Adam & Eve.
Adam and Eve don't have to be the first humans for the story to work. They just have to be the first humans to receive commands from God.
They’re not reconcilable. The Bible shows that Adam and Eve were created by the direct action of God, and that sin came before death. Evolution holds that many millions of years of death occurred prior to “Adam and Eve” coming about as the result of random mutations. Further, the Bible says the Sun was created on the 4th day.
I disagree on basis of oil platforms.
Evolution isn't even the big thing here. How do we explain that geologists, using a theory that takes Earth to be billions of years old, can correctly deduce places with a high probability of having certain minerals?
There might be a case for Old Earth Creationism, but the first chapters of Genesis are metaphorical. Unless geologists are very, very lucky with their hole diggin
This is why Christianity and evolution are not reconcilable. Without the fall, the core of Christianity makes no sense, and then you have to accept that the deity decided that the best way to create humans was through millions and millions of years of death and suffering.
I also think it's at least a little dishonest to assert that Genesis was intended to be metaphorical.
I don't agree it's dishonest. The writer of Genesis had it revealed to him by God, who taught him what his people needed to know about the universe. We give a political and religious power to hard sciences and the ability to exactly describe the universe; but I see this form of revelation as a sign that God doesn't, which is coherent with the rest of Scripture. If I may provoke you, consider the notion that the importance given to correct description of nature is pagan. Other than that, ancient interpreters like Augustine also wondered what the six days really meant.
We know the Fall happened. We don't know the specifics (unless we're Old Earth creationists), but the core of Christianity makes sense equally. The suffering of animals is the same moral/theological problem with or without evolution. If you mean Man and cognition arising in evolution, this is more challenging, but only because we don't have a clear timeline, not for lack of sufficient explanations. For example, I think it's important that Genesis tells us we come from dirt, from the material world, but were made something in the image of God.
This is just an example, because we can and maybe should be ignorant of the misteries of Creation. This doesn't make less of our faith or our commitment to God.
EDIT: what is your opinion on geology taking for granted the Earth is old, and workind fine enough that many industries depend on it?
I stated they’re not reconcilable, which you didn’t refute.
However, finding oil at 40,000 feet contradicts that oil is the product of old dinosaurs. There are other theories about how oil is produced by the Earth, such as the one mentioned in this link.
https://www.motortrend.com/features/is-the-earth-producing-more-oil-1826/
Why wouldn't they be reconcilable? There's nothing in the text indicating it's a literal description of events, unlike other books of the Bible. Is this comment useful to further our discussion?
Finding oil at 40,000 feet does not contradict the fossil origin of oil. Oil is not "old dinosaurs", it's any organic matter, specially plant, specially from a period known as Carboniferous, 300 million years ago. It's time enough for soil to be moved even deeper and then resurface.
Nothing wrong with alternate theories. Plate tectonics itself was considered crazy at its start, but its fundamental to modern geology. I can't say if Gold is right or wrong, but I can say geologists use models where the Earth is billions of years old and consistently predict the composition of the underground.
That’s really odd that you say there’s nothing in the text indicating a literal description of events, because it’s written as a historical account. Rather, the contrary is true… there’s nothing to indicate it’s anything but literal. The New Testament views the Genesis account as literal, confirming sin brought about death, which is consistent with the Genesis account that people, animals and all living things were initially ordained as herbivores.
And 7-8 miles is quite deep to find oil, not just in Russia but in Qatar as well.
Maybe because the methodology doesn't actually have to do with the age...
I'm non-ironically all ears if you care to explain or, if you don't feel like, to link me something easy to read.
But the very beginnings of modern geology and its ability to predict whats underground comes from observation of patterns in sandstones. Actually the whole theory is based on the movement of rocks, and we know it is a slow one. There are only two possibilities: 1) the rocks moved slowly to their position, in a pattern that can be understood enough to be economically useful; 2) the rocks were always in that position, and the theory based on rock movement works by luck
I just understand that Satan deceives the whole world
And that the heathens are lying about God
Pretty basic
If you believe in evolution then you have to logistically speaking have an ‘Adam and Eve’ couple for every evolutionary iteration you believe we have come through. Every time a supposed beneficial mutation happens evolution necessitates that they are the Adam and Eve (assuming minimal or moderate promiscuity) and hence all subsequent specimens come from them.
There is no contradiction. Even evolution says we have a mitochondrial “Eve” and a Y-chromosomal “Adam”, for our common ancestors. Also, this might help: https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2014-01-28-brain-area-unique-humans-linked-cognitive-powers
Do you think they lived at the same time?
Our common ancestor parents, which both sides agree that we had? (They would have had to, to be able to have sex and bring forth the human race as we know it.)
You should look into mitochondrial eve and the Adam the
Edit: got you some links.
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2013/08/common-genetic-ancestors-lived-during-roughly-same-time-period-scientists-find.html#:~:text=Mitochondrial%20Eve%20and%20Y%2Dchromosomal,lived%2C%20are%20shrouded%20in%20mystery.
"Despite the Adam and Eve monikers, which evoke a single couple whose children peopled the world, it is extremely unlikely that the male and female MRCAs were exact contemporaries. And they weren’t the only man and woman alive at the time, or the only people to have present-day descendants "
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2013.13478
https://biologos.org/series/evolution-basics/articles/mitochondrial-eve-and-y-chromosome-adam
But our MRCA common mother would have had to have sex with somebody in order to be our common mother. And the original couple would be who I am referring to.
The first chapters of Genesis are metaphorical but the metaphor holds true. We should hold its lessons to our hearts as part of God's revelation.
I think the (conservative) theologian Willian Llane Craig made very interesting contributions to this topic. He now believes the anthropological evidence that Man is much older than 6,000 years. However, he remains open to the ways Genesis can be reconciled with this evidence. His most striking idea is that the Fall of Man could have happened 500,000 years ago, before Homo sapiens as a species surfaced!
WLC is just an apologist.
By that standard, there are only a few theologians or philosophers in each generation. Regardless, he have interesting ideas on this topíc which deserve to be discussed.
huh? makes no sense.
Evolution is 100% false
It contradicts the bible. There is way more evidence for Christ than evolution yet Christ is rejected and evolution is taught and praised.
Who is the common ancestor? Where are the intermediate spices?
There should be billions of bones where are they? How come there's only 8 billion people? If humans have been around for millions of years wouldn't there be way more humans?
Evolution isn't false nor does it have anything to do with Jesus and his existence. Please stop spreading misinformation
I thought they were a troll, but I actually think they really believe their nonsense, lol.
That other guy blocked me lmao
He did??! ! hahhaha
yeah, he's a big baby. He's still talking smack to me right now.
Evolution is an observable fact. I don't understand how you can even attempt to claim it is false
Darwinian evolution is not, it's never actually been observed. Claiming that a bird's beak got a little bigger and we decided to call it a different species is not evidence of Darwinian evolution.
That's not how we distinguish different species. And yes, evolution is an observable process. Many species that reproduce quickly, like fruit flies, can be studied in labs. And their evolution can be observed on human time scales. Other plant species can also be observed evolving in the wild. There are numerous examples I can go through
So your understanding of science is not even at 6th grade level. There are many intermediate species for example Archaeopteryx between theropods and birds, australopitechus between humans and early ape like ancestors and many more. The reason that not every square centimeter of earth contains a fossil is because fossils are made in very specific conditions which are very unlikely. If evolution is not real how can you explain dog breeds? Humans are not immoral thats why there are 8 billion people which is still a massive number. Your arguments are full of uneducated claims with zero evidence. Read some papers before spreading misinformation.
Actually the population thing is quite a thing. Human population growth percentage has to be INSANELY lower despite a complete lack of evidence for the capability of such a drop for so long.
The poorest, least medically capable nations plaster the top of the list of the nations with the highest population growth.
The length of time and the estimates of death of the major known diseases that have affected humanity fall far short of impacting growth percentage that much and besides that, reproductive population has been shown to be less impacted by things like the plague and so it wouldn't have had as big of an impact long term as the overall death count might lead one to believe.
The numbers really are insane. There should be orders of magnitude more people on earth and I have yet to see an actual reasonable explanation for why humans wouldn't have been reproducing at any sort of growth rate for most of human history given all these facts.
Condoms.
Heh, if you take the past 100 years of population growth percentage and just run it backwards, the era with condoms, you'll get to around 600-700 AD and that's where you'll hit 0. Literally only goes back 1300-1400 years. Obviously there are numerous reasons for a somewhat lower overall growth rate the diseases I already mentioned, less food availability, worse medical intervention capabilities, etc...
This is what I mean by the numbers being truly insane. Humans have been around for at least a couple hundred thousand years according to the general ideas of the mainstream scientific community. And the century prior also has drastically higher growth rate than can work, which compresses the timeframe for the slowdown even more.
It doesn't work. Honestly, the papers that talk about human population growth seems more like they're just trying to make it fit the evolutionary view than fit the real evidence.
There are billions of points of evidence for evolution, from fossils to existing biology to genetics. All life fits somewhere on the tree of life, whose trunk is the same for all of it. We can be more certain of evolutionary connections than we can be of paternity tests.
For Jesus, we have four anonymous stories full of magic (mythology) that used each other as sources, a historian who possibly says he had a brother, and a much later historian who says he was crucified. That’s hardly enough to prove Jesus was anything more than some guy, and certainly isn’t enough to overturn the theory of evolution.
No, there really shouldn't. Considering just back in 1900, Earth's carrying capacity was around 1,5 billion humans. That of course was far higher thanks to industrial and agricultural revolutions, before which (10,000 B.C.) it was around 5 to 10 million humans. Only thanks to the Haber-Bosch process developed in the early 1900s we can feed even the current amount of people we have.
Also, Homo sapiens originate around 300,000-ish years ago. So while the genus Homo is about 2 million years old, not that much happened before the agricultural revolution.
Please educate yourself more on the fundamentals of science
Additionally, there are fundamental issues with the premise of carbon dating. Earth is NOT billions of years old, which is the only way to reconcile the current human population and lack of more fossils.
Please stop spreading misinformation. Carbon dating is not used to approximate the age of the earth.
It was literally done with radiometric dating, but okay.
Yes. Not using carbon. Using other isotopes.
We don't use carbon dating for dating age of the earth. Read some papers on potassium argon dating, fission track dating and uranium lead dating before spreading blatant lies on internet.
Moses wrote the Book of Genesis he was given an account by God Himself, that's why you should believe God and not man. The question is do you believe God or do you believe man? It is the question that we all come face to face with as for me and my house we shall believe God.
Isaiah 44:24, 25 Thus says the LORD your Redeemer, and He who formed you from the womb: I am the LORD who makes all things, who stretches out the heavens all alone, who spreads abroad the Earth by Myself; Who frustrates the signs of the babblers, and drives diviners mad; who turns wise men backward, and makes their knowledge foolishness
Simple: a day with God is not like some ordinary day, we have heard it to be like 1000 years here on earth, but who knows about back then? (I may be missing something, correct me if I’m missing something). Now I personally do not believe in macro-evolution (I believe micro) but here’s an idea:
Animals were created from the dust before humans, and therefore God could have created animals that are closer and closer to being humans before He ended up creating the final draft of the human being. We don’t know how long a “day” was in Genesis, but we can be sure that it is 1000 or more, as it was a day with the Lord and not a day on this earth. Given that a day being millions of years is possible in this theory, it would account for the millions of years of recorded carbon dating.
You could add more on to this, but in my eyes this would make sense to connect the dots with macro-evolution.
Christian (or at least Catholic) theology is not made or broken on the existence of evolution, and therefore my disbelief in macro-evolution does not come from some “MUST BE THIS WAY OR MY LIFE IS RUINED” ideology that we see from many Protestants (I am a Catholic, I believe in science). However the contradiction with macro-evolution is not in its logic, but rather its evidence. While it provides potential evidence for many different animals, when it comes to humans, it fails to bring up a common ancestor with any other species, and therefore has a lack of evidence at least for explaining humans. I don’t think after like 250 years of intense archaeological research and searching and still failing to find a human-ape common ancestor is really working for them. They rather put up a “hey wouldn’t it make sense if it was like this? Don’t you see how it all relates? Doesn’t that make sense?” argument that has no REAL evidence, but rather non-real evidence (meaning stuff that isn’t necessarily fake, just not really fully real, like the number “i”). It’s like the white hole theory. Have we ever seen a white hole? No. Have we ever recorded one? Not to my knowledge. Do they exist? According to theories based on non-real evidence. Would it make sense for white holes to exist? Sure. Do they? No.
In a brief summary, macro-evolution isn’t real, or at least isn’t really proven, but even if it was it would be reconcilable with scripture.
Micro-evolution is real though, keep that in mind.
Hope this helped, God bless
Does the existence of things like Austrolepithicus or other early hominids not prove a common ancestor? Reminds of this scene from Futurama: https://youtu.be/ICv6GLwt1gM?si=i1V9IkaRqX22WUmM
This is just a misunderstanding of how evolution works. Macro and micro are just describing different parts of the function of evolution
Not enough for me. Create an intelligent being in lab from scratch then I may take these seriously.
Do you require a star to be made in a lab from scratch before you will believe in star formation?
Do I believe in scientist explanation? No.
Lot to explain, where did the hydrogen come from
We can see stars at every stage of development. We can make predictions based on stellar formation that end up being true. We can mathematically represent the process.
I see babies on every stage of development. Also know their milestone. I wouldn't use that to prove evolution and deny book of genesis.
I find the evidence for macro-evolution lacking. There is no evidence for evolution from one distinct species to another. Science cannot even define definitively what separates one species from another. I'm unconvinced that man's reasoning for life trumps God's word.
There is an incredible wealth of evidence. Species lines are fuzzy specifically because of evolution, because things change gradually with no clear separation, because all species are actually related and can be divided up by different traits.
There are thousands of transitional fossils. Whales have all the bones in the arm that humans have. And what evidence you have for God? Bible? Non credible resources from the time that people drained their blood to heal common cold?
Gods word was written by man