ASA - December 1997: Re: classic arguments

Eduardo G. Moros (moros@castor.wustl.edu)
Wed, 10 Dec 1997 11:25:06 -0600

A few points offered as food for thought:

1) Christ became dirt for us.

2) God would have been "cruel" if He would have created (or made evolved)
creatures totally different from us. Isn't it interesting that when we go to
the zoo we look for eyes or a nose, etc. things and features that we may have
in common.

3) I am not an evolutionist in the strict sense of the word. Why can't we
think that a common designer (God) used common materials (dirt) to create
"life" and life-forms".

4) A basic belief of Christianity is that there is a real human being at the
rigth hand of the Father, his name is Jesus, who also happened to be God, the
creator and ruler of the Universe. Is He, Jesus-the-man, evolving? Or, are
we evolving and he is not (for not being exposed to mutations and Natural
Selection)? Or do you believe man will not evolve any further?

Salu2

>
> I noticed the term "put down man" as if being evolved from animals is a
> denigrating thing. I would like to point out that actually the Bible says we
> were formed, ultimately, from something even lower than animals. We were
> formed from dirt. Dirt does not even possess the quality of life. Dirt is,
> well, dirty. When wet it is muddy.We take baths every day to wash the dirt
> off of us. No one wants us around them when we are dirty. Dirt is not very
> intelligent and can not perform trained tricks as animals can. Why is it
> such a shame to be formed from animals rather than dirt?
>
> A friend of mine, a local creationist wrote:
>
> "If people really did evolve from monkey-like creatures, then the questin
> arises, 'What about the Virgin Mary? Was Mary, the human mother of the Lord
> jesus, composed of made-over monkey genes?' If Mary was a highly evolved,
> distant relative of monkeys, then is our Lord also genetically related to
> the primates? Mary was created in the image of God, not in the lineage of
> monkeys." Jobe Martin, The Evolution of a Creationist.(Rockwall: Biblical
> Discipleship Publishers, 1994), p. 15
>
> So is it so much better for Mary and thus Jesus to be made-over dirt? Is
> that really a higher view of man to know that he is related to dirt? The
> image of God is not a physical thing, but many anti-evolutionists act like
> the image is a material thing as Jobe seems to do above. If we have
> monkey-genes, we can't be in the image of God. Considering that 98% of our
> genetic material is identical to the chimpanzee's genetic material, I would
> say that we are 98% chimp.
>
> I am not trying to be sacriligious with this. But this issue seems to be a
> strange place to fight the battle. My point to the above is that if God
> chose to create man from dirt via a path through the animals, what is the
> big deal? God took dirt and evolved (changed) it into living beings.
> Anti-evolutionists often act as if being derived from an animal is bad but
> being derived from dirt is great. Both possibilities are evolutions
> (changes) of one form into another form. I find the values expressed by this
> amazing.
>
> glenn