Mike Satterlee wrote:
>Dick Fischer wrote: Since you want the "image" to start before Adam, you must
>say where that begins. Any date you pick would be arbitrary - 4 million
>years ago, 100,000 years ago, 10,000 years ago. You can guess, but you don't
>know.
>
>Dick, this raises a question I had hoped to get your opinion on. Regardless
>of whether Gen. 1:26, 27 is referring to God's creation of the human race
>prior to His creation of Adam and Eve or to His creation of Adam and Eve, I
>would like to know how and when you and others on this list believe God first
>created the human race? As you say, all we can do is guess as to the "when."
>The "how" may also be a matter of some disagreement here.
>
>I'll volunteer to go first.
>
>I believe God "created" man by making highly evolved primates into "spirit"
>people. A "spirit person" is a person who has a spirit unlike that of
>animals, a spirit which returns to God upon our death. (Eccl. 3:21; 12:7)
>Being a "spirit person" also means having the ability to comprehend
>"spiritual" concepts. Concepts such as eternity, morality, justice and God. I
>believe at some point during the physical evolution of our species God
>intervened and gave mankind the ability to comprehend such "spiritual"
>concepts. I believe God also then began giving us eternal spirits. I believe
>these were the creative acts spoken of in Gen. 1:27.
>
>I believe our ability to think "spiritual" thoughts has, since that time,
>been inherited from our parents. However, the eternal spirits all human
>beings have since possessed may be individual gifts which God gives to all
>human beings at their births, at the time we take our first breath. This may
>have been what was pictured by God breathing the breath of life into Adam.
>(The Hebrew word "neshamah" which is used in Gen. 2:7 can mean both "breath"
>and "spirit.") If this is so, I believe it can truthfully be said that all
>human beings, before and after Adam, have been individually "created" in the
>same way that Adam was. (Adam was created from preexisting organic material,
>the dust of the earth, and had a spirit breathed into him directly by God.)
>
>I suspect God created the human race in this way about 100,000 years ago, at
>the time scientists tell us people just like ourselves first appeared on
>earth.
>
>I would much appreciate reading the thoughts on this subject of others on
>this list.
>
>How and when did God create man?
I said to Peter Ruest, "You can guess, but you don't know." Just as easily
I could have said, "I can guess, but I don't know," or "anybody can guess,
but no one knows." It is just speculation, I'm a data and evidence guy,
even becoming a Christian because the gospel message made sense. I was
approached by Mormons years ago. I listened to their pitch for two days
and rejected it on the basis that it made no sense.
Richard Leaky correlates the beginning of the road to humanity with the
Gregorian rift that cut through Africa about 5.5 million years ago, or
thereabouts. When the jungle slowly turned to savannah, the tree dwelling
apes had to come down and forage for food, returning to the trees at night
for safety. Gorillas went one way, chimpanzees went another. On the other
side of the rift, ground foraging wasn't necessary, and so they remained
what they still are to this day, brachiating apes.
I heard an anthropologist venture that our primal fear of the dark, fear of
falling, and fear of snakes was engrained in humans from our nights spent
in the trees.
Australopithicines (in the ape family) became Homo erectus 2-3 million
years ago. Apparently, there were three trips out of Africa, the last were
modern Homo sapiens about 100,000 years ago. That's about as concise as I
can make it.
Fast forwarding to southern Mesopotamia, we find some of the same elements
roughly 6,500 years ago as existed in the days of Rome at the time of
Christ. The Sumerians had culture, schools, writing, marriage, divorce,
social structure, organization, differentiation of labor, laws, government,
a social hierarchy, a belief in the divine. All the elements were in place
where it was just a good time for God to make his presence known.
Adam was given the mission to bring the message of accountability, a
communion with God and observance of the moral law - a law of righteous
living. Adam himself failed, and you know the rest of that story.
I believe the Sumerians had something worth saving that Australopithicines
lacked. But as to exactly when humans became imbued with "souls" capable
of redemption, I make no claim of knowledge. I don't think my message
lacks from ignorance in that area. On the contrary, I would prefer to be
remembered as one who made a contribution with a logical argument using the
stuff of science, and resisted the temptation to speculate.
Dick Fischer - The Origins Solution - www.orisol.com
"The answer we should have known about 150 years ago"
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