Re: Special Creation

--- David Opderbeck <dopderbeck@gmail.com> wrote:

> So the scientific evidence suggests that we have to abandon the idea that
> our progenitor, whether it was 100k or 1.5 Ma, was created out of nothing
> with no connection to the rest of the tree of life.
>
> Jack -- another possibility: could Adam have been specially created out of
> "something" -- "the dust of the ground" -- that included genetic material
> (skin cells, hair, etc.; or stem cells?) from earlier hominids? There is no
> "appearance of a connection" fallacy here -- there is a real connection, but
> it is not the one evolutionary science suggests. The "clay" the master
> potter used to form man was "genetic clay." Which seems to make sense to
> me. When biotechnology today "creates" an organism -- say, a microbe that
> digests oil wastes -- it doesn't do so ex nihlo, it clones existing microbes
> and manipulates existing DNA to produce desired characteristics. If we
> humans are able to "create" garbage-eating microbes within only fifty years
> or so of learning about DNA, couldn't God have specially created a human in
> a similar way?
>
> I've been thinking about this alot over the past couple of weeks, and the
> above is something that came to me. I don't want to suggest it's the
> "right" view or even "my" view, but it does seem feasible and seems to have
> been omitted from the conversation so far. I'm sure I got this from
> somewhere. Does anyone know of a paper or book or recognized position that
> takes this kind of approach?
>
I have advanced this argument on this list and elsewhere. In Genesis 1 God says
"let the earth bring forth ...". Therefore, in a sense _all_ created creatures
(the land creatures anyway) are "the dust of the earth". So when God made Adam
from the dust of the earth, He could have been merely transforming an existing
creature. I'm sure this argument is not original with me, but I don't know
where I got it. Although he doesn't mention it explicitly, Glenn comes close to
this in "Foundation, Fall and Flood" in the way he has God make Eve
(I think it was Eve -- but maybe it was Adam) from a stillborn primate.
Another source _might_ be an article by Roy Clouser in PSCF a number of years ago.

Bill Hamilton
William E. Hamilton, Jr., Ph.D.
586.986.1474 (work) 248.652.4148 (home) 248.303.8651 (mobile)
"...If God is for us, who is against us?" Rom 8:31

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Received on Wed Mar 1 12:10:19 2006