Re: Special Creation

The traditional interpretation is that Man is created ex nihlo. (bara)
There is no mention of using the rib of an animal for example, like Eve was
fashioned (banah) out of Adam's. And this is the issue that has to be
addressed. Was man created ex nihlo like the heavens and earth or was he
fashioned, shaped out of what was already around?

I thought the traditional "literal" interpretation was that Adam was created
not ex nihlo, but out of the "dust of the Earth" ("apar" = dust, clay,
"adamah" = earth, soil, cultivatable land) as stated in Genesis 2:7 and Gen.
3:19 ("from dust you are and to dust you will return").

In a practical sense, I dont knows what "genetic clay" is. When microbes
are engineered the genetic material that is inserted is not taken from the
dust of the earth or the ground, but from other living organisms.

"Genetic clay" just my stab at a memorable phrase, not a description of some
actual stuff. The point about genetic engineering is just that genetic
engineering creates a real, not apparent, genetic link between the
engineered microbe and the entire evolutionary line of microbes that
preceded it. So a Homo Erectus or some closer ancestor of ours dies and
begins to decay; God takes the "dust" of that decaying material and
"genetically engineers" it to create a modern human, and breathes into that
human the "breath of life." It seems not entirely different from God
breathing spirit into an existing, living homo sapiens, which is what some
TE's propose.

On 3/1/06, jack syme <drsyme@cablespeed.com> wrote:
>
>
> Yes I have seen you mention this. I have not seen much of a response to
it and that is in part why I made this thread. The issue is not just where
Adam is in the timeline, but was he created specially or not. Or maybe we
need some more work to understand what it means that God "created" man.
>
> The traditional interpretation is that Man is created ex nihlo. (bara)
There is no mention of using the rib of an animal for example, like Eve was
fashioned (banah) out of Adam's. And this is the issue that has to be
addressed. Was man created ex nihlo like the heavens and earth or was he
fashioned, shaped out of what was already around? Just from that simple
look at it, it would seem that since the author used barah for Adam, and
banah for Eve, the biblical view does not seem to support your idea.
>
> In a practical sense, I dont knows what "genetic clay" is. When microbes
are engineered the genetic material that is inserted is not taken from the
dust of the earth or the ground, but from other living organisms.
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: David Opderbeck
> To: jack syme
> Cc: glennmorton@entouch.net ; Terry M.Gray ; asa@calvin.edu
> Sent: Wednesday, March 01, 2006 9:21 AM
> Subject: Re: Special Creation
>
>
> 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?
>
> On 3/1/06, jack syme <drsyme@cablespeed.com> wrote:
> >
> > In all of this discussion about geneologies, mtDNA, and Adam, an
important theological point is not getting pushed aside somewhat and
that is the idea of special creation. Was Adam created out of
the dust of the earth as a new creature or not?
> >
> > In the evolutionary model humans are part of the tree of life. We
all have a common ancestor that utlmately evolved into chimpanzees,
gorillas, and humans. So we are geneticall connected to primates, and
mammals to a lesser extent, and all vertebrates, etc etc. And in fact
the scientific evidence supports this. We have been focusing lately
on templetons autosomal analysis of human migration. But
MHC loci, psudogenes, and chromosomal banding patterns, clearly
connect us to apes.
> >
> > 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.
> >
> > At this point, I am leaning towards Dick's view. If the creation of
man means nothing about his actual first appearance (in a
biological sense) then there is no reason to make Adam
a homo erectus. I am concerned about Glenn's argument against
evidence for a substantial flood in neolithic times, which I think is
the strongest argument against Dick's view, (and this would apply to
Phil's view also).
>
>
Received on Wed Mar 1 12:10:59 2006