Re: Special Creation

But I think, from what I've gleaned from some OT scholars, that the
extrapolation of bara to "ex nihilo" does not quite capture the
sensibilities of the ancient writers. In that view God was not quite
surrounded by nothing, but rather more by something from which He, in
creating, drew and gave reality to by giving new (for the first time)
form, function and name. What existed before was formless and chaotic,
but it existed, at least in the context of God's domain. Was that
pre-existing pre-Creation "virtual clay" just something like the E in
E=mc^2? I dunno. I just registered that, at least in the view of some OT
scholars, that the ancient writers would not likely have identified with
the "from nothing" notion, and that is narrowing the idea embodied in
"bara" unnecessarily.

This would seen not to do any essential violence to what you've said below.

Another observation that might be made is that when the first of the
super-nebulae went off, the result of producing higher atomic weight
elements (greater than hydrogen and helium - transparent in the visual
spectrum) produced would have been enormous clouds of (for the first
time) opaque DUST - carbon and oxygen and iron and such. Ultimately,
gravity would be able to impose its influence and in time, clear the
open space as the dust congregated into more local concentrations, some
of which would ultimately become suns and planets more as we know them -
but all from that initially atomic dust - not strictly speaking "dust
from the earth", but certainly "same dust as earth".

 JimA.

David Opderbeck wrote:

> 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
> <mailto: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 <mailto:glennmorton@entouch.net> ;
> Terry M.Gray ; asa@calvin.edu <mailto: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
> <mailto: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 17:45:23 2006