RE: Special Creation

Jim wrote:
 
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".
 
Ah, and since our solar system is powered by a second generation sun,
the star which preceded ours and became a nova roughly 5.5 billion years
ago may have had an array of planets around it upon which life had
formed or was created. When earth coalesced, the "dust" of rudimentary
life could seed our primitive planet.
 
Dick Fischer
~Dick Fischer~ Genesis Proclaimed Association
Finding Harmony in Bible, Science, and History
 <http://www.genesisproclaimed.org> www.genesisproclaimed.org
 
-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of Jim Armstrong
Sent: Wednesday, March 01, 2006 5:43 PM
To: ASA
Subject: 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.

 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> 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 Thu Mar 2 13:49:22 2006