Re: Re: [asa] Does ASA believe in Adam and Eve?

On Thu, 29 Mar 2007 17:39:16 -0500 (CDT) <dickfischer@verizon.net>
writes:
> If I thought the road to salvation could be found in a poem you bet
> I'd check it out. The only reason I bothered checking out Genesis
> history is because, well, it is the Bible, and due to the general
> lack of knowledge of the related historical elements that part of
> Genesis is highly misunderstood. YECs don't become YECs simply
> because of their lack of science education, it is also because they
> don't understand Genesis either.
>
Dick,
I'd turn you upside down. You hold that the first chapters of Genesis
agree with Mesopotamian sources because both reflect the same history. I
think they agree because the Mesopotamian myths were there and the
apologist responded to them in order to communicate with maximum clarity
in the circumstances. This requires that there were fully human beings
long before the time you give for Adam's existence.

I find a grave problem with your idea that a notion could transform a
humanoid creature that is not quite fully human into a fully human being,
and that notion (which could not be transmitted across oceans to the
already inhabited New World) made the others also human. Could there have
been any kind of human society without moral notions? Could an idea,
however deep and sublime, produce a soul (which I hold to be biblical) or
produce the Nancey Murphy kind of function? Glenn has also pointed out
worship long before 7000 B.C. I conclude that your idea for an Adam is
too late and too pathetically weak. Also, as I have noted elsewhere, I
see no way that you can escape Universalism.

As to possibilities in an old universe, God could have chosen 2 hominoids
and changed them into ensouled beings, at least 50,000 years ago, letting
them replace all earlier "species" (varieties ?) of _Homo_. Or he could
have done something similar with an entire breeding group. The soul could
have been transmitted to all hybrid descendants as well as the pure bred,
giving Glenn his hair. Alternatively, the development of the group may
have resulted in their becoming "ensouled," whether with or without
creative intervention. I see these as the basic kinds of explanation, but
know of no way to definitively test them.
Dave

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Received on Thu Mar 29 20:05:25 2007