Adam's immortality
There has historically been an objection to evolution because
of the belief that death entered the world through Adam. Romans
5:12 states, "Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into
the world {cosmos}, and death through sin and so death spread to
all men, because all sinned." (NIV)
Notice that the verse says death spread to all men. It does
not say that death spread to the animals or plants. Death was
man's punishment for sin. Man was the only creature given the
possibility of immortality by God. The cows, goats and my cat
never had that possibility. To interpret this verse as implying
that the death of animals prior to the advent of sin is taking the
verse further than it wants to go.
The very fact that God created reproduction argues very
strongly that death, at least for the animals was part of the
creation. Bacterial reproduction, if unchecked by death and
stasis, would cover the earth in less than a week's time.
Cockroaches are well renown for their reproductive success. Do we
really think that God created a world in which cockroaches would
continue to multiply without end and never die? No, death was part
of nature at the creation of Adam, but Adam had the opportunity to
not participate in that death had He made the correct choice.
The second passage is the Romans 8:20-23: "For the creation
was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but because of Him
who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set
free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory
of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans
and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now."(NAS)
The creation suffers from man's sin far beyond mere death.
Man's sin has upset the ecological balance, we are not being good
stewards of the earth (and I don't think we even know how to be).
But the above passage does not say that creation was subject to
death, but to futility. No matter what man does in the area of
conservation and ecology, he faces a Hobson's choice. Save one
species but at the expense of another. By allowing the saving the
wolf, we run the risk of killing off other species because of their
predation. Suppose the wolf captures the last black-footed ferret?
The place of fossil man
There is often an issue raised concerning where the fossil man
fits into the Biblical record. This of course raises the question
of how do you define man. Can you do it on brain size? The
Australopithecines had brains in the 450 cc range much smaller than
modern man (1350 cc). Well, there are modern humans who had
hydrocephaly as an infant, whose brains are mere coatings to the
inside of the skull (about one millimeter thick) and yet have normal
intelligence. A generous calculation of this man's brain size places
it in the range of 108 cc. Are we to deny people like this the
status of humanity? (Lewin, 1980, p. 1232). There was a report of
one child whose epileptic seizures required the removal of half his
brain. At college he received a higher grade in a class with half
his brain than his father, who took the same class, did with a full
brain. Does his approximately 600 cc brain deny him a place in
humanity?
What other characteristics can we use to define man? This
gets really tricky here. Modern man has an amazing range of
morphological variation. Pygmies to the tall Watusi in height;
straight hair of many Chinese to the extremely kinky hair of
Africans; very dark skin with lots of pigmentation to the near
absence of pigmentation in the Scandinavians. Eyes with and
without epicanthic folds are found. Is there one physical trait
that can be used to define man? No. If you say that the
Australopithecines could not be man because their brains were small
and they were very short, you would rule out by that definition,
men alive today. While I know of no examples the possibility of a
normal intelligence, hydrocephalic pygmy certainly exists. To
deny such a person the title of human would be an injustice of the
highest degree.
Can we use intelligence? Hardly. First technology and
intelligence do not go hand in hand so there is no way to measure
it in the fossil record. Secondly such a definition of humanity
would then deny humanity to one such as my wife's Down's syndrome
uncle or a good friend's extremely unintelligent anencephalic
child. Is he not human? I would fight such a definition.
Humanity can not be defined by such terms. I would contend
that humanity is anyone made in the image of God, even if they look
different from me (e.g. pygmy, Chinese, Swede, Homo erectus).
Before we exclude some of the fossil men from humanity, we need to
have a very, very clear definition of what humanity is. There was a
time, not too long ago in this country, when Africans were not
viewed as human since they were so different in appearance from the
Europeans. God judges what is inside of us, not what we look like.
Thus I would define man as any being who engages in human
activities.
When was mankind created? Morris and the ICR crowd would want
us to believe that man was created 6-10 thousand years ago. Hugh
Ross would want us to believe that mankind was created less than
60,000 years ago. (Ross, 1994, p. 141). If this is true, then there
should be no evidence for human-like activity in the fossil record
prior to that time. Do these views match up with the data found in
the fossil record?
There are some behaviors which can currently be correlated to
man and man alone. These activities have been in the fossil record
for several million years.
Mankind is the only creature on earth today that fashions
stone tools. The oldest stone tools found in the fossil record come
from 2.7 million years ago. (Chamberlain, 1983, p. 143).
Mankind is the only being that creates a tool with the purpose
of making another tool. (Schick and Toth, 1993, p.53-57). The first
evidence of tool use for a purpose other than gathering food or
making a nest is from Homo erectus 1.5 million years ago. Schick
and Toth report that microanalysis of the stone tools found evidence
of wood-working on the stone tools of Koobi Fora 1.5 million years
ago (Schick and Toth, 1993, p. 176).
Mankind is the only being who controls fire and the first
evidence of the controlled use of fire is from Europe with Homo
erectus 700,000 years ago. (Barnouw, 1982, p. 143).
Only mankind fashions weapons with the future purpose of
killing. The first spear in the fossil record is from Clacton-on-
Sea from 300,000(this is really the making of a tool to make
another tool for a third purpose) (Schick and Toth, 1993, p. 271).
Mankind is the only being who has been known to scalp his own
kind and the first evidence of this is from Bodo, Ethiopia from a
skull dated at 300,000 years old. (Tattersall, 1995, p. 244).
Mankind is the only being who has two brain structures related
to speech, Broca's area and Wernicke's area. Both of these leave
impressions on the inside of skulls. These are first found in the
skulls of Homo habilis dated at 2 million years ago. (Shreeve, 1995,
p. 274-275). This indicates that some level of speech was probably
developed in Homo habilis. Since speech is a purely human trait, it
would seem difficult to exclude habilis from humanity!
Mankind is the only being who engages in art-especially the
art of making statues of naked females of his species. The earliest
possible example of this type of art is a presently controversial
object known as the Golan Venus. It is a rock modified to look like
a female. It was found in rocks dated at 330,000 years ago (Morris,
186-188; Feraud et al, 1983, p 263-265.) While I have no details,
apparently more ancient art has been found in Africa from 240,000
years ago. (Bower, 1995, p. 378). Marshak (Marshak, 1995, p. 495)
reports that it is clear that human hands modified this object.
These behaviors have a lot of bearing on when it can be
reasonably asserted that a being engaging in those activities first
appeared on earth. For Christians to ignore this data and blithely
state that Adam was created less than 60,000 years ago is wrong.
Modern humans first appear at Klaisies River Cave in deposits dated
at 120,000 years (Shreeve, 1995, p. 214-215). To claim that they
were not spiritual, and therefore not human, as Hugh Ross wants to
do, raises all sorts of possibilities that some of the modern
peoples alive today are not human. That view opens the door to
racism.
The only way to fit the scriptural account with the scientific
observations is to have Adam and Eve be Homo habilis or
Australopithecus. Bones of Australopithecines are found as
long ago as 5.5 million years ago (Chamberlain, 1991, p. 139).
The earliest habilis is from around 2.4 million years ago. A
small population of habilis could have lived considerably earlier
than 2.4 million years ago. The recent discovery of Homo in
China at Longgupo from strata dated at 2 million years (Huang,
1995, p. 275-278) argues for a fairly long prior existence for
habilis or another species, ergaster, since dispersal from Africa
to Asia requires some time.
Genesis 3-5
Events here are basically as described. The genealogies, are true,
but very incomplete. Even Whitcomb and Morris believe that the
word translated as "begat" in the genealogies can mean, "is ancestor
of" (Whitcomb and Morris, 1961, p. 474-475) Whitcomb and Morris try
to limit the length of those gaps to only a few generations. Hugh
Ross also limits the gaps in the genealogies to no more than 60,000
years (Ross, 1996, p. 4). But I am not sure that they can do that
in light of the use of what must have been the same or similar term
by Jesus. Jesus was called the Son of Man. My Bible dictionary
says that Adam means man! Thus Jesus was using that term to skip
over hundreds of generations. Thus, I feel that it is within the
realm of possibility that the genealogies, while true in what they
report are a minuscule portion of the true list of humans in the
line from Adam to Jesus.
Genesis 6-9
One thing is very clear to anyone who has studied geology,
the world-wide flood, as envisioned by Whitcomb and Morris, is
absolutely impossible. Animal burrows are found throughout the
geologic column. Since one can not catastrophically deposit a
hole in the ground, there must be a lot of time for the animals
to dig and eat their way through the rocks making the burrows.
This is especially true of certain limestone burrowing animals,
the clionid sponges. Paleocaves, deep in the geologic column,
are found (occasionally filled with oil) and these also can not
be deposited catastrophically. Large holes in the rock are not
the product of deposition. Footprints on layer after rock
layer, vertically, clearly shows that the rock was NOT covered
by deep water when it was deposited. Animals do not have long
enough legs to leave footprints on the botton sediments during
a worldwide flood which covered high mountains (Olsen, 1980,
p. 18). I have a photo of an oil well core with 9-10 layers
(years) worth of plant roots. This was pulled up from 7,000
feet in southern Colorado (Morton, 1995, p. 32). I can point you
to 3 dimensional seismic data which shows, river channels
(Brown, 1993, p. 14-15), paleokarsts (sinkholes like what
happens in Florida) and other features buried deeply in the
geologic column. Since these features require much time to
form, they could not be formed in the Flood as envisioned by
Whitcomb and Morris.
The flood as alluded to above occurred at the in filling of the
Mediterranean Sea, 5.5 million years ago. The Bible uses the word
"eretz" to describe what was flooded and as we saw above that word
can be translated as "earth", "land", or "country". I suspect that
the main reason that "earth" is chosen is that it was always
chosen. One certainly can not claim that the "context" requires
the entire earth be flooded, and thus we must translate 'eretz' as
'earth. The context is precisely what is at issue! Is the flood
local or global. Your decision in relation to that question will
determine how you translate the verse. The word 'eretz' does not
determine the extent of the flood, your view of the extent of the
flood determines the translation choice.
What about Genesis 7:19 where it talks about the waters of the
flood covering the 'high mountains'? Does that not require a
global Flood? It does, unless you place the Flood where I do, in
the Mediterranean basin. Then, the high mountains were covered but
by a local flood not a global one. This issue of the high
mountains has always been a difficulty of the local flood view in
that no one could point to a place where anything which remotely
qualified as 'high mountains' could be covered without also
covering the entire world. This left the local flood view as an
explanation of the Flood which had no location. Local flood
advocates could merely say "Yeah, we know it happened but don't
know where, probably in the Mideast somewhere." This led to a
further problem that the local flood advocates could not correlate
the biblical events with their event in any detail whatsoever. The
suggestion was made that the Caspian Basin was the locale. This
failed because parts of that basin have no geological deposits
which could qualify as flood deposits and you can't cover 'high
mountains' in that basin without covering the earth to a depth of
3000 feet with water. There is also the difficulty that no local
flood in a river valley can last one year, and deposit the ark on
top of a mountain. How do you have the Ark float down a river for a
year and land on top of mountains? He would float to the sea! The view
presented in _Foundation, Fall and Flood_ can solve these difficulties.
There is a subtlety in Genesis 6:13 which young earth
creationists miss. The verse states: "Then God said to Noah, 'The
end of all flesh has come before Me; for the earth is filled with
violence because of them; and behold, I am about to destroy them
with the earth." (NAS) If you insist on translating 'eretz' as
'earth' then this verse if read in a normal fashion would imply
that the 'earth' is about to be destroyed. But we live on the
earth and so it was not destroyed. If on the other hand you view
this as the 'land' which is about to be destroyed, then even this
can be true. The 'land' at the base of the Mediterranean was
destroyed, and it has not been land since the catastrophic collapse
of the Gibraltar Dam 5.5 million years ago.
Conclusion
Can this scenario be proven? No, but it is consistent with
almost all of the data of science. That is an important step in
developing any viable view. It also makes certain predictions.
First, it makes the prediction that Homo habilis or Homo erectus
should be found much further back in time. It also would make
the prediction that certain artifacts or bones of hominids might
be found at the Miocene/Pliocene boundary in the Mediterranean
region. Prediction is an integral part of science. Without
predictions, a theory can not recieve confirmatory support.
To me it is quite sad to see Christians confidently state that
all observational science must be wrong in order for the Bible to be
correct.
A much more detailed account of this can be found in the book,
_Foundation, Fall and Flood_ (ISBN 0-9648227-1-7) available from the
address below. $15 + $2 postage in U.S. $3 postage in Canada
Overseas U.S. funds, $15 + $4 surface mail, or $10 Airmail.
Glenn Morton
16075 Longvista Dr.
Dallas Tx, 75248
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_____________________________________________________________
Terry M. Gray, Ph.D. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Calvin College 3201 Burton SE Grand Rapids, MI 40546
Office: (616) 957-7187 FAX: (616) 957-6501
Email: grayt@calvin.edu http://www.calvin.edu/~grayt