"And the objection that the Hebrews would not have understood modern science
is fallacious. God could have simply said, "I created man from the slime in
the sea." That would have been sufficient to get across the proper idea.
All in all this is a
strange God indeed."
Genesis reports that "The Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground."
This is a wonderful metaphor. Over the millennia, "dust" has probably been
a more universally understood concept than "slime of the sea" would have
been. Besides, in another 50 years the scientific view may be that life
began in the crevice of a rock. Do we expect God to change His metaphor with
every new finding of science? Being formed from the dust conveys the
profound idea that should not be lost, as Van Inwagen suggests: Human
beings are part of this world and are formed from its elements. The specifics
of how it was done is left open for later generations to discover.
Shalom,
Bob