>There is a greater issue than science in the question of whether Adam
>was real or not. That is the question of sin. I am joining this
>discussion late, and perhaps someone has already mentioned this, but
>if Adam was not an individual, from where did sin come? If evolution
>was the producer of humanity, there is no direct source of the
>concept of sin, hence no need of a savior, hence Jesus cannot be the
>Savior of the World, as He claimed to be. Hence, Jesus was not
>factual or accurate, hence He could not be God.
I agree with you on the need for a real, historical Adam. I would disagree
that there is no possibility of explaining the source of sin in the fashion
that the Bible describes. The Mantra that evolution is incompatible with
special creation is due to the fact that Christians haven't tried very hard to
united the two views. Conservatives repeat the mantra; liberals don't believe
the creation account is anything but allegory. But it is possible to unite
these views. What I have suggested, gives some people indigestion but it does
unite both the evolutionary and the creationist views into one account.
Gen. 2:7: "The LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living
being." NIV
This verse is often used to throw out an evolutionary view of mankind. But
what is this "dust" that is spoken of?
Genesis 3:19 says of Adam: ". . .for dust you are and to dust you will return"
It does not say "for dust your were". This is a significant point. At the
time of that speaking, Adam was a living being; he was not dust, in the normal
use of that word, at that time. Thus his body --a living body-- is dust also.
Here is what I have suggested. The evolutionary transition from ape to man
involved a chromosomal fusion. Apes have 48 chromosomes and mankind has 46.
If evolution is true then two pair of chromosomes had to fuse into one. This
is a fairly large genetic change. Most beings who undergo such a fusion would
be likely to die. or to be still born.
I suggest that God took such a still born, miraculously fixed him up, breathed
into his nostrils the breath of life and created Adam. In this way you have a
partially, evolutionarily generated body, and a special creation of God. This
allows one to take into account the Biblical account, which is important to
me, and allows me to explain the pseudogenes we share with the apes.
(Non-working, broken genes are found at the same genomic location in Chimp,
Gorilla, Orang, and man but not in other primates. The odds against that
occuring by chance 4 times is greater than 1 x 10^38 -Edward Max,
"Plagiarized Errors and Molecular Genetics:" Creation/Evolution 6:3, Winter
1986-1987 p. 34-46)
Once Adam was created, the rest of the story can unfold as the Bible outlines.
This includes your source of sin via the Fall.
Theologically, if a living body can be dust and upon death, you are dust,
then it is at least possible for God to have taken a cadaver an converted it
to a living being, an evolutionarily derived body a specially created spirit,
resulting ultimately in a fallen being like us.
glenn
Foundation,Fall and Flood
http://members.gnn.com/GRMorton/dmd.htm