>Explaining origins is not the same as theorizing as we now do. It seems that
>two facts are hard to reconcile with evolution and that is the creation in
>the image of God and the Genesis account of the creation of man. Christ
>could have put down man very easily by saying that man evolved from lower
>forms of animals. But He did not. Why?
I noticed the term "put down man" as if being evolved from animals is a
denigrating thing. I would like to point out that actually the Bible says we
were formed, ultimately, from something even lower than animals. We were
formed from dirt. Dirt does not even possess the quality of life. Dirt is,
well, dirty. When wet it is muddy.We take baths every day to wash the dirt
off of us. No one wants us around them when we are dirty. Dirt is not very
intelligent and can not perform trained tricks as animals can. Why is it
such a shame to be formed from animals rather than dirt?
A friend of mine, a local creationist wrote:
"If people really did evolve from monkey-like creatures, then the questin
arises, 'What about the Virgin Mary? Was Mary, the human mother of the Lord
jesus, composed of made-over monkey genes?' If Mary was a highly evolved,
distant relative of monkeys, then is our Lord also genetically related to
the primates? Mary was created in the image of God, not in the lineage of
monkeys." Jobe Martin, The Evolution of a Creationist.(Rockwall: Biblical
Discipleship Publishers, 1994), p. 15
So is it so much better for Mary and thus Jesus to be made-over dirt? Is
that really a higher view of man to know that he is related to dirt? The
image of God is not a physical thing, but many anti-evolutionists act like
the image is a material thing as Jobe seems to do above. If we have
monkey-genes, we can't be in the image of God. Considering that 98% of our
genetic material is identical to the chimpanzee's genetic material, I would
say that we are 98% chimp.
I am not trying to be sacriligious with this. But this issue seems to be a
strange place to fight the battle. My point to the above is that if God
chose to create man from dirt via a path through the animals, what is the
big deal? God took dirt and evolved (changed) it into living beings.
Anti-evolutionists often act as if being derived from an animal is bad but
being derived from dirt is great. Both possibilities are evolutions
(changes) of one form into another form. I find the values expressed by this
amazing.
glenn
Adam, Apes, and Anthropology: Finding the Soul of Fossil Man
and
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm