HI Gordie,
At 10:31 AM 3/2/98, Gordon Simons wrote:
>Glenn, since you subscribe to evolution, perhaps you could agree that
>racism is a natural consequence of the mechanisms of evolution. Then the
>question becomes for Christians:
But while I accept evolution, I do it in a way that allows me to agree with
Russ Maatman. I believe that neither our humanity, i.e., the image of God,
nor our sin nature arises from evolution. If our sin nature is merely an
extention of animal behavior, then I would have trouble calling it sin. I
would also have trouble understanding why we humans, behaving as animals,
are held accountable, when animals, behaving as an animal, are not.
It is this facet of the problem that convinced me that there had to be some
type of separation between us and the animals. The biological data, in the
form of pseudogenes, clearly shows that our bodies are connected via common
descent with the apes. But our natures must be separate. That is why I
suggested that Adam was a miraculously fixed up victim of a chromosomal
fusion (apes have 48 chromosomes we have 46). In fact I suggested that Adam
was originally still born. God fixed him up. He was then the only one of
his kind on earth and thus the need for the surgery to create Eve. In this
way, Adam's body could show the connection with the apes, but his spirit was
created by God.
After seeing what Russ Maatman wrote tonight about Eve being the mother of
all living, I must add that this is another reason for not having mankind
merely evolve like any other animal. If that were the case, Eve could not
be the mother of all humans, as there would be thousands of them.
>
>How do the "fallen nature of man" and man's evolutionary origins
>intertwine? It seems that we have inherited our "original sin," in a
>very literal sense, through our genes (no apple required!), -- a natural
>tendency toward racism, selfishness, promiscuity, and a multiplicity of
>things we Christians (should) view as sinful.
But once again, if we inherited sin in this fashion, it leaves me wondering
why our natural behavior then shouldn't be the ethical behavior? I would
find this disturbing.
glenn
Adam, Apes, and Anthropology: Finding the Soul of Fossil Man
and
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm