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."
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
hydroencephaly as an infant, whose brains are mere coatings to the
inside of the skull and yet have normal intelligence. Are we to
deny people like this the status of humanity? (see Science Dec.
1980, p. 1232). There was a report of one child whose epileptic
seizures required the removal of half his brain. At college he
recieved 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 epicanthric 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 possiblity of a
normal intelligence, hydroencephalic 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. pigmy, chinese, Swede, homo erectus
Australopithecus or even my wife {for she looks different from me
in interesting ways.}). 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.
Genesis 3-5
Events here are basically as described. The genealogies, are true,
but very incomplete. Even Whitcomb and Morris beleive that the
word translated as begat in the genealogies can mean, "is ancestor
of" Whitcomb and Morris try to limit the length of those gaps to
only a few generations. 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 miniscule portion of the true list of humans in the line to
Jesus.
Genesis 6-9
The flood as alluded to above occurred at the infilling 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 that was made that the Caspian Basin was the locale,
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. My view 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 beause 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, 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
My epistemology requires that historical events either be true
or false (e.g. they either happened or they didn't). To treat the
early part of Genesis as allegory was very unsatisfactory for me.
The creation accounts in Egypt as well as the creation accounts of
the American Indians are all equally allegorical. They convey some
truth also, but it is not THE truth in the sense that it actually
happened that way. I recently had a brief e-mail discussion with
a person who told me that she had no problem with theists. If she
could be nonjudgemental about a tribe that viewed the world as
created by a Hero Twin or a giant salamander, she could be equally
nonjudgmental about the virgin birth. When the events of our
Scripture lose their historical reality, we find those events
lumped in with the giant salamander as having no more reality than
said salamander. If that is all Christianity is, a great big
salamander story, it is not worth my time!!!!! The events described
by the Bible either happened or they didn't but I will reject
forever the usefulness of the allegorical approach for events
described as historical.
If our Bible taught that the world was on the back of a turtle
swimming in a large cosmic sea, we would be very hard pressed to be
able to have any type of harmonization between theology and
science. Such a situation is not an observational fact. Our
Scripture does state that there was a flood, that Adam and Eve
sinned, that Eve came from Adam's rib. Either we account for how
these events fit within the historical, geological, and biological
knowledge we have or we will be the proud possessors of a "turtle
in the sea" document. If our religion is true, this can not be the
case. If our religion is true, then there MUST be a way to
harmonize the data from science and the data from Scripture. This
is the only way I have found to accomplish that purpose.
Glenn Morton
16075 Longvista Dr.
Dallas Tx, 75248