Are we all descendants of Adam and Eve?

But of course you won't be able to provide anything to back this up. Your reputation here for accuracy and honesty is not the best. Maybe you can improve it by showing a science book that makes this claim.

You've gone off on a tangent. I was explaining why abiogenesis is not "miraculous".

One of the most popular biology texts around the country in the 60's was "The Golden Book of Biology" Golden Press, New York, 1961. I know because I remember the pictures in the text and when I saw one after 30 years at a book sale I bought it for my own two budding scientists.It was the current science for the time and was evolution frendly. It never mentioned such a bullshit crazy scheme.I reiterate. Either you miss-remember or had a bad (or religiously motivated) science teacher interpreting the text for you. As a mater of fact I know for certain that this will happen. But it will not be in favor of the even more ridiculous hypothesis you and yours have been trying to cram down everyone’s throat for the last 2000 + years. Yet you continue to have "faith" in something that has been so completely debunked as creationism.Look, jaywill, the planet earth had, and still has, trillions of little nooks and crannies all over the surface and below. The chemical soup KNOWN to be present on the early earth soaked every one of those spaces giving us trillions of petri dishes each with its own separate experiment of randomly colliding molecules. And every few hours each "dish" was repopulated by more sets of molecules and another experiment. For literally tens of millions of years these hundreds of trillions of experiments each year were performed. These are KNOWN facts.With such numbers all working in parallel the chance encounter of some set of molecules to form a self-replicating chain (thus the beginnings of life) is not just pretty damn good but so close to unity as to make no difference.These are facts.And you have "faith" in an un-evidenced, illogical, falsehood. You do not have any "faith" to believe in facts, probability ... reality. You are being willfully blind to the universe around you.You don't know it since you are so blinded by some 3000+ year old myths that you really believe you have some kind of corner on Truth^TM but, man, you are really missing out on the true beauty of this universe. You miss-understand yet again. That seems too easy for you.That lots of chemicals and molecules were brought to earth by comets, asteroids and dust is well known as fact. It continues today as well. The misleading part of the pop-culture sound bite for this, that I was pointing out, makes it seem as though these were magic seeds of life itself. People, like you, get the totally wrong impression of the mechanism being presented when pop-culture puts catchy names on them.This "seeds of life" crap was, and still is, the pop-culture way of saying ... "stuff came to earth". No "seeds," and only a tenuous connection to "life." It's like saying an acorn is a "seed of the suburban neighborhood." With the explanation above, I hope you can recognize this statement as nonsensical. Don't flatter yourself. Creationism hasn't the intellectual ability to mount any type of conspiracy against reality. Oh, I am quite certain the type of blind religious BS you have fallen for has not contaminated my quite large, pure and intellectually superior reasoning. Edited by AZPaul3, : damn bbcode.

Well, as the original poster of this question, it sure has been interesting reading the responses, although I haven't read anything new from either side.I am an Evolutionist through and through. I can only surmise that fear is what makes Creationists believe in the ancient myths. They certainly were written with that in mind, I'm sure. "Believe or you will suffer for Eternity"! I tend to think that deep down, way way down, they know that it's all hocus pocus, but I may be wrong.I will continue to enjoy the debate!

That's all well and good.
But you do not know for a scientific fact that there was not first human being.

Do you know what a clinal distribution is?Have you any reason to believe that you can pick a single point on a cline and declare that "This is the first!"?

You don't know for a fact that there was no first man.I present my reasons for believe from the Bible that there was.Basically, I explained to, Catholic Scientist, that when I first became a rather reluctant Bible student I had all the standard conceptions of the typical modern educated youth. I started reading the Bible in the Gospels and stayed clear of the Old Testament Genesis of which I had much skepticism.Eventually, the integrity of the character of Jesus Christ became to me beyond suspicion. I noticed that Jesus took Genesis seriously as history. Gradually, I decided that if that was the case it must be true. There is nothing in the New Testament that bases eternal judgment on whether or not one believes that we all descended from Adam. What the New Testament teaches is more along this line -

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"That if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.

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For with the heart there is believing unto righteousness, and with the mouth there is confession unto salvation.

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For the Scripture says, Everyone who believes on Him shall not bve put to shame." (Romans 10:9-1)

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Please notice that there is nothing there concerning Adam or how old the earth is or whether there were half animal / half humans in the past, or anything hotly contended between Evolutionists and Creationists.There is no requirement not to believe in a vast number of scientific theories. They have no bearing on being justified unto salvation. (YOU brought it up).It makes not requirement of anything written in Genesis. God calls you to believe that Jesus Christ is Lord and confess so and to believe in your heart that God has raised the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead.The night I confessed my need for the Lord Jesus, nothing whatsoever concerning Evolution or even eternal damnation was an immediate issue.Having said that, it is my opinion that one's understanding of the nature of man's need for salvation and Christ's work will be weakened much without appreciating the New Testament's dealing with Adam / Christ, First Man and the Second Man, Christ as the Head of a new humanity.But there is no requirement of God that salvation is based upon rejection of a "No First Adam" theory of human origins. My adoration of Christ is that He has no equal as to beauty, preciousness, value, and superlative worth. I am captured by His beauty and not by the fear of religious duty.As I got to know Him both in Scripture and in personal experience I became persuaded that His word could be trusted, His apostles could be trusted, and the New Testament's attitude towards the Old Testament stories was worthy of my trust.As for fear, I think you might be more concerned for the fear of how much of human life in the universe is a huge, empty blank question mark WITHOUT the love of God expressed in Jesus.Too many unbelievers are groping around as blind with no clue where we came from or why we are here. That emptiness is worth a little fearing. You're not getting any younger, you know?Consider that nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ the Lord and in His redemptive death and resurrection for our eternal reconciliation to not only the uncreated Creator but our heavenly Father as well.

Having been a statistical programmer, I remember what distributions, means, averages, standard deviations, degrees of error, etc. Is that what you mean?You see I don't think that the scientific method is the ONLY way man can know truth. In fact doing science is based on a philosophy of science. The philosophy of science is not something which can be proved true by science itself.That would be circular reasoning.So I believe that science is man's invention and the Bible is God's revelation. If there is a discrepancy between the two, I trust the Bible because God knows all the facts.Having said that, I'd add that I do believe that sometimes scientists can correct Bible believers in a certain matter. But the particulars have to be examined carefully.Ie. If Bible readers believe that the earth does not move according to some poetic like passage stating something like that, and it is scientifically demonstrated that it appears that it IS moving, then the Bible reader might be corrected.In some cases there is the need for the Bible reader to go back and carefully ascertain exactly what was SAID in God's revelation and perhaps how it should be understood. "What did it really SAY there?"Though I count the word of God as infallible our interpretations of it are not always infallible.I think the revelation of God shows all humans as coming from a first man and first woman. I don't think a lot of hand waving on this Forum has yet proved that that cannot be the case.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

This is an example of a clinal distribution: Given this type of a distribution, how is one to select the single point that represents the end of one type and the beginning of another?Or, in dealing with the human situation, how is one to select when the first human was born? Is no speciation characterized by a clinal distribution among many traits within a population?

I reiterate, that you are simply mistaken. These books and articles were not religiously motivated at all. And I don't say the books were not interesting. They were just enthusiastic for the then current gradualism paradigm.As I recall now one that I loved concerned water raining on a hot earth for millions of years and eventually electrical strikes into water produced the first living things.I may not say it was related as known history. But it certainly was communicated as the most prevalent up to date theory at the time. I think you're wrong. I think that this is a most exciting time for the Bible believer to be alive in terms of the confirmation of an Creator behind the fine tuning of the cosmos for life. But I am going to try to stay with the subject.And this is the Bible Study room. For you to come over here and complain that I am cramming something down your throat is as silly as me hanging around Fenway Park in Boston complaining that people are trying to cram baseball down my throat.There is no cage door fella. You want to be let "out" the cage to believe your theory, the door is open. I'm mostly explaining here why I don't think humanity faded into existence in so gradual a way that a New Testament teaching of a first man cannot be true. The original creation of the universe is completely beyond our ability to do science upon. In that sense Creation Science probably can only demonstrate the problems with some purely naturalistic explanations of things.The creation of the universe though, current science suggests that all of nature came into being with time and energy and matter at event billions of years ago. I think that has to be described as a "supernatural" event if all of time, matter, energy, space only existed AFTER the event.Is there true "Creation Science"? That is arguable I think. But there are lots of flavors of creationism, and most of the ones I am familiar with teaching problems with other people's theories.I tend to take their views on a case by case basis. And I recognize some crack pot ideas are out there. I do not dismiss all creationists ideas based on a few more vocal ones which I can't bring myself to consider seriously. And from that start we now look around and see the result in the incredibly diverse biosphere ? I don't have enough faith to believe that these kinds of lucky accidents explain everything I see as life around me on this planet. Do you think that THINKING and CONSCIOUSNESS also are the result of these chemical accidents ? I mean the result was a human mind which can conceptualize its own coming into existence in some way ? No I like science as much as the next person. Science doesn't say anything. Scientists say things. And as far as I can see a total gradualism of purely naturalistic evolution to explain life is too much to ask be to accept.And isn't it the case that eventually we all have to put our TRUST in SOMEONE ? I mean, you trust someone about them telling you of all these billions of petri dishes.Isn't it the case that in the last analysis you have to TRUST someone ?
Did you work out your self Newton's laws of gravitation ? Or did you just review them ? Did you work out yourself the structure of the DNA molecule? Or did just review what others told you and lean on trusting them ?For the real important matters of life in this world I trust in God.
I find Jesus Christ believable. I trust His word more than many other people though they be rather intelligent.I explained that Christ seemed to me to take Genesis seriously as history. So I decided that if it was good enough for Him it must be reliable.However He did not wait for me disbelieve in a gradualism of evolution before He came into my life. That is for certain. In that regard Jesus met me just at where I was at the time. "That if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved." (Rom. 10:9) Why do you think I am missing the true beauty of the universe ?I know why I am here. And I know what the universe is here.
I understand something of the eternal purpose of God.
That is plenty of beauty of the creation.Why are you here in the universe ? Do you have something better than my Father and His life and nature making me one of His sons ?What do you offer me that is more beautiful than eternal life through Jesus Christ and the complete uniting of God in man in the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21,22) ?Don't you know that all things were created through Him and for Him ?

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" For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and through whom are all things, in leading many sons into glory, to make the Author of their salvation perfect through sufferings

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For both He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of One, for which cause He is not ashamed to call them brothers." (Hebrews 2:10,11)

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The Christian's Elder Brother is leading many sons into the glorious expression of the Divine Being for the enjoyment of God and His creation for eternity. That is very beautiful. And this marvelous One Jesus Christ is not ashamed to call those who believe into Him - "brothers" .Creation is for His eternal kingdom - "To the increase of His government and to His peace there is no end, Upon the throne of David and over His kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it in justice and righteousness from now to eternity." (See Isaiah 9:7) While Christ's life, as the Second Man and Head of a new divine born humanity, is growing in us, we await the liberation of creation according to the maturity of the sons of God.

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"For the anxious watching of the creation eagerly awaits the revelation of the sons of God. For the creation itself will also be freed from the slavery of corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God." (Romans 8:19,20)

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Jesus has implanted His life into the Christian's innermost being. He is growing and the manifestation of the matured sons of God will also be the release of the creation from corruption and vanity.Through man's fall away from God creation became damaged. With the salvation of man in the manifestation of the sons of God it will be restored. Creation eagerly awaits this manifestation of God's life incorporated into man's natural life.This is what I am living for and hastening to come by turning over my whole being to this eternal life in the Spirit of Christ within us.Why you are here in this universe and what is your destiny ? What is the beauty you say I am missing ? Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

Just like the Tethys Sea. No why's and no destiny. Just existed for some time as a result of nature.The Tethys existed for a lot longer than I will. In the end it disappeared. Just like I will. I'm not special in the Universe. Neither are you. Even though you want to believe that you are. You aren't. You're just one of many.Even though you think you are; you're not special. At all.

I will remember to distinguish your answer from that of AzPaul3, who I didn't hear from yet.But my realization it totally different from yours. If man was not important God would not have made man in the image of God and according to His own likeness in Genesis 1:26,27. And if man was not important God would not have committed to man dominion.These two little words "image" and "dominion" speak volumes about the eternal purpose of the Creator.

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"And God said, Let Us make man in Our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of heaven and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth." (Gen. 1:26)

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This description is not exhaustive but only representative and poetic. God created man to express the invisible uncreated Divine Life in His image. And God created man to reign over His creation as deputy authority - image and dominion. That is priesthood and kingship.

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Besides God became a man - in the incarnation of Christ. He did not become a turnip or a bush buck. Nor did He become a gerbil or a whale. God became a man -(John 1:1,14) .

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These Tethys you speak of are probably related to the Nephilim of Genesis chapter 6. The fallen angels of Satan sought to derange the human race to thwart God's eternal purpose through deep occult activity.The Bible doesn't tell us too much about this. But it does say something about the "fallen ones" who are identified with the mighty men or renown of ancient mythology -

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Genesis 6:1-4 - "And when men began to multiply on the surface of the ground, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were fair; and they took wives for themselves from all whom they chose.

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And Jehovah God said, My Spirit will not strive with man forever, for he indeed is flesh; so his days will be one hundred twenty years.

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The Nephilim [or giants] were on the earth in those days - and also afterward - when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they gave birth to children to them;

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these were the mighty men who were of old the men of renown."

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Many believe that these "mighty men ... men of renown" are real beings upon which much ancient Roman and Greek mythology is based. For sure in the Old Testament the "sons of God" refers to angelic beings which would include good ones and bad ones who followed Satan.The flood of Noah, seems to have been concerned with this plan of Satan to derange the human race, as we consider the whole context of the verses Genesis 6:1-4 and the following judgments on Noah's world. This sounds a bit like "Misery loves company."You'll just have to speak for yourself there. Embrace your own sense of futility and even despair if you wish. But a much more realistic assessment of the purpose of humanity comes out of the mouth of the Lord Jesus in His mighty prayer to His Father before His redemptive death and resurrection -

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"And I do not ask concerning these [12 disciples] only, but concerning those who believe into Me through their word, That they all may be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us; that the world may believe that You have sent Me.

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And the glory which You have given to Me I have given to them, that they may be one, even as We are one; I in them, and You in Me, that they may be perfected into one, that the world may know that You have loved them even as You have loved Me.

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Father, concerning that which You have given Me, I desire that they also may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory, which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world." (John 17:20-24)

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What a tremendous purpose of God - that we may be built into this oneness with other believers and with the Triune God. And the end of this process is far surpassing anything dreamed by evolution. It is culminated into the perfecting of the New Jerusalem - the eternal mingling of God and man - united in living union.Then we will be with Christ where He is in the full expression of God living from within and being expressed out through humanity.How can any mythological Tethys compare with the mass production of Christ in billions of believers into the glorious city of God - the New Jerusalem - the capital of the new heaven and new earth? (see Revelation 21 and 22). Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

I will have to consider your chart with some more time.But in this study of the Bible I think your gradualism must be in error though impressively represented by a chart.I know that First Corinthians 15:45 has to be true which says - "the last Adam became a life giving Spirit." If this Jesus Christ, this "last Adam" had not become a divine life imparting Spirit I could not know Him. I know that I have received Him and know Him. Millions can testify that though they cannot see Jesus, they have received Jesus. He could only be dispensed into us for our enjoyment as the "life giving Spirit" .But Paul calls this One "the last Adam" . Apparently Paul means "the second man":

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So also it is written, "The first man, Adam, became a living soul"; the last Adam became a life giving Spirit.

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But the spiritual is not first but the soulish, then the spiritual.

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The first man is out of the earth, earthly; the second man is out of heaven. (1 Cor. 15:45-47)

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Now there have been millions upon millions of men on earth. But singles out two individuals, Adam and Jesus Christ. And Paul refers to them as the first man and the second man.Could there be other men BEFORE the "first man". I don't think that is a proper understanding. The first man and the second man refer to two heads of two humanities. The first man is the first man created - Adam according to Genesis 1 and 2 and chapter 5. The second man is the conclusion of the first race and the Head of the second race - the last Adam.And He definitely has initiated a new humanity which contains Himself as a divine "life giving Spirit". God in Jesus Christ has gone through human living, death, resurrection and transfigured into a form in which He may be dispensed into man's innermost being. "He who is JOINED to the Lord is one spirit" ( 1 Cor. 6:17) .So the second man and the first man must refer to Jesus the resurrected Son of God and Adam the first man created who brought death into the world. The question remains whether one believes this or not. I do.I cannot deny that Christ has come into my human spirit as a life giving and life imparting Holy Spirit.Then Paul speaks of the future saying that the saved bear the aspects of both the first man and the second man, which is quite logical -

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"The first man is out of the earth, earthly; the second man is out of heaven." (v.47)

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"And even as we have borne the image of the earthly, we will also bear the image of the heavenly." (v.49)

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This is God's revelation. I am enthusiastic to see what scientist can discover and what facts or theories they can chart out on histograms and bar charts. But I believe God's revelation in the New Testament is what I will live by and believe.Look, even if you find a Lucy like skeleton, how do you know that individual had any children at all. Really no fossil indicates that it was a parent of another creature.And why be so clear in your classification of non-human life only to insist on obscurity when it comes to humans ?

From Message 79Maybe you should base your next judgement of a full assessment, then. What do you mean by "miraculous"? I don't see how anything can be as miraculous as the actual hand of God being involved. Oh, well they're wrong. But let's not get into abiogenesis, this thread is about the first man not the first life. You could've right-clicked on the link to the message you were replying to that was below the writing field, and then picked "open in new tab". Then you could've reviewed the message and replied to my question in this same post rather than submitting this one and starting a new one. Just sayin'From Message 80That's how the "first man" got here too.I use scare quotes, though, because its fairly impossible to draw a line to say that this particular hominin counts as a 'man' while that hominin that it came out of does not count as a 'man'. But, assuming that we wanted to draw that line somewhere, the first hominin that we would call a 'man' must have come out of a womb. We know that's how babies are born.Surely you can follow that logic, regardless of if you think its correct, yes? And you say you don't have enough faith for abiogenesis...You have an awful lot of assumptions and unknowns in your case, like whether or not the people who were saying that Jesus said something were correct in what he said. There's just not enough factual information there to be basing a denial of basic known biology on. I mean, maybe everything written really is correct and its just your own personal interpretation that is faulty. You must have a huge amount of trust in your own self to figure that you got this one right, and all the scientists are just wrong about biology. Took it seriously, sure. Thought that the events they described definitely happened in real life? Not so much.Jesus's audience would have been familiar with those stories. Jesus was found of using parables to make a point. I don't see that Jesus using the myths that people were familiar with as being an endorsement that those myths definitely happened for real.I could use the phrase: "just like Dark Vader was Luke Skywalkers father...." and that would not mean that I thought that story actually happened. It just means that I think you are familiar with story and it will make my point.You know, Jesus referenced Jonah being in the whale for 3 days, do you think that one really happened too? Come on now, a guy living in a whales belly for three days!? Don't you think that's a bit ridiculous? What if you're wrong?Is it really worth a public denial of some of the most basic know biology, because you think that you're correctly interpreting What Jesus must have thought? Mmhmm, and some guy totally lived in a whale for three days

Bwa-hah-hah-ha! That is frigging hilarious!Jaywill, did it occur to you to find out even the tiniest little thing about the Tethys before you started throwing out crazy theories? Did you even read Prssie's message? If you go back and read it very carefully, you'll find a clue...Mutate and Survive