I would like to have a discussion among Christian believers who also accept the reality of evolution. In this thread I would like to assume evolution is true and leave debating its reality to other threads. I would also like only Christian believers to respond; loosely defined here as believing in Jesus: His deity, incarnation, death, resurrection, and into Him for salvation.
Moving from an old earth position who otherwise accepts everything in Genesis as literal to one who (while still unsure) is moderately convinced that evolution indeed took place, I am finding myself struggling with Genesis. I would like to talk through this with some other believers who have already taken this path. Here would be some of my questions:
Was Adam ever a real person? If he did exist, how many others were alive at the same time? Did someone named Cain ever kill someone named Abel? Was Adam the first man with a soul? Did all his contemporaries have souls? Was there a fall? Is the entire story just made up?
Was Noah a real person? If the flood was only local, did it kill off all of mankind? (and from a science perspective: do we have evidence that it is impossible that the whole human race hit an 8 person bottle neck just 5k years ago or so).
Was Abraham a real person? If the first 11 chapters or so are entirely mythical, when does Genesis start becoming historical? Did people really live into their 800s? If not, why is this written into Genesis? Is that part of the myth, or some translation mistake? (I know Dr. Meyers at Institute of Bible and Science suggests that the Hebrew is a translation of a mistranslation of another language where one little jot or tittle changes the number by a factor of ten, and if you decrease by a factor of ten you have very realistic ages for childbearing and death. I am not yet comfortable with this explanation though.
I think that is enough for now. As you can see, I am just getting started on dealing with these issues. I have absolutely no philosophical hang-ups to the reality of evolution. If God wanted to evolve me from slime, so be it. He can do whatever He pleases. But I do have hang-ups to declaring parts of the Bible “aren't true”, or are myths. I have problems not believing Adam was a real person given his role in Romans 5.
Edited by Pete OS, : No reason given.
Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Took out some extra line breaks. When doing a message, one should not use the "enter" key at the sentence end, unless it is also a paragraph end.
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