Can science prove Adam and Eve were real?

The problem I find with the premise of this thread is that it deals with Adam and Eve as if they were unique physical creations -- and were the very first and only pair of their (physical) kind....
[Rather] Adam and Eve were unique spiritual creations "ensouled" by the very Spirit of God to be in His likeness (God is Spirit) -- and the very first such of that kind.
Scripture is very clear that the physical bodies of the pair were NOT uniquely created ex nihilo (caused to exist where nothing had existed before). Scripture specifically and clearly states that their physical bodies were formed (made, shaped, fabricated, molded) from physical matter that was, instead, created "in the beginning" by God.

I wholly agree with paragraphs two and three above, dear Brother!

However, WRT paragraph one, regarding the "premise" of Fazd Rana and Hugh Ross (and therefore their motive in writing), I think before we draw any conclusions, we ought to understand what they may have thought they were doing.

As far as I can tell, they were taking state-of-the-art genetic science and projecting it back onto the past, to the very Garden of Eden, to see whether there is any scriptural reason by which state-of-the-art genetic science could be falsified. The answer they find: NO, there is no such reason.

At the same time, if they are persons of genuine Christian humility, perhaps they would also tell you that, at best, what they've come up with in their findings can only be speculation. For there is no way to "validate" their findings by means of the scientific method.

A speculation is an immaterial thing, a creature of the human mind. And science, by virtue of its methods, cannot ever reach to immaterial things, and so cannot falsify them in principle. At best, what Rana and Ross have done is to tell a "likely story." And see if it holds up over time.

Oh, that "likely story" business: It's straight out of Plato. He discerned that "truth" as articulated and promulgated to the wider public comes in two alternative presentations: The "likely story" ( Aletheia logos); or "opinion" (Doxa). Though there is no way humanly possible to directly validate (or falsify) either one by scientific means, I suspect Rana and Ross, as scientists and informed Christians, are trying to reach the former, because they see the latter is fatally insufficient in explaining anything meaningful about the human condition.

Well, that's my take anyway, FWIW. Further, it is evident that these two men do not separate faith and reason into two mutually-exclusive categories, where under Aristotle's Third Law (the Law of the Excluded Middle), one must be found "true," instantly confirming the other to be "false." This is a false dichotomy from the get-go, an exercise in comparing apples to oranges....

It seems to me that Aristotle's Third Law is utterly destroyed at the threshold of the quantum world, along with Newtonian physics.

In the quantum world, one does not speak of "either/ors"; one speaks of complementarities. The most famous of which is the question, "is it a 'particle' or a 'wave'?" It turns out, the answer to that question absolutely depends on the experimental set-up used to analyze it. Yet it turns out that both the particle and wave descriptions are entirely valid; and that both are necessary to the explication of the total system of which they are constituent descriptions.

I believe that faith and reason are complementarities in this sense. Good things happen when they work together.

And there is no biblical reason for them NOT to work together, at least on my reading of Romans 1:20:

For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead....

You put up the Periodic Table of the Elements as a form of description of "matter." In the first place, this wonderful and extraordinarily useful Table is a human construct for the purpose of classifying atoms; it's fun to watch the Table expand, to take into account newly-discovered atomic structures. But I don't see any neutrinos classified there. For neutrinos are massless, thus undetectable to direct human observation in principle.

Anyhoot, my point is if "matter" -- the "dust of the ground" -- is just the configuration of atoms, the entire idea of "matter" is completely destroyed, along with Aristotle's Third Law and Newtonian physics, at the threshold of the quantum world....

Having said that, I firmly believe that the "material configuration" of a given human body is derivative from a deeper principle. That is to say, it is a by-product of something more essential, which is utterly intangible in nature. And thus immune from investigation by means of the scientific method, which depends on direct observation and replicable experiments.

What is "more essential" is: the God-created human soul, made in His Image, and destined for eternal life. When God created Adam in Eden, what he created was not Adam's physical, that is mortal body, it was Adam's unique, unrepeatable soul -- created from the very foundation of the world, from the very Beginning.

From the genetic standpoint, you raise an extraordinarily interesting problem: If Eve is merely Adam's "clone," then her genetic heritage is identical to his. And their offsprings' genetic inheritance -- according to current notions regarding genetic inheritance -- would also be identical to their parents'.

So, how do we get from this situation of genetic uniformity to account for the genetic diversity -- within limits, I'd say -- that we see today?

Darwin has no useful answers to this question that I can discern....

You wrote:

The question of how the existing radical genetic diversity of humankind came to be (where Cain, Abel, and Seth and their other brothers and sisters got their [genetically different] spouses) is beyond the scope of this article and discussion thread.

How "Cain, Abel, and Seth and their other brothers and sisters" even got "genetically different spouses" is not only "beyond the scope of this discussion thread," it is arguably beyond all human explanation whatsoever. It seems the Holy Scriptures do not explain this.

I do not credit this as a fault of the Holy Scriptures. I credit it to the innate limits of the human mind, to grasp things utterly beyond its ken.

God alone stands in this gap of human intelligibility. So I put my full faith and trust in Him.

Thank you so very much, TXnMA, dear brother in Christ, for your excellent (and thought-provocative) essay/post!

Dear Sister,

As has happened before, your inestimably agile, philosophic mind took much that I said well beyond its intended, simple extent.

Firt of all, if you examine it, you will see that I deliberately used a periodic table listing only the 92 "naturally occurring" elements.

My purpose was not to expound on esoteric details of God's Creation, rather, it was to emphasize the ordinariness of our bodies and the common stuff of which they are made. IOW, everything you will find in the physical makeup of human bodies is found right here on Earth -- and already existed here (had already been created by God) at the time of God's forming of the bodies of Adam and Eve from them.

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My point: The bodies of Adam and Eve were not "created", per se... ~~~~~~~~~~

To the discussion of our earthly, human bodies, things like trans-uranic ("man-made") elements and neutrinos zipping unnoticed through them are totally irrelevant. Even moreso are subatomic particles -- that we can only "see" via the (admitttedly magnificent) works of our own minds and hands -- off-topic re my intent in my #39....

OTOH, I know that you know full well that, if there is anyone on this forum who has put extensive thought into -- and expounds -- the premise that, as we expand our scientific knowledge, the more we find our discoveries reflecting truths that were revealed in Scripture -- it is I. (Your motives, question I, not...)

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I must admit, however that, because my satellite connection is finally becoming reliable after over 36 hours of rainy weather, I just now was able to watch the linked video in its totality. Nothing in it surprised me. In fact, Hugh Ross (an astrophysicist) and I are quite close in our thinking re the timing of creation. That is especially so re his placement of "the saga of Adam and Eve" within the last Ice Age. [Even Bishop Ussher would come close to agreeing with that!] <GRIN>

At that time, Earth already had a sizeable population of Homo sapiens (folk physically and intellectually "just like us") that was genetically and reproductively capable of providing those genetically diverse spouses I mentioned for the offspring of Adam and Eve.

=====<TXnMA's own, Speculative Thoughts>=======
I am beginning to suspect that it was never God's intent to keep Adam, Eve, and their offspring "walled up" in the Garden forever.

Marron mentioned the "purity" of the genetic makeup of Adam and Eve. I agree. Moreover, I now think that it was always God's intent to introduce that purifying genetic strain into the extant population of His beings He had developed here on Earth. But, I suspect that Satan -- through Adam and Eve's sin -- short-circuited God's perfectly-planned timetable.

Furthermore, what Earth totally lacked until that time was a core populace created to be spiritually In the image and likeness of God.

Even though Adam and Eve were cast into the world ahead of time, and bearing the persistent stigma of sin, that lack was still rectified.

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Whimsical aside: Even though A&E probably left Eden wearing the latest in palaeolithic fur-style, being tossed out of Eden into an ice age probably was no picnic! ...the wages of sin...
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======</Personal Speculation>======

Back to the premise of the thread:

I most certainly may be wrong here, but, AFAIK, no one knows what "perfect" DNA looks like. (Or, more to the point, what Adam and Eve's genetic makeup was.) IOW. if we found it, would we reognize it?

My take on the premise of the thread is that , while "science" can not "prove" that Adam and Eve existed, neither can it disprove that Biblical fact.

Some of your “speculative” views match mine pretty closely.

My view is that the “garden” was in effect a refuge from which they were safe and isolated from surrounding tribes.

I assume A&E were genetically the same as the others, but pure whereas the others would have the genetic imperfections you pick up over time. But that doesn’t have to be so. Their wives seem to have lived as long as they did, so maybe their genetic code was similarly pure, or maybe the mantle theory is right, that they were all protected from solar damage to the genetic code. Or maybe they took their wives from close relatives and didn’t seek out wives from other tribes so much until later. God always discouraged taking wives from among outsiders; this was for moral reasons but maybe it was to preserve the blood line for reasons beyond what we know. What do I know. :)

I do believe that A&E represented a kind of priesthood relationship, they were intended to walk with God in a close and familiar way. Over time they would have been injected into the surrounding tribes. As it was, Satan’s attempt to interfere merely caused God to inject them sooner than he would otherwise have done.

The idea was that as God’s bridge all men would be drawn into that kind of familial relationship through Adam’s family. And in fact that has continued to be God’s plan. So had Adam not sinned, thats the way it would have worked out. And if Adam did sin, its still the way it would work out.

I tend to assume that had Adam sought God after his sin, rather than running from God, the relationship would have continued as it had been.

As it is, God’s plan has been to bring us back into the original familiar and familial relationship Adam had enjoyed in Eden.

The “priesthood” role Adam was intended to play was unique, but was not intended to remain unique as all men were drawn into that relationship. Or at least potentially drawn into it as they chose and as they learned to walk in it.

So I’m not sure if the term “ensoulment” is exactly correct, but its as good a term as any to represent the change God sought in his relationship with the humanoids.

My view is that the â€œgardenâ€ was in effect a refuge from which [Adam and Eve] were safe and isolated from surrounding tribes.

Dear brothers marron and TXnMA, I've been attending your recent exchange of replies with great interest, and have been mulling it over. Mostly I agree with both of you, my Christian brothers.

But I do have to say that I found the idea of "other tribes" more or less contemporaneous with Adam and Eve extraordinarily perplexing, from my POV; i.e., my understanding of Genesis. There is nothing in my reading of Genesis that could account for such a phenomenon as "other tribes."

Perhaps my understanding of Genesis is faulty. That cannot be peremptorily ruled out; so bear that in mind in what follows.

Genesis is God's account to us, of His ex nihilo Creation, of His "breath of life" that makes all things live, from the living Universe itself as constituted by all living, created things, up to and including Man.

It seems to me there is a huge cognitive, or epistemological gulf between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2: Genesis 1 deals with the spiritual creation, with the Logos as articulated in the different realms of Being, as yet unmanifested. There is not a word of "matter" or of "incarnated material substance" in Genesis 1. Genesis 1 appears to function at the creative, divine ideational level -- at the level of divine Logos, in its differentiations as translated down to the world of human and creaturely existence in their respective gradations....

It isn't until we get to Genesis 2 that problems of "matter" are introduced into the divine discourse -- "the dust of the earth" that God used to "form" Adam's physical body. Note the word "form" -- it doesn't connote the same meaning as "create." Adam was "created" in Genesis 1; but he wasn't "formed" until Genesis 2. And as TXnMA points out, this "forming" was done out of already extant materials, according to God's laws.

When God creates a human, He creates an eternal SOUL, made in His image, and destined for communion with Himself, a relationship of beloved son with his Father. [Generic pronouns used here; no disparagement of the female intended.]

It seems to me a main idea of Genesis 1 is that it deals with the origins of human life. Thus it goes to the idea of "the first Man," which is Adam. Who later on acquired a "helpmeet," the "first woman," Eve.

In Genesis 2, we are dealing with the materialization, that is the incarnation, of two human souls made in Genesis 1. And the Bible very strongly suggests (to me at least), that these first two incarnated human souls were the very first parents of the entire human race. (You gotta start somewhere....) And they were fruitful; and they did multiply....

So, where do "the other tribes" come from?

Here it seems to me that both my dear brothers in Christ are in some way, shape, or form, backloading current genetic theory onto God's Beginning, trying to explicate a total mystery by the use of current scientific understandings.

If Eve is just a "clone" of Adam -- which I strongly doubt, for she was separately created "female" in Genesis 1 -- then any geneological heritage from what can only be understood as the ultimate of inbreeding (propagation with a clone), would wipe out all their progeny over the next indeterminate, yet countable generations, due to deadly mutations....

So, do we need to hypothesize "other tribes" to account for our desire for explanation according to the scientific explanation that we learn from studies of genetics? If so, please tell me how we humans think we can reduce God's action to purely human categories of understanding, in the first place.

I don't see anything in either Genesis 1 or 2 about the contemporaneous existence of "other tribes" with what transpired in the Garden of Eden.... But surely the purported existence of ""other tribes" would clear up some misgivings that we moderns might have, on the genealogical issue....

But then, I could be wrong. And if so, would be glad to be corrected by those more knowledgeable on this subject than I.

Thank you ever so much, dear marron, and dear TXnMA, for writing!

I assure you I’m not trying to explain current genetic theory, I couldn’t begin to do that. I am not that smart.

The other tribes seem to be there once they leave the garden.

Now, there are several possibilities. One is that, after all, they did live nearly a millenium. In a thousand years you could have a lot of kids, who as they move off from the homestead, could be those tribes.

Cain’s fear of them, in that case, could be well founded if it was their brother he killed.

The Bible only mentions 3 children of A&E, but it could be that if there were many, and they only named the three who were important to the point being made.

Another possibility is that, if we admit there may be other children not mentioned, there may be other tribes not mentioned. This little detail of creation has always mystified me.

Another thing, there seems to be a fair bit of the supernatural going on, with fallen angels roaming the land and having families of their own. The pre-flood world is just a bit weird.

I’m bouncing ideas off the wall, and you and TXnMA are my sounding board so to speak. It never bothers me to be wrong, its how I learn. It never even bothers me to be wrong about biblical matters; God likes me and I get away with asking questions. When I’m wrong he seems to take it in good humor.

Before I respond to Betty Boop's excellent and thought-provoking discourse, I should do what I should have done earlier: reply to WhiskeyX's :

TXnMA: â€œIF Adam and Eve were the very first two physical humans:â€
Whiskey X: Define â€œhumans,â€ do you include the Neanderthals as â€œhumansâ€ or not?"
Are Neanderthals, Homo neanderthalensis, supposed to be among the other tribes?

My definition of (physical) "Human" is "Homo sapiens".

While interbreeding of Homo sapiens with Homo neanderthalis may well have been possible, I exclude Neanderthals from the designation, "Human" for various reasons, not excluding their obviously rudimentary hand-eye motor skills and lack of pre-plannning and visualization mentation evident in their artifact assemblage.

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Beyond a doubt, Adam and Eve were the epitome of physical Homo sapiens perfection. In fact, I fully expect that there is not a heterosexual male alive today that would not consider Eve to be the absolutely most beautiful and desirable woman he could possibly imagine -- and the same with modern women and Adam... But, that is just speaking of their physical and mental attributes.

What I DO believe is that Adam and Eve were the VERY FIRST humans ("Mankind") (Homo sapiens) to be spiritually "In the image and likeness of God".

We are, indeed, blessed to count our descent from them!

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"God is Spirit". Even Jesus "took upon Himself the form of a man..."

But, I honestly don't understand many folks' hangup with believing that God physically looks just like them -- except for having been misled by erroneous teaching and artifice like that of Michaelangelo...

...that belittles God by reducing him to human form, frailty and scale...

Dear Sister bb: You wrote:

Nor do I, Dear Sister, see evidence of "other tribes" in those verses. However, I am ever mindful of the principle that,

"Absence of evidence is not (necessarily) evidence of absence".

As I have oft pointed out, nowhere in Scripture does the term, "galaxy" occur. Yet, we live within one, and God's creation contains far more of them

than the mere, individual stars we (or the recorder of Genesis) could count with our unaided eyes.

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I hope that we, here in this discussion, can avoid the sort of error committed by Moslems in Baghdad, when they attacked ice vendors "...because the Holy Koran doesn't teach us that the Prophet (PBUH) had ice in his drinks!"

Whether we like it or not, (or whether or not it causes us epistemological angst) there is very sound evidence that humans were here, even on this continent well before the dates pontificated by the likes of Bishop Ussher and his ilk. Over ten thousand years ago, humans here in Texas were capably making magnificent stone tools of a sophistication that taxes the capabilities of even the most masterful of us students of the art and science of lithic technology today.

Should our adherence to tradition and our deepest desires to label Adam and Eve as "THE FIRST" cause me to cast aside masterpieces of human artistry like this

when I uncover them in unmistakably ancient context?

I hope not...

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This may come as a surprise, but I am beginning to consider the possibility that Bishop Ussher may not have been too far off (within a factor of 4X or so) in his dating of the creation of Adam and Eve. The "begats" can only be "stretched" so much, and placement of Adam & Eve within the last Ice Age would put them smack in the middle of a thriving Homo sapiens sapiens population ... [Does that make me "YA&E"?] '-)

Of course, YEC folks would still have a problem with the first five days of Creation; but that's their problem -- not mine... '-)

==============

Well, it's approaching 3AM. Guess I'll consider this an adequate kickoff for my 79th orbit around our local, fusion-powered source of Global Warming energy -- and power down for the "night"... '-)

But to apprehend/ The point of intersection of the timeless/ With time, is an occupation for the saint.... -- T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets, "The Dry Salvages," V, 201-2

Not to claim to be a saint; merely to suggest that Bishop Ussher was not one either.

Nor was the great American ex-patriot poet, T.S. Eliot. But Eliot had grasped that "timelessness" actually directly impinges on human life, while it appears that Bishop Ussher entirely ignores the problem. His sense of "time" is very human -- serial, sequential, irreversible -- and above all, is something that can be measured. And so, using this standard of "measurement," in close consultation with the genealogies as recorded in the Holy Scriptures since Adam, the good bishop concluded that the date of Creation was the year 4004 B.C., meaning the age of the world is roughly six thousand years and counting.

On this point, it appears that the divine revelations of the Holy Scripture and the Natural World itself (see: Romans 1:20), the latter as explicated by scientific inquiry and human experience in general, are seriously at odds with each other.

This cannot be attributed to any shortcoming of Divine Intellect or Will. If there is a disconnect here, the fault must lie on the human side.

I suspect the fault lies in the failure of humans to appreciate their essential existential position, which is that man lives at the intersection of time and timelessness.

The Incarnation of Christ makes this existential fact absolutely crystal clear and beyond doubt. The mortalization, incarnation of a human soul involves placing a timeless, eternal entity into physical embodiment, for a time. That body is fully subject to the natural laws, and so perishes in due course. But the soul itself is eternal, everlasting. But this most essential fact about human nature is what most of us tend to forget. We do not "see" the "timelessness" involved in our own personal being, in every aspect of our daily lives....

Dear TXnMA, you pick off Bishop Ussher for his date, noting that splendid artifacts have been found in Texas that clearly indicate human action of great artistry and technique predate Ussher's inception date by some six thousand years. But in so saying, can you possibly mean that the fabricators of such splendid tools predated Adam and Eve?

I guess the answer to that question all boils down to how we deal with "the time problem"....

Thank you ever so much for writing, dear brother in Christ!

Dear TXnMA, you pick off Bishop Ussher for his date, noting that splendid artifacts have been found in Texas that clearly indicate human action of great artistry and technique predate Ussher's inception date by some six thousand years. But in so saying, can you possibly mean that the fabricators of such splendid tools predated Adam and Eve?

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Yes, Dear Sister, that is precisely what I am suggesting that we consider -- as a possible interpretation of how events (actually and Scripturally) transpired..

And, that does include a thriving and accomplished population of homo sapiens here on Earth, at the time that Adam and Eve were ejected from the Garden and into their midst!

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And, yes, indeed, as you so cogently stated: "I guess the answer to that question all boils down to how we deal with "the time problem"...."

Please bear with me...

I am trying to have us open our minds to the possibility that Bishop Ussher, by following the genealogies in Genesis, and, looking backwards toward the instant of creation (as we, from our spatio-temporal reference frame are forced to do) was surprisingly accurate in his dating of the creation and expulsion of Adam and Eve. (NOTE: I do not tie Ussher's date (in 'our' years) back to "The Inception").

Remember this?

In another, similar illustration and discussion, where this graphic says "Now", that one said, "The Age of Man". That is probably a better interpretation.

Following the fall of man, we, Ussher (and Scripture, itself) are bound to our reference frame, where all information (including time-related info) is transported and received at the limit of "C" -- the speed of light... And, we are restricted to only looking backward -- into the past...

As in our "Universal Now" discussion, God has no such temporal limitations.

There is zero doubt in my mind that Adam and Eve were physically formed as anatomically-modern Homo sapiens sapiens, and were uniquely, especially and Divinely created as eternal souls in the (Spirit) image and likeness of God.

There is also zero doubt in my mind that anatomically-modern Homo sapiens sapiens has occupied this planet for far more than the >ten thousand years documented on this continent. For most of that time, Homo sapiens survived as roaming hunter-gatherers.

Further, it is well-known that some groups of humans later developed nomadic animal husbandry as a supplement to hunting and gathering.

And -- it is well-documented that agriculture is a quite recent development of humankind (which, rather quickly, caused / allowed the sedentary settling of societies into towns, etc.)...

With the above in mind, here's a tidbit for further cogitation:

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What was the occupation of Cain, Eve's firstborn? And what was the occupation of Abel, her second son?

For that matter, what was Adam's livelihood?
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,,,and we're just getting started... ;-)

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