[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!
Excellent post, betty boop!
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.