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No. I agree with you that God could make man out of a lump of mud, or out of nothingness or a bowl of jello. He's God. He can do anything. I guess you are right in saying there is a POSSIBILITY He did it the way you state.

On the other hand, I believe the scientific evidence indicates He used the body of a lower animal, and the "dust of the earth" is a simple way to express that to an unsophisticated audience. The important part of the message is not really HOW God made man, but the fact that He DID make man, and He made him in His image, and since God is a non-corporeal spirit, He couldn't even be referring to man's body in the latter sense. As a matter of fact, in a great many of God's miraculous actions, He actually uses well-timed natural phenomena, often carried to extreme conditions.

For instance, the plagues on Egypt. There are possible scientific explanations for ALL of them. HOWEVER, their extreme manifestations and the timing of the events would lead anyone to conclude that a Supernatural Agent, i.e. God, was involved. Even a pillar of cloud or of fire is not really something outside the ordinary. Fire and clouds are natural phenomena. Water and wine are natural ingredients.

I don't believe Creationists are "nuts". I understand what their perspective is. I just happen to disagree with it.

I believe that God created man using the body of a lower animal which he produced through evolution and that a lot of what is written in the Bible, although accurate, is presented in an allegorical or symbolical manner, especially considering the level of scientific sophistication of the audience to which it was delivered. And I consider myself basically a fundamentalist Christian also - I believe in God, I believe Christ is my Saviour, I believe in the resurrection, I believe in miracles, I believe in the Bible, I believe in Satan, I believe in angles, I believe in a Last Judgement, I believe homosexuality is morally wrong, I believe abortion is murder, etc, etc.

According to the scripture there was a 1st man and he was Adam and he chose to disobey God. All other things about the creation story can be reconciled to a degree with an evolution theology (i.e. evolution controlled by God) except for the 1st man who was called Adam. Without Adam, Christ and the concept of redemption cannot apply.

An interesting note on this is that the literal translation of the verses that talk about God clothing them is that he put them in skin. A pure literal reading could be that prior to being put out of the garden they were spirit and the clothing that God dressed them in was a body. That is the closest I can get to reconciling the theology of sin and redemption with evolution.