“I am a strange breed that believes in the literal truth of Genesis and in the study of evolution without seeing a contradiction.”
Not sure what you mean.
I believe in Genesis, basically and in evolution. I believe evolution is the method God chose to create one species from another.
The Bible says the world was created in seven days. How long was a day back then? Is God’s day the same as our day? Can a finite mind really understand God and his methods? Didn’t God create the laws of physics and biology through which evolution and the Big Bang operated? Doesn’t that mean, essentially, the same things as Genesis?
When Genesis says that God created man out of the dust of the earth, does it mean literally “dirt” or a lower animal? Does it mean that God created man out of basic chemicals like methane, etc, through the evoltuonary process? Who exactly WAS Adam anyway? Was he an individual or a population? If God created man from a lower animal, at what point in the evolutionary cycle did man become man and not some lower hominid? Didn’t that happen at the point God gave him an immortal soul? Does that mean that lower animals are soul-less or does that mean that the souls of men and lower creatures are in some way different as ours are a mirror of God (made in His image and likeness)?
What about the passage in the Bible about the Sons of God and the daughters of men and there were giants in those days? What does that mean???
The Bible is full of statements that generate questions. Different people read these statements and come up with different answers. The reason the Bible was not translated into the vernacular until the Reformation was because the Medieval Church was aware of this and didn’t want people reading it and asking their own questions and coming up with answers which might be unorthodox and question the authority of the Medieval Church.
I think, as a Christian, the most important part of the Bible is the message that God created man in his image, that man sinned, that he has an immortal soul, that he was place on earth to choose between God and salvation, betweeen the Devil and Christ, that God sent his only Son to pay the price for our sins and save us, if we were willing to accept that salvation, and that Christ will come again at the Last Judgement to raise the dead and either condemn or save us, based on our acceptance of Him and His teachings, and that those who are saved willl live on in His presence.
I believe you can’t be a Christian unless you believe in the immortal soul, in the sacrifice and salvation that came from Christ’s death and suffering, that He was the Son of God, that He rose from the Dead and that Satan exists as a living entity and is the enemy of God, us and the truth.
Everything else is just secondary.
You are making my point exactly.
The reason I believe in the creation of Adam is that Jesus speaks of him directly IIRC. If there was a literal Adam, why would I assume that the rest is metaphore?
Now, there are those that will argue that there was no creation of people prior to Adam, I do not find that in the Bible. I also do not see any biblical limitation in how those created before Adam were created.
God went out of his way to tell us about a the circumstances of our creation, he goes on to exposit how that creation affects our relationship to him now. I see no reason not to believe it. I also do not see any physical evidence to deny it.
I know that I am not doing a good job explaining what I am trying to say. I am someone that loves studying evolution, old earth science and still believes that at some point, God started over and created the human race. I am even open to there being some residual hominids existing at the time of our creation. Who know, the Bible does not clearly say, but it may relate to the sons of god and daughters of man passage, maybe.
I find joy in science and religion and I do not think they have to be segregated, Genesis is not threatened by men in labcoats.