Excuse me for easedropping, but I would like to disagree with an assumption here, one that is part of a collection of assumption I call the “false-dichotomy” arguments:
Your’s is an example of one of them:
” 1: Did God create Adam and Eve, or did all life start from a single primitive cell?”
The truth is, these are not the only alternatives to the question, because there is a more fundamental one that has not been answered about any question of origins—which is, why does there have to be an origin? Did things have a beginning or not? For my money, there is just not enough evidence of any kind to conclude that there had to be some kind of instant or gradual origin of things, either the universe, or life, or anything else.
I do not hold to either of the alternatives presented in your question, by the way. Please do not ask me what I believe about “where everything came from.” I don’t know, and only know all those who are promoting what they believe as “absolute truth” don’t know either. The whole problem will go away when people admit, they do not know, and argue what they believe under that honest premise. There is nothing wrong with presenting your views in the form, “this is what I believe about it, and these are my reasons for holding that belief, but to argue one’s beliefs as though they were facts is disingenuous, as far as I’m concerned.
Here’s a thought. Except to back up your beliefs about something (God perhaps, or “no God,” if that’s what you believe) what difference does it make where everything came from.
Cosmology, and all other forms of “historical conjecture” which is what all such “studies” are (none are science, in the classical sense), make not a wit of difference to any science, because what is, is, however it got to be.
To be honest, the first question in your list should have been:
“Did God create Adam and Eve, did all life start from a single primitive cell, or does life exist in some way neither of these addresses?
Excluding the third alternative makes the question a false dichotomy and therefore dishonest.
Hank
Adam and Eve having not being "BORN".. but "created" whatever that is/means.. They may be a metaphorical image(bibical instrument) to explain things no human could "Grasp"(creating life forms).. No one I know of, has ever seen a Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil or Tree of Life..
Genesis ch 1-3 may be the first science fiction..
Fiction must be logical, reality needs not to be logical(to humans)..
Fiction can be based in reality.. like an Atom consisting of little balls revolving around each other.. like that.. Which is a myth.. but useful..
[[Did things have a beginning or not?]]
your question asks if life was eternal- I assume you would then think that somewhere along hte line life became corrupted and thus was imposed limits as to how long life could then last per individual?
There either had to be eternal life of species of gods that somehow became flesh with Nature-imposed limits of beginnings and endings-
At any rate, there is no evidence the earth is eternal either- infact, nature argues strongly against it being that the second law of thermodynamics exists and can be traced back to beginnings (some assume it was the big bang- others that God began nature- but if you’re assuming life always was, then which god created the beginning? Or was it the TRUE God?)
[[I don’t know, and only know all those who are promoting what they believe as “absolute truth” don’t know either. ]]
Yeah we do- We KNOW nature is incapable of creation- We KNOW nature is incapable of creating the necessary metainformaiton, we KNOW nature imposes an inescapable second law of thermodynamics, and we KNOW nature can not create new non species specific information that would be necessary to move each species beyond it’s own kind- We also KNOW the fossil record, which records species, shows discontinuity, and it shows an explosion of fully formed, highly complex, irreducibly complex species, and further, we KNOW Chemicals can not give birth to the highest metainformation witnessed in species of all manner. Tyherefore, we can come to a beyond reasonable doubt conclusion that at some point, species were infact created.
Some holding to naturalism will of course deny the evidences point strongly toward special creation and will insist nature somehow violated several key scientific principles, but that’s their problem- we KNOW what the recors objectively show and don’t show.
If you hold to an ideology that life always existed, you still MUST explain how it became flesh- and the science doesn’t support any kind of eternal life becoming flesh - Your argument is not a deviation from the two ideologies I’m afraid- it STILL boils down to one of two ideologies- either nature created life (in your case, you’re arguing it could have created it from some spiritual, supernatural, eternal life that just always existed) or that God did what He said He did- Created species fully formed and fully functional supernaturally
[[Here’s a thought. Except to back up your beliefs about something (God perhaps, or “no God,” if that’s what you believe) what difference does it make where everything came from.]]
It makes a lot of difference- life STILL had to begin somewhere- and htose that reject God’s special creation, IF they have not accepted Christ as Savior, risk eternal damnation, and htey’ll arrive at that destination denying God created life
In my reply to the same post I mentioned several open "origin" questions for which science does not have an reasonable answer. They were:
Measurements of the cosmic background radiation from the 1960's forward agree that there was a beginning of real space and real time. As Jastrow said (paraphrased) that was the most theological statement ever to come out of modern science.