Where did we, the modern human species, come from? Science has a very convincing case that we evolved via Darwinian natural selection from primate ancestors over the past eight or so million years. New Agers suggest we are the product from those same primate ancestors, only by artificial selection via genetic engineering on the part of ancient aliens. Then there’s God’s religious claptrap, one of various mythological creation tales to account for mankind, starting with Adam and Eve.
Adam and Eve are the names that we can use as an overall generality for the first humans, the first Homo sapiens, a species which had to come from somewhere. Biologists of course will argue the case for natural selection; evolution from older ancestral primates, especially the chimpanzee. New Agers might opt for an artificial selection or genetic engineering explanation on the part of flesh-and-blood ‘ancient astronauts’ under the clever disguise as deities, or perhaps incorrectly interpreted as deities by primitive man, but still an evolution from older primate ancestral stock. Then there’s a variation on that New Age theme that someone or something created a simulated universe via a computer program that ultimately created us as virtual beings. Finally, there are the creationists – God did it on the sixth day according to the Book of Genesis and no correspondence will be entertained on the matter. The Bible is literally God’s final word on life, the Universe and everything, including how we came to be.
If there were no other viable explanation for our existence apart from God creating mankind, that’s one thing, and there probably wasn’t any alternatives back in Bible times, so the Book of Genesis is understandable from that perspective or point of view, even if wrong. Alternative theories do abound now, with Darwinian evolution by natural selection the clear and preferred leader. One could almost say that evolutionists are really using the brains that God gave them to actually think with – one could almost say that except that implies a total contradiction in logic.
According to the Book of Genesis, Chapter One and Chapter Two, God created mankind, or at least one male (Adam) and one female (Eve) – Adam and Eve actually created the rest of humanity, well at least three sons worth of humanity. Humanity should have then gone extinct since no other women were apparently created to serve as possible mates, yet they (well one anyway for Abel) appear as if by magic. But back to Adam and Eve: were they really created by a supernatural deity, or perhaps genetically engineered by flesh-and-blood ancient astronauts or did they evolve naturally from more primitive ancestors? What do you think? I think we can eliminate God from Creation’s Big Picture.
Here are the relevant quotes:
Genesis 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.
Genesis 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
Later on down the track we get more details.
Genesis 2:7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
Genesis 2:21 And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;
Genesis 2:22 And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
Genesis 2:23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.
That’s God’s story and no doubt He’s sticking to it!
We can debate the Darwinian and the New Age concepts as viable alternative scenarios some other time, but first creationism as related above has to be dumped into the rubbish bin and incinerated and thus eliminated from all logical consideration as a viable rival scenario.
Reason numero one states the obvious that there is no supernatural God or Allah or Jehovah or any other supernatural deity. If there was overwhelming evidence for such a supernatural deity then there would be no atheists. You don’t find people who deny the existence of gravity since there is so much evidence for it, yet you can’t see it or hear it or taste it or smell it or touch it. There are no gravity atheists. Evidence is everything – faith counts for nothing in any court of law, science or logic.
Reason numero two is that the dust-and-rib (and variations thereof) scenario is absolutely ridiculous to even the most biologically ignorant, which is probably why it’s not taught in Biology 101. And how could a male rib shape-shift into a fully developed adult female (blonde, brunette, redhead?), minus navel no doubt, but ready equipped with intelligence, vocalization and language? A male rib in any event would contain male genetic information for maleness, but you couldn’t have expected the author(s) of this imaginary (bordering on sci-fi) Genesis tale to have known that. As to Adam’s creation from dust, perhaps all those bored housewives who are dissatisfied with their hubbies might want to save up all that household dust that they deal with daily with the intention of creating some sort of youthful stud rival for hubby’s affections and bedroom favours. I mean if a mere male deity can create a man from dust, imagine what a human female can accomplish with that same ingredient!
Reason numero three is that if God created Eve directly from Adam’s rib, then Adam and Eve are more closely related than any brother-sister pair ever were, and therefore when they did God’s ‘be fruitful and multiply’ thing, well that was incest! And God, by design, promoted that. Wow! Now what God should have done was take a pile of dust from the planet Mars and create Adam; take another pile of dust from the planet Venus and create Eve, and that way you’d really have men are from Mars and women are from Venus and no incest need be entered into (as it were). Further, humans would have had an extraterrestrial heritage and therefore been separate and apart from the rest of the terrestrial animal kingdom (see the following paragraph for that nitty-gritty).
Reason numero four is that if God et al. really wanted to make humans a unique creation, really separate and apart from all else, He would not have moulded us with the same basic body plan and biochemistry as the rest of the animal kingdom. We might have been created with a silicon-based biochemistry and we certainly wouldn’t share any DNA with anything else like chimpanzees, since that just confuses the creation picture. God was not thinking logically, just begging for a Darwin
Reason numero five is that a perfect God wouldn’t have created so many design flaws or imperfections in the alleged pinnacle of His creationist endeavours, the human species, what with their easily breakable bones, a way too narrow birth canal, bad backs, poor eyesight, and impacted wisdom teeth, as well as those non-functional body parts like an appendix, earlobes and toenails. One does not tend to manufacture something with faulty and non-essential parts. God might have created us a tad more resistant to arthritis, the common cold, as well as a seeming zillion other common afflictions from infections to cavities to the measles to numerous cancers. Then too there are all those nasty God-created personality flaws part and parcel of the human being we’d be better off without. If God created us, God created the automotive equivalent of the Edsel.
Reason numero six suggests a further anomaly that proves just about beyond any doubt that Genesis is the literary work of man and not of God; we note the endless repetition of “And God said.” My question: prior to Adam, just who was around back then to copy down anything that God said? And if the answer to that is “nobody”, then presumably God is just talking to Himself! Or, more likely as not, the entirety of the Book of Genesis, creation and all, is just an early example of what would later become first known as mythology and even later on down the track as science fiction or science fantasy.
Reason numero seven is that remains of Homo sapiens have been dated via various accepted and verified scientific methods to way before any possible Biblical date that’s accepted by creationists. Human remains can be dated to way in excess of an order of magnitude (a factor of ten times) in fact, in fact closer numerically to two orders of magnitude (a factor of one hundred times) vis-à-vis what a literal Bible demands.
Reason numero eight is that if God wanted His Chosen People (starting with Adam and Eve) to occupy what’s today the Land of Israel Africa is apparently mankind’s point-of-origin home turf on the grounds that hominid fossils have been uncovered there while nobody has yet conclusively pinpointed and proved the geographical location of the Garden of Eden, far less found human remains close by.
Reason numero nine asks why a Chosen People at all? If God created Adam and Eve, then they were His Chosen People and then all of their descendents would be God’s Chosen People, not just a select few further on down the line. It’s akin to parents singling out one child of many for special love and attention – it’s not the done thing.
Now another question arises, why would God want to create humans in the first place? The Almighty already had a nice garden for His R&R and a petting zoo created for His pleasure and what with His staff of angels, etc. He surely didn’t need any additional intellectual company – did God create Adam to play a game of chess with? Well the obvious reason is that God wanted someone, actually many some ones, was to lick His boots and kiss His posterior which presumably the fish and birds and beasts refused to do (and who said animals were dumb). Well, if that’s why God created us, beings to worship Him, then it’s high time to cease kissing His posterior but to kick it instead, hard, and often!
In summary, if you want to come to terms with where you came from, as a subset question of where humans originated from, you should look elsewhere for answers rather than to the Bible, to the Book of Genesis, to God, or to any religion or deity for that matter. A supernatural explanation for creation is no answer at all, well at least until that bored housewife creates her male stud ‘boy toy’ from the innards of her vacuum cleaner! Till that happens then, I’ll file the Bible under fiction.
