From: brian@lpl.arizona.edu (Brian Ceccarelli 602/621-9615)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism,talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: Where does Adam and Eve Fit In?  Attn:  Jeff West
Date: 26 Jan 93 17:59:00 GMT
Organization: Lunar & Planetary Laboratory, Tucson AZ.


Hi Jeff!  8-)

Jeff West (jwest@wisc.cray.com) says:

>Apparently Brian, you and I look at the word literal in two very
>different ways.

Well, to put it bluntly, I think I originally used the word in a 
way that was not the common way of understanding it.  I screwed
up our communication!   I was trying to find a way to express
that I believe the Bible to be true, in the way that its
original authors intended.  Trying to find what the orignal authors
meant, is not at all obvious all the time, but also it is not 
impossible either.  I try to put myself in their historical
perspective and try to understand the people to whom their
writings were directed.  If I remove the writings from their
historical backdrop, and fail to understand the mind set
of the people of the time, I may easily misapply what they
said and arrive at absurd conclusions.  

>Later in your post you say that A&E were possibly created while
>Stone Age man exhisted.  Do you not believe that we are decended
>from these people?  It's been shown for instance that the Stone
>Age people of Europe are the forfathers of today's Europeans.
>
>Are there two lines of people out there.  Ones who evolved and
>the ones who were "created?"
>
>Jeff West

     Frankly, Jeff, I do not know.  The creation account doesn't
say exactly.  The creation account also doesn't disallow evolution. 
Jeff, we are now on an outermost limb of Biblical speculation and
getting farther away from Biblical fact with each question.  It may be
that A&E were created during the Stone Age, and we as well and
the Europeans, are descendants of A&E.  Those not descended from
A&E, may have been wiped out in the Flood.  Now, Jeff and all
you netters reading this, this is only speculation--granddaddy
theories, not Biblical fact.   In may turn out that God may have
built evolution into his creation.  We do not know for certain.

     As far as nailing down a time for the advent of Adam and Eve,
I really don't know.  I have to consider all the possibilities, but
I do not have enough facts.  I don't even know if it is possible
to collect enough facts.  

     I wouldn't mind feeling comfortable with evolution.  But to my
knowledge, there is not enough facts to show that that is true either. 
I have more problems with evolution that I have with God's creating
the animals.   The following may be a rumor, but did not  Darwin 
say that if scientists do not find evidence of transitional species
in the fossil record, then his Evolution theory doesn't hold water?
By a transitional species, he meant an in-between animal--an animal 
between a lower order and a higher order.  For example, skeletons of
men with but half a tail, a quarter of a tail, etc. and all variations
between.  There should be lots of evidence since the changes were 
gradual.  However, as far as I know, such has never been found. 
There is no evidence.   Do you know anything on these lines? 

    What appears to have happened, is that new species simply 
appear--significantly disjoint from their predecessors, as if the
animals were placed on earth intermittently throughout time.  This
would concur with Genesis.  Also, in the entire recorded history of
man, no one has wrote down an observation of a transition from a
lower ordered species to a higher ordered one.  For thousands of
years, man has not observed such a transition.  Evolution is an unbacked
claim.   If animals are in transition all the time, where is the
evidence?  All we see are animals dying off, going extinct, as if
the cosmic clock began at point T and is winding down.  
This also would concur with Genesis and the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
I also learned from a neurobiologist friend of mine that there is new
biological evidence in the human genome, for a great bottleneck in the
human species which happened some thousands of years ago.   (Perhaps
Noah.)  There should actually be far more variations within the human 
species than we see today.   Also, there is new biological female-traceable
genome data that suggests we all originated from a single woman, the
so-called Eve of humanity.

     If it comes to a shooting match between Darwin's Evolution and
God's Genesis chapter 1, to me, Jeff, it would take me more faith 
to believe in Evolution than to believe that God created the whole 
thing.  I see design in the universe.  I see design in the intricacies
of living things.  Evolution implies randomness.  Randomness begats
randomness.  To me, I have to commit intellectual suicide to believe
that we were all a soup of atoms without a plan.  I would have to
believe that a computer program could simply make itself and 
design itself to work better and better without human intervention
despite power outages, disk failures, circuit rust, etc.

    What also adds to my faith in the Genesis creation, is the
reliability of the rest of Genesis and the Bible.  Starting with the time 
just after Noah (Genesis 6), the people and places recorded in the Bible 
become historically and archaeologically provable.  The Smithsonian and the 
National Geographic Society back that up.  My archaeologist professor,
some ten years ago, Dr. Machinist, simply stated the Bible has never
missed in its observable historical record.  Anthropology and archaeology
pursue the factual level of the Bible.  These sciences are in the Bible's wake
and are playing catch up. 
  
   To conclude, if it came to a decision betwen man's theory of creation,
or that of the Bible's, I would go with the Bible's any day.  Man has been
known to be wrong.  As far as I my understanding goes, I am confident that
God's word to man, the Bible, is never wrong.  If something in the Bible seems 
contradictory, then it has always turned out to be something I have failed
to understand myself or had a false presumption about.  Never has the Bible
let me down by its lack of authenticity or veracity.  

    To me, my God is a rock.  He doesn't lie.  He doesn't change.  He is 
a God of order.  He has and does reveal himself.  You yourself can read
about Him.  You can actually get to know him.  Imagine that!   I have one
suggestion though:  just don't take your false assumptions with you when
you do.  You'll just cause yourself grief.   The God of the Bible has a 
personality all His own.  You can't make up one for him, although it is
tempting and self-flattering to do so.  You cannot read about God and 
try to fit your own personal ideas about him into Him.   I tried that a 
decade ago, and boy was I wrong.  The God of the Bible was not who I made
him out to be.  In one respect, He was more dreadful than I had ever 
thought, but at the same time, incredibly more loving than I could have 
ever imagined. 

    To me, my God and Saviour is Jesus.  I full confidence that Jesus
created the universe (Colossians 1:16) and He knows better than you or I
how He did it.  I will stand firm with Him.


Sincerely,


Brian Ceccarelli
----------------
brian@gamma1.lpl.arizona.edu












     If you know anything with regards to the evidence of
transitional species, let me know.  I am very interested.  
     


---------------------------------------------------------------------
It's not denial.  I'm just very selective about the reality I accept.

    - Calvin & Hobbs