Does the Creation of Eve Contradict Theistic Evolution?

[JustinMartyr100]

My understanding of theistic evolution is that everything evolved under God’s guidence, including our bodies. Genesis says that Eve was created from Adam’s rib. And Adam said “bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh.” It sounds like Eve was created on the spot. Wouldn’t this cause problems on theistic evolution?

The reason I ask is because it seems that science (which I know does not conflict with faith) seems to be showing evidence that we did develop, and that the earth has been around for a long while. For example, dinosour bones dated millions of years. I also read on an atheist website “Fossil remains show that living things in the remote past were very different from living things today.” How accurate is that claim? Anything, for this reason I need to lean more towards theistic evolution rather than instantaneous creation.

I always put my faith above reason, but I am disturbed here because I can’t seem to reason things out.

 

[Ghosty]

Well, the quickest and most obvious answer is that Adam was made from an evolved humanoid body (up from the slime of the Earth), and Even was made miraculously from him. Nothing about Theistic Evolution, or Evolution in general, precludes miracles.

It’s also possible that Eve was made the same way as Adam, but specifically as an equal companion for him, and that the story reflects this reality.

Those are just two possibilities, though. I’m sure brilliant minds could come up with more and better ones.

Peace and God bless!

 

[JustinMartyr100]

Well, the quickest and most obvious answer is that Adam was made from an evolved humanoid body (up from the slime of the Earth), and Even was made miraculously from him. Nothing about Theistic Evolution, or Evolution in general, precludes miracles.

It’s also possible that Eve was made the same way as Adam, but specifically as an equal companion for him, and that the story reflects this reality.

Those are just two possibilities, though. I’m sure brilliant minds could come up with more and better ones.

Peace and God bless!

Good point about the miracles…Any other thoughts?

 

[Lady_Cygnus]

My understanding of theistic evolution is that everything evolved under God’s guidence, including our bodies. Genesis says that Eve was created from Adam’s rib. And Adam said “bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh.” It sounds like Eve was created on the spot. Wouldn’t this cause problems on theistic evolution?

Does it matter how God created her? For Christianity to be true it only matters that He did create her, he created her using Adam in some way and she was created equal with him.

The reason I ask is because it seems that science (which I know does not conflict with faith) seems to be showing evidence that we did develop, and that the earth has been around for a long while. For example, dinosour bones dated millions of years.

True, science does show that, but faith tells us that we are made by God. Science tells us HOW we were made, Faith tells us WHO made us.

I also read on an atheist website “Fossil remains show that living things in the remote past were very different from living things today.” How accurate is that claim?

That would depend on how “very different” they mean. Animals were still made out of bones and muscles back then as they are now. They ate, grew, reproduced, died and decayed, pretty much the same as they do today.

Where reason fails, faith takes over, that doesn’t mean that reason is less than faith. Since God is the creator of reason, not chaos, it makes sense that there will be times when our understanding falls short, but we shouldn’t have to contradict or kill reason to have faith.

 

[spauline]

Good point about the miracles…Any other thoughts?

Hi, Justin (way cool username you have! Justin ROCKED. He died bearing witness to the truth. Am I right when I paraphrase his response to the Stoics who were so angry that he beat them in debate that they threatened to kill him, Justin said, “I mean, do you honestly think that after I spend my whole life looking for the truth, and I finally find it in all its glorious splendor, that I would then just give it up for a few more pathetic years on this earth?!”)

Anyway, here’s an even more beautiful reason to look at this. Admittedly, HOW God actually intervened in creating, at a bare minimum, the souls of Adam and Eve, and perhaps their physical bodies, is not as important as the great meaning and depth of what I believe JPII’s theology of the Body sees here.

Remember, human sexuality is the most profound of sacraments in Creation, for it manifests the ultimate meaning of our creation: to give and receive love, to be united utterly in intellect and will, in eternal penetration of one another and with God. And ultimately, it is this eternal and unending and immeasurable embrace that constitiutes the “Central Mystery of the Christian Faith”, the TRINITY!

Hence, the meaning of how woman is taken from man can be a symbol of this: God the Father, Eternal in Love and Power, proceeding from noone, is such life giving and fruitful love that He BEGETS an Image of Himself, and Image that is FULLY of His Essence, equal in Dignity, and therefore DIVINITY, that is, the Eternal SON. And the Love and Knowledge shared between the Father and the Son, being likewise Infinite is Scope is so indescribably wonderful, that it BECOMES another Divine Person, the Holy Spirit.

So then, just as the Son “proceeds from the Father”, being of the same essence and Divinity, so “Eve” proceeds from Adam and is fully of the same essence, totally equal in dignity, just as priceless a creature as Adam, called to give and receive love in total penetration of intellect and will eternally. And the love between man and woman is so fruitful and deep and wonderful that it can BECOME another totally priceless creature, a child!

This is the marvel of the mystic, JPII. If only persons knew how beautiful and immensely deep was his theology, this world could be utterly transformed.

 

[Ahimsa]

“Adam” (which is related to the Hebrew for “ground”) refers to the Earth, and “Eve” (“mother of all living”) refers to living creatures. Living creatures “came out” of the Earth (Eve “came out” of Adam), just as the theory of evolution proposes.

The above interpretation fits with the Creation Narrative starting at Genesis 2:4. In that narrative, Adam is created first, because the Earth came first, followed by living creatures, plants and animals; this symbolizes evolution of life from the earth. Finally, Eve comes last, because Eve represents the culmination of the process of “Eve-olution”.

The Creation Narrative that starts at Genesis 1:1 is more straightforward in terms of its symbolism; humans are created “male and female” together.

 

[Icarus210]

The whole creation thing had always been a “sticking point” with me. Until my catechism when my great priest also mentioned the “theory” of God “chose” one man of a group… whether it was Cro Magnum or whatever. That also explained who lived “east of Eden”. where Cain met his wife. God gave ONE of them a soul… as in He “Breathed upon him” as in Adam… also fits into Gen 6… as in the “sons of God”… which were Adams relatives, and the “rest”.

Eve… well is that really an issue, whether she was “created” from Adam, or just a “supernaturally changed” female of the tribe?

This is of course IMHO

 

[jmcrae]

The whole creation thing had always been a “sticking point” with me. Until my catechism when my great priest also mentioned the “theory” of God “chose” one man of a group… whether it was Cro Magnum or whatever. That also explained who lived “east of Eden”. where Cain met his wife. God gave ONE of them a soul… as in He “Breathed upon him” as in Adam… also fits into Gen 6… as in the “sons of God”… which were Adams relatives, and the “rest”.

Eve… well is that really an issue, whether she was “created” from Adam, or just a “supernaturally changed” female of the tribe?

This is of course IMHO

In either case, they could not have mated with non-humans - Cain was intimately related to his wife who was his sister, niece, or cousin. If he mated with a non-human, the union would have been sterile (just as we cannot mate with the great apes), and yet we see that he and his wife had a large number of human children.

So it doesn’t matter whether God created Adam and Eve from the dust of the earth, or by evolving them from the bodies of non-humans - either way, the story remains the same.

 

[paarsurrey]

My understanding of theistic evolution is that everything evolved under God’s guidence, including our bodies. Genesis says that Eve was created from Adam’s rib. And Adam said “bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh.” It sounds like Eve was created on the spot. Wouldn’t this cause problems on theistic evolution?

Hi
Please don’t get confused. First one should understand that Adam was not the first human created, rather Adam was the first privilieged human being with whom GodAllahYHWH had a direct conversation. Humans beings got evolved as everything else got evolved, unitl a stage came that God talked with a man, that man has been named Adam. So as men were there before Adam, so were the woman. I think woman was there before even man, because she bears a child, male or female. Females feel happy in the company of their spouses, she is so much attached with her man that has been depicted as if she is from the rib of the man.
I think now you understand. Science and religion go hand in hand.
Thanks

 

[Ahimsa]

Hi
Please don’t get confused. First one should understand that Adam was not the first human created, rather Adam was the first privilieged human being with whom GodAllahYHWH had a direct conversation. Humans beings got evolved as everything else got evolved, unitl a stage came that God talked with a man, that man has been named Adam. So as men were there before Adam, so were the woman. I think woman was there before even man, because she bears a child, male or female. Females feel happy in the company of their spouses, she is so much attached with her man that has been depicted as if she is from the rib of the man.
I think now you understand. Science and religion go hand in hand.
Thanks

In other words, Adam was the first to receive a revelation from God. You can see this in Genesis as well, where Genesis Chapter 1 tells how God created male and female humans; and Chapter 2 tells, symbolically, how God revealed himself to Adam and Eve.

 

[JustinMartyr100]

In other words, Adam was the first to receive a revelation from God. You can see this in Genesis as well, where Genesis Chapter 1 tells how God created male and female humans; and Chapter 2 tells, symbolically, how God revealed himself to Adam and Eve.

Doesn’t the idea that there were humans before Adam and Eve contradict the idea of original sin? If that is the case, then not ALL men are fallen because of the original sin. ALL men today are because everyone got wiped out in the flood, but before the flood, I suppose most humans didn’t have their fall because of the original sin?

 

[MojeIme1981]

Doesn’t the idea that there were humans before Adam and Eve contradict the idea of original sin?

ah, this is just one of the tenets of faith you have to compromise when you choose to believe into theistic evolution…

 

[Ahimsa]

Doesn’t the idea that there were humans before Adam and Eve contradict the idea of original sin? If that is the case, then not ALL men are fallen because of the original sin. ALL men today are because everyone got wiped out in the flood, but before the flood, I suppose most humans didn’t have their fall because of the original sin?

Who is to say that Adam, after he received the revelation, did not communicate that revelation to all of the other humans alive at that time, thus giving them the revelation too? The Fall would then be the denial of the human race as a whole, of the revelation they had all been given, either a revelation directly from God (Adam and Eve) or a revelation testified to them by Adam and Eve.

 

[jmcrae]

Who is to say that Adam, after he received the revelation, did not communicate that revelation to all of the other humans alive at that time, thus giving them the revelation too? The Fall would then be the denial of the human race as a whole, of the revelation they had all been given, either a revelation directly from God (Adam and Eve) or a revelation testified to them by Adam and Eve.

The de fide teaching of the Church is that Adam and Eve were literally the first two humans on earth, and that all human beings who have ever lived are directly descended from them.

This belief is a requirement of the Catholic faith. How one makes theistic evolution fit around this unchangable truth is up to the person himself, but we are not allowed to believe anything that would either cause God not to be the Creator, or that would cause Adam and Eve not to be the first humans on earth.

 

[Ahimsa]

The de fide teaching of the Church is that Adam and Eve were literally the first two humans on earth, and that all human beings who have ever lived are directly descended from them.

This belief is a requirement of the Catholic faith. How one makes theistic evolution fit around this unchangable truth is up to the person himself, but we are not allowed to believe anything that would either cause God not to be the Creator, or that would cause Adam and Eve not to be the first humans on earth.

This brings up the question “what is a human?” One could suggest that, since Adam and Eve were first, that it was the reception of revelation that made Adam and Eve into “true humans”. Once Adam and Eve started to spread the revelation God gave to them, whoever accepted their revelation, then became “true humans”, becoming, in a real spiritual sense (which operates at a deeper level than the biological), “children” of Adam and Eve. Until their acceptance of Adam and Eve’s revelation, they were “not-true-humans”.

 

[rossum]

Doesn’t the idea that there were humans before Adam and Eve contradict the idea of original sin?

No. According to the Church, a human is both a body and a soul. The organisms before Adam had bodies like ours but no souls, so they were not human in the theological sense. In Genesis 2 the creation of Adam is a two stage process - body from clay followed by the “breath of life”. Evolution merely covers the body from clay stage in more detail.

rossum

 

[youannis]

The ultimate truth is there is no ultimate truth? That in itself is a truth claim, so the very proposition is self defeating. William Lane Craig, a distinguished professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology describes such blatant violations of logic as “crazy and unintelligible”, “For if this statement (the truth is that there is no truth) is true, it is not true, since there is no truth” (Craig in Phillips and Ockholm 1995. pp.79-82)

 

[paarsurrey]

The organisms before Adam had bodies like ours but no souls

Hi
First; have you any straight quote from OTBible that men before Adam didn’t have a soul?
Second ; do you mean that since the men before had no souls, they did not feel any pain if they got hurt?
Thanks

Adam did make a mistake, but since he repented and was forgiven by GodAllahYHWH so that cannot be called a sin.

 

[rossum]

The ultimate truth is there is no ultimate truth? That in itself is a truth claim, so the very proposition is self defeating. William Lane Craig, a distinguished professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology describes such blatant violations of logic as “crazy and unintelligible”, “For if this statement (the truth is that there is no truth) is true, it is not true, since there is no truth” (Craig in Phillips and Ockholm 1995. pp.79-82)

You are not the first person to comment on my sig. The original source is Mark Siderits, “Thinking on Empty: Madhyamika Anti-Realism and Canons of Rationality” in S Biderman and B.A. Schaufstein, eds, Rationality In Question (1989). Dordrecht: Brill.

I have not read Siderits but saw the quote in a piece on Nagarjuna. The “Madhyamika” in Siderits’ title refers to the religious and philosophical school that Nagarjuna founded. I have seen the same quote again in other places in reference to the Madhyamika and Nagarjuna - it seems quite popular. The quote is intentionally paradoxical; paradox is necessary to remind us that words are insufficient when trying to describe the fundamental nature of reality. To use the Zen parable, words are the finger, they are not the moon.

For a philosophical discussion of Nagarjuna and reality see the web article Nagarjuna and the Limits of Thought. The Siderits quote is at the end of section four of the article:

There is, then, no escape. Nagarjuna’s view is contradictory. The contradiction is, clearly a paradox of expressibility. Nagarjuna succeeds in saying the unsayable, just as much as the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus. We can think (and characterize) reality only subject to language, which is conventional, so the ontology of that reality is all conventional. It follows that the conventional objects of reality do not ultimately (non-conventionally) exist. It also follows that nothing we say of them is ultimately true. That is, all things are empty of ultimate existence; and this is their ultimate nature, and is an ultimate truth about them. They hence cannot be thought to have that nature; nor can we say that they do. But we have just done so. As Mark Siderits (1989) has put it, “the ultimate truth is that there is no ultimate truth.”

rossum

 

[paarsurrey]

Hi
The ultimate truth is that there is Truth.
Thanks