Why did it take soooo long for God to show up?

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Hey,

This question bothers me a lot: We know now that the human race is between 100’000-200’000 years old. Why did it take SOOOO LONG for God to show up and finally speak with Adam and Eve or Abraham? Why did he just watch for 10’000s of years how humans kill each other without knowing Him? And why doesn’t the bible explain all that?

Thanks 👍

source
pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/humans/humankind/o.html
britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/275670/human-evolution
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomically_modern_humans
genetics.med.harvard.edu/reich/Reich_Lab/Press_files/2011_Gibbons_New_View.pdf
 
We know there were humaniod species before modern man, but we do not know their intelligence, their sentience, their spiritual state of being. We do not even know they were related to us–that’s speculation, not science since it cannot be tested or repeated. A lot of what passes for science is really philosophical speculation based on findings that cannot speak for themselves. Some of these assumptions may be right and some wrong, but they tell us little about modern man–not even our origins, which science has not discovered.

Adam and Eve were created by God. Perhaps humaniods were the template, but they were not our ancestors any more than apes are human beings. One need not interpret Genesis literalistically to believe that we are all descended from one set of parents and that they fell from grace. How else do you explain that human beings are all one species and that we are all flawed persons?

Why are we here? Why are we sentient? What will our end be? None of these questions can be answered by science. Only religion has the answers because only religion has the means to answer them–the revelation of God to man in the person of the God-man, Jesus Christ, who is the final prophet fulfilling all the prophets and partriarchs.

Believe because faith answers your questions about who you are and why God put you here. Evolution is a lot of fuss over genetics but it doesn’t tell us a thing about us except our bodies are made from the elements of the earth, something we know from the Genesis creation stories. There is no barrier between true science and faith or faith and reason. Rather they go hand in hand.
 
Della said:
We know there were humaniod species before modern man, but we do not know their intelligence, their sentience, their spiritual state of being. We do not even know they were related to us–that’s speculation, not science since it cannot be tested or repeated. A lot of what passes for science is really philosophical speculation based on findings that cannot speak for themselves. Some of these assumptions may be right and some wrong, but they tell us little about modern man–not even our origins, which science has not discovered.

Adam and Eve were created by God. Perhaps humaniods were the template, but they were not our ancestors any more than apes are human beings. One need not interpret Genesis literalistically to believe that we are all descended from one set of parents and that they fell from grace. How else do you explain that human beings are all one species and that we are all flawed persons?

Why are we here? Why are we sentient? What will our end be? None of these questions can be answered by science. Only religion has the answers because only religion has the means to answer them–the revelation of God to man in the person of the God-man, Jesus Christ, who is the final prophet fulfilling all the prophets and partriarchs.

Believe because faith answers your questions about who you are and why God put you here. Evolution is a lot of fuss over genetics but it doesn’t tell us a thing about us except our bodies are made from the elements of the earth, something we know from the Genesis creation stories. There is no barrier between true science and faith or faith and reason. Rather they go hand in hand.
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You beat me to saying that. :mad:

Good job. 😃
 
Did God use evolution? He may have. Genesis is not a science text, so it does not tell us how so much as why. But there are hints. Only three times in the creation account is “bara” used: for the creation of matter (I:I), life (I:2I) and humanity (I:27). The other times, God said, “let the waters bring forth…” or “let the earth bring forth…” that is, for most of His acts of “creation”, He made rather than created.
For example, He used the pre-existing material of “the dust of the earth to make man. Was that an ape body? Perhaps. Why not? Our 'image of God” distinctiveness, our personality, is grounded in the soul, not in the body. We are “rational animals”. God is not an animal.
Catholics have seldom had the difficulties and embarrassments many Protestants have had about creation vs. evolution. Ever since Augustine they have interpreted Genesis’ “days” non literally. (The Hebrew word there, yom, is often used non-quantitatively in Scripture.) Purposes not clocks, measure God’s time. KREEFT
 
Studer said:
Hey,

This question bothers me a lot: We know now that the human race is between 100’000-200’000 years old. Why did it take SOOOO LONG for God to show up and finally speak with Adam and Eve or Abraham? Why did he just watch for 10’000s of years how humans kill each other without knowing Him? And why doesn’t the bible explain all that?

Thanks 👍
Click to expand...
yes, the human biological species has been around for 100,000 years or so. But these humans, until God put an imortal soul into two of them, were just really intelligent animals. They were not spiritually human until Adam and Eve.
 
I believe ensouled humanity is at least 2 million years old. Homo Habilis showed signs of human intelligence, and Homo Erectus even built fires and ships. Because of my french ancestry, I have somewhere between 2-7% neanderthal DNA due to interbreeding in Mesopotamia, Russia, and Europe, so I think your 200K estimate is slightly off the mark.

Leaving that aside, God spoke to Adam and Eve from the first. He spoke to their descendants also (See the story of Cain and Able.) He spoke to men before Noah Including Enoch, who was taken up to heaven like Elias. He spoke to Noah contracting with him a covenant which endures to this day. Though we do not have all the details he was not absent from the lives of men between Noah and Abraham. Why didn’t the Bible mention more? Because it wasn’t relevant to the establishment of his people Israel or to the coming of the messiah.
 
Studer said:
Hey,

This question bothers me a lot: We know now that the human race is between 100’000-200’000 years old. Why did it take SOOOO LONG for God to show up and finally speak with Adam and Eve or Abraham? Why did he just watch for 10’000s of years how humans kill each other without knowing Him? And why doesn’t the bible explain all that?

Thanks 👍
Click to expand...
Adam and Eve are the two human beings from whom humanity begun. So, according to your estimates (which we do not know, since it’s a solid theory, not a well-known fact) they lived 200,000 years ago, and that’s when God spoke to them. In fact God speaks to everyone throughout history, and nobody here is claiming that God only spoke to the Hebrews or to Christians and that other religions are pointless.

Quite the contrary, we believe that everything that is good in other religions is a sign of God’s presence and guidance.

Why did God chose the Hebrew nation? Well, if we do believe that there is a God who is Creator of us all and our Father, the answer “because He chose so” is more than sufficient, given that ultimately our minds of limited, imperfect knowledge and capacity to learn and understand may not even be able to grasp a reflection of God’s reasons for making that choice. However, the Bible does say that God engraves His law in all human hearts, meaning that every human being in the world, at any point in history, knows certain basic things to be good and others to be evil - murder of an innocent, for instance, or love for our parents.

Ultimately, it is a very profound theological truth that God is outside of time, and we are all created by God with an immortal soul that shall return to dwell with Him. This means that time, in fact, does not mean much.
 
Really good and interesting answers. Thank you very much everybody!
 
Studer said:
Hey,

This question bothers me a lot: We know now that the human race is between 100’000-200’000 years old. Why did it take SOOOO LONG for God to show up and finally speak with Adam and Eve or Abraham? Why did he just watch for 10’000s of years how humans kill each other without knowing Him? And why doesn’t the bible explain all that?

Thanks 👍

source
pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/humans/humankind/o.html
britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/275670/human-evolution
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomically_modern_humans
genetics.med.harvard.edu/reich/Reich_Lab/Press_files/2011_Gibbons_New_View.pdf
Click to expand...
The modern craze for speed, e.g. instant coffee and instant photos, now manifests itself in the need for instant Revelation!

Men continue to kill one another regardless of divine intervention…
 
Studer said:
Hey,

This question bothers me a lot: We know now that the human race is between 100’000-200’000 years old. Why did it take SOOOO LONG for God to show up and finally speak with Adam and Eve or Abraham? Why did he just watch for 10’000s of years how humans kill each other without knowing Him? And why doesn’t the bible explain all that?

Thanks 👍

source
pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/humans/humankind/o.html
britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/275670/human-evolution
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomically_modern_humans
genetics.med.harvard.edu/reich/Reich_Lab/Press_files/2011_Gibbons_New_View.pdf
Click to expand...
Christopher Hitchens always used that argument too, along with the size of the universe being soooo big that it would be crazy wasteful to be centred on mankind.

With the early geneologies, the Bible reaches back into the prehistory of mankind as much as it is able. Some have postulated even that many of the early figures are representatives of Egyptian dynasties and their ages.

Aside from that the Bible makes no comment on things not revealed, and not relevant to the themes and messages it gives.

As far as God not being that for prehistoric man, there is no reason to believe he wasn’t. He was pleased with the goodness of his creation, and not just the crown of his creation.

It is also a matter of perspective. What seems to us as infinitely large and infinitely timeless and infinitely just too, too much, is the commentary of a finite mind.

From the perspective of a being who exists outside of the space and time that he created, anything finite is infinitely small when compared to Infinity itself.
Even as a point approaches infinity, that is not even the half of it.
 
Studer said:
Hey,

This question bothers me a lot: We know now that the human race is between 100’000-200’000 years old. Why did it take SOOOO LONG for God to show up and finally speak with Adam and Eve or Abraham? Why did he just watch for 10’000s of years how humans kill each other without knowing Him? And why doesn’t the bible explain all that?
Click to expand...
Actually, God spoke to Adam on the first day that He created him. And according to the New Jerusalem Bible, the first three words that Adam heard God say were “You are free”: “Then Yahweh God gave the man this command, ‘You are free to eat of all the trees in the garden’” (Genesis 2:16 NJB). And God spoke these words on the same day that He created Adam.
Why did he just watch for 10’000s of years how humans kill each other without knowing Him?
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Evil and suffering are the result of sin entering into the world. And sin’s entrance into the world -and consequently the entrance of “how humans kill each other without knowing Him?” - is related to human beings using their free-will choice to disobey the Commandment of God that says, “Thou shalt not kill” (Exodus 20:13).
And why doesn’t the bible explain all that?
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I think that the Bible does explain the fall of mankind in the first three chapters of Genesis. The Bible states that when God created human beings, He created them innocent and blameless. He placed them in a garden where suffering did not exist. The Bible also states that it wasn’t until mankind chose to follow Satan rather than God that suffering entered into the world. Therefore, human beings are responsible for human suffering, not God. I think that some human beings, in their attempt to conceal their own responsibilities toward their fellow human beings, tend to take the easy way out and pass the buck for all the tragedies and sufferings in the world to God.
 
Studer said:
Hey,

This question bothers me a lot: We know now that the human race is between 100’000-200’000 years old. Why did it take SOOOO LONG for God to show up and finally speak with Adam and Eve or Abraham? Why did he just watch for 10’000s of years how humans kill each other without knowing Him? And why doesn’t the bible explain all that?
Click to expand...
Jesus the Christ came “in the fullness of time”.
  1. If you look at a graph of human population…you will see that there was a relatively small number of people who lived prior to Jesus…then an explosion of population growth.
If you combine all the ages before Jesus there was (an estimated) less than 1% of the total human births. Also, the human populations ability to spread out and communicate also rapidly advanced after Christ’s time on Earth.

As human populations continue to near double in the next 50-70 years…the time of Jesus becomes even more pronounced (statistically)…as if One was standing at the entrance of human civilization.
  1. The method of Christ’s execution was perfected by that time
  2. The historians ability to verify and cross-check facts had advanced
  3. The world was stable enough (under Roman pax) to spread a large message
 
Darryl1958 said:
Christopher Hitchens always used that argument too, along with the size of the universe being soooo big that it would be crazy wasteful to be centred on mankind.
.
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William Lane Craig’s response to this in his debate in Hitchens was that in 90,000 years Jesus would have come right in the middle of human history. The time when he came is really irrelevant. It’s like Tonyrey’s point.

And Craig also noted that if you consider it with respect to the number of humans who have ever walked the earth, 98% came during or after the time of Christ.

Edit: ^^^ someone already mentioned the population stats.
 
There is the young earth hypothesis which according to Hasidim, is just 5773 years old.
 
Lots of arguments…But please tell me oh children, have you really learned so much?❤️

If the power to make a universe is acknowledged and if already demonstrated powers over light, darkness, fire, water, stars, and even death has not convinced you… can you not at least acknowledge that power over time might exist as well …remember, so much of what man has “known” has proved false or inaccurate…
Look not through glasses limited by someone else, but have faith like a child and seek ye the truth…you will not find it in poor questions…:twocents:❤️
 
We do not know when Adam and Eve lived except in the Biblical timeline, which is relatively recent compared to most accounts of the first appearance of humans. If evolution is true, we do not know when the first conscience appeared in the first human. No doubt it was long after intelligence had been developing to the point where it can be considered typical of the modern human. If it took only several thousand years between Adam, the first man with a conscience, and Christ, that is not soooo long! 😃 👍
 
AloysiusBologna said:
Lots of arguments…But please tell me oh children, have you really learned so much?❤️

If the power to make a universe is acknowledged and if already demonstrated powers over light, darkness, fire, water, stars, and even death has not convinced you… can you not at least acknowledge that power over time might exist as well …remember, so much of what man has “known” has proved false or inaccurate…
Look not through glasses limited by someone else, but have faith like a child and seek ye the truth…you will not find it in poor questions…:twocents:❤️
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Unfortunately, with so many voices vying for attention and so little in the way of classical education, most people have no context in which to place how God orders his creation. They aren’t taught it at public schools anymore–it’s forbidden–like it was some poisonous idea that might inhibit their minds. Indeed, there are well known scientists who say as much. Catechesis in our parishes over the last couple of generations has been abysmal and hasn’t improved very much. Is it any wonder people ask questions and have no understanding of these things?
 
Some replies to OP:
  1. Everyone agrees that hominids arose in Africa.
    There is evidence that one and a half million years ago some migrated out of Africa, along the shores of the Middle East, India, and into Asia, crossing many rivers along the way. This is evidence of high intelligence.
  2. Evidence has been found of Aborigines in Australia 200,000 years ago. Look at the map and you can see they had to cross a wide expanse of water between Asia and Australia. They must have used some kind of rafts or boats.
  3. Neanderthal man buried their dead fifty thousand years ago. While we don’t know why, it’s likely they had some concept of an afterlife.
  4. Who said primitive men ran around killing each other? :confused:
    The population of Earth has been estimated at about one million some million years ago. That’s not a lot for the whole world. There was plenty of room for everybody. The was no need to compete for territory. So why would people kill each other? Do gorillas kill each other? No. They are very peaceful. Give them a lot more intelligence and they will still be peaceful, until they’re assaulted by all the evil influences of our modern world like rap music, the Oscars, and Lady Gaga. :egyptian:
  5. God makes the rules.
    Let me repeat that: God makes the rules! 😃
Who’s going to argue with Him? :bigyikes:

So with that in mind…
… let me stick my neck out and risk being burned at the stake. 😊

Since God makes the rules, did I say that already? ] he can do anything he wants. Right?
Are you ready for this? 🤷 ( make sure you kids are out of the room :whacky: )

Maybe Adam and Eve weren’t the first human beings.
Maybe they were just the first two people God put in the state of innocence. :eek:
In which case, the Fall applied to all who followed.

What about the people before Adam and Eve? They were just like us.

God reduced Adam and Eve to the fallen state which meant they could repent and be saved after all. This was an act of mercy on God’s part. So creating the earlier people in the fallen state was not unfair. because the fallen state means our intellects and will are weak compared to Adam in the state of innocence, and we can always repent and be saved. .

What happened to the other people besides Adam and Eve? They intermarried with Adam and Eve’s descendants, and their children were heirs to original sin.
Do I smell smoke?
 
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