Adam and Eve did not live earlier than around 8000 B.C., that is, roughly 10,000 years ago but evidence of humans is much older … The fossil record of anatomically modern humans, however, extends at least 100,000 years before the present.” (The Antiquity and the Unity of the Human Race Revisited, Davis Young)
Dr. Davis A Young, a scientist with outstanding academic credentials and a thoroughly orthodox, evangelical Christian, has presented in this volume solid and convincing evidence for the thesis that the earth is an extremely old planet created by God. This book demonstrates how well-meaning creationist (Dr. Young is also a creationist in the term) have misrepresented the evidence of geology in their attempt to argue that the earth is only a few thousand years old.
Christianity and the Age of the Earth – Davis Young
“Adam and Eve did not live earlier than around 8000 B.C., that is, roughly 10,000 years ago but evidence of humans is much older … The fossil record of anatomically modern humans, however, extends at least 100,000 years before the present.” (The Antiquity and the Unity of the Human Race Revisited, Davis Young)
The reason he says this is that the context of the Adam and Eve story has to do with agriculture and a settled culture. The conflict between Cain and Abel is often interpreted (for instance in the Erdmann’s Bible Dict) as symbolizing “an irreconcilable conflict between farmers and herders.”
Davis Young has quite a few essays on the ASA website (American Scientific Affiliation, a group of scientists who are Christian believers) and I also read his book Christianity and the Age of the Earth.
Readings of this type had two different sets of effects on me. First, they caused me to consider the evidence for common descent of humans within the evolutionary framework, something I had not done, though I was never a big cheerleader for Creationism either – I had just not thought much about the subject.
Secondly, it made me question the overall authoritativeness of the context in which I was living at that time. Those in positions of authority I now began to doubt, because I perceived that they were not actually grappling with issues of this type or even admitting that such issues existed. It was only completely outside of the church boundaries and at times even in opposition to it that I had access to information which was to my surprise, readily available. So I think by this way of functioning, the church lost its credibility in my view.
I like Polkinghorne”s idea that God ”gifted the creation with the ability to bring forth.” In fact in one of the creation accounts God is reported as saying something similar to this.
George Washington I’ve wrestled with this too, but at this point I’m not completely satisfied with the views of either camp. When I try to embrace evolutionary processes as God’s mechanism of creation I’m left wondering what really changed when creation came under the curse of sin? Death, killing, suffering, and all of those things would already have been a fundamental part of the world. And what becomes of the idea that Adam and Eve made a choice that resulted in their separation from God? It would seem to diminish the severity of their spiritual death if they were just returning to something very similar to the de-facto status of their pre-awakening.
Steve Ranney Yes, it raises those issues. By the way I will also upload a picture of Davis Young. That book by him was published in 1982. Which kind of knocks me out knowing that stuff was out there all those years, I just didn”t know about it. He taught at Calvin College at the time the book was published.
September 22, 2008 at 4:56pm