I hope the discussion on artificial intelligence has given you new insights into why God did not create fully grown humans in twenty-four hours. Self-awareness and consciousness take time to acquire. The account of creation in Genesis is not meant to be understood literally. If God created fully grown Adam and Eve in twenty-four hours, then He must have also given them a predefined data model and program. If everything is already programmed in, all decision-making is based on the data model God had given, and free will and moral choice become an illusion.
If we assert that God created humans via a long process like evolution, we must reconcile with the biblical account of Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve had no biological parents, and they were supposed to be the ancestors of all humankind. They are critical figures in our faith. Paul asserted that Jesus is the second Adam, sin entered the world via one person (Adam), and salvation is through one person (Jesus). This is a controversial issue; different understandings of Adam and Eve will lead to different interpretations of original sin. The keys to understanding this are: 1) what does it mean to be human? 2) What is it mean when we say that human is created in the image of God?
Since this website is not about the origin of humans, I will highlight some possible ways of understanding Adam and Eve, and you must decide which one is more believable.
- The story recorded in Genesis is literally true. They were created by God directly from dust around six thousand years ago. They literally ate the forbidden fruit and introduced sin into the world.
- The story of Adam and Eve is a myth. Genesis is not a science book; the first few chapters are not history books. The first few chapters of Genesis use pictorial language to tell us that God is the creator of heaven and earth and that there is a meaning behind the creation. Eating the forbidden fruit is a symbol of human rebellion. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is not an actual physical tree.
- Adam and Eve are two unique historical beings that started the Homo Sapiens branch of the evolution tree. This makes the age of Adam and Eve way older than the age deduced from the genealogy recorded in Genesis.
- Adam and Eve were the first homo sapiens to grow consciousness and communicate with God. This pushes the age of Adam and Eve much closer to the biblical account. If we assume that the world population is 9 billion today and the average family produces 2.5 offspring, and if we further assume that one generation is 30 years. A very simple model predicts that it will only take 100 generations (3000 years, 2 * 1.25^100 = 9.8 billion) for the descendants of Adam and Eve to fill the whole earth. However, this simple model does not consider wars and famines that limit population growth. Still, it shows that it is mathematically possible that Adam and Eve lived six thousand years ago and are the ancestors of everyone on Earth today.
“Cain said to the Lord, ‘My punishment is more than I can bear. Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.’
But the Lord said to him, “Not so; anyone who kills Cain will suffer vengeance seven times over.” Then the Lord put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him. So Cain went out from the Lord’s presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden.” – Genesis 4:13-16.
After Cain killed his brother, Abel, God cursed him but spared his life and put a mark on him so no one who found him would kill him. This passage suggests that there are people around who are not the descendent of Adam and Eve.
- Adam and Eve were not individual human beings. Adam and Eve represent a group of homo sapiens that developed consciousness. Scientists that used DNA to investigate whether there is a common human ancestor concluded that with the DNA diversity we see today, the human genealogy must have come from more than a few tens of individuals.
Sin came to this earth when Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate the forbidden fruit. If Adam and Eve weren’t historical figures described in Genesis, where do we get the original sin? Another problem is how original sin is transmitted from one generation to another. Before the age of DNA, most people understood original sin to be culturally transmitted. Younger generations learn our sinful behavior through observation of the older generations. With the advance in DNA, most people now think it is transmitted via DNA. Although it has not been proven, some researchers think that they “found” a gay gene that is responsible for homosexual behavior. Is our sinful nature determined by our DNA, and nothing can be done about it? If one day scientists found a gene responsible for stealing, is it all right for people to steal? Your DNA is not your biography and will not tell your life story; it is just a manual telling your body how to build itself.
A friend of mine who is a medical doctor once said that the gay gene theory doesn’t make sense. Homosexuals are attracted to the same sex, and as a result, they are less likely to have offspring that carry the gay gene to the next generation. Therefore, after a few generations, the so-called gay gene will eventually disappear from our DNA pool.
I’m contemplating a third possible transmission mechanism here. Remember we talked about innate behavior when we discussed AI? Innate behavior is the ability of an animal to perform a particular behavior in response to a given stimulus the first time the animal is exposed to the stimulus. Is original sin an innate behavior we were born with? If so, our sinful behaviors are not hard-coded in our DNA, it is a built-in data model in our mind, and we can retrain the data model to unlearn the sinful behavior.
For example, one of the common problems we all have is putting people into boxes and not treating them as who they are. We all have this problem; it is just a matter of degree. In some cases, it led to racial profiling, and minorities got mistreated. It is part of our brain makeup, and we create different models for different situations; primal humans have to make a split-second decision to act; they don’t have time to analyze the situation; it is part of survival skills. Putting people in boxes is part of our innate behavior.
Brain researchers tell us our mind is very plastic, and we can reconfigure neurons to conduct different tasks. For example, if you became blind, you could train your brain to enhance the sense of sound. To eliminate our racial stereotyping, we can always understand cultures other than ours and learn more positive things about them. So, when our brain extracts information from our model, we have more positive things to say. Retraining our brain and getting rid of old habits and biases is difficult; we need the help of the Holy Spirit to retrain our behaviors by renewing our minds, getting involved in a God-fearing community, reading the bible daily, and meditating on His word.
“But whose delight is the law of the LORD and meditates on his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither- whatever they do prospers.” (Psalm 1:2-3)
Another thing we human beings are different from AI is that we have the willpower not to act on our sinful thoughts (what our data model tells us to do). Even if we have sinful natures, we can overcome them. As the reformer Martin Luther said, “You cannot keep birds from flying over your head, but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair.”
How we get this innate behavior in the first place is unknown. Suppose you believe in the historical Adam and Eve. In that case, it should be when Adam and Eve disobeyed God, and the impact is so traumatic that it got burned in and embedded in the brain and transmitted from one generation to another. Recent animal studies confirmed that transmitting traumatic memory from one generation to another is possible. On the other hand, if you believe humans evolved over a long period, we got our innate behavior like animals’ innate behavior for survival purposes.
“Since you listened to your wife and ate from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat, the ground is cursed because of you. All your life, you will struggle to scratch a living from it. It will grow thorns and thistles for you, though you will eat of its grains.
By the sweat of your brow, will you have food to eat until you return to the ground from which you were made. For you were made from dust, and to dust you will return.” (Genesis 3:17-19)
In Genesis, death is the penalty for disobeying God for eating the forbidden fruit. But if we view the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil from an evolutionary perspective, it’s not just a symbol of humanity’s defiance against God. Consciousness is required to understand the distinction between right and wrong. Suppose we take the view that God created humans through evolution over a prolonged period for humans to develop consciousness and free will. Death is an unavoidable condition for intelligent life to emerge. Thus, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil has a more profound significance. The cursed earth and human mortality are necessary conditions for humans to thrive; that is why it’s called the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.