CREATION ACCOUNTS OF ADAM AND EVE ACCORDING TO W.L. CRAIG

 

 

In an interview, apologist and esteemed debater, William Lane Craig, admitted that God could have created Adam, out of nothing. However, he tends to believe in the evolutionary account that Adam and Eve had evolved from apelike ancestors. Why? Craig is convinced that the Genesis account of the creation of Adam and Eve is figurative rather than literal history:

 

·       I think that the creation of Eve out of Adam’s rib is almost undeniably figurative language, rather than describing an actual surgery that took place with this rib floating in the air and then being formed into a woman – and then even God’s creating Adam out of dirt and then blowing into his nose again seems to be very anthropomorphic and figurative.  So, I think that the narratives of Genesis 1 given their genre leave it open as to HOW God created Adam and Eve, and that makes it a scientific question. (CAPs are added where Craig had emphasized the word.) https://youtu.be/raCC7PSrG4I

 

Sometimes, this kind of language is figurative. How then must we decide how to interpret these two accounts of the creation of Adam and Eve? We need to take our cues from the entire corpus of the Scriptures, and they reaffirm that Adam was literally created from the ground. After creating Adam and his sin, God had pronounced His judgment, reaffirming that Adam had come from the dust of the ground:

 

·       “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3:19; Psalm 104:29; Ecclesiastes 12:7 (ESV)

He came from the dust and would now return to the dust. This sounds very literal. It also is in line with science. How? We are made of the same elements as found in the ground! The NT also takes this account literally and historically:

 

·       The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. (1 Corinthians 15:47–49)

 

If our origin from the dust of the ground is not literal, then we have no reason to believe that we will have a literal resurrected body. Therefore, for Craig to deny that Adam had come from the earth is to upset biblical theology.

 

I think that Craig commits a similar oversight regarding the creation of Eve out of Adam’s rib. For one thing, Adam acknowledged that Eve had come from his rib:

·       Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” (Genesis 2:23)

The terminology also affirms this. “Isha” (wife) is taken from “Ish” (husband), reflecting the historicity of her origin. Paul had affirmed the same:

·       For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. (1 Corinthians 11:8–9)

 

If the NT affirms that these things had literally taken place, we have little choice but to do the same.

 

However, Craig objects that these accounts aren’t scientific, but why not? If science can now clone a human from a single cell, what is to prevent God from doing similarly with a cell from Adam’s rib!

 

Craig then claims that the commonalities we share with chimp-like creatures provide evidence for common descent:

 

·       And when I look at the question scientifically, I think that the similarities that human beings exhibit genetically to chimpanzees, particularly broken genes that we and chimpanzees both seem to have inherited from the last common ancestors that has no function anymore, suggests that we do share [a common evolutionary origin.

 

However, common features fail to prove common ancestry any more than they point to a common Creator. Instead, science has found many common traits for which there is no evolutionary ancestral connection. One example of this is bioluminescence, the ability to produce light. Fireflies are just one of 40 species (some claim 60) that can do this. Bruce Malone and Vett explained:

 

·       From single-celled organisms called dinoflagellates to glow worms found in caves; from deep-sea fish to googly-eyed glass squids; there is a vast array of creatures with an ability to mix varying forms of luciferin and luciferase to produce light at will. It turns out that each of these creatures uses a slightly different variation of the key chemicals to produce light. One would think that closely-related organisms should have similar luciferins and liciferases, while creatures further apart on the evolutionary sequence would have much different versions of such chemicals. NO SUCH PATTERN EXISTS. Thus according to those who have extensively studied this subject, “bioluminescence is estimated to have evolved independently at least 40 times.” (Inspired Evidence)

 

It is difficult enough to believe that the ability to produce light – with its necessary structures and complex chemicals – could have evolved at all. However, evolutionists are forced to acknowledge that this same ability magically evolved “independently 40 different times.” It is wildly improbable that chance mutations could have accounted for these common features.

 

Whatever we might think about this improbability, these observations and many others like them demonstrate that commonalities do not prove common descent.

 

Craig is a highly gifted debater. It is sad and unwarranted to see him inject evolution into the discussion of origins.