Unlike many rationalists, I do not scoff at the Creation as described in the Bible. I don’t believe that Creation occurred as narrated, but I am convinced there is a lot of reasoned thought within the account.
Most scientists don’t like this idea. Rather, it is rubbish produced by a superstitious culture with no hold upon reality whatsoever. Hence, we have the two polarities of the Evolution/Creation controversy.
I disagree with both stances.
wood2Taking the scientific view, it is blatantly not true that such ancient societies descended into superstition alone. Superstition didn’t build the pyramids, or work out agriculture. Reasoned thought had to be involved.
This said, I am always on the look-out for reasoned thought within the Bible, and I nearly always find it. And as an exercise in just what I mean, there is no better example than the idea that Eve was created from Adam’s rib.
The whole idea seems ridiculous.
But read on. Adam is created first, but he is then made to sleep and God takes one of his ribs with which to make woman. Of course, together they make a potent force, and procreation soon occurs.
This is the first important point – that procreation had not occurred before hand. A further point is that, during the Adam and Eve Narrative, the writer seems to embody the whole process of life in Adam.
We now have what we need to make sense of it all.
Indeed, it can become quite reasonable. And what we must first argue is that, if female was not yet existent, can we call Adam male?
I think not. Indeed, I would argue that we can best understand the account if we class Adam as a hermaphrodite – i.e. sexless. Now, prior to sexual reproduction, evolution relied on asexual reproduction.
sage1 How did asexual reproduction occur?
It involves cloning, by taking a cutting from the parent in order to produce an offspring. And with such information we can look at the Adam and Eve Narrative in a totally new light.
To me it becomes a perfect symbolic understanding of the change from asexual to sexual reproduction, with a cutting (rib) taken from a hermaphrodite, leading to male and female, and the obvious sexual reproduction that then followed.
One obvious deduction some could make from this is a process of incest, with Adam being the parent of Eve, but it implies no such thing if looked at it terms of symbolic understanding of evolutionary change.
Indeed, the narrative becomes a marvellous explanatory tale better than any scientist has so far managed to produce. And if correct, it shows that, underlying the general trend of Creation, is a reasoned mind-set at work.
One other point of importance, whilst this essay seems to favour evolution over Creation, as such, it actually does no such thing, for it leaves intact the possibility of a God-force driving the process forward.
Could such reasoning eventually lead to a middle ground between evolutionist and Creationist. Well, yes – though I won’t hold my breath.
