Looking at the two different beginnings widely accepted, we have on one side scripture and on the other science, but can there be found common ground where they both agree?
Firstly, I’d like to differentiate between what scripture says in Genesis and the common doctrine taught in most, if not all religious places of worship. If you were bought up Christian or Muslim, you were taught that we all came from Adam and Eve, this is what the church teaches but not what the bible says. Just because a university educated religious theologian will reiterate that this is what the bible says, that just makes them a parrot repeating what it has been told instead of questioning when it doesn’t fit with all available information. It’s ludicrous to think we all came not once, but twice from a small group of people you could fit into one single room (Firstly from Adam and Eve and then secondly from Noah and family). For me, I believe what the bible says, not what I’m told it says.
So, in Genesis we have Adam and Eve that had two sons Cain and Able. Cain killed his brother Able and so God is about to banish Cain from Eden. Cain is afraid of being kicked out of Eden as he says to God, “If you banish me then everyone I meet will kill me for this crime I committed” so God places a mark upon his forehead so that everyone he meets will know not to kill him. So, in every bible it states quite clearly there are already others outside of Eden despite what the church might teach you. This does not mean the church is lying but they can’t explain what they refuse to understand. This can’t be explained without science and possibly a touch of Buddhism, let’s all get uncomfortable and dive right into the deep end, from the beginning.
We are in fact “Children of the stars”, every element you can see, and touch was once part of a star. Let’s not get picky and say hydrogen wasn’t formed in a star but rather forms the star which is the nursery that starts forming the lighter atoms all the way to iron on the periodic table. Nuclear fusion combining two hydrogen atoms into helium and so forth working its way up the periodic table until it gets to iron, once the main sequence star reaches a certain percentage of iron and the available hydrogen fuel can no longer support the star, the star goes supa nova exploding with ferocity unimaginable scattering those elements into the vastness of space. Heavier elements like lead, Gold etc. come from an even more amazing event where two neutron stars collide forcing nuclear fusion into the heavier elements and once again these elements explode into space. That is what everything you can see and touch is made from, “Star dust”, all the elements that make you, carbon, iron, everything you are made of was made in a star billions of years ago. Side note, just a point of interest. Nuclear fusion creates the heat and light we feel and see from the sun deep in its core. That heat and light take about 8 minutes to reach us from the sun, but the nuclear fusion in the core of the sun to create that energy actually happened when dinosaurs walked the earth. It has taken all those millions of years for that energy from nuclear fusion in the suns core to travel all the way to the outer edge before it is released as light photons and heat.
That is all mostly facts, up to you as to what are your facts but star dust over billions of years forms solar systems with all the planets, all formed by star dust, you don’t have to accept these as facts but read on and you see that scripture does recognize these facts and I hope you do to.
So that’s where all the elements come from, the next step is forming that into life once a planet has formed, the two main accepted principles in the creation of life are similar. Primordial soup, think of it as basically a muddy puddle filled with elements and it gets struck by lightning forming the first simple proteins being the hypothetical building blocks of life.
. The second theory is similar but an oceanic vent where heat from within the earth rises out the vent supplying the energy source instead of lightning for the primordial soup. The same principle is applied, elements around the oceanic vent, applied heat and the first simple proteins are formed. So primordial soup or an oceanic vent, same basic principle but the energy source differs.
A quick note related, science cannot yet offer how simple proteins can combine to form anything like even a simple strand of DNA, it would take a miracle to make that happen even over the billions of years. Whether you understand DNA or not, here’s a simple fact that shows the sequence of life. Every living thing on earth has DNA, from the simplest form to the most complex. DNA starts off in simple life forms as a short basic strand although extremely complex, then as DNA gets longer, you get a more complex organism. Every living thing on earth shares that first basic strand, from a blade of grass to you the reader, you share your DNA with everything alive. That alone is proof of a common ancestor. So, the lawn you mow or the child you put to bed at night share the same DNA. If your still lost, I’ll explain it like this. A very short strand of DNA could be a very simple plant like moss or fungi, now that short strand of DNA doesn’t change but it gets added to making it longer, it is now a more complex life form like a rose bush or an insect, both sharing the exact same strand of DNA. Then human DNA is even longer still but we still have the exact same strand in our DNA as the simplest life forms, we have an identical section of DNA in every single cell of our bodies to every single cell of any living thing, plant or animal on earth.
So that’s where science says life originated while scripture says God took the dust and breathed life into it (translations can vary from clay or dust) but then to clarify if you take a funeral scene from so many movies and what’s the reading from the bible? From ashes to ashes, from dust to dust. We’ve all heard it a thousand times. Muslims go further to say life originated with/in water which actually ties right in> Muslim scripture also say “smoke was formed” but in the original Arabic text, smoke is a loose translation that can also encompass dust.
So now let’s go back to science and it doesn’t matter if it’s primordial soup or an oceanic vent, one is a slightly larger puddle but the principle is the same but with a different source of energy. To keep the explanation easier to visualize, I’ll focus on primordial soup. So, we go back in time to find that puddle of primordial soup just before it gets struck by lightning, we scoop up the entire puddle including the muddy bottom and bring it back to the present day. We take it all to the laboratory and dry out all the water leaving a lump of all sorts of elements and dried mud. That dried lump, we now grind it up, not just a little but we keep grinding it until it turns to? Yes, we grind it until it’s dust. Now if Steven Hawkings was still alive and you bring to him such a bag of dust and you asked him if we just add water, strike it with lightning, could we create the building blocks of life? I’m sure he would have been bloody excited to prove science right.
So that’s the basic link, science and scripture can both agree we came from dust but it’s a long stretch to get from simple proteins to a complex life form, let alone the first basic strand of DNA. Yes, the earth is old, a lot can happen in a few billion years so let’s dissect that for a moment since scripture says it all happened in 7 days. basically, there are so many different length days in the universe, the time it takes for a planet or star to rotate once, the fastest known, over 700 rotations per second while a day on Venus is longer than its year. For science to make scripture work, one biblical day equals roughly half a billion of our current years. Please don’t get caught up in a time line, God was here for over 10 billion years before our solar system even formed so our measurement of time came much later in the history of the universe.
According to science, life on earth has been through a few mass extinctions almost wiping out all life, after a few billion years, modern man arrives through evolution with history that we can only validate to date back to the tens of thousands of years by architecture or various records like written in stone or cave paintings for example.
So, the million Doller question, exactly what then is Adam and Eve? The Bible states that Adam was the first created in Gods likeness or image. Firstly, that creation took billions of years to arrive at that point of the first in Gods image. Secondly, what is Gods image? A spiritual being had no physical body to mimic so what was God creating in his image?
I’ve done a few retreats out at the Wat Buddha Dhamma and for years I was saying the best Christian I ever met was a Buddhist monk (Thanks Kenith), there was always something so special about the Buddhist mentality that I couldn’t quite put my finger on it but now it just falls into place. One of the biggest religions in the world, it’s all about enlightenment. That is the point in evolution that man had to arrive at to be in Gods image, not a physical trait but more importantly an intellectual ability to love and understand, to be enlightened as God is. That was Adam, the very first in a very long evolution to arrive in Gods image. Not alone in the world, but that last final tweak to be the first in Gods image. As explained, Adam was formed from dust, Eve came from the same as Adam. Did God remove Adam from his natural birth parents to place him in the Garden to nurture his upbringing knowing full well how it was destined to turn out when they ate from the tree of Knowledge. Was Adam a divine act once evolution reached that mile stone and Adam were indeed created perfect and placed in the garden? God doesn’t lie, but what we have is open to translation and interpretation.
Let me finish this with my own personal observation, (Yes, a reiteration from a previous page) when so many different religions tell you so many different things, there is one fact, they can’t all be right. But they can all be wrong, myself included.