Journal: Christian Apologetics Journal
Volume: CAJ 12:2 (Fall 2014)
Article: Who Was Adam? An Old–Earth Creation Model For The Origin Of Humanity
Author: Fazale “Fuz” Rana

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Who Was Adam? An Old–Earth Creation Model For The Origin Of Humanity

Fazale “Fuz” Rana

Fazale (Fuz) Rana, Ph.D. (Ohio Univ.), Adjunct Professor Science and Apologetics at SES, is Executive Vice President of Research and Apologetics for Reasons To Believe. He is author or co-author of Origins of Life, Who Was Adam? And The Cell’s Design, as well as numerous articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Did Adam and Eve actually exist? Were they the first human beings? Did all humanity emanate from a primordial couple? Or did human beings evolve, sharing an evolutionary history with the great apes (and all life on Earth)?

Questions about humanity’s origin have become the focal point for science–faith discussions—at least among evangelical and conservative Christians. In recent years, a growing number of evangelicals have adopted a view of human origins based on Darwin’s account, instead of the traditional understanding of the first two chapters of Genesis.

In The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, published in 1870, Darwin proposed that humanity evolved through a process of descent with modification from an ancestor shared with apes. As he

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put it, “In a series of forms graduating insensibly from some apelike creature to man as he now exists, it would be impossible to fix on any definite point when the term ‘man’ ought to be used.”1

Darwin claimed that the evidence indicated that human beings are nothing more than animals—certainly not the direct product of divine activity. He believed humankind differs only in degree and not in kind from apes.

Darwin interpreted humanity in a fully mechanistic and materialistic fashion. According to this view, all of human nature, not just humanity’s physical makeup, emerged under the auspices of natural selection. Darwin regarded humanity’s mental powers and intellectual capacity, as well as moral sense and religious beliefs, as evolution’s invention.

Today, the scientific community claims support for human evolution from the fossil record. Paleontologists have unearthed many hominid fossils (and accompanying archaeological remains) throughout East, Central, and South Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. These specimens encompass a wide range of species. According to evolutionary biologists, these hominids fill in the evolutionary tree and clarify the pathway human evolution took over the last 6 million years.

Molecular geneticists claim another type of fossil evidence in support of human evolution: namely, molecular s...