For modern Christians, that don't believe in Adam and Eve...?

Question

I know there's a bunch of you out there. Those of you that acknowledge that evolution is real, and the Genesis stuff is, at best, a "parable"...

How do you figure you can still be a Christian without the Garden of Eden? If there was no Adam and Eve, then there was therefore, no "Original Sin".

Without Original Sin, there is also no need for forgiveness, and no need for Jesus, or any of the other trappings of Abrahamic faith.

Thanks to Fokker for pointing this out. I find this to be a dazzling bit of logic for intelligent Christians to grapple with.

For the fundies answering that are debating whether Adam and Eve existed, why are you even answering? Post that crap on a question that it matters on. This is directed to INTELLIGENT Christians, who are not oblivious to modern science. :) It has nothing to do with you. Boy, you people are something else.

Answer 1

Ironically, this is the redeeming feature of fundamentalist Christians. They don't resort to complete subjectivity and interpretation in understanding the texts - they just take it literally. Of course, they're incredibly ignorant in their approach to the world, but at least they understand (maybe, maybe not) that a text loses its authority when it becomes fictional.

Answer 2

If there was no Adam and Eve, there was no second Adam (Jesus) 1 Corinthians 15:45 states, So it is written: "The first man Adam became a living being"; the last Adam (Jesus) a life-giving spirit. 46. The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. 47. The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man (Jesus) from heaven.

There would be no forgiveness of sin, no Heaven and No Hell and everything else in the Bible would be a lie. So, if you are a Christian, that is to say that Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior, you must believe in the whole written Word of God. Christians please read your Bible to know what God says. He is truth, not what you make up.

The Bible is God's written Word to us.
It was written by human authors, under the supernatural guidance of the Holy Spirit.

“Above all you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” 2 Peter 1:20-21. (New International Version)

http://www.answersingenesis.org/

P.S. Julian,

Adam and Eve's sin was that they disobeyed God and chose Satan's lie over God's truth. God told them that they would die if they ate the fruit. They they had a choice, the same as you. They ate it and did die.

Eternal life is in Jesus Christ. God's sacrifice for us to live for ever and come back to a relationship with Him.

Answer 3

Allan Wilson's naming Mitochondrial Eve after Eve of the Genesis creation story may be considered unfortunate in that it has led to some misunderstandings among the general public. A common misconception is that Mitochondrial Eve was the only living human female of her time — she was not. Had she been the only living female of her time, humanity would most likely have become extinct due to an extreme population bottleneck.

Many women alive at the same time as Mitochondrial Eve have descendants alive today. They may have left descendants via either son or daughters (and grandsons or granddaughters, and so on). Nuclear genes from these contemporary women of Mitochondrial Eve may be present in today's population, but mitochondrial DNA from them are not.

Answer 4

You make a very good point here, Captain.

Because I believe God is all-powerful, I have no trouble believing the Genesis record as it is written.
And an all-powerful God also has the power to keep His Word from being corrupted.

Jesus said, "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then YOU WILL KNOW THE TRUTH, and the truth will set you free." John 8:31

Even Jesus Himself said in the debate about divorce that God created them male and female and repeated the singularity of the marriage bond that God had instituted at the beginning. ("For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh." Gen. 2:24)

"Haven’t you read," he replied, "that AT THE BEGINNING the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’?
So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate."
"Why then," they asked, "did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?"
Jesus replied, "Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way FROM THE BEGINNING." Matth. 19:4-8

So, if Jesus Himself believed in the creation record, I have no trouble believing it either!!!

Answer 5

Well, I'm not a Christian, but I thought I'd bring up something I read a few years ago in a Scientific journal:

DNA evidence supports the 'Eve' theory. That all Homo sapiens sapiens are decended from a single female. Interesting stuff. It sounds like our evolution didn't happen with a group of humans, but just one female.

I don't think the DNA evidence they were looking at could track the male chromosome, so there wasn't much about the first dudes.

Answer 6

No grappling here and there is NO logic at involved in this "dazzling bit". Just a newer piece of "unbelief" tossed out from those who would pit their human reasoning up against the Truth and divine Wisdom of the Holy Scriptures.
Evolution is, was, remains a human theory for all who do NOT accept that there is a Creator God and that He made all things ADULT/FINISHED/MATURE/COMPLETE,WHOLE, FULL in the beginning of creation and made it to produce SEED & EGGS& FRUIT in order to multiply and fill the earth. To accept evolution, you have to accept "unexplained" jumps in process, procedures, next sequence happenings and expect others to just swallow it. It doesn't make sense and what WAS before your 'right stuff' to start evolving? NOTHING by GOD! You may be "churched" in a Catholic or Protestant religion, but Christian you are not if you don't accept the Bible as the written Word of God..., how could you be filled with the Christ spirit and not believe the origin of His Creation of Adam: male and female? But that is about as logical as evolution.

Answer 7

For once I agree with an atheist! There is no way for a true Christian to not believe in Adam and Eve. There is no way for a true Christian to call Genesis false and believe in Evolution.
I personally don't understand it !

Answer 8

Although I'm not a Christian, I'll give you some free theology lessons.

If God is all-loving, why did he punish adam and eve for eating the fruit of knowledge? That would make him angry and vengeful, right?

If he was given them parental, tough love, then he would have to punish them for their actions, so that they would learn and not do it again. So, why is knowledge wrong? The bible says that the fruit made them like-God and understand good and evil. Does this make God jealous, is jealousy all-loving?

If God is human than he could be jealous, but God is God, so he can't be jealous. (Now, here comes the fun, how am I going to escape this nifty theological trap I've set up, and by the by, it would be no fun just to say God does not exist). People will always learn things that hurt them and thus will see that knowledge is the uncovering of something that is frustrating to them. So knowledge itself is not the problem, but rather the knowledge of evil is the problem. Thus, we should not be ignorant of all things, but instead, ignorant of evil, thus ignorance would be bliss. By denying our knowledge of evil, we are preventing it from existing. If we see something, we describe it how it is, we say, "this man stole from this man, or this man killed this man," we don't say, "this man did something evil to this man," that is vague and does not tell the whole truth. Thus, by ignoring evil all-together, we come to understand things as they truly are, and we our conscience is freed from fear of evil.

And so, God punished adam and eve because they became knowledgeable about evil, and so their punishment was knowing that evil existed. Prior to that, they only knew that goodness existed. So, to take God out of the equation, now that the truth has been laid out, we know that whenever we come to comprehend a form of evil, we are punishing ourselves because we are contemplating something foul and wicked rather than something beautiful and worthwhile.

And there you go, there's some perfect theology for Christians to contemplate. But the question is, will they?

Answer 9

Even DNA evidence points that we have acommon male and common female ancestor, so although I don't think you can write off Adam and Eve as being false apriori...

This debate (from the Christian perspective) has been very well handled in the "The Genesis Question", where several different perspectives on this are given.

Soli Deo Gloria!

Answer 10

LOL. I have never aimed to be too modern. You do not have to believe everything in the Bible to be saved. Otherwise it would be our seeds that saves us. There are many great places for the minimum belief, the absolute minimum is John 3:16.