In Genesis 2:5-23, the story is told as Adam being created first. Then plants.
Then God decides that Adam might need a help mate (or "help meet" in the
KJV) , so
he makes all the beasts of land and air, (although he skips fishes in this
account).
{{As an aside, although God must have already made language, so he and Adam
could
talk and so God could give Adam commands such as "Of every tree of the
Garden thou
mayest freely eat" etc., he hadn't made any nouns for all the beasts, so
Adam was
allowed to name them all, as he looked at each to see if it would be a good
helpmate/help meet. Also, did Adam name all of the over 1 million species of
critters we know exist, or just the ones which were going to be present in
Palestine after the fall?}}
None of the beasts turn out to be suitable, so God then decides to make woman.
Since Genesis 2:25 specifically makes the point that although they looked
upon one
another, they felt no shame, and no further miracles are recorded to modify
either's
body, the inference is that they were both physically "normal" as created.
Which creates a problem. All the beasts were made at once, presumably although
not explicitly stated in chap. 2, male and female and hence self
reproducing. But if
in verse 25 Adam is already physically normal, then way back in verse seven
he must
have already had normal genetalia, which means normal testes producing sperm
through
normal mitosis.
But if Adam had normal testes producing normal gametes, then he had a normal
genome--which means his DNA, containing both X and Y sex chromosones,
***already contained all the genetic information for a female***
Indeed, the presence of testes and the production of sperm makes no sense
except if there already are females, or if they're at least already part of
the plan.
But then in 18-19 God makes all the beasts in an attempt to get Adam a
helpmate.
Even though all the information on what Adam really needed was already
contained in his own body and its genes.
Which God had made.
So why the animal show? Adams helpmate, woman, was already implicit and
completely coded in the DNA in Adams own cells. Even if God decided that
more different
genes were needed so he didn't want to just "clone" a female from Adams own
genes, he certainly didn't need to start from scratch and solve the problem
all over
again.
So it would seem that the passage simply, upon analysis, cannot be both
literaly true and accurate at the same time. If it is accurate, then it
makes little
sense--God creates the extraorinarily complex molecular biology of plants
and Adam,
then forgets everything about it, then re-remembers the molecular biology
again so he
can create the beasts but still doesn't remember a thing about Adam.
But if that's not what happened, even though the Bible says that that's what
happened, then the Bible cannot be true.
* * * * *
So there you have it. Modern knowledge of Molecular biology and genetics makes
the hypothesis that Adam was fully formed before the beasts, and yet God had
not
thought of human females, quite intenable. But that is exactly what the
Bible says
happened.
Ciao.
Michael Fisher, ET1/SS USN ret., lawstudent
http://www.sonoma.edu/cthink/Library/intraits.html
* * *
He that would make his own liberty secure,
must guard even his enemy from oppression;
for if he violates this duty,
he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
Thomas Paine