Adam & Eve Archives – Rational Faith

The Three Faces of Mitochondrial Eve

Posted on August 29, 2022 by Duane Caldwell

Eve White in the movie The Three Faces of Eve suffers from what is popularly known as multi-personality disorder. As the title suggests, she manifests three distinct personalities. There is a theory of human origins called “Mitochondrial Eve” that is similarly expressed with three separate concepts. As is usual in the origins debate, what one believes about mitochondrial Eve is dependent on your worldview. So what is one to make of these three understandings of mitochondrial Eve? Follow along as we shed light on the proper understanding of mitochondrial Eve. Continue Reading

Y Chromosome Adam Confirms the Bible

Posted on June 19, 2022 by Duane Caldwell

Noah on the ark

On this Father’s Day I thought it would be appropriate to deal with a topic that highlights fathers, so for this article we’ll be looking at Y Chromosome Adam. (Sorry ladies, with the tragedy last month all eyes were focused there. But I’ll come back to a topic for moms either next article or next mother’s day).

Correcting the Record

“Y Chromosome Adam” actually originated as a concept out of secular genetics. According to the secularists:

“By analyzing DNA from people in all regions of the world, geneticist Spencer Wells has concluded that all humans alive today are descended from a single man who lived in Africa around 60,000 years ago.”[1]

With secularists believing that modern humans appeared some 200,000 years ago, the time estimate was pushed back to that earlier period by some as indicated in this Wikipedia article. The older age is consistent with typical evolutionary timelines such as this one which show modern man emerging about 200,000 years ago.

But a closer examination of the human Y chromosome leads to startling, even alarming, conclusions for secularists but expected conclusions for those who support the Bible. Specifically, study of the human (male) Y chromosome confirms these two facts: Continue Reading

Hell is for liars Part 2: The Heart of the Lie

Posted on June 2, 2018 by Duane Caldwell

Satan’s advice: Be proud

In part 1 of this series, I pointed out that God will not allow liars into heaven (Rev 21.8), and then pointed out some of the lies that will keep you from heaven. Some wanted to make a distinction between those actively lying by trying to deceive, and those duped by the lies. But those who read closely understood that objection was answered implicitly with the analogy of poison: It doesn’t matter if you drink poison because someone lied to you and told you it was a harmless soft drink; Or because you’ve deceived yourself and are now convinced that the poison – say arsenic – is not really poison at all, and it won’t harm you, in fact it’s good for you so you consume lots of it. (Think “did God really say…” Gen 3.1) – regardless of what causes you to drink the poison whether you’re actively deceiving (yourself) or are merely deceived and believe the lie, if you drink it, you will die. Continue Reading

Is Creation Relevant? Part 2: Undisputed Evidence

Posted on July 4, 2016 by Duane Caldwell

In part 1 of this article, we began to explore the dynamics around the question, “Is creation relevant?” What we found is that to God, it is quite relevant – it is the first thing he wants us to know about himself, as indicated in the first verse of the Bible – “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” But today, due to a desire to make and live one’s own reality, people are throwing away what God has clearly created and instituted in order to fashion a world made to their own likings and tastes – whether such a world is true or not. And since they have rejected God’s truth – the world they fashion is increasingly distant from the truth of what God created. And thus like the shadow of Mordor over Tolkien’s middle earth, the shadow of self deception grows increasingly long over the lives of people today.

In our previous exploration, we left off pondering the question “how do we begin to address this problem of a rejection of absolutes and the creator?” – the Creator being of course the ultimate absolute. Which is where we pick it up today. In order to address the problem, we must understand what is at the root of the problem of people rejecting the Creator and His teaching on creation. Otherwise we will merely be treating symptoms, while the disease continues to ravage the body (Some of those symptoms – 80-90% who make a profession of faith fall away; 2/3 of professing young adults leave the faith by the time they leave college; the falling numbers of people adhering to Biblical truth, etc.). Thus we must understand why people reject the creator. Continue Reading

Creating Confusion: Theistic Evolution and Progressive Creation

Posted on March 19, 2015 by Duane Caldwell

The Expulsion of Adam and Eve, Benjamin West 1731

The compromises of theistic evolution and progressive creationism has caused confusion and is undermining faith in scriptural accounts.

If you saw the Ken Ham, Bill Nye debate last year you saw proponents of the two major views of Origins: Creation (defended by Ken Ham), and Evolution (defended by Bill Nye). Those two positions – Creation and Evolution – are diametrically opposed worldview positions as you can see from the chart below.

Unfortunately many Christians – including some well known, well regarded apologists and leaders- have elected to undermine the biblical account of origins by taking one of the two compromise positions below. In their desire to reconcile science and the Biblical account of the beginnings of all created things (the universe, earth, life), they are attempting to do what cannot be done: have their cake and eat it too. To appease a scientific community that has misinterpreted the data they’ve turned to either Theistic Evolution of Progressive Creationism – both of which are in compatible with the biblical account.