Adam & Eve Archives – Rational Faith

The Minimal-Facts Fallacy

Posted on November 28, 2024 by Duane Caldwell — Leave a reply

Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden with a Therapod dinosaur

Adam, Eve and a therapod dinosaur in the garden of Eden (Gen 1.24-30)

Having just dealt with similar issues in the previous article on Hugh Ross’ mis-directions, I felt a twinge of déjà vu as I read through an “A Minimal-Facts Case for Genesis”[1]. The author appears to have a problem with the teachings of origins as laid out in Genesis. He summarizes the main points of the Biblical origin account as:

1. God created the universe, Earth, and all life in six 24-hour days.
2. The Earth is only 6000 years old.
3. Common descent (i.e. “evolution”) is false.
4. Humans coexisted with dinosaurs.
5. Noah fit the ancestors of all present-day animals on the Ark.
6. The Flood covered the entire Earth, killing all other humans and land animals.[2]

Q33 Why does God hide? Where’s the evidence?

Posted on September 30, 2024 by Duane Caldwell

Every time a father walks a bride down the aisle they provide evidence of God by recreating the first wedding when God walked Eve to Adam

I shortened the follow up question for the sake of making it fit in a title. The full question is:

Why does God hide? If God wants us to believe, why doesn’t he give us more evidence?

Is God Hiding?

First off, regarding God supposedly concealing himself: God is not hiding. When you read your Bible, the following facts are made clear.

1. In this age of the gospel, God is not hiding. He is spirit (John 4.24) and therefore invisible (Col 1.15, 1 Tim 1.17) to our physical eyes.

2. It is a good thing that God has separated himself from us so that we cannot see him, because sinful man cannot come into the presence of the holy God and live. Before man sinned he could see God and be in his presence. We learn this from the first marriage. After God created Adam the first man, God saw that it was not good for the man to be alone. (Gen 2.18) So God created a “suitable helper” for the man and brought her (Eve) to the man. (Gen 2.22) By the way, this bringing of Eve to Adam by God is why, during a wedding, fathers walk their daughters down the aisle to present their daughter to the groom. It is a reenactment of the first marriage. Continue Reading

Q22 – Is There Really Any Such Thing As Truth?

Posted on February 20, 2024 by Duane Caldwell

Serpent tempting with apple

There is an obvious answer to this question, and the only reason to ask this question in the first place is to attempt to deny that obvious answer. But attempts to deny the obvious are self-contradictory. So the humanists and atheists and other “ists” who believe they are the masters of logic and reason show their foolishness when they attempt to deny the obvious answer to this question. They are the perfect example of the foolish idolaters identified in Romans chapter 1:

“Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.”
(Rom 1:22-23 )

Those who fall into the trap of repeating this foolish question from supposed wise philosophers and thinkers do not realize that they have fallen into a form of idolatry. That is because the idol is hidden from their view. It is made possible by their own ability to think, reason and question. Such thoughts become idolatry when the thinkers place the conclusions from their thoughts above the clear declarations and revelations of God and God’s word. Anything that displaces God from his rightful place is an idol, so those asking “is there any such thing as truth?” are really expressing a form of idolatry, akin to saying “is there any better god than this calf idol?”.

Jesus stated he is truth incarnate (“I am the Way the Truth, and the Life, no one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14.6), so to deny there is such a thing as “truth” is to deny the clear declarations and revelations of God, that: Continue Reading

Q2 Why are Christians opposed to equality in marriage?

Posted on November 27, 2023 by Duane Caldwell

This question, “Why are Christians opposed to equality in marriage?” again shows the poisoned well thinking common in this culture and age. I’m tempted to give a quick, accurate answer to this, but it is such a loaded question, a quick answer will not address the errors implicit in this challenge which is fraught with many antibiblical assumptions. So, as Fräulein Maria tells the von Trapp children when they need to learn the basics, “Let’s start at the very beginning.” Let’s get the assumptions out in the open. We’ll start with definitions.

What is meant by “equality”?
What is meant by “marriage”?

On Equality

Christians believe that everyone has the right to marry any eligible person of the opposite sex of marriageable age who will willingly marry the person in question. That is “equality” for all, but already I hear objections because clearly this definition imposes limitations. But having limitations does not mean there are “inequalities” because everyone is under the same limitations. It would only be “unequal” if some people were under restrictions and others were not, but that is not the case. Everyone is under the same restrictions. (Except for one case I’ll discuss below.) So let’s look at the restrictions. Continue Reading

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.