"Christians must be careful to discern sound ideas from falsehoods so that we may honor Christ and proclaim the truth of his Word—starting in Genesis.
---Many pictures show lions, tigers, and leopards on the ark. But
these three cats came from a common ancestral cat kind, represented on the ark by a single pair.
These two cats would have contained the genetic information necessary for the various combinations we see today; therefore, they couldn’t have looked exactly like any of the cats we see today.
---Since the Bible doesn’t describe Adam and Eve’s appearance, we can’t know what they looked like.
This lack of description has inspired many different ethnic depictions of the first couple. However, we can assume that they didn’t express recessive traits like light hair and blue eyes.
As the parents of all people, Adam and Eve must have possessed DNA containing vast genetic information needed for a diverse human population. As such, they probably had brown eyes and dark hair—the dominant traits.
Adam and Eve likely had a middle-brown skin shade. Although skin shade is complex and the result of multiple genes, it is determined in part by the amount of a pigment called melanin.
A middle-brown shade indicates that the person has the genetic diversity to pass on either light or dark tones to their children. If Adam and Eve were both a middle-brown shade, they could have had children of all shades—from dark to light.
---As for rainbows, Genesis 9:13 does not teach that God created
the first colorful bow after the flood, only that he assigned it as a symbol of his faithfulness.
No one can prove that rain fell or rainbows graced the sky before the flood, but to insist that they did not stretches the meaning of Scripture.
---God’s creation was fully functional from the beginning. After all, plants had to bear fruit to provide sustenance. And if Adam and
Eve were to obey God’s mandate to multiply, they had to be able to reproduce (Genesis 1:28). But a fully functional, mature universe is not the same as a universe created to look old.
This misconception is based on two faulty assumptions.
First, the concept of “appearance of age” is based on the human experience of aging. Before the first birth, humans had no frame of reference for determining how old someone looked. Likewise, we have no way to know what an old earth would look like since we don’t know what a younger earth looked like.
Second, the misconception presupposes that the earth looks old, based on man’s ideas about fallible dating methods, specifically in rock layers. Our culture is entrenched in evolutionary teaching that natural processes over millions of years produced the earth we see today. But Scripture clearly teaches that the universe was created in six literal days. God is not a deceiver (God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Numbers 23:19), so why would he create a world to appear older than it is?"
CMI
---Many pictures show lions, tigers, and leopards on the ark. But
These two cats would have contained the genetic information necessary for the various combinations we see today; therefore, they couldn’t have looked exactly like any of the cats we see today.
---Since the Bible doesn’t describe Adam and Eve’s appearance, we can’t know what they looked like.
This lack of description has inspired many different ethnic depictions of the first couple. However, we can assume that they didn’t express recessive traits like light hair and blue eyes.
As the parents of all people, Adam and Eve must have possessed DNA containing vast genetic information needed for a diverse human population. As such, they probably had brown eyes and dark hair—the dominant traits.
Adam and Eve likely had a middle-brown skin shade. Although skin shade is complex and the result of multiple genes, it is determined in part by the amount of a pigment called melanin.
A middle-brown shade indicates that the person has the genetic diversity to pass on either light or dark tones to their children. If Adam and Eve were both a middle-brown shade, they could have had children of all shades—from dark to light.
---As for rainbows, Genesis 9:13 does not teach that God created
No one can prove that rain fell or rainbows graced the sky before the flood, but to insist that they did not stretches the meaning of Scripture.
---God’s creation was fully functional from the beginning. After all, plants had to bear fruit to provide sustenance. And if Adam and
This misconception is based on two faulty assumptions.
First, the concept of “appearance of age” is based on the human experience of aging. Before the first birth, humans had no frame of reference for determining how old someone looked. Likewise, we have no way to know what an old earth would look like since we don’t know what a younger earth looked like.
Second, the misconception presupposes that the earth looks old, based on man’s ideas about fallible dating methods, specifically in rock layers. Our culture is entrenched in evolutionary teaching that natural processes over millions of years produced the earth we see today. But Scripture clearly teaches that the universe was created in six literal days. God is not a deceiver (God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Numbers 23:19), so why would he create a world to appear older than it is?"
CMI