[added 2020-06-14:] For a modern account of evolution and much more (reason, science, humanism and progress) I strongly recommend reading Steven Pinker's bestseller "Enlightenment NOW". (https://www.amazon.com/Enlightenment-Now-Science-Humanism-Progress/dp/0525427570)

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Adam & Eve may be important characters in Judean, Christian and historically related theology and religion (cf. Wikipedia), but they don't play any (significant) role in other equally respectful and wide-spread theologies or religions. I rather sympathize with your implicit point of view that modern science tells us a quite different story, devoid of any superstition, mysticism, anthopologism and the like (although, from a philosophical point of view, science in general has many other problems of trust and validity).

The search for a unique first homo sapiens is clearly ill-conceived. And the belief in and search for a unique geographical origin of mankind is plausibly unwarranted (but of course a nice meme for research grants).

• You need not even be a Darwinian to understand and accept that. Use your common sense -- after spending a couple of hours reading some well-documented books or viewing just a tiny part of the TV documentaries on the ongoing discovery of new forms of life on earth. Project this back in history, thousands and thousands years ago.

I guess, you will agree with me, that we will never know for sure, what really happened how and when and why. The worst thing of all however, is then to assume on the basis of our ignorance on these points, that human species (as we know it now) ever had a unique place or fate in the unbridled plurality of life on earth and in the oceans.

It is plain hubris, to assume otherwise. Perhaps, looking at mankinds historical records, hubris is the most significant character of mankind. Luckily, nature doesn't bother about what a living species thinks of itself. It will go it way(s) -- if necessary without us.

I am a Christian and believes the Holy writings in the Genesis account. Indeed, Adam lived and was the first human to walk the earth. Archaelogical discoveries show evidences of the paradise garden of Eden and should therefore substantiate the existence of the historical Adam.

[added 2020-06-14:] For a modern account of evolution and much more (reason, science, humanism and progress) I strongly recommend reading Steven Pinker's bestseller "Enlightenment NOW". (https://www.amazon.com/Enlightenment-Now-Science-Humanism-Progress/dp/0525427570)

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Adam & Eve may be important characters in Judean, Christian and historically related theology and religion (cf. Wikipedia), but they don't play any (significant) role in other equally respectful and wide-spread theologies or religions. I rather sympathize with your implicit point of view that modern science tells us a quite different story, devoid of any superstition, mysticism, anthopologism and the like (although, from a philosophical point of view, science in general has many other problems of trust and validity).

The search for a unique first homo sapiens is clearly ill-conceived. And the belief in and search for a unique geographical origin of mankind is plausibly unwarranted (but of course a nice meme for research grants).

• You need not even be a Darwinian to understand and accept that. Use your common sense -- after spending a couple of hours reading some well-documented books or viewing just a tiny part of the TV documentaries on the ongoing discovery of new forms of life on earth. Project this back in history, thousands and thousands years ago.

I guess, you will agree with me, that we will never know for sure, what really happened how and when and why. The worst thing of all however, is then to assume on the basis of our ignorance on these points, that human species (as we know it now) ever had a unique place or fate in the unbridled plurality of life on earth and in the oceans.

It is plain hubris, to assume otherwise. Perhaps, looking at mankinds historical records, hubris is the most significant character of mankind. Luckily, nature doesn't bother about what a living species thinks of itself. It will go it way(s) -- if necessary without us.

With due resect, the prophet Adem is the first known Human being created from sticky clay by Almighty. The following link is worth reading.

https://www.islamreligion.com/articles/1190/story-of-adam-part-1/

At some point, the genetic mutation that resulted in homo sapiens occurred. You don't need to "believe in" ancient made-up stories about a mythical person made of clay.

I always think of these stories as being a tool to get a point across, from the writers of these books. There is no need at all, even for religiously-minded people, to force themselves to accept the stories as literal truth. People are free to choose to do so, but there is no need. Insisting on literal truths is a way of generating disagreements, and closing off minds, for no good purpose.

As a Muslim; I believe what is in the Quran. The Creator Created Adam from clay and then Created Eve from Adam. According to the Quran; all the universe was created for us and will be destroyed once the Creator gives life back to everyone and calls us to be judged according to our actions.

No.

The first hominin tribe was probably a matriarchal one, in the fashion of the bonobos. So I would vote for the historical Eve as one of the mature mother of this first human tribe. She was not biologically different , nor her children biologically different from other primate tribes. She started a new tribal singing dancing practice that change the way we use our nervous system to become one, this was first religion and this created us, her children. Thank Mother Eve.

Wait a minute! Is this ResearchGate or FaithGate? Research is, by definition, evidence and logic based. Faith is very nice but it is not Research or Science and does not belong here.

@Patrice Showers Corneli

I too dislike those dogmatic doctrinal faith-based and especially naive unreasoned answers some people post on RG. But there is still such a things as scholarly research, which is different from the empirical research of the sciences. There is a place for research in the humanities, theology included.

No. It’s just a story some guy made up.

From a Catholic theological point of view, the Adamic myth was just a theological framework which tries to explain essentially how sin entered into the world. From this perspective, we do not have to look at Adam and Eve as historical persons, but simply part of the whole theological structure that attempts to explain how sin and evil came into the world.

From a Catholic theological point of view, the Adamic myth was just a theological framework which tries to explain essentially how sin entered into the world. From this perspective, we do not have to look at Adam and Eve as historical persons, but simply part of the whole theological structure that attempts to explain how sin and evil came into the world.

Indeed, we are talking about myths. But there are at least two distinct types of myths:

• literary myths
• explanatory myths

Literary myths:

• Literary myths are what their name implies: they are a kind of literature, being created to entertain people. Although they may refer to people, places and times, the latter are purely fictitious. The myths' plot does not try to documentand describe real events and beings or to explain those events & beings . Any ressemblance with living people or existing objects are accidental, and do not have any meaning.

Explanatory myths:

• Explanatory myths are different. They are forerunners of what we nowadays call science or scientific research. As forerunners, they are not quite sophisticated: assumptions, hypotheses, beliefs, facts, implications, theories, models, it all goes in one top using natural language instead of some well-defined scientific language. Indeed such myths try to explain and predict. They may even have some normative connotations and purpose, i.e. to prescribe how we - human beings - should behave in view of the world view put forward by such myths.

Dear Paul,

I do not believe in this duality of myths nor do I believe in a separation between a search of explanation and other concerns such as education and education. In oral traditions, every cultural transmission had to go throw stories and they used the anthropomorphic mode since it is more efficient, more intertainment, more easy and fun to remember. Even today, the most serious social and human issues are dealt with in litterature much prior any scientific identification of these issues is possible when it is possible.

Can I suggest you all read the book entitled

What Happened In the Garden

Edited by Abner Chou

ISBN 978-0-8254-4209-4

This is a most helpful scholarly work and worthy of studying as it is 302 pages of carefully inspired researched book on this subject.

According to the Qur'an, Adam was not the first man, but the first Prophet. The logic, first, the angels know that the human character is bad, that is like shedding blood and making damage. Where did angels know about human characters? Here it is clear that the angel witnessed the human character. The second logic, a Prophet was sent to mankind. If Adam as the Prophet as well as the first man, then who is the man he invited to the true religion?

According to Muhammad Anwar Muttaqien Kiai (Shaykh Syaththariah 49th), the first man was black, while Adam and Eve were white. Why is it that human is colored now? According to him the result of mixed marriage between ancient man and Adam's descendants. The original first man (before Adam) (uninterrupted by marriage) is still present. They remained black, well built, and lived in the interior.

In addition, the first man was many (not single). For example, in the interior of Aceh (Indonesia) there is Mante tribe. They are short-bodied (about 110-120 cm). They are still there.

@ Patrice Showers Corneli & Karl Pfeifer

Agree! Still, I am puzzled with the distinction you, Karl, make between scholarly research and empirical research. Where does this classification come from?

I know that many (social) researchers equate research with empirical research (of some sort). Others (especially physicists) go so far as to acknowledge only experimental research. Both camps are IMHO quite naive, blending out aspects, steps and phases in scientific research without which genuine scientific research couldn't exist.

But what then is scholarly research? Research going on in the humanities, broadly conceived to include e.g. theology, psychology (the old-fashioned branch, still existing), etc.? Or is it philosophy in all its diverse incarnations?

@ Louis Brassard : Apparently, you believe that myths are something from the very past or at least from cultures without a written language ("oral cultures"). I don't believe in that myth. Myths are being created in our times, too. Our problem is: we don't recognize them as such. That's the reason that I tried to put this discussion in a new light, in a new perspective, by making the distinction between literary and explanatory myths. Perhaps it helps, for some.

The name Adam occurs only in the second narrative of creation (Gen 2,4b-3,24). The name is not found in the first creation story (Gen 1,1-2,4a). The two stories of creation in Gen 1-3 are not meant to be theologies of creation and not history as such. There are contradiction between these two stories. The ancient writers who redacted these stories in one scroll to be read as stories and not as history were more intelligent than the present readers. The contraditions did not disturb them for they knew they were not writing history, but a theology of creation.

In the Bible truth is not identical with history. Truth could be historical or not. The parables are meant to be stories and the Bible recognises in them salvific truths. Biblical truth may not be found in historical truth or may be found in historical truth. Parables in the Bible present salvific truths and not historical truths.

I am still more puzzled: Why should anyone with a university education and research job want to spend his precious time with truths which are neither historical nor scientific truths (where contradictions are alarm bells to react on) ?? How many sort of truths are there or are we willing to accept without getting totally confused: one, two, three, umpty?

I agree with Paul (see his answer to Patrice and Karl).

This field (I mean the research on the origins of humankind) is changing in the last two centuries, helping science and helping theology to "refine" their statements and better understand their own limits. We can close the debate now, of course. But I will suggest further reading:

In english:

http://www.inters.org/origin-nature-of-man

http://www.inters.org/creation

http://www.inters.org/evolution

In spanish (showing the "status quaestionis" and slightly tending to monophyletism):

http://www.unav.edu/documents/6709261/7026503/monogenismoypoligenismo.pdf

Dear Paul,

''Myths are being created in our times, too. Our problem is: we don't recognize them as such. ''

I agree. I don't know why you infered from what I said that I restricted myths to ancient cultures. Short text are invariably ambiguious.

''I am still more puzzled: Why should anyone with a university education and research job want to spend his precious time with truths which are neither historical nor scientific truths''

Maybe because not all scientists are positivists. I believe into the truth of the sacred books of humanity. Of course mythical truths are not of the same nature as scientific truth. But since I am not a positivist, I believe in the compatibility of the mythic truth and the scientific truth. All is in the art of interpretation.

"Adam" and likewise "Eve" were creations not of "God" but of human beings who sought not "truth" but a palatable myth by which to induce fellow humans to heed and follow the mandates and decrees formulated by yet other human beings to yield Jejovah, Allah and the three-headed Christian beast.

Your hypothesis (in view of modern science, I realize that Adam could not have been the first human being) is incorrect!

You or modern scientists have not experienced the Adam`s time!

You consciously used a fallacy (Petitio Principii or Begging the Question)!

In Front of me there are 2 Understandings that Adam do Exists? I would say YES. The explanation is read the History of the Mankind look for the evidence Investigate the Process. You would find that Adam was Created from Clay by The God and Eve was created from the Nearest part of Heart of Adam. They was forced out of Heaven for making a mistake and the Day of Judgement thisworld would be Destroyed and bring again for Question and Answer.

As a Student of Modern Science I have Investigate saveral Claims and I found Lies within. The Foot step of Mankind on Moon is still Questionable as there are different Claims about it. The presence and seen of Aliens and starships considered all are Lies. There is no Proof and they all are Imaginary Fictional Stories. I must say and Admit Science has given us uncountable Inventions Luxuries and Comfort.

Regards

Some really interesting answers from Christian and Islamic dogma.

From some Christian perspectives, the myth of Adam functions not so much as a way of understanding the origins of sin as a way of understanding the nature of the Divine-Human relationship - as theological anthropology.

It seems to me that the role of research in relation to the Adam narrative is to explore the implications of that narrative for the lives of those who believe it. We might call that Psychology of Religion or perhaps Pastoral Psychology. Both of these disciplines use empirical research methods to uncover those implications. There is no way, however, to use empirical research methods (quantitative or qualitative) to "prove" anything that is a belief. On can only "prove" that persons hold a belief and that it impacts their way of life. At least, that is the way I see it.

In Judaic lore, for example, The Alphabet of Ben Sira, etc., Adam is hermaphroditic, that is, Eve is the product of a woman's self-fertilization, which is why Jesus is depicted as 'woman's seed'.

Cf. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=pomona_theses .

John,

We should also apply this pragmatic maxime to the scientific narrative of the evolution of humans from primates. The Adam's creation narrative do not relate Adam to our primate ancestors. It is certainly true that we are primate. We would think that Killing them is a bit harder with the scientific narrative than with the Adam's narrative. But it is not obvious to see a difference on behavior from our part vis a vis them. IN the years following Darwin story about our origin, most Europeans started to see the Africans as more primate than them and from that concluded that it was justify on their part to treat them as zoo's keeper and rank them by level of evolution. According to the Adam's story, they would be children of Adam like us but in the Darwin's story they were lower in the ladder of evolution. Scientific racism was a consequence of the new scientific narrative. Eugenism was another of such consequences. Based on these consequences, it is not evident that it is a real evolution .

https://jamesbishopblog.com/2015/01/16/scripture-indicates-that-adam-and-ever-were-not-the-first-people/

Writing was invented by the Sumerians of Iraq around 3,400 BC. They wrote about Adam and Eve later using Cuneiform Clay tablets.

@ Louis Brassard : I am decidedly not a positivist, too! Neither am I a dualist who believes that either you believe in science or you believe in (some) God. Not do I have a split mind: one for science, another one for theology and the like. Infer from that what you like. If you are puzzled, too, I apologize for my cryptic answer.

According to Holy Quran, Adam was the first human being on earth.

@ John C Carr: Excellent analysis: "There is no way, however, to use empirical research methods (quantitative or qualitative) to "prove" anything that is a belief. On can only "prove" that persons hold a belief and that it impacts their way of life."

There is no such thing as a Darwin's story, as I pointed out in a previous reply. See the illuminating & intriguing papers and books by Mike Sutton!

Unfortunately, it will take centuries again to correct historical anecdotes which are burn so deep into collective memory

Paul,

I was carefull enough in my previous post to not put the positivist hat on your head. I spoke against positivism in general. I deliberatly been vague in the text leaving aside wheter we want to wear the hat or not. What John C. Carr said about beliefs was exactly what the american pragmatists said about all forms of beliefs including scientific beliefs. THere is no way to claim that a scientific concept is not a belief. Claims can be made that such scientific beliefs have to be adopted responsibly in light of empirical evidences and best judgement of the scientifc community, but they still remain belief of a certain kind. There is no exit door to the belief room, our only choice is to choose the corners we prefer in that room.

''Science can never be more than an affirmation of certain things we believe in. These beliefs must be adopted responsibly, with due consideration of the evidence and with a view to universal validity. But eventually they are ultimate commitments, issued under the seal of our personal judgment. At some point we shall find ourselves with no other answer to queries than to say “because I believe so.” That is what no set of rules, or any model of science based on a system of rules, can do; it cannot say “because I believe so.” Only a person can believe something, and only I myself can hold my own beliefs. For the holding of these I must bear the ultimate responsibility; it is futile, and I think also ignoble, to hunt for systems and machines which will take that burden from me. And we, as a community, must also face the fact that there is no system of necessary rules which will relieve us from the responsibility of holding the constitutive beliefs of our group or of teaching them to the next generation and defending their continued profession against those who would suppress them.''

Michael Polanyi, Scientific Beliefs, Ethics, 61 (1)Oct. 1950, 27-37.

http://www.compilerpress.ca/Competitiveness/Anno/Anno%20Polanyi%20Scientific%20Beliefs%20Ethics%201950.htm

You have managed to misrepresent what I said, also, Louis Brassard.

No.There was no Adam and Eve. Their story is mythology found in Qur'an and Jewish Bibles. As to sin and evil, they don't exist. Made up by humans as was Adam and Eve stories and the imaginary God. Humans evolved from primates and not from clay.

Dear John,

My mistake. I found a similarity between what you said:

and

''Pragmatism. The opinion that metaphysics is to be largely cleared up by the application of the following maxim for attaining clearness of apprehension: Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.

(Peirce, 1902, "Pragmatic and Pragmatism" in the Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, including quote of himself from 1878,

in Hebrew "Adam" is not a name but a noun referring to 'man' in general, humankind (= 'homo' in Latin). In the second creation narrative (Genesis 2:4 sq) a story about 'man' is told in which the human predicament is elucidated.

@Dick Wursten: Good to know!! This shows again (cf. Sapir-Whorf-Hypothesis, see link below) how strong the influence of language on thought is, especially:

• if people forget about the original meanings and uses of words or phrases
• if they regrettably don't know any other than their own mother tongue

Inevatibly, this leads to the infamous

• Locked-up syndrome of monolingual minds and cultures

In such cases, we are completely "locked up" in this language-based world-view, mediated by oral or written cultural beliefs and traditions, irrespective of what common sense and proven facts tell us.

Links:

• https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_hypothesis

RE: @Paul Hubert Vossen’s Q: "I am still more puzzled: Why should anyone with a university education and research job want to spend his precious time with truths which are neither historical nor scientific truths?''

RE: @Louis Brassard’s A: "Maybe because not all scientists are positivists. I believe into the truth of the sacred books of humanity."

Paul, there is nothing wrong with avocational pursuits. Some people like recreational math puzzles or cross-word puzzles, others delve into literature, folklore, and theology wherein interesting conceptual puzzles can be found. Moreover such pursuits can also also become a vocation. But why would you dignify the doctrinal claims of theology by calling them “truths” in the first place?

Louis, you don’t have to be a positivist to reject myths as truths. Some myths may impart important life lessons but that doesn’t make the myths themselves true, just as literary fiction may impart life lessons without being true. Discerning truths by "reading between the lines” doesn’t make the lines themselves true.

For me the puzzle is, how could anyone with a scientific education believe in the historicity of Adam as characterized in the Bible?

I think these guys have the right take; the idea of Adam is truly funny but not funnily true:

https://www.oedilf.com/db/Lim.php?Word=Adam

@ Karl Pfeifer: Thanks for your comments. Apology for not expressing myself clearly enough.:

• I don't have anything against avocational pursuits (I didn't even know there is a word for it ;-). Indeed, to be frank, I myself had/have several avocational pursuits, but I wouldn't discuss them here on ResearchGate.
• Also, I didn't call or dignify theological doctrines as truths in some philosophical or scientific sense (but others did so). They are what you have called them: dogmas, i.e., matters of belief, faith, hope or whatever other non-philosophical, non-scientific opinions and their oral or written testimonies.
• As long as they stay avocational activities, i.e., a personally and socially restricted pursuit, I can live with them, as with so many other things which are none of my business, which don't disturb me in my own (a)vocational activities.
• But if they take overhand in the larger public or political arena, aligned with vocational activities - probably even supported and financed by the larger community - something is evidently going awry, at least when you accept the deep premise that state and religion are or rather should be independent (for good reasons - see history's record of calamities, if not).
• So I was talking about public vocational research and science, not any sort of privately pursuited and financed research and/or publication activity. Here it is where I wonder why someone would spend his or her precious vocational time and effort on matters which apparently have nothing to do with truth in any deeper philosophical or scientific sense.
• Of course, someone may want to expand the original meaning of the words 'philospohy' and 'science' so as to encompass personal religious beliefs and dogmas, but I don't see the need or advantage of it, as long as we have the word 'theology' for that. And beware: Not all words ending on '-ology' or similar qualifications are automatically dignified as being serious public philosophy or science (or philosophy of science)! Where with serious I mean of course some endeavor which helps humankind on its way to an ever more pleasant, healthy and worthy world for all of us, not just a couple of privileged individuals. Yes, this is a value-laden statement about science, and yes, I know that some may regard science as something value-neutral. I don't believe so, although I admit that while doing science in the midst of research and development it may seem so.
• For that, you have to work hard and convince yourself and others with independent facts, evidences and rationales that what you are talking about is more than a personal world-view and can be used to improve humankind's condition and destiny (whatever and wherever that may be).
• Why independent? Because it is a basic error of productive logical thinking to use one and the same "source" to "prove" everything else in the source itself. If one would accept and apply the latter method, one might as well as take any bundle of excellent stories or fictions or novels (and there are so many of them on this planet) to represent "the truth" without ever advancing our state of verified knowledge!
• I don't claim that the above statements are originally mine. There are umpty philosophers and scientists with a much broader body of knowledge than I have who have analysed and reported upon these and related issues, and that already for centuries. They may partly err, but for the most part what they say makes sense to me and most of my colleagues here on ResearchGate (or so I hope ...).

Dear Karl,

''Louis, you don’t have to be a positivist to reject myths as truths. Some myths may impart important life lessons but that doesn’t make the myths themselves true, just as literary fiction may impart life lessons without being true. Discerning truths by "reading between the lines” doesn’t make the lines themselves true.''

The truth of myths is never a litteral truth. It is like good literary fiction. It teachs something but it may be hard to say exactly what. It is a different type of truth than scientific truth, but still a kind of truth. Great art are other kind of truth. Art that we really resonate to, teach us something by transforming us certain ways. Positivism disregarded all non scientific forms of truth.

Dear Louis, you adopt a very generous, heterogeneous definition of truth. Of course I understand what you mean. Still I believe that there are better words than truth for what you want to describe, i.e. the "truth" in/of myths or art.

Let me give another example to clarify matters. A wise and good person may be said to have a "true" personality. However, since Aristotle (in Western philosophy) such a person would rather be said to have virtue (or virtues). So the use of the predicate "true" or the concept of "truth" in relation to personality is rather misleading, confusing, and superfluous. And if there were not such a word as virtue in relation to personality, I would quickly invent it, thanks to the flexible nature of natural language.

Better to have two or more distinct words for distinct matters (concepts), than steadily having to explain the extraordinary connotation of a well-established word with a > 2000-year history of discourse and debate, don't you think so? Or what else could be the advantage of attaching so many different meanings to one and the same word (here: truth)?

Dear Paul,

The use of words is very important. Sometime we have to emphase certain distinctions and we have to use different words. But other times using different words may obscure some similarities between different phenomena and then using a single word with different qualification may be more productive. You use an example from Aristotle. Plato had a rather adversarial position regarding the poetic artforms and tend to opposed mathematic and philosophical knowledge as almost antithesis to these. He thought that these were too close to the appearances and were thus twice remove from the deep reality. So Plato had strong positivist tendencies as a lot of philosophical tradition. There are notable exception, and Aristotle is among them, the first biologically oriented philosopher, one that did not see imagination pejoratively or in opposition with the intellect but at the core of it.

''Aristotle took the term ‘imitation’ from Plato. He gave to it a much wider significance and greater dimensions. He turns the table on Plato by saying that poetry is an imitation, but imitation of a special type. The imitation in poetry is not a slavish ‘copying* of the external appearances of things. It is a recreative imitation. It is a creative reproduction of objects; it involves the effort of the imagination and the intellect. It thus presents a higher truth, the truth of imagination. It universalises the particular. The poet sifts1 his material, selects the most relevant portions, imposes order and design on the chaotic material of life and universalises the particular. Thus Aristotle contends2, the truth involve in poetry is higher than that embodied in history.''

http://neoenglishsystem.blogspot.com/2010/08/nature-of-poetic-truth-in-aristotles.html

As you can see I am not the first to extend the meaning of truth to domains such as poetry (in a greek sense of the word).

@Louis Brassard: I agree that “true” or “truth” has non-scientific uses. There is nothing particularly scientific about its being true that I drank coffee this morning. But even if you still consider that scientific qua data, I also agree there are non-scientific non-statement uses. A good sketch might be a true likeness of a person, whereas a photo taken at a distance might just show a blurred blob that bears no likeness at all (however, we wouldn’t likely call it a false likeness either). And sure, “true friends” and “good men and true” use the truth predicate to indicate loyalty or virtue.

We call something a myth because it isn’t true. Consider the set of stories. True stories are a subset of the set of stories. Myths are also a subset of the set of stories, and so is the subset of stories that are based on true stories. There are also stories in the intersection of myths and stories based on true stories. We don’t know, but maybe the myth of Pegasus, the winged horse, is such a story. E.g. there might actually have been a horse named Pegasus that was unusually swift and inspired folks to say that [*metaphor alert*] Pegasus has wings. It would of course have been false to say of such an actual horse that it has wings, but as @Louis Brassard might truly say, it could still have been nonliterally (metaphorically) true in light of the horse’s speed. However, the myth also has a bunch of other baggage that is true-in-the-myth but couldn’t be true in real life (e.g. Pegasus’s mother was the snake-headed Gorgon, Medusa). Truths-in-the-myth can’t always be understood as metaphors that stand in for clusters of real features of the real world. Nor can truths-in-fictions (e.g. that Holmes lived at 221b Baker St. -- although there is such an address now, there was no such address when the Holmes stories were written). However, a story, like a picture, can be more or less true-to-life. (A Holmes story in which he flew by flapping his arms or walked through walls would not be true-to-life.)

But let’s get back to the original issue of Adam. What nonliteral “truth” is to be discerned in the Adam creation myth? That it is a metaphor for the “truth” that men are primary and women secondary (i.e. superior vs. inferior), given the mythical order and detail of their creation? That it intimates the “truth” that our god qua creator of humankind is better than your false god(s)? That it inaugurates a pre-Hamite golden age of racial purity? The problem with metaphorical truth is that anything can be like anything in some respect or other and unless the intended respect is self-evident or suitably constrained, the notion of truth can’t get a proper grip.

I like @Dick Wursten’s reminder that “adam” in Hebrew just means “man”, for it raises a possibility that might give us a plausible historical "first person” in an honorific sense. Although human evolution is a gradual process, it is conceivable that there was a first hominid to do something we would regard as especially if not uniquely human: maybe a hominid that saw its own reflection in a pool of water with the understanding that it was seeing a reflection of itself -- an aha moment of self-awareness?

The Judeo-Christian tradition knows two completely different creation accounts, which arose at completely different times. Adam only appears in the older (biblically seen: second) account of creation. Both reports are components of faith. Archaeology knows comparable myths of the origin of man and the world in those regions that ranged from Ancient Egypt to Mesopotany.

Only religious faith can assign the predicate of having "really" lived to them. However, in modernity religious faith is free to believe what is good for the believer: the "fall of man" must play no role at all, for God simply says in the younger (first) myth of creation that his creation was "very good".

It was the genius of Paul's theology to preach that "Adam's Fall" was absolutely necessary: not only because the human will is weak but because the "first sin" became the lever for his mission: That man and mankind must be redeemed from this sin - if not so would be the eternal hell their fate, so all humans are in need of salvation - that was not believeable for normal Greeks and Romans, of course, because the allegeded redeemer should be a very unknown Jew in Palestine which was crossed by the Romans as popular upriser.

Today we can recognize that the older account of creation with Adam, is most encouraging for us believers, for Adam became 930 years old - modern medicine does not manage that. And Adam loved his wife Eva, in the full meaning of the word. To have sex in the paradise was not allowed of course, therefore they had God's mercy to go to Earth, and there they lived - altogether - happy, obviously.

Oncer more: Adam and Eva as intelligent and curious human beings, God's images, created their own paradise in Paradise by discovering the most beautiful thing in reality. They had sex. And to have sex is an important part of God's good creation. Although all things which happened in that matter were pre-planned in God's wise providence, nevertheless God was a little angry about this, because he could all make and create and all thinks foresee, but he couldn't have sex (as his younger "relatives" - let us call them so - of the ancient Greek Gods could have sufficient which lived under the leadership of Zeus) . But the Jewish-Christian God was merciful. He gave Adam and Eve the Earth.

The Jewish God didn't tolerate any other God in his dominion (heaven and earth) that is the reason that the human being, who is a image of God, has some difficulties with toleratiion of others. But man had one advantage in comparison with the Jewish God: He was able to make physical love. This was something unknown to the Judeo-Christian God. However he rejoiced at Adam and Eve on Earth. So he learned that his creation was indeed good. Were there other advantages for man on earth? Yes:

Adam begat sons and daughters en masse within his long life, such joys he didn't experience in the former times at the paradise. Today's hormone injections for elderly people cannot achieve this much procreative power.

That man had to work to feed himself was a liberation from boring idleness in paradise, and later this insight became the most important criterion of humanity for the atheist Karl Marx. The fact that you finally die after 930 years of life was a redemption for Adam as the first human being: We know today that the older age has its complaints, therefore after a fulfilled life on earth Adam had enjoyed really you like to become the dust from which you had to be born again.

In Adam's time there existed neither heaven nor hell, these were later inventions of faith. So Adam was not in need of salvation, he did not have to be afraid and did not need to be redeemed from this fear. When he died at the age of 930, he simply had peace. Wonderful!

Can anyone with a deeper knowledge of the historical facts related in the bible and similar books tell us, how "old" (in the archeological c.q. anthropological sense) Adam/Eve are? I am asking because I just noted on my office calendar that there is an early precursor of us humans living some 900.000 years ago: the so-called "homo naledi". If Adam/Eve happen to be younger (which I assume), then perhaps there is nothing so special about them, or ...?

Link:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_naledi

As scientific sources say, Judaism originated in the 2nd millennium BC by the invasion of hill tribes into the territories of the settled Hittites. These hill tribes were clans who joined forces and found common beliefs. They took up many existing myths. The two basic myths are the Exodus from Egypt with the right of conquest, and the covenant with God. Well, these are relatively young evolutionary phenomena.

Surprising! Many saying it is a made up story, but no one is narrating the purported "true and better" story. What the kind of species we are?

For me and my household, I believe in the story and focus on one thing, God Exist.

With due respect, The people do not believe in religious guidelines, they should probe into the fact either saying a tale of previous people. Quran is not about to prove or disprove science but illuminate the signs of Almighty.

The civilized human must have some starting node, so adem is the first man- created by Almighty. HE is supreme and created all we know and to be known in future, Thus HE created the human-life which begins from First Man " ADEM". HE taught him and ask him to spread the message, thus known as First Prophet.

Regards,

Jahangir

All living human beings share common ancestors (see. Rohde.pdf). The narrative of Adam and Eve (Gen 1:27) refers to the created spiritual-physical infrastructure of humankind ('earthlings'). We can infer from this literary account that women are decisive to perfect humanity, which complies with biological evidence.

@ Segun Michael Abegunde

RE: Many saying it is a made up story, but no one is narrating the purported "true and better" story. What the kind of species we are?

My last post hinted at a better kind of story, namely one within an evolutionary context. As for the kind of species we are, I think we are by-and-large a species that avoids incest, which makes the biblical first-humans story unsatisfactory because of the wholesale incest that would've been required to get our species underway.

No one can provide proof for such queries. All this is a matter of faith and beliefs.

with best regards

Jahangir Khan : I think you are right in saying that religion is about religious guidelines for human living, not more not less. That explains also why there are so many religions: people are different, so are their prefered guidelines.

Moreover, some people like to explore where those guidelines come from, historically speaking, and how they are actually used by people, anthropologically speaking. That's certainly a fascinating type of research and science, the latter understood in the most general way, i.e. including social sciences and humanities.

Obviously, the religious guidelines themselves don't belong to the realm of science, i.e. they are not framed or expressed as if scientific claims or truths, otherwise you would have to acknowledge also that - for instance - animals or stones belong to the realm of science, which is evidently not the case: you can study the life of animals or the composition of stones, both as objects of scientific research, but that doesn't make them scientific notions or claims either. So it is with guidelines for this or that.

However, there is still a basic difference between guidelines etc. and most other objects of scietific research. For instance, animals or stones are themselves part of what we call "natural world" or "physical world". Guidelines and similar objects, on the contrary, are basically man-made artifacts, i.e. they wouldn't be there if there were no human beings who created them for a specific purpose, especially to make life easier and to behave in a more predictable way for ourselves. They belong to what is nowadays called our "mental world", partly shared with others, partly highly personal/individual, as all of us have experienced from time to time.

Dear Colleagues,

the story of creation with the first historical Adam is a wonderful story, you just have to understand it correctly and tell it in a contemporary way.

I don't see why the story of creation, or of the first historical Adam (did we really trace him!?) should be told in a contemporary way. If you do that, I fear that you loose a lot of the attraction of those original stories. Some may even claim, that you are projecting modern ways of thinking and understanding into the stories of our ancestors, which makes those stories actually a-historical notions. Anyway, it will be utterly difficult to prove that your interpretation of the stories is the correct one, because there is no fixed objective frame of reference, only variable subjective ones. Otherwise, there wouldn't be so many scholarly disputes over the "correct" content of the stories over the last 2000 years or so (depending on which religion you "belong to").

Here is a condensed version of the greek myths related to the creation of humanity:

''

Prometheus and Epimetheus, two Titans, were spared imprisonment in Tartarus after the Titanomachy, the War between the Titans and the Olympians, because they had not fought alongside the other Titans. Instead, they were given the task of creating man. Prometheus shaped man out of mud, and Athena breathed life into his clay figure.

Prometheus assigned Epimetheus with the task of giving the creatures of the earth their various qualities, such as swiftness, cunning, strength, fur, wings. Unfortunately, by the time he got to man, Epimetheus had given all the good qualities out and there were none left for man. So Prometheus decided to make man stand upright just like the gods did and to give them fire.

Prometheus loved man more than the Olympians, who had banished most of his family to Tartarus. So when Zeus decreed that man must sacrifice a portion of each food to the gods, Prometheusdecided to trick Zeus. He created two piles, one with bones wrapped in juicy fat, and another with the finest meat hidden inside a hide. He then asked Zeus to choose one of the piles; Zeus, unaware, chose the bones and since he had given his word, was forced to accept the bones as his share for future sacrifices. In his anger over the trick, he took fire away from man. However, Prometheus lit a torch from the sun and brought it back again to man. Zeus was enraged that man again had fire. He decided to inflict a terrible punishment on both man and Prometheus.

To punish man, Zeus had Hephaestus create a mortal of stunning beauty. The gods gave the mortal many gifts of wealth. He then had Hermes give the mortal a deceptive heart and a lying tongue. This creation was Pandora, the first woman. A final gift was a jar which Pandora was forbidden to open. Thus, Zeus sent Pandora to Epimetheus, who had decided to live amongst men.

Prometheus had warned Epimetheus not to accept gifts from Zeus, but Pandora's beauty was too great; so, he let her stay. Eventually, Pandora's curiosity about the forbidden jar overwhelmed her; she opened it, releasing all evils upon the earth. Only one thing was left in the jar when Pandoramanaged to close the lid again - hope.

Zeus was angry at Prometheus for three things: being tricked on sacrifices, stealing fire for man, and for refusing to tell Zeus which of Zeus's children would dethrone him. Zeus commanded his servants, Force and Violence, to seize Prometheus, take him to the Caucasus Mountains, and chain him to a rock with unbreakable, diamond chains. There, he was tormented day and night by a giant eagle tearing at his liver. Zeus gave Prometheus two ways out of this torment. He could tell Zeus who the mother of the child that would dethrone him was. Or meet two conditions: first, that an immortal must volunteer to die for Prometheus. And second, that a mortal must kill the eagle and unchain him. Eventually, Chiron the Centauragreed to die for him and Heracles killed the eagle and unbound him.''

https://www.greekmythology.com/Myths/The_Myths/Creation_of_Man_by_Prometheus/creation_of_man_by_prometheus.html

===================================

It is an amazing story. Each part related to other myths which elaborate it. The names of the gods means what reality this character symbolize. There is a lot of similarities between the biblical myths because both the greeks and the jews, and the myths of other peoples around them. Everything is told as impersonated by characters. Even children would listen with interest to these stories and would with their much better memory than adult remember them all their life but only the later adults could used the deeper meaning embedded in the story. The warning against technology and knowledge, the calamities unleashed by sorcerer apprentices is here shown in the myth of Pandora very similar to the myth of paradize lost and the tree of knowledge. The relation between the god character are embodied psychology theories. Even the separation between titans and olympian is an implied theory of evolution from the primordial forces of nature to the living forces. Prometheus is the representation of imagination, the stealing of fire from Zeus, the primordial creative power of the Universe. The battle to keep this creative imagination, is the battle of Prometheus with Zeus whose name is the name of the sky in ancient language. THe amount of wisdom in such stories, if all the other constellation of stories is also known is tremendous. This way to transmit tradition and culture is amazingly effective. All societies that are still in continuity with their ancestors keep alive these stories and keep re-inventing new ones. This is the way a collective consciousness become imbedded in the minds of all the people of a tradition and keep evolving. It is a shared living culture contrary to a culture of specialists relying on tons of written documents.

Well, Louis, I see that you did your homework ;-) I did too. When I was young, we had to translate all that stuff from Old Greek to Dutch. It was sort of funny, but - believe it or not - no teacher asked us whether we understood and "believed" the things we had to read and translate.

We didn't, of course. For some of us, it was just great literature in a foreign language. Most didn't care so much, as long as they got their university-entrance diploma.

In those days, people still believed that learning dead languages like Latin (8 hours/week) and Old Greek (9 hours/week) was good for the analytical mind of youngsters. Was it? Who knows. Frankly, in hindsight, I doubt, except for being able to better understand doctor's prescriptions ...

What are current youngsters missing when they don't learn dead languages and cultures, and instead invent their own group language nobody understands or is interested in? Probably the answer lies on another level of discourse, more abstractly: it is all about the creativity of the mind, and the self-producing powers of the mind.

But this goes too far for the current discussion. So, my sincere apology, Mr. MacGregor, for drifting off so much... But, as I said, it sort of funny ....

Dear Paul,

I learned latin and did some translation into French of famous latin text. I was not very good and found doing these translations very tedious but I was feeling a sense of excitement in reading Cesar or Cecero directly in their own words. I also appreciate studying latin civilisation, their history. I was spending days in weekend reading about this ancient world and I think that it is important to get a sense of contact with the roots of our civilisation. I wished I would have learned greek because of the importance of their culture for our western culture. I learned some of it but not enough. Learning at least a second or third language is prooven to be very significant for brain development as much as learning to play a musical instrument. Simple observation of the cortex, the grey matter shows that. Another indicator is the retardation of dementia.

Regards

Interesting

Well, Louis Brassard, I guess I am not a candidate for dementia - since my academic formation included study of Latin, French, Spanish, Greek, Hebrew, and smattering of German and Hungarian - in addition to English (my first language). I'm also a musician.

I don't think that one can really understand another culture unless one knows at least the rudiments of that culture's language - there is such an intricate interplay between language and culture particularly with reference to the way in which the meaning of experience is constructed.

None of the answers questioning the historical validity of Genesis 3 offer anything but opinion. Genesis is full of history, evidenced by genealogies, accurately recorded place names (geography), events that shaped the later history of Israel, all based on careful preservation of the Masoretic Text (as shown by the Dead Sea Scrolls). The answer to the question is yes, there was a historical Adam.

Joel Heck - I think that that is true if you believe that it is true (i.e. in the sense of being historically accurate). However, that is not how scholars who don't start from a place of faith evaluate the "evidence."

[updated on 2018-08-07]

Let's get back to the original question of Kirk MacGregor "... was there still a historical Adam who served as the first theologically significant human being (i.e., the first one to represent the human race before God)? Or is Adam a purely literary character? ".

The most plausible answer based on all foregoing comments seems to be: BOTH, to a certain degree, i.e.:

• "Adam" serves as the first theologically significant human being to represent the human race before God (a statement which makes only sense in Christian and related religions). Whether this person existed or not and/or can be uniquely identified as such is not the point. It really "serves" as an axiom in theology that such a person existed and is unique. You need to accept the whole theory of theology to understand what that means, because how you define or concieve of "Adam" depends as well on all those other figures related to him, especially of course Eve, and on all other axioms of theology. By definition, axioms can't be proved, they can be made plausible, but still they remain matters of intuition (in science and mathematics) or faith (in religion and culture).
• At the same time it is possible to interpret the various texts speaking about an allegedly historical person called "Adam" or similarly as literature, and "Adam" as one of the characters in that literature. At the time of writing of those texts it was quite usual that all kinds of orally transmitted explanatory tales were brought together in the attempt to get a more systematic and comprehensive overview. We will never know whether the writers of those texts "believed" in their characters as real historical persons or not. But again, that doesn't really matter. Good literature is such that the empathic reader imagines that the described characters were actually living persons, even if he/she knows that this is not factually true.

We take it for granted that when you propose a theory then you need to make it plausible by offering a lengthy explanation of all the terms you use, and a lot of data that serve as empirical verified evidence for whatever you want to explain. However, in those days, the rules of the game of scientific (empirical) research were not yet fully worked out (if at all), and the distinction between formal models of science (the text, so to speak) and their empirical counterparts (that what really exists, in some way) was not even known.

We should thus be very very careful not to project our conception of faithful rigorous science on writings from a time, in which such deep epistemological "what do we know" and methodological "how do we know" knowledge was not at hand.

Great discussion. Thanks for getting it started, Kirk MacGregor!

Although the people at the time of the creation of this biblical narrative did not have very advance natural knowledge they had understood that it take a man and women to have a baby. That every body had parents and the numbers of children tend to exceeds the number of parents. It does not take a lot of witt to come up with the idea that if we go back in time then we may come up with the original parents or small group of first humans. Now the point of the author is not a scientific one but a tribal one. All mythology traces a people to a original ancestry. Adam is not seen here are the first Jew but as the first man and the bible will trace its descendants down to the first Jew: Abraam. That make sense. The purpose of a mythological story is always a cultural identity purpose and political one. Obvioiusly the author of the tale did not go in the field and do what archeologists do today and collect evidences and come up with some story. I notice that the greek story is talking about the identity of the gods and their relations pertaining to the creation of the first man but does not concern much with it and does not even give it a name. But it gives the name of the first woman: Pandora and like Eve she is used to explained how evil entered creation. In both cases, curiosity and seeking of knowledge by Eve and Pandora is at the source of this evil entering the world. It is also a hint that curiosity and creativity is on the feminine side. We can also see these two story as the story of coming of age of a man to sexual maturity, as an infant there is no knowledge of god or bad while at maturity such knowledge enter life. There is a clear warning against the propensity of humans to loose sight of their creator, i.e. their nature in societal life and our propensity to loose sight of our natural intuition in favor of social pressure and knowledge. These stories are extremely rich and can be interpreted in multiple of ways. And there are surely no correct or unique way to interpret them. The purpose of these stories were social and they still fullfill these role today for those that learn them into their early years.

Probably it is the belife of one sect/some people that Adam is the first human being and it is related to religion.

Historical characters are given in text books for studies. Nowhere Adam is mentioned. I did not come across. There were various Civilisations existed, you might have studied.

If you go to the following link you get some information reg. human evolution.

As per the theory of Evolution it is a gradual and sytematic process.

Human evolution

(http://humanorigins.si.edu/education/introduction-human-evolution)

@ Paul Hubert Vossen

RE: Still, I am puzzled with the distinction you, Karl, make between scholarly research and empirical research.? Research going on in the humanities, broadly conceived to include e.g. theology, psychology (the old-fashioned branch, still existing), etc.? Or is it philosophy in all its diverse incarnations?

In recent times many universities have privileged the sciences (because they attract significant research grants) and are trying to apply a science model to the humanities (e.g. by applying similar research output criteria to the humanities). One reaction of academics in the humanities has been to insist that they are scholars not scientists, so if you want to call what they do "research", it should be qualified somehow; hence in some quarters the label "scholarly research" is used, faux de mieux. The label seems especially appropriate for academics (i.e. scholars) whose work requires studying archival or textual material. So yes, literary studies, philosophy, and theology would fall into that category, as well as some old-fashioned psychology of the armchair sort.

In the first place, you sown seed of doubt in the researchers on this platform. Rephrasing the question may have opened our minds to debate the motion with rationale rather than speculation.

The Law of First Mention states that the first mentioned in that order formulates the prototype of the rest in the formation of any creature created. The name Adam means mankind or first man.

Great contribution, Nina! You got the mystery out of the myth(s).

I know of course, that many people believe that it is enough to talk or write about something to make it true and real.

This philosophy goes back at least to the great Italian scholar Giambattista Vico (1668 – 1744) who created the verum factum principle. Looking him up on internet I was flabbergasted to see how many followers he has had over the centuries until the present day Institute for Vico Studies (http://ivs.emory.edu/home/index.html).

This school of philosophy is nowadays called constructive epistemology (see attachment) with its most prominent representative Ernst von Glasersfeld (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_von_Glasersfeld).

I wonder how many people knowing and reading and living to the great religious epics from East and West have taken the trouble of following up the history of human ideas from those early days up to now ... Well, not all of us need to become philosophers, but a little bit of glimpsing at what other clever man and woman have written about the topic might make us more humble and less susceptible to dogmatic thinking.

@ Paul Hubert Vossen.

It is one thing to say that scientific knowledge is mediated by human conceptions and categories, negotiated by the scientific community. But are there not constraints on construction imposed by the world? And are there not unconstructed bits of knowledge, e.g. when predications are verified or falsified by direct observation? We found Pluto where it was theorized to be, but Vulcan never showed.

Karl Pfeifer : " ... But are there not constraints on construction imposed by the world?" PHV: Assuming that there IS (=exists) such a thing we CALL world (a realist position itself!), AND assuming that we humans are part of this world (presumably part of this realist position), then Yes, of course, there might be constraints on construction imposed by the world (a claim which can only be understood by a realist).

• Unfortunately, if there are (were) such constraints, we will (would) never know for sure, otherwise this assumption or claim will (would) be self-defeating!

Karl Pfeifer : " ... unconstructed bits of knowledge, e.g. when predications are verified or falsified by direct observation?" PHV: It all depends upon your notion of "direct observation", again a concept living in the mind of a realist. Observations are never completely "objective", again a category of thought heavily relying on a realist world-view.

• What about Vulcan? Perhaps somebody already saw it, but didn't recognize it as such? Perhaps somebody will see it in the future and recognize it as such ( a surprise for some, a long-awaited confirmation for others)?

The message is clear: Every such claim is willy-nilly caught in a web of many tacit and unproven presumptions and conditions. To get rid of them is extremely difficult.

• Natural language makes it possible: it is so flexible as to allow all kinds of logical and extra-logical errors, without noticing it. It is a poor and misleading instrument of human knowledge. But ... do we have another choice?

Not clear!

Dear Paul,

''I know of course, that many people believe that it is enough to talk or write about something to make it true and real.

This philosophy goes back at least to the great Italian scholar Giambattista Vico(1668 – 1744) who created the verum factum principle.''

Vico's verum factum principle is not to believe that it is enought to talk or write about someting o make it true and real. Vico is the first great philosopher that begin this huge reaction against the excess of the enlightment, the romantic movement. He is a philsopher of the imagination and a philologist. He replaced the enlightment emphasis on logic by an historical type of thinking.

''for the Latins the true is the made (“Verum esse ipsum factum”); for them, science is cognition of how something is made.''

It seems to be trivial but it is not when we read Vico. The target of Vico here is the claim of the new rationalist to know nature with the cartesian geometrical method. Vico claims that we can know better ourself which is the task of rhetoric and the human science because we here study what humans did and so we can really access how something is made for the humanities but we can make such a claim in the case of the natural sciences which is the domain that humans did not make but Nature did make. I disagree with Vico on this one but this is why he insisted on the Verum factum principle. It is similar to Augustin thesis concerning the different challenge in interpreting the two books: the book of God and the book of Nature.

For me taking the Bible seriously and taking the Bible literally are not the same things. Although I do believe that the Bible contains everything man need to re-establish his relation with God and I also believe that is contains absolute truths - IN A CERTAIN SENSE. We do not always know is what sense. I am quite sure that such questions will not decide salvation or damnation. It is decided by the state of heart - as far as I understand the revelation.

@ Paul Hubert Vossen.

Sorry, Paul, I don't buy into the sort of global skepticism you are suggesting. Sure, observation is defeasible; sure, we make mistakes, as in the case of the alleged Martian canals. But Pluto is observable, both from afar and closer up (e.g. NASA's Horizons spacecraft). Its existence is not a construction, although its status as a planet is. The chair I am sitting on is a construction only in uninteresting senses; it was constructed out of wood for the purpose it serves and it falls into the constructed category of artefacts known as furniture.

Back to the original Adam issue. It is interesting that the responses mostly divide up into those who favor a literal unconstructed (except by God) progenitor Adam (while ignoring the incest issues downstream) and those who favor a mythically constructed Adam evincing some sort of nonliteral truth, thereby appropriating the cachet surrounding the notion of truth. (Nonliterally true = not true! At least the literalists are honest.)

Interestingly, no one has reacted to the kind of possibility I previously suggested which could yield a conceivable (pre)historical Adam of sorts: @Dick Wursten’s reminder that “adam” in Hebrew just means “man”, might allow for the possibility of a progenitor "first person” in an honorific sense. Human evolution is a gradual process, but it is still conceivable that there was a hominid or prehominid who first manifested something we would regard as a quintessential symptom of personhood: maybe a hominid seeing its own reflection in a pool of water with the self-awareness that it was seeing a reflection of itself -- a singular aha-moment of awareness and understanding? This is of course speculation, but it at least suggests how a nonincestuous Adamic lineage could literally exist.

Karl,

''Nonliterally true = not true! At least the literalists are honest.)

Nonliterally true is effectively non litterally true but it is not dishonest and may have metaphorical truth. Prehistorical people had understood this Karl try to catch up.

''There are two different uses of the word myth:

...

But I do love the metaphorical truths found in mythological stories. The winged story of Icarus and Daedalus isn’t true in aerodynamic fact but contains powerful truths about ambition and trust. Few great works of literature are true in a factual sense, but their freedom from facts allows the expression of emotional or philosophical truths in ways factually based stories can’t. Picasso said “Art is the lie that tells the truth” and that’s what he meant. ''

N.T. Wright on Adam and Eve (5 min)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BP1PpDyDCw

Science and Genesis - N.T. Wright, John Polkinghorne, Allister McGrath (12 min)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bKa92eLkQM

Bishop Barron on Original Sin (10 min)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fdmsnbz1-EE&t=9s

Karl Pfeifer : "Human evolution is a gradual process, but it is still conceivable that there was a hominid or prehominid who first manifested something we would regard as a quintessential symptom of personhood."

If Patrick Matthew's macroevolution theory (1831) (later adopted and popularized by Darwin and others) is correct, such an event is possible and plausible. More so: it is so plausible, that I wouldn't wonder if it happened independently more than once at different places over a short period of time, archaeologically speaking. That's probably the most scientists can tell until they develop superb research methods much more powerful than what we have today. Thus it is wise to think of this Adam as a whole class of such first hominids seeing their reflection in the water (metaphorically speaking). Genetically, each of them rightfully deserves the name of Adam. It would furthermore explain in a simple way (Occam's razor!) why anthropologists and archaeologists have found several candidate cradles of mankind.

Link:

• Book Nullius in Verba:Darwin's Greatest Secret

@ Paul Hubert Vossen

RE: "If Patrick Matthew's macroevolution theory (1831) (later adopted and popularized by Darwin and others) ..."

Coming out of the blue, this is certainly a far-too-quick and controversial supposition. A lengthy nuanced discussion of this allegation can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Matthew

I'm sure this discussion [on Patrick Matthew & Co] will continue forever. It's historiography, more precisely: the empirical study of the history of science. As such, it is not hard science iself; rather, it is a kind of detective work following typical legal methodology. None of my interest, really, although I have to admit that the link reads like a suspense thriller "who did it?". However, it is aimed at historical persons, actors, mediators etc. instead of ideas, concepts, theories etc.

Shall we come back to the original question again?

science is false Adam and Eve were the first human beings God created read the bible for once and stop believing in evolution theory which is just that a theory that is a lie. The bible is the absolute truth if you dont believe what the bible says then dont bring it up. You cant call yourself a Christian and not believe that Adam and Eve were the first humans stop it.

@

Maupertuis (1751) on natural selection

Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1751. Essay de Cosmologie) stated the idea of natural selection or the survival of the fittest early and sub-headed his essay: "Which examines the evidence for God's existence from the Wonders of Nature." That is, it is an early example of the old combination of natural selection with fixed species:

“Mais ne pourroit-on pas dire, que dans la combinaison fortuite des productions de la Nature, comme il n'y avoit que celles où se trouvoient certains rapports de convenance, qui pussent subsister, il n'est pas merveilleux que cette convenance se trouve dans toutes les eípèces qui actuellement existent? Le hazard, diroit-on, avoit produit une multitude innombrable d'Individus; un petit nombre se trouvoit construit de manière que les parties de l Animal pou voient íàtisfaire à ses besoins; dans un autre infiniment plus grand, il n'y avoit ni convenance, ni ordre: tous ces derniers ont péri: des Animaux sans bouche ne pouvoient pas vivre, d'autres qui manquoient d'organes pour la génération ne pouvoient pas se perpétuer: les seuls qui sòient restés sont ceux où se trouvoient l'ordre & la convenance & ces espèces, que nous voyons aujourd'hui, ne sont que la plus petite partie de ce qu'un destin aveugle avoit produit.” (Maupertius 1751. Essay de Cosmologie, p. 24-26)

This passage is often, falsely, attributed to Maupertuis' earlier publication Venus Physique. Its reproduction is then, typically, deviant (e.g., starting with "Ne pourrait-on" instead of "Mais nepourroit-on") and cited without giving page numbers. Anyway, the above passage roughly translates:

“Could one not say that, in the fortuitous combinations of the productions of nature, none but those that found themselves in certain relations of appropriateness could subsist, is it not wonderful that this appropriateness is present in all the species that are currently in existence? Chance, one would say, produced an innumerable multitude of individuals; a small number found themselves constructed in such a manner that the parts of the animal were able to satisfy its needs; in another infinitely greater number, there was neither appropriateness nor order: all of these latter have perished. Animals lacking a mouth could not live; others lacking reproductive organs could not perpetuate themselves: the species we see today are but the smallest part of what blind destiny has produced.”

The simple question is do you believe the Bible is the written word of God point blank. If you say no then you are lost and in need of salvation. All these scientific people that dont know nothing about religion nothing about the bible keep basing asumptions off of evolution theory which is a lie. Adam existed he was the first man in the hebrew Adam means mankind. please study the hebrew and koine greek. Genesis 1:1-26 study please. Job 26:5-7 read God hung the earth on nothing he created something out of nothing. Jesus is the Logos the word made flesh. The only true religion is Christianity and I am not talking about mystery babylon the Roman Catholic devil group

Adrian McNair : "You cant call yourself a Christian and not believe that Adam and Eve were the first humans ..." I absolutely agree with you. It is a matter of Aristotelian logic (some syllogism) to prove that right. However, ..... that was/is not the question we are discussing here, are we? And it leaves completely open the possibility that there are human beings who don't call themselves a Christian and still live a decent, respectful life.

Shall we come back to the original question again?

Certainly, a first alive entity existed. So a first human. Why not Adam? (In Hebrew 'a' is a negation. So, the name 'Adam' etymologically means 'the being that cannot be divided', if I 'read' it well.)

Most people on this earth are not Christians. They all need salvation. Hard work for you and your 7081 colleagues point blank.

The story of Adam and Eve was a particular culture's efforts to explain life as they experienced it - with pain, with murderers, with people not getting on because they spoke different languages. The truth is still there, but we speak in scientific myths today instead.

We do both.