I’ve answered the musings of Mike the Geocreationist before here and here. The latest article on geocreationism.com connects Psalm 104:29 to Genesis 2:7. In Psalm 104, the psalmist says that the animals return to dust when they die. From this verse, Mike reasons that the man in Genesis 2:7 was created indirectly from dust through evolution. Instead of being the direct work of God’s hands in his image, as the plain meaning of the text would indicate, God made men and shaped them through generations of evolution.

Two questions for Mike are: is the dust in Psalm 104:29 the same as the dust in Genesis 2:7? And, if it is, does that mean that man is ontologically the same as the beast? First, let’s address the question of whether the dust is the same in both verses. First, there is no question that the dust is the same dust in both verses. Mike didn’t have to go any further in the Bible than the Genesis account itself. In chapter 2, verse 19, the Bible tells us that God formed the birds and beasts “out of the ground,” same as the man.

At first brush, it appears as though man and beast are ontologically the same (cf. Eccl 3:19-20). But if that were true, then why did God judge that none of the beasts were an adequate mate for Adam? Why did God form a woman from the man himself? This indicates that, ontologically, men and beasts are different and intended to be different.

Bottom line is that the act of creating men and the act of creating beasts is kept separate in the Genesis creation story. Evolution just isn’t in the Bible, no matter how many Scriptures get used. But there’s a more important issue underlying this–that is the Atonement. If Adam isn’t the first man, if Adam had ancestors as Mike indicates, then Adam isn’t the federal head of the human race. It therefore makes no sense that Adam’s sin is imputed to us.

If Adam’s sin isn’t imputed to us, then we don’t need Christ’s Atonement. In a previous post, I made the case that mankind is dead in sin. In a future post, I will make solidify that case using Scripture. This sin is imputed to us by our father, Adam, and is atoned for on the Cross by Christ. If Adam isn’t our first father, if he had fathers before him, then the Atonement makes no sense.

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