Creationism - National Center for Science Education

A.E. Wilder-Smith, the creationist with three earned doctorates, has a chapter on
the “cloning” of Eve from Adam in the Garden of Eden in his book The Reliability of the
Bible. “The entire report reads exactly like a historical description of surgery under
normal physiological conditions for surgery,” he says (1983:55) regarding the Genesis
account. Wilder-Smith emphatically rejects any suggestion that this story be interpreted
symbolically or mythically, and insists it is a factual description of an actual operation.
God, after removing a cell from Adam’s rib, deleted the Y chromosome and doubled the
remaining X chromosome to produce a female. Thus Wilder-Smith retains a literal
interpretation of biblical Creation and also affirms the scientific accuracy of the Bible.
A somewhat earlier theory was advanced by P.G. Fothergill in his book Evolution
and Christians (1961). He suggested that Adam was “the product of pre-hominid parents
acting as instrumental causes.” Adam married one of the proto-human creatures; their
offspring would have been “the product of a fully-formed human male gamete and a
near-human female egg.” Since each gamete contains the full complement of genes,
Adam’s offspring could have been fully human if they got their genes from his gamete,
and thus they could have received a soul as well. Adam could then have married one of
these (his own) children—Eve. Eve was in this way created “out of Adam.”
Arthur Custance, the Canadian author of the “Doorway Papers” series, has a
doctorate in medical physiology (though it is usually listed in the creationist literature as
an “anthropology” Ph.D.). The Flood: Local or Global? (1979), one of his several
Doorway Papers volumes, contains a chapter on “The Meaning of Sweat as Part of the
Curse.” Custance, who has done research on combat heat stress and related topics, here
analyzes the physiological significance of biblical references to sweat, concluding that
Adam originally sweated only minimally for heat regulation. Sweating from fear or
emotional stress did not exist until the Fall.
PROPOSITIONAL NATURE OF THE BIBLE
In Genesis in Space and Time (1972), Francis Schaeffer, a leading fundamentalist
theologian and philosopher, proclaims the historicity of Genesis. The Bible consists of
“propositional truths” rooted in actual history.
What the Bible tells us is propositional, factual and true truth, but what is given is in relation to men. It is a
scientific textbook in the sense that where it touches the cosmos it is true, propositionally true. When we
go to heaven, what we learn further will no more contradict the facts the Bible now gives us than the New
Testament contradicts the Old. The Bible is not a scientific textbook if by that one means that its purpose is
to give us exhaustive truth or that scientific fact is its central theme and purpose. [1972:35-36]
The truth of the New Testament is dependent on this historicity and facticity of Genesis.
What is the hermeneutical principle involved here? Surely the Bible itself gives it: The early chapters of
Genesis are to be viewed completely as history—just as much so, let us say, as records concerning
Abraham, David, Solomon or Jesus Christ.
The opening verse of Genesis, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” and the
remainder of chapter 1 brings us immediately into a world of space and time. Space and time are the warp
and woof. Their interwoven relationship is history. [1972:15]
The historic Christian position concerning Genesis 1:1 is the only one which can be substantiated, the only
one which is fair and adequate to the whole thrust of Scripture. “In the beginning” is a technical term