I think that the concept of the original sin may be why there are still so many who take Genesis as a literal telling of actual events. Otherwise the implications make for even more questions and more interpretations and more complicated explanations to fill the new gaps in the new scenarios and make them compatible with the rest of the Bible.
I think that without the Adam/Eve/Serpent scenario you don't have a clear plot point where the need for a redeemer is outlined and promised by god. This would, IMO, completely sever the NT from the OT, as it seems to me that the only real thread that keeps them together is the idea that mankind was lost without the redemptive sacrifice of a promised messiah.
I think that without the Adam/Eve/Serpent scenario you don't have a clear plot point where the need for a redeemer is outlined and promised by god. This would, IMO, completely sever the NT from the OT, as it seems to me that the only real thread that keeps them together is the idea that mankind was lost without the redemptive sacrifice of a promised messiah.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
