2. Must Christians believe in Adam?

Must Christians believe in Adam and Eve, creation and Genesis to be true believers?
Many think that Adam and Eve never existed and that the Genesis record is just a parable.

But the Bible is a completely unified teaching and none of it is a myth or a parable unless it states that is otherwise.
Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden and the creation of the universe from out of nothing are taken as fact throughout the Bible and are referred to in the New Testament.

A Christian who is doubting that Adam and Eve are a real story will not be barred from heaven.
But when these things are believed it does open up a whole new joy and confidence in God’s Word – the Bible.

Can you believe in evolution and be a Christian? Yes, of course, but believing is opening up a marvellous gold mine of truth.

The thing that trips Christians up is the supposed weight of proof for evolution which seems to be overwhelming.

Major update: 6th March 2023

1. How does Adam fit in with the Big Bang?

It seems like if the Bible was rewritten now it would start with these words; ‘In the beginning, evolution!’
We are regularly bombarded with the ‘facts’ of Evolution.
How does that make us feel?

Let’s look at an example of how the ‘Atlas of the World’ by Readers Digest describes the big bang theory:

…the universe is concentrated into a single point, infinitely hot and dense.
During the first billionths of a second, the universe goes through a brief phase of accelerated expansion, growing from the size of an atomic nucleus to the size of a volleyball.
After a millionth of a second, the primeval universe is a violently expanding fireball, about 10 billion miles in radius.
It is filled with protons, neutrons and electrons – the building blocks for atoms – as well as billions of tiny particles called neutrinos.
After one minute the universe, about a million billion miles across, has become a giant thermonuclear reactor, building the nuclei of helium atoms from the hydrogen nuclei created in the big bang…”

‘Atlas of the World’ by the Readers Digest ²

It then goes on to tell us precisely how mankind evolved:

The story of mankind begins in the tropical forests of at least 65 million years ago.
By then the first primates, the order of mammals to which Man belongs, had appeared.
These tiny creatures of the night gradually developed hands for gripping branches, preying upon insects and testing fruit for ripeness.
Since complex hand-to-brain nerve ‘wiring’ was required for these tasks, the capacity to explore with the hand may have contributed to an inquiring and expanding brain…”

‘Atlas of the World’ by the Readers Digest

This is flowery language mixed with a few scientific words and is the material of fiction writers that is often unfortunately presented as fact.
How do we know what is a fact, it is a problem because even in educational establishments we are taught things that are facts and they are not, see here for examples.

The truth is that what the Bible says about the whole creation story cannot be reconciled with the Big Bang theory.
There is one area of possible agreement in verse one of Genesis, but then it deviates too much.

2. The Big Bang initially matches the Genesis account

The Bible describes the start of the creation of the universe :

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.”

Genesis 1:1-2 ESV

We are not told how much time passed from ‘In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.’ to this next verse when ‘the earth was without form…’
It could allow for millions of years, or it could just be seconds, we are just not told.

We are also not told how long it is before God speaks:

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.”

Genesis 1:3-5 ESV

Professor Nathan Aviezer of Bar-Ilan University takes God’s words “Let there be light” as being the start of the Big Bang. He is quoted here:

the universe had a definite starting point — a creation — as described in the Book of Genesis,” said Aviezer. “To deny this now is to deny scientific fact.
What happens in the rest of creation is another question,” he said. “It’s the Big Bang – the explosion of a highly concentrated chunk of energy that appeared out of nowhere to create the universe – that is being described when God says ‘let there be light.’
For 3,000 years no one really understood what ‘the light’ of Genesis was, with different interpretations talking about a ‘spiritual light,’ Aviezer said. “Now, thanks to the Big Bang theory, we can understand exactly what it means, on a physical level.”

‘New Big Bang evidence supports Biblical creation, says Orthodox physicist’ By David Shamah ³

To be true to what is written in Genesis, there could have been a big explosion at the point ‘In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth’, but it would not fit in with the “let there be light” because the earth at that point already had substance and was covered in water.

The problem is, if we are truthful with ourselves, the Big Bang does not fit with the Genesis account.
To make it fit we have to take a pinch of truth from the creation story, change the days to long epochs, change the order of what happened, gloss over the fact that Adam was the first human and block out the teaching that there was no death before Adam when he was in the Garden of Eden. What about all those fossils dying?

We may want the Bible to fit neatly in with the Big Bang theory, but it just doesn’t.
What can we do about it, must Christians believe in Adam, creation and Genesis?

3. Must Christians believe in Adam? If not what do Christians believe?

Unfortunately, the Popular Science on our TV and magazines, etc are constantly pushing science theories as fact by using very sweeping statements and lots of imagination.
This article looks at how Evolutionists try to prove their beliefs by using: anatomy, molecular homology, biogeography, fossils and direct observation.
Also, there are so many flaws in the Big Bang theory, are scientists clutching at straws?

I see four different ways of looking at the Big Bang:

• We totally accept the statements made by those who believe in the Big Bang.
• We accept what they say but add ‘God’ into the areas of ‘chance’.
• We accept what the Bible says about the creation of the world.
• We just ignore the whole subject and steer away from the Big Bang and Creation.

Depending on which one we choose to accept will have an effect on how we view the Bible and this is looked at in the next section.

4. Accepting the Big Bang controls how the Bible is viewed

Our particular standpoint means we would have to view certain parts of the Bible in a particular way.
We need to choose which one of these viewpoints refers to us:

• We totally accept the statements made by those who believe in the Big Bang therefore we would see the Garden of Eden as being just a Parable.
• We accept what evolutionists say, but add ‘God’ into the areas of ‘chance’ therefore we STILL see the Garden of Eden as being just a Parable.
• We accept what the Bible says about the creation of the world, therefore we accept the Genesis account in the Bible as being the truth, which means that it is literally and historically true.
• We just ignore the whole subject and steer away from the Big Bang and Creation therefore we ignore the first few chapters of Genesis.

So looking at the second option which is ‘We accept what evolutionists say, but add ‘God‘ into the areas of ‘chance’ ’ we would need to see Genesis containing a spiritual truth, but that it is NOT literally and historically true.
Does that make the Creation story just a myth, a parable?

The account of God speaking and things being created, is it a fabrication?
Perhaps we decide that everything started with a Big Bang and all creatures and humans evolved later from a primaeval swamp, and God moved in the areas of chance.
If that is the case, then WHAT truth is God actually telling us by including Genesis chapters one to three in the Bible?
WHY, if we believe in the Big Bang, would He tell us something different to what happened?

If God fills in all the areas of chance, then to me there is an uneasy unity in that thought.
That is like having a proper brick house, but then building an extension onto it made out of cardboard and sticks!
The two things are incompatible.

Developing bacteria and dog breeds don’t prove evolution, here’s why.
Fossils don’t prove evolution either.
How can evolution explain ‘obligate mutualism‘ where two different things cannot survive without each other?
How can sexual reproduction evolve?
Or why hasn’t human childbirth evolved to become painless?

5. If Adam was not real, why would God write it as historical fact?

If we say that the Big Bang is how the world came about, why would God want a different order of events written down?

He explained the process of Creation in a certain order.
So why did He write down that the sun and stars came into being after the earth was formed?

In fact, God is saying that the sun and stars came into being after the earth was formed and after the earth’s atmosphere, clouds and vegetation had grown on the earth!
If the sun and stars came first, then surely God would have said so and it is the most logical – even to the writer of Genesis!

Now, before everyone dives in and says that when Genesis was written, people didn’t know as much as we know today – think about it.
It is obvious to everyone, even the earliest Man, that the sun is essential for life on this earth, so in any account of the beginning of the world, we would naturally put the sun first.

But God didn’t! To our minds, it isn’t logical.
God was showing us that the sun is NOT essential to life – He is!
In Revelation, when there will be a new heaven and a new earth, it explains why:

There will be no more night.
They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light.”

Revelation 22:5 NIV

Modern genetics has found by assessing mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) down the female line, they can trace the whole of humanity down to one woman.
Yes, that is modern science stating this, but then because the Big Bang theory requires humanity to have evolved from something else the scientists say that there must have been a genetic burst to create this one woman.
From this one woman came ALL of humanity now, but science allows no divine creation, so it then has to try and make humanity evolve from simple, single-celled life.

6. Is science beginning to make us lose our faith?

This whole Evolution and Creation subject can make us jittery and lose faith in the Biblical account.
Perhaps in your eyes, science seems to be contradicting the Bible.

And if the Bible is wrong in that area, then what about other areas?

Also, if we don’t accept Genesis’ account of the creation of the world, then what about the Apostle Paul (and others) who write about it in the New Testament in a way that we know that they believe that the account is true:

But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ.”

2 Corinthians 11:3 NIV

Must Christians believe in Adam? It would be good if we could all scrutinise what we do believe in and what we don’t, and then study to fill in any woolly areas.

What we tend to forget is that scientists don’t always get it right.
Also, many scientists believe in God AND the Genesis story.
Science should not make us doubt the Bible, see: Scientific laws and building blocks of life
More detailed articles covering: Creation and Evolution – Conclusive evidence for the age of the universe:

7. Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

References open in new tabs:

1. Evolution of the head and skull. Retrieved from Artstor ↩

2. Atlas of the World, Readers Digest, 1989, ISBN 0-276-42001-2, p4, and p50 ↩

3. ‘New Big Bang evidence supports Biblical creation, says Orthodox physicist’ By David Shamah, 19 March 2014 Times of Israel ↩

4. Earth image: thanks to Serif Serif RESOURCE CD. ↩