Parallelism Between Adam's Rib and Science

There is an amazing coincidence between numbers in Book of Genesis involving creationism and numbers in science regarding man's evolution from ape. The parallelism begins on Bible quotes according to which God took out one of Adam's ribs and made woman, Eve, with it. "And Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up flesh in its place. Then rib which Lord God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to man."

The number of ribs - Men have 24 ribs - 12 on each thoracic side. The same number is found in women. The text says that God removed one rib and not one pair of ribs. Had He indeed removed only one rib, man would have different numbers of this bone on each side of his chest. Not only that, but there would also remain a doubt about number of ribs in a female.

These contradictions disappear if text is examined from standpoint of information conveyed by Jesus Christ to His disciples: "To God nothing is impossible". God may have removed one of Adam's ribs but He did it in such a way that woman and all her descendants would have same number of ribs. However, it is assumed that rib's removal is symbolic language and explained it cannot be regarded as direct language.

A look at it now from standpoint of science. The chimpanzee, from which science now admits that man has evolved, has 24 chromosomes in its sexual cells, i. e., 24 chromosomes in each spermatozoon and 24 chromosomes in each ovulum. This is referred to gametes, those sex cells capable of reproducing species. Therefore, number of ribs in a man and of chromosomes in a chimpanzee are identical. The other cells in a chimp, as in a human, are diployd, that is, they have chromosomes in pairs - therefore, they have 48 chromosomes.

Confluence of Book of Genesis and Human Evolution Timeline

Were we to admit that rib symbolizes chromosome, implicit and explicit Bible numbers say that God removed a chromosome from a chimpanzee and made a woman out of it. In other words, "man", a chimp, lost a chromosome and thus a woman was formed. Indeed, woman, just like man, has one chromosome less than a chimp in sex cells. The human spermatozoon has 23 chromosomes and human ovulum also has 23 chromosomes. It makes sense. The other cells in human being are diployd, i. e., they have 46 chromosomes. But it is needed to see what science says regarding man ape evolution, that is, man's evolution from chimpanzee. Man's evolution from ape - It is admitted that, in evolution of species, through some unknown phenomenon, two chimp chromosomes were fused and thus, primitive man, a hominid, came about. Some theories claim that female came first, which, if true, would give further consistency to symbolic version of Adam and Eve's story.

In a nutshell, this is what matter has: • Number of ribs in human being: 24 • Number of chromosomes in chimp's gametes: 24 • Creation: removal of one rib. • Evolution: fusion of two chromosomes. • Rib symbolizes chromosome. • Removal of one rib = fusion of two chromosomes. • Number of chromosomes resulting in gametes: 23 - New species: man, hominid.

Without wandering too far from these basic issues, it should be asked why there are so many differences between human and chimp, given "simple" fusion of two chromosomes. Furthermore, those in favor of creationism would argue that, since similarity between a chimp's DNA and that of a human being is above 98%, humans and chimpanzees ought to be more alike. These are pertinent questions which must be carefully examined.

Starting with numbers: difference between human and chimp DNA is less than 2%. For three reasons, this percentage can be very meaningful:

the science is just barely beginning to understand human genome, that is, DNA map, that of genes and each one's role. On other hand, researcher know also little about chimp genome. Thus, it is perfectly acceptable that this percentage, though small, means much in terms of anatomical and physiological differences between species;

the differences may be situated in fundamental parts of DNA, enough to cause differences between species;

the amount of DNA in cells is not always proportional to their complexity. Therefore, arrangement of DNA components in humans may be more important than quantity.

Thus, slightly less than 2% difference between chimps and humans may become more meaningful. The "simple" fusion of one species' two chromosomes may cause many differences in resulting species.

Why is Bible not explicit? - In other words, why, since issue was raised in beginning of this article, does Biblical message not speak directly about chromosomes? At least two answers are possible.

Terry Dashner……………….Faith Fellowship Church PO Box 1586 Broken Arrow, OK 74013

Since basic science is ever-changing, shouldn’t our theology change with it? No. Our theology should remain constant, even when science seems to contradict it. Usually science changes to support, to some degree, what theologians and simple people of faith have been saying all along—“In beginning, God…” Allow me to illustrate this, please.

Catherine H. Crouch in her essay entitled, “The Strangely Relational World of Quantum Mechanics” makes a very interesting observation about science in 20th century. Says Crouch, “…Einstein is rightly celebrated for his association with relativity, one of two major innovations in twentieth-century physics, it’s less well known that he vehemently opposed other theory that rocked twentieth-century scientific world—quantum mechanics.” Crouch continues, “And, surprisingly, in recent years theory that reportedly caused Einstein to protest, ‘God does not play dice [with universe],’ not only has turned out to be right, but may be remarkably congruent with Christian convictions. Call it quantum leap of faith.”

QM speaks of probabilities. For example, take particles which make up your body. QM “…is stubbornly unwilling to tell you where each electron in your body’s roughly billion billion billion atoms is right now. Chances are, they’re all pretty much where you think they are, but there is a real (though extraordinarily small) chance that right now, at least one of your electrons ‘is’ outside of your personal space. In fact, QM refuses to commit to where electron is, preferring instead to say merely that at any given time, that electron has a certain probability of being in a certain place. This idea—that chance, rather than definite predictability, describes behavior of universe—prompted Einstein’s uneasy comment about God playing dice.”