Did Adam and Eve have navels?

Dilettante · Post by **Dilettante** » Sun Jan 23, 2005 8:41 pm

An old conundrum says that if Adam and Eve had no navels, they were not perfect human beings. However, if they did have them, those navels would suggest a biological birth that could never have ocurred if the Creation story is to be taken literally.
Michelangelo painted a belly-button on Adam in his Sistine Chapel masterpiece. Artists have usually followed his example. But is it justified to do so?
Other strange Garden-of-Eden-scenarios involve the first trees. Did they have no timber-rings (since such rings are evidence of a past they couldn't have if they had been freshly created). How about elephant's tusks? Did the first elephant have them?
As we can see, reading the Bible too literally raises some intractable questions. Or does it? What do YECs think?

Dilettante · Post by **Dilettante** » Tue Jan 25, 2005 7:39 pm

Well, Hannahjoy, for Non-theistic evolutionists it would be either the Big bang, or, if they believe matter to have always existed, no beginning at all.
For most Theistic evolutionists, the Big bang would be the method used by God in creating the world. So God and the Big bang are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Of course there is still the question of where God came from. One of my sons asked me this the other day. "Who made God?" he said.

I had to acknowledge my ignorance on the matter. I couldn't tell him God is uncreated by definition because he could then ask why God was an exception and not the universe. You see, it's either admitting ignorance or saying it's "turtles all the way down". Or change the subject.

And yes, I do spend time thinking how it all started. But since I have no way to know, I usually suspend judgement and get on with my life as usual.

hannahjoy · Post by **hannahjoy** » Tue Jan 25, 2005 8:52 pm

An old conundrum says that if Adam and Eve had no navels, they were not perfect human beings.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't a navel a scar? Why would they have to be scarred to be perfect human beings?

Well, Hannahjoy, for Non-theistic evolutionists it would be either the Big bang, or, if they believe matter to have always existed, no beginning at all.
For most Theistic evolutionists, the Big bang would be the method used by God in creating the world. So God and the Big bang are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Of course there is still the question of where God came from. One of my sons asked me this the other day. "Who made God?" he said. I had to acknowledge my ignorance on the matter. I couldn't tell him God is uncreated by definition because he could then ask why God was an exception and not the universe. You see, it's either admitting ignorance or saying it's "turtles all the way down". Or change the subject.

So at some point you have to stop at something that just "was" - God, or the Big Bang, or matter . . . I agree the "Uncaused Cause" argument (was it from Aquinas?) can't prove the existence of God as opposed to the other options.

Hannah Joy

Dilettante · Post by **Dilettante** » Wed Jan 26, 2005 7:32 pm

hannahjoy wrote:

Dilettante:
An old conundrum says that if Adam and Eve had no navels, they were not perfect human beings.

hannahjoy: Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't a navel a scar? Why would they have to be scarred to be perfect human beings?

Whether or not a navel is a scar is irrelevant. The fact is that all human beings have navels. That's my point. Same for hair, which is as much an indication of a past as a navel. If Adam and Eve had no hair (but maybe just the follicles for hair to grow from in post-Creation days) they were not "perfect" in an aesthetic sense, i. e., they would have looked pretty weird without hair or navels.

So at some point you have to stop at something that just "was" - God, or the Big Bang, or matter . . . I agree the "Uncaused Cause" argument (was it from Aquinas?) can't prove the existence of God as opposed to the other options.

Exactly. We totally agree on this.

seventil · Post by **seventil** » Tue Feb 01, 2005 10:20 am

Dilettante wrote: If Adam and Eve had no hair (but maybe just the follicles for hair to grow from in post-Creation days) they were not "perfect" in an aesthetic sense, i. e., they would have looked pretty weird without hair or navels.

It may be a mute point, but I'd like to point out that perhaps it's us, with navels and weird hair stuff, that look weird. We look normal to each other, but perhaps the true God image (aesthetically) looks nothing like us. Just food for thought.

Dilettante · Post by **Dilettante** » Tue Feb 01, 2005 7:58 pm

You could be right, of course. But I was not making esthetic judgments. By "not perfect human beings" I only meant "not like the vast majority of human beings". Not "normal". I bet all the Adams and Eves we are descended from did not look like us because of their apelike features.

Sandycane · Post by **Sandycane** » Tue Feb 01, 2005 10:11 pm

Dilettante · Post by **Dilettante** » Wed Feb 02, 2005 9:01 pm

sandycane wrote:

"apelike features"!
I don't have any of those in my family photo album.

How far back does your family photo album go? I put the Australopitecus Afarensis on the cover of mine.

I thought the original question was pretty funny until I read some of the replies- darn good question.

Thanks. Actually I got it from Martin Gardner.

I have often said that God can (and did) create the universe any way He wanted. I think it was created pretty much the way we see it- things in different stages of existance, from new born to dead.

And why would God do that? Isn't it a bit silly to create something already dead? I admit I can't disprove your theory, but it seems to me that it calls for too many auxiliary assumptions to be plausible. What if the universe did not exist until last night? Can anyone disprove that?

I have had this discussion on an astronomy forum and my opinion was "poo-pooed" but, that would explain the contradiction between what the bible says and what scientists are "discovering" about the age of our universe.

I am not here to poo-poo anyone's opinion. But if I heard a noise outside and discovered that a house on my block had been reduced to rubble, I would ask someone what happened. If the answer I'm offered is "a mysterious force did it", I would then ask "Can you tell me what kind of force it was? How does it work? Why was this force unleashed?" If the answer to all those questions is "I don't know, but I know it was a force". I would thank that person and go ask somebody else, because the previous answer is not satisfactory. Maybe I would ask a scientist.

God knew we would never live long enough to witness the birth, life, and death of a star for example so, He created them in a way we could know about them.
Same for the earth. We could never witness a mountain being formed but, we know how they are by studying the different layers and such.

...so they were created as objects of study? Was God providing us with teaching materials? What's the idea?

Did Adam & Eve have belly-buttons? My guess is, "No". God created them- they were not conceived nor born from blood. That's my guess.

OK. And my guess is that Adam and Eve looked a little bit like apes, or their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents did at least.[/b]