Was Adam Created from Clay, part 1 of 2

“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul” (Genesis 2:7).

We live in an orderly universe.

I believe God to be a God of order.

I believe God works by universal laws and principles.

Whether or not God created those laws and principles is irrelevant to me.

What is relevant to me is—if God broke those laws, he would cease to be God.

God is not like the mythological gods of yore who could do anything they wanted, who were more supreme magicians than gods, turning people into animals and so forth.

Given this, one has to wonder at this scriptural account of the crowning achievement of God’s entire creation — man. It doesn’t seem very scientific, to be sure.

I believe God to be the perfect scientist—all knowing that he is.

There certainly seems to be a lot missing in this description. You’d think there’d be a lot more involved in a creation that was made in the image and likeness of God himself.

I don’t think God looks like a breathing lump of dust, dirt or even clay.

After giving it much thought, I believe this particular event was symbolic in nature. What it’s symbolic of, I’m not so sure. It may be that God just didn’t intend for us to fully understand the actual creation process of man.

Who knows? Nevertheless, let’s take a look at it as if it were a literal creation.

Note: I’ll be using some poetic license here, so, bear with me. No disrespect to God is intended, although I may seem a little cheeky, not unlike Bill Cosby’s Noah routine, only not so funny.

One can only imagine what actually took place in that one simple sentence. And that’s what I’ll be doing: imagining.

So the scene opens with God gathering a wheelbarrow full of dust and taking it to his laboratory. (Where else would he take it?) He moistens it to keep it from falling apart, adding some clay to the mix to give the moist dust something to cling to.

He then fashions a sculpture in his own image and likeness. He pokes holes in the nostrils and then breathes into them. All of a sudden, the sculpture magically comes to life, complete in every detail as follows:

• A brain, with its billions, if not trillions, of neural pathways and ability to store tremendous amounts of information, most of it unbeknownst to its owner.
  
• Bones, wonderfully connected together to allow for maximum movement of the entire body.
  
• A muscular system, magically connected to the bones and held in place by tendons and sinews, that allow for this movement.
  
• A circulatory system that, among many other things, carries nutrients and oxygen to every cell in the body.
  
• A heart, with its uncompromising ability to keep that blood flowing to each and every cell of the body.
  
• Lungs, which take oxygen to the heart and expels carbon dioxide from the heart.
  
• The entire integrated digestive system, a marvel in itself, that breaks down nutrients, thus making them available to be carried into the bloodstream into every cell of the body.
  
• A wonderful immune system with its white blood cells which seek out, attack and destroy all invaders.
  
• A lymphatic system which eliminates the product of cellular breakdown and bacterial invasion, among many other important bodily functions, and is tied closely to the cardiovascular system.
  
• Several marvelous waste disposal systems—for solids and liquids—including but not limited to sweating, nasal, ear, eye and throat excretions.
  
• A wonderful and marvelous reproductive system that just happens to have the one thing necessary to create new life in the yet uncreated woman. What’s the chance of that happening by mere chance? How about zero to the infinitesimal degree?
  
• Symbiotic relationships, such as good bacteria in the digestive system.
  
• The most massive organ of them all, the skin, which holds everything in place and provides other functionality as well.
  
• The miraculous DNA and RNA that exists in every cell of the body.
  
• The hormones and other special fluids that keep the body running smoothly.
  
• A multitude of different types of cells that form the basis of all bodily systems, and all working together for the good of the whole body.
  
• Stem cells that can form into any and all parts of the body, such as bone, muscle and organs, all from the same stem cell.
  
• All other organs and systems of the human body. And everything else I have not listed.

That’s a lot to ask for, for one puff of breath . . . even a Godly puff.