How did humanity come to be?

    Genesis 1:27

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

    The well-known account of Adam and Eve is how the Bible describes the beginning of the human race. The natural sciences' seemingly opposing narrative, which claims that humans evolved from simpler species and ultimately from a single living cell that was born in the earth's primordial oceans, is also well known to most people. Two separate explanations for the same phenomenon are hardly possible. The argument over which explanation is more plausible has frequently put Christians on the defensive because they appear to be out of touch with contemporary culture and are defending an old tale that is not supported by external scientific data.

    Christians who have great faith in the reliability of God's word have claimed that the presence of Adam and Eve is significant to both the Old and New Testaments because Adam is a key character in the gospel and serves as a model for all people in the Salvation account (Romans 5:14)

    A group of theologian-scientists working under the banner of "creation science" have been working on finding a scientific foundation for the Genesis account of Adam and Eve. This loose alliance of academics gathers evidence to support the notion that the earth is young (biblical genealogies also appear to indicate a recent origin for the planet) and that the earliest humans were the result of a unique act of creation unrelated to genetic evolution. Strong believers in "intelligent design" contend that the natural world's complexity is evidence of an intelligent designer.

    On the opposite extreme, scientist-theologians who have discovered compelling genetic evidence linking humans to other primates have developed a hypothesis known as "theistic evolution." According to this, human growth generally follows the patterns predicted by natural science, but at a specific point in that development, God endows people with the trait that distinguishes them from all other species—the image of God (conscience, Will, the capacity to reflect, the desire to belong to God and praise God.)

    Christian scientists who think that the purpose of Genesis is to teach those human beings: 1. are indeed set apart by the particular gift of being made in God's image, enigmatic as it is, but wrestling with data from both scientific and biblical research

2. have moral accountability and responsibility unmatched by any other species; 3. exhibit significant genetic resemblances to non-human species that must be taken into consideration in any theory of origins.

    They also think that the Earth's age is unquestionably old (unless God placed evidence of ancient origins in a "young earth"). All contestants agree that the connection between humans and nonhumans (hominids, human-like predecessors who existed before the creation of God's image) has not been found and is unlikely to ever be, given the enormous ramifications involved. These topics are still being studied closely from many angles.