There are those who would say that Adam and Eve designate specific historical figures. That makes some sense, acknowledges theologian Alister McGrath, but it makes even more sense to say that Adam and Eve are figures that encapsulate the human race as a whole.

Here are three final issues that arise when trying to understand Paul’s use of the Adam story.

Recently a biology teacher inquired of Casey Luskin at the Discovery Institute how science works in the Intelligent Design paradigm. How, the teacher asked, does one “test intelligent design using the scientific method?”

Even in the depths of the ocean, the beauty of God's creation shines through. The seas teem with countless amazing and wonderful creatures, from silvery schools of fish that dart through the waters, to mysterious jellyfish which float silently through the deep.

In this video conversation, Kathryn Applegate discusses the implications for the church if we ignore scientific developments.

My personality, honed by a decade of heavy teaching loads facing many, many undergraduates, made me a natural for the stage, realizing that in these circumstances a good joke will get you much further than a long serious argument.

In many ways, I think the Evangelical community’s approach to science is like a bog on a mountaintop. For the most part, Christian theology is solid and trustworthy, but there are weak spots in our understanding, and how many believers relate to evolutionary science is one of them.

In this video conversation, renowned Old Testament scholar, Biblical translator and expositor Bruce Waltke discusses the danger the Church will face if it does not engage with the world around it, in particular with the issue of evolution, which many evangelicals still reject.

Thinking through questions like these takes some patience, a fair amount of knowledge, and even more wisdom. At the end of the day, wrestling through these issues will yield a greater understanding of Paul and how his Gospel is summed up in the risen Messiah.

We do not pretend that showing faith and science can exist in harmony will be easy. It has taken a long time to get to our current state of disharmony.

These words help us understand why faith in God is so important to seeing and understanding the world, and our place within it…

It was around mid-2005 that I started to understand why I could never defend the Behe/Dembski arguments. This is when I began to play down these arguments and put a greater stress on anti-naturalism in the way I defined ID.

When the ID movement first burst on the scene in the mid-1990s, it lacked the amateurishness of the creation-science movement while at the same time making its main goal to unseat philosophical naturalism. As a philosopher who had critiqued one sort of naturalist project in his doctoral dissertation, ID intrigued me.

Childhood Christianity just faded away in my early twenties. There wasn’t any kind of Road to Damascus experience in reverse, nor was it a direct function of taking up philosophy. The feelings and beliefs just went. They have never returned.

In this video conversation, Pete Enns sheds light on the key difference between the ancient and modern mind with regard to interpretation of texts. A literal understanding of Genesis from an ancient mindframe would not necessarily be the same as what we now think of as a literal reading.

Can Paul have a clearer view on the true depth of our alienation from God that is not yet present in the Old Testament? Does Paul’s use of the Adam story actually depend on him not reading it literally?

If we say that an intelligent agent has produced certain strings of DNA, are we more or less puzzled by the problem of DNA when we are all done? Frankly, this “explanation” generates a set of questions even more troubling than our original query about how information-rich strings of DNA came to be.

As Philip Yancey notes in his editorial "A Whole Good World Outside," the hymn gets one things wrong: faith in Christ should illuminate, not diminish, the beautiful world around us.

I have been called many things in my time, but I truly believe that “clueless gobshite” is a first. In a way, I am almost proud of this. After all, if you are in your seventieth year and someone feels so strongly about your ideas that they refer to you in this way, then you must be doing something right.

It’s hard to see how Ayala’s attempt to defend biological evolution and refute the particular hypothesis that intelligent design played a discernable role in the origin of the human genome in any way challenges the argument of Signature in the Cell.

Meyer spends considerable time disputing what he calls “Ayala’s claim” that Alu sequences are distributed randomly. I’ve reread Ayala’s post several times trying to find what makes Meyer think Ayala claimed this. Put simply, he doesn’t say it nor does he imply it.

Meyer and Ayala have very different views about what science has to say about the origin of genetic information. The Intelligent Design movement, as Ayala sees it, is deeply flawed at both the theological and scientific level.

In this video conversation, Old Testament scholar Peter Enns discusses the Apostle Paul and his understanding of Adam as the progenitor of the human race.

In my experience, a lot of Christians have come to some peace with all of this. They may handle it in different ways, and some may not have arrived at a conclusion, but they at least recognize that something has to be done.

At the end of last year, Darrel Falk posted his reflections on Stephen Meyer's book. Francisco Ayala was asked to respond to the concerns Falk had raised. Meyer was offered an opportunity to respond to Falk's reflections as well. He accepted, and expressed a desire to respond to Ayala also.

Science can tell us how flowers bloom and how the sun rises and sets each day. Does such knowledge mean we cannot look upon these natural wonders and experience the same awe of our Creator, as described in the verses above?

In this video conversation, Karl Giberson notes that have to be careful about projecting our idea about human creation onto God because the notion of a human creator is an entirely different concept.

What are the theological consequences that would arise from evolution being false or physically impossible?

The psychology of why people believe what they do is complex, but in the case of believers who choose to accept or reject the theory of evolution, one’s Christian community plays a large role in that decision.

In this video conversation, Os Guinness addresses the question of why it is essential for Christians to engage in scientific discourse. Resistance, skepticism, and hostility to science are not biblical precepts, but views that originated from Christian movements that emerged in the 19th century.

It helps us look at the Adam story from an angle that might be new to some readers here: Adam is the beginning of Israel, not humanity. I imagine this may require some explanation.

Unfortunately, the mythology about Darwin and the implications of evolution creates confusion, and muddled commentators continue to perpetuate misunderstandings from the past.