How Intelligent was Adam? - Creation Moments

1. The word GENESIS is the Greek of the Septuagint version of the Old Testament and means “beginning.” The Jews call this book BERESHITH – the first Hebrew word of the book and means “In beginning.” Note no article [the] nor is there an article in the Greek of John 1:1. The SHAMIYIM [heavens, plural] were created first and since Paul speaks of the “third heaven” [2 Corinthians 12:2] there must be a first and a second. The first is “where the birds fly”– the biosphere found in Genesis 1:20, the second is “the stars of heaven” of Isaiah 13:10 while the third is the abode of God. Interestingly, there are two words for “light” in the Hebrew: OR in Genesis 1:3-5 and MAOR in Genesis 1:15-18. It is suggested that the OR light was that seen from the head of Moses or the halo [aura] shown in medieval paintings e.g. Bartolommeo’s [c.1500]. God declared His creation on the sixth day, [Genesis 2:31], to be “very good.” Reasonably, we may conclude that death and natural disasters were not part of that original creation. Adam and Eve were perfect living in a perfect environment and had perfect mental abilities. Possibly, there evidence for this. Romans 1:20 declares that since His creation God has provided Fallen Man with a clear understanding of the perfection of that early world. Jesus said of the man born blind in John 9:3: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned but that the works of God be revealed in him.” One in 100 of those born with autism is highly talented in one specific area and has no passion for power, thus their particular talent will not be used for evil. Our first example is Matt Savage born in 1992 with mild autism. He attended a New York school for music for 3 years, formed his own jazz trio, has written and produced 6 musical albums, and appeared on the front cover of Time magazine all before he was 12 years old!

2. Genesis 1:27 and 2:7 tells us that Adam was made in God’s image … formed from the dust of the ground then God, breathed into his nostrils the NESHAMAH CHAIYIM — the breath of the spirit of lives. Passing into the nostrils [all vertebrates, mammals, birds and fish, have two nostrils] the spirit of life became divided: part became the spirit of life for the soul and part the spirit of life for the body. Calvin failed to understand this and concluded that the spirit and the soul were the same thing. Calvin’s work was adopted by the Westminster Confession of 1649 and became the majority Protestant view that Man is a two-part being: body and soul/spirit. First Thessalonians 5:23 tells us that God’s order of priorities is: “spirit, soul and body.” While Christians have reversed this to: “body, soul and spirit,” we all acknowledge God to be a trinity and, since we are made in His image, it is perfectly reasonable to conclude that we are also a trinity.

3. Living in the third century BC, Plato believed in reincarnation concluding that the human soul was immortal. Unfortunately, this view has also crept into Christian thinking via Calvin and the Westminster Confession. From 1 Corinthians 15:21 God did not create death for Man or animal thus originally both their souls and their bodies were not subject to death and were either eternal or immortal. However, only heaven can provide immortality, while so far, only God is immortal [1 Timothy 6:16]. We are not told that the plants have souls but they have a body and life and provide our food. It is God’s Spirit of life that gives life to our body and life to our soul; God sees us as a “living soul.”

4. The soul and the spirit are different. The soul is translated from the Hebrew NEPHESH and from the Greek PSUCHE or PSYCHE. Both words have been mistranslated [99 times in the KJV as “life”]. God sees us as an eternal soul temporally clothed in a mortal body in order to function in a material world. The soul occupies the whole body but is not accessible to science; the soul is our consciousness, the domain of our intellect, personality and memory and is therefore the actual and eternal person. The spirit is translated from the Hebrew RUACH and the Greek PNEUMA; both words mean “wind or breath.” It is God’s spirit that gives life to our mortal body and is on loan to us; upon death it returns to God [Ecclesiastes 12:7]. God’s spirit also gives life to our eternal soul and this remains alive even after death of the body. This explains why God is not the God of the dead but the living [Matthew 22:23-32 and Luke 20:37-38]. The soul must remain eternal if it is to be subjected to eternal punishment.

5. The Book of Jubilees [not inspired] tells us Adam and Eve were in the Garden for 7 years before the Fall; sufficient time to learn a lot and there were no children, death, earthquakes, tsunamis or hurricanes. God did not curse Adam [Recall Noah cursed Ham’s son, Canaan, rather than bear the stigma of appearing to be a poor father by cursing his own son, Ham, Gen. 9:22-27] but rather God cursed the ground from which grew every food for Man. By consuming the cursed food Adam and Eve’s bodies gradually changed, cell by living cell, from eternal to mortal i.e. subject to death. Souls do not consume food and every soul has remained eternal and perfect, but since we can use it for good or for evil, God has veiled man’s soul to limit what we can do with it. The veil of the tabernacle separated Man from God and is described in Exodus 26:31-36. When Jesus died the veil of the Temple was torn [Matthew 27:51]. Jesus came to remove the veil [2 Corinthians 3:13-16] and does so partially now but completely after death. The veil was purple and red, the same colors as the Great Harlot [Revelation 17:4]. It is proposed that revelation to the Christian and those we call “genius” result from the partial removal of the individual soul-veil by God.

6. There are several categories of genius: some have incredible memories or are lightning calculators that demonstrate the original capability of the human mind; others confess to have had “inspired” abilities for books or music but the inspiration can come from either of two sources both under God’s control. [Job 1:6-12 etc.]
William Sidis [1898-1944]. He read the New York Times at 18 months, Latin at 2 years, and, as an adult, could speak over forty languages; he could learn a language of 5,000 words and grammar in a single day. Entered Harvard at 11, graduated at 16 then breezed through Havard’s Law School.
Rene Descartes [1596-1650]. French scientist/philosopher living in Holland had a frightening 3-part dream on Nov. 10, 1619 in which his room was filled with sparks; he ascribed it to the “Holy Virgin.” Isaiah 50:11 warns us about this. In 1637 he concluded: Cogito ergo sum – “I think therefore I am” and in a very subtle way this denies any external source of knowledge, say by revelation, and places doubt upon the existence of the human soul. The discipline of psychology is literally the study of the soul but this is now called “Behavioral science.” The neurosciences today completely deny the existence of the human soul and ascribe all our mental attributes to the brain. Interestingly, there are cases of normal people with virtually no brain!
W. A. Mozart [1756-1791]. His father took him to the Sistine Chapel to hear Allegri’s Miserere sung in Latin. It is a very complex choral piece and lasts 13 minutes. Considered too sacred to be written down Mozart, then 14, memorized the entire thing, wrote it, played it and sang it before the Pope.
T. B. Macaulay [1800-1859]. English writer/diplomat could learn a foreign language quickly and, for example, learned German during a boat journey.
Alexander C. Aitken [1895-1977]. Professor of math. at Edinburgh U., was a lightning calculator. Tested at 77 he could square, take the square-root of or generate the logarithm of, any four-figure number in 2 or 3 seconds. He multiplied 123456789 by 987654321 and gave the correct result in 30 secs!
George Koltanowsky [1903-2000]. Played an exhibition chess match at San Francisco in 1960 against 56 world chess experts simultaneously and won 50 games and drew six in 9 hours. He averaged 10 seconds per move and was blindfolded throughout!
Rudyard Kipling [1865-1936]. English writer/poet was a senior Freemason. The poetry was mostly barrack-room doggerel. In his last book he openly and quite seriously confessed that his works were “daemon” inspired.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge [1772-1834]. English poet had a life-long opium habit. At 26 and ill he fell asleep and received a very long poem; he wrote down the first 54 lines beginning: “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan …etc.”
Houston Stewart Chamberlain [1855-1927], influenced history. He was the son of an English Admiral, educated in Switzerland then lived in and took German citizenship and married Richard Wagner’s daughter. He was a hypersensitive neurotic with frequent nervous breakdowns and confessedly “driven by his demons” who he sometimes saw. His book Foundations of the Nineteenth Century [1899] advanced a thesis of world rule by a super-race – the best candidate-rulers being the Aryans i.e. the German race. This book greatly influenced Kaiser Wilhelm II of WW I and Adolf Hitler of WW II.
Adolf Hitler [1889-1945]. As a corporal in WW I trenches heard a voice tell him to, “Get up and go over there.” He did and a shell landed where he had been standing killing everyone in the trench. Later, the same voice told him to “Save Germany.” He went into politics and always obeyed his “Voice.”
John Forbes Nash [1928 – ]. This American is a gifted mathematician and won the Nobel prize in 1994 for developing the mathematics of game theory used, among other things, for making stock market investments. He suffered for years with schizophrenia and saw his demons who he believed were real people! He was the subject of the 1998 book and movie: A Beautiful Mind.

8. Autism was mentioned earlier and Matt Savage given as the example but there are many others; here are two more:
Christopher can speak, read, write and translate from 16 languages yet has to live in a sheltered community as he is incapable of living independently.
George and Charles are identical twins, cannot multiply, add or subtract even single digit numbers yet can each instantly provide dates or days in the past or the future for over 7000 years! They are typical of calendar calculators. The calendar repeats itself in terms of days of the week and dates in the year every 28 years but complications were introduced when the calendars were changed.

Conclusion. Based upon those exceptional cases of memory or calculating ability that accompany every generation, it has long been argued — and Dale Carnegie capitalized upon it — that Man uses only 10% of his brain capacity. The evolutionist objects to this argument since it implies that evolution is driven by more than blind chance thus implying some intelligent guidance [teleology]. The other horn of this evolutionist’s dilemma is that early man had full use of his brain meaning that Man has not progressed as commonly taught, but has regressed or Fallen as the Bible teaches. We conclude, from Scripture that God placed a veil over fallen Man’s soul for Mankind’s own good: Imagine a world where Man lived for 1000 years and everyone was an evil genius! This may have been the situation in the pre-flood world. On the other hand, God’s love for fallen Mankind has caused Him to inspire certain individuals to introduce good inventions e.g. the printing press, medicines such as penicillin. At the same time from Job chapters 1 and 2 we are shown that He has given the enemy permission to inspire others for evil e.g. Hitler, Stalin etc so that history will unfold perfectly as He has planned.