Lesson video

Hello and welcome to this lesson on a Christian beliefs about the origins of humanity or the origins of life.

I'm Miss Kendrick.

And in this lesson, we're going to be looking at the creation story in the Bible that talks about the origins of humans.

We're going to look at different interpretations of these from different Christians.

And we're also going to be looking at the theory of evolution as well.

So you need to make sure you've got a pen or a pencil, a different coloured pen or pencil, and some paper to write down your answers.

So if you didn't have these things now, you need to pause the video and run and get them.

So the creation stories in the Bible can be read in Genesis one and two.

And I said stories because they are two.

Genesis one focuses on what happens on each of the six days of creation and tends to focus on the origins of the universe as a whole.

Animals and things are mentioned, but only quite briefly.

So it talks about the birds and the fish being created.

It talks about animals and humans being made on day six.

If we look at Genesis two, we can see the creation of humans in much more detail.

So in Genesis two, it talks about God creating a beautiful garden in which humans will have everything they need, filled with green plants that are good for food.

And this is the garden of Eden.

And the story talks about God creating Adam the first man and placing him in the garden.

So here we've got artistic representation of Eden and it's this idea that animals and humans living in perfect harmony.

You've got lions, walking along and not going for the Turkey and the sense of there being no suffering, than being a completely peaceful natural order.

So we're going to look at the creation of Adam and a bit more detailed because in the biblical story, Adam is created differently to the animals.

And this is going to impact a lot of Christian beliefs about ethical issues that we're going to be looking at in other lessons in this unit.

So you've got this quotation here, "Then the Lord, God took some soil from the ground "and he formed a man out of it.

"He breathed life giving breath into his nostrils "and the man began to live." So in this story, we've got the idea of as him being individually created and this intimate image of God breathing life into him.

And many Christians so history have interpreted that as God giving him a soul.

But either way, there is this idea of Adam being created in a special way.

Now this things still, I believe in the sanctity of life, the sanctity of life is a guide when it comes to ethics for many Christians.

And it's the idea that human life is special.

It is sacred, that humans are more important than animals, and it links to the idea that it is wrong to ever kill a human.

So many Christians who believe in the sanctity of life will look at these verses as evidence and say, well, God has created humans special.

And that means human life is special and should never be destroyed.

So that's a really useful introduction to sanctity of life.

And we are going to be using it in this unit when we talk about some ethical issues.

But for now, I'm going to get you to do is pause your video and answer some questions.

So the next part of the story.

Then the Lord God placed the man in the garden of Eden to cultivate it and guard it.

So you've got this idea of stewardship in the creation story or perhaps dominion.

So if someone is a steward, that means they're looking after somebody or after something.

If you've ever been to the theatre, then there'll be stewards they're taking tickets and making sure everyone knows where they need to sit.

Dominion is the idea of having power or rule over something.

And so some Christians will focus more on stewardship.

Others will focus more on dominion.

Either way, there's this idea that humans have a responsibility to care for creation, and that they have power over creation in a way that animals do not.

And again, this is something that's going to impact lots of Christian views on how we treat animals and treat the environment as well.

But again, here's an opportunity to pause video and I've got a couple of questions for you on the next slide.

So that is part of the story.

We've got Adam in the garden of Eden and he's essentially in paradise, however, he is lonely and we've got this sort of scene where God brings him all of the animals and for Christians, this is when Adam names the animals as well.

And the problem is that Adam does not find a suitable companion among them.

And God says, "It is not good for man to live alone.

"I will make a suitable companion to help him." And so this is where we get the creation of Eve.

So the story we have from Christianity is, "Then the Lord God made the man fall into a deep sleep "and while he was sleeping, "he took out one of the man's ribs and closed up the flesh.

"He formed a woman out of the rib and brought her to him." So, Christians are going to interpret this in different ways, which we will look at later on in this lesson.

But there's a few ideas that come out of this story.

There's the idea that men and women are one flesh, so in Christianity, the idea is that when a man and woman get married, they are now one flesh because there's this idea that creation Eve is taken out of Adam.

There's this idea that man is not meant to be alone.

That humans are created to be in community rather than to live alone.

So many Christians would say it's important that humans are together and care for one another.

And there's this idea of men and women being created for one another as well, which you might have looked at in the family and relationships unit, if you have completed that one yet.

So we're going to have an opportunity again, to pause and answer a couple of questions based on these verses.

So Christians interpret the Bible in lots of different ways, because when we look at stories like the Genesis story, and there's this idea about Eve being created out of Adam's rib, then some people are not going to take it literally because of what science tells us about the origins of humans and the world.

But Christians are going to have a variety of views.

So we've got here, fundamentalists, conservative, and liberal Christians.

And if you've done my lesson on the origins of the universe, you should hopefully be familiar with these terms, but we're going to refamiliarize ourselves with them.

So even if you've looked at this before, it's still good to go over again, because the more often we go over it, the less likely you will be to get it muddled up.

So firstly fundamentalist Christians, will interpret the Bible literally.

This means they will believe that is meant exactly as it is written.

So for example, if I was to say, my legs feel like jelly, and you as him separate that literally then you'd think my legs actually tended to jelly.

Whereas if you were to interpret that symbolically, then you might think I mean, I just feel that wobbly, maybe I don't feel very well.

So Fundamentalist Christians will interpret the Bible literally, they will believe the Bible is inerrant and has no mistakes.

And then it has more authority than science.

So where scientific theories disagree with what is in the Bible, then they will say, well, the science must be incorrect.

Conservative Christians will interpret the Bible based on historical context.

So they might look at the translation of particular words in the Bible, they might look at what society was like at the time the Bible was written, and they will often argue the Bible can work alongside science.

And finally we've Liberal Christians.

So they're going to interpret the Bible symbolically.

And they'll say that scientific theories are correct.

They'll accept them in full, but they might say that the Bible holds truth about the meaning of life.

And they might say that meaning is put across in a symbolic way.

So here are our different views.

So what you're going to do is you're going to pause the video so you can copy down the definitions and examples so that you can know which ones worked without getting them muddled up.

So before we look at different Christian understandings on the origins of humanity, we need to know what the theory of evolution is because it is the theory of evolution that you can say causes Christians to have these different interpretations, because many Christians will either want their bodies to be compatible with evolution, or they might be persuaded by the scientific evidence of evolution.

So, evolution is a process of random mutation and natural selection that has resulted in the species of animals that we have today.

So scientists will say that this happens over millions of years.

You can't observe it within our human lives.

It takes a huge amount of time, but they would say that evidence of evolution can be found in fossils.

And that's why I've got my fossil here of some type of dinosaur.

Because when we look at fossils, we can see there used to be creatures on earth that don't exist now.

And you can also see over the time in fossils, tiny changes happening in different species so that we have this idea of adaptation.

So how does it work? Well, evolution theory says that animals that can adapt to their environments are the most successful and they pass on their genetics.

So this might be a creature that is able to survive in lots of different types of habitats.

And they might become more numerous and survive because if the weather changes, if the environment changes, they can continue to live.

Whereas animals that are unable to adapt will die out because they won't be able to get the food they need and they won't survive.

And the adaptation is going to mean that certain characteristics of animals might be increased over time.

So for example, if any one animal species that animals that are bigger and are surviving better, they're going to be more likely to have babies and pass on their genetics.

And that means that over time you might see that particular species of animal get bigger and bigger because the smaller animals are not able to pass on their genetics.

Maybe they're being eaten by something before they're able to have babies, or maybe they're just not getting the food and things that they need.

so that is natural selection and most adapting to their environment and animals with the features that best suit their environments.

They're the ones that are passing on their genetics.

And so we see those genetics being strengthened in that species.

And like I said, this happens over millions of years and that's how we have this idea of species changing quite a lot.

Whereas some species don't change very much, like alligators and crocodiles.

They've barely changed for millions of years, same as sharks because they are apparently just amazing killing machines that can adapt to their environments.

We can also see when we look at fossil records, things like mass extinctions which might mean that there's a gap left and then natural order of things, which means that some animals might suddenly do better.

So we can see where dinosaurs have become extinct due to mass extinctions, mammals and fills the gap that was left behind by dinosaurs and just exploded into huge amount of variety of life.

So to give you an example of natural selection, to help us get our heads around it, we've got the example of the Peppered Moth.

So this example is often used in biology textbooks for GCSE, So you might be familiar with it.

And this is an example of natural selection that we have been able to observe in recent history.

So the peppered moth is camouflage to be able to hide on tree box.

So we can see this one here, it's white, but it's got lots of black flecks in it.

And that means that when it's resting on a tree, it's going to be really difficult to see.

So that's a defence mechanism, so that birds and things are unlikely to eat it.

Now, occasionally you get a peppered moth that is black due to a random mutation, but the problem was that black peppered moth were not very common because they can camouflage in the same way that the white ones could.

So they'd get eaten by birds and they wouldn't pass on their genetics.

And so that's why they were quite rare.

But then in the industrial revolution, there was so much smoke coming from factories that the trees in those areas were stained black by the soot and things like that coming from the factories, and this mean that the black peppered moth were able to hide much better than the white ones.

So things started to change and the white pepper moths started to be eaten by birds.

Whereas the black ones were surviving and passing on their genetics.

So now we can see that there's far more black peppered moths than they used to because of this change in the environment.

So that is one example of natural selection.

Now, in this scenario, we've just got an increase of the number of black peppered moth and to white ones, rather than a change in the species completely, that might mean it with stop being a moth, and start being something else.

And that is because it have such a big change of that as that it would take millions of years.

So we can only see a bit of natural selection in human lifespans.

Before we answer some questions on evolution and natural selection, I've got a common misconception for you.

That one question I often get from students is, "Miss, if humans descended from monkeys, "why are there monkeys today?" And this is because evolution does not say that humans evolved from monkeys or apes.

Rather it says that humans and apes have a common ancestor.

So that would mean that apes would be more like a cousin than an ancestor.

So rather it being apes or monkeys, your uncle, situation, it would be monkeys, your cousin.

And your great grandfather is a bit more than that is shared between you and that monkey.

So that would be incredibly distant cousins.

And this is where we have an idea of an evolutionary tree where there's an ancestor, much further back in the tree.

And one sort of line went monkeys and apes and things like that.

And then another line came human beings.

So that's a common misconception about human evolution.

You guys pause your video now and answer some questions.

So again, let's look at some challenges of evolution to Christians.

And before we do, I'm just going to say that humanists are going to accept evolution because it's a scientific theory.

It is an incredibly strong scientific theory.

And so they're going to accept it.

And I'm just reminding you of that, because in this theme, we are going to be using humanist views as we go along and say humanists are going to accept evolution, but why might evolution be a challenge to Christians? So firstly, the timescale of evolution is very different to the biblical account.

Some fundamentalist Christians would argue that according to the Bible, the earth and the universe is not as old as scientists say it is.

So the scientists would say that the universe is 13.

8 billion years old , earth is not that old, but we're working in huge timescales like millennia or billions of years.

So some Christians would argue that the earth is not as old as science claims, because of the Bible.

Another point is that evolution involves a lot of suffering.

So natural selection, for example, some animals dying because they can't get the food or because they're eaten by other animals and things like that.

Or mass extinctions that we can see in fossil records.

Some Christians would say, well, there's a huge amount of suffering in that process.

And they might say that loving God would not use that as a method of creation.

And finally, we have the challenge from evolution that humans are not special and different, but they are parts of the animal kingdom , evolution would say that humans are just really intelligent animals.

And that the only thing that makes humans different from animals is our ability to reason and think morally and to use tools and create stuff.

So, from an evolutionary point of view, you could argue that it could have been a completely different species that might've developed the level of intelligence that humans have.

So that goes against Christian views, that humans are special in the order of creation and that they have been created intimately by God with a soul and have the job of ruling over the world.

I'm going to give you a moment to pause your video and answer a couple of questions or ask a question about the challenge of evolution to Christianity, Right, So we're going to look at fundamentalist conservative and liberal views on the origins of humanity and how they're going to react to evolution.

So fundamentalist Christians, because they take the Bible literally because they are going to believe that it's in evidence, that it can't have any mistakes in it.

They're going to reject the theory of evolution.

They're going to say that evolution cannot happen because the Bible said that God created the world and animals whole and complete.

So animals did not evolve from one another.

And some evidence you can use for this is, "Then the Lord God took some soil from the ground "and formed a man out of it." So they're going to take that literally.

They're going to say the Bible doesn't say that Adam evolved from a common ancestor with apes.

They're going to say it says that God created Adam whole.

Conservative Christians.

Now conservative Christians are going to look at the language used in the Bible.

And in Hebrew, the first human created by God is called Adam.

And this word means grant.

And they would argue that all of this means is that humans should be close to the planet and live in harmony with it.

And they would say it neither agrees or disagrees with evolution, but that it is just telling people this message, that they are part of creation and they should care for it.

So many conservative Christians are going to accept the theory of evolution, or they may accept it to an extent and say that, well, it's compatible with Christianity, like the idea that the six days of creation and the Genesis story just means period of time rather than day.

So they might say, well, that fits better with the theory of evolution, maybe animals and humans evolved over these long periods of time.

So they're going to fit it together.

Liberal Christians are going say that the creation story is a myth which uses poetic language to describe a deeper truth that Adam was lovingly created by God.

So they're likely to say that evolution may be God's method of creation and that both the Bible and evolution can be true.

They would argue that the thing that's being taught in Genesis story is just that Adam is special and loved by God.

Not that Adam was literally created out of out the dust out there.

Again, I'm going to get you to pause and answer some questions based on these different views on the origins of humanity and on evolution in Christianity well done for answering all those questions.

We've done quite a lot in this lesson, but it's just really important that you know, the difference between these different views in Christianity and the views of humanists, the views from science as well.

And do you make sure you've got a working understanding of evolution.

You're not going to be asked to explain it in full detail, but you do need to know what it is as well.

So we're going to do some quick five questions just to strengthen our knowledge before we finish and do the exit quiz.

So what is not a part of the theory of evolution? Humans are descended from apes.

So that is a common misconception.

Which Christians will accept evolution? You're looking for more than one answer here.

So you've got liberals and conservatives.

Which Christians will reject evolution? Fundamentalists and just to remind here denominations means a group within a religion.

It's not a particular group of Christians.

And as I've explained before, in other lessons, you're going to find fundamentalist liberals and conservatives in lots of different denominations as well, just to make life more confusing.

What is not part of the biblical story about the origins of humanity? So the sun moon and stars that links more to the origins of the universe rather than to the creation of humanity.

You could argue that obviously humans would need those things to survive, but we're going to be focusing on the idea of Adam being made from dust, God breathing life into Adam etc.

So thank you so much for taking part in this lesson.

I hope you found it interesting.

And now you can go and do the exit quiz, again, well done for all of your hard work.