Did Adam and Eve have bellybuttons??

Michelangelo painted Adam with a navel and took flack for it because some decided it challenged the Genesis narrative that God created Adam from the dust of the earth. Since then (1512) theologians have debated whether or not Adam and Eve had navels, and some of their back-and-forth has been less than charitable. (If you're interested, note the tone of this article.)

It seems to me the question can be answered by posing other questions:

• When Adam and Eve laid down to sleep that first night under the stars did they in fact see stars? It's more accurate to ask if they saw the light from those stars, since nobody has ever seen the stars themselves. We know the nearest star is 4.24 light years away, or 5.88 trillion miles. If the stars were created on the fourth day (Gen. 1:14-19) we must conclude either that on that day God created both the stars and the light emanating from them or the universe is incredibly old and the Genesis narrative completely untrustworthy. 
• On Thursday of the next week when Adam cut down a tree to begin construction of their tiny house did the exposed stump have rings? On the third day of creation when God made the vegetation that covers the earth did he create fully formed mature trees with the appearance of an age they did not actually possess, or were Adam and Eve given a garden of bare ground with seeds that would eventually sprout and become trees? Or perhaps Adam's freshly hewn tree had no rings and it would be decades before ringed trees were present. 

If we answer yes to those two questions - they did indeed see light from the stars and rings on the tree stump - then it is reasonable (though not necessary) to conclude Adam and Eve had bellybuttons. That is, God created a universe that at the moment of creation was fully formed and mature with the appearance of an age it did not actually have. This, in turn, leads us to conclude that from its creation the earth had petroleum deposits, geological strata, and fossils. The appearance of age.

Most of contemporary science proceeds from the principle of uniformitarianism. That is, the working assumption is that geological change happens at a constant rate through time. If you can measure the rate of change currently taking place then, allowing for reasonable deviations like 100-year floods, you can work backward to determine age. To illustrate, if it can be determined that over an extended period of time a canyon deepens by 2 mm per year due to erosion then a measurement of the total depth of the canyon divided by 2 mm will give the approximate age of the canyon. This is the method that lies behind most of the dating we see that concludes a given fossil is X million years old or that a geological formation is Y trillion years old. 

Note: the various methods like carbon dating and other radiological methods work on the same principle. The amount of (carbon) is measured in an item, then the half life of carbon is used to work backward to the item's total age. 

Uniformitarianism. 

You can see how these two methods arrive at very different outcomes. In an effort to reconcile the biblical account with the scientific method and its results some have concluded that the Genesis record should not be understood literally. Alternatives include a poetic format, an allegorical document meant to teach only spiritual truths, or a reading of the account in which the "days" of creation are really geological ages.

These options are entirely implausible. In Romans 5:12-21 Paul writes an explanation of how sin got passed on to all humanity, an explanation that clearly relies on a historical Adam and the accuracy of the Genesis narrative. Paul considered the Adam of Genesis 1 and 2 a historical figure. See also 1 Cor. 15:45. 

Luke 3:38 mentions Adam at the top of the genealogy of Christ.

Either Adam as presented to us in Genesis was an historical figure and that account is reliable or our faith is entirely bogus and the authors of the NT peddlers of total fiction. 

I accept the accuracy of the Genesis account of creation and that it occurred over six 24-hour days.

 

By the way, it's worth noting that everywhere in ancient Hebrew literature where an ordinal number (first, second, third etc.) is used with the word yom (day) it refers to a 24-hour day. To understand that combination of ordinal and yom in Genesis 1 as a geological age makes it the sole deviation from otherwise universal usage. 

Wanna know what got me started on this track? Today I read online and saw on the evening news that Harvey is evidence of climate change. This, in turn, was used to urge us again to take better care of our planet lest more Harveys beset us. 

So, is climate change really happening? If so, is human behavior responsible? And if those first two questions can be answered in the affirmative how should I respond? 

It depends on whether or not Adam had a bellybutton.