Question:

What does the Bible mean when it says that God made man from dust?

Answer:

No one takes the statement that God made man from the dust of the earth literally–at least not that I know of.  As far as I know, no one believes that God literally swept up some dust and miraculously turned a pile of dust into a human embryo or into Adam or Eve.  The way I understand this passage is that God created humans our of already-existing “stuff.”  Humans are made out of physical atoms.  We are physical beings.  We come from “dust” and we return to “dust.” Not literally…  A decayed body does not become dust literally.  It more likely becomes organic matter in the soil.  This idea that we come from dust is a kind of idiom.  We come from disorganized matter and when we die, our bodies return to disorganized matter.  To use the language of physics, our bodies come from a massive reduction in entropy, and when we die, our bodies return to a state of very high entropy.

John Oakes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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