Genesis 2:7 (NRSV) — Creation

Spencer W. Kimball

“And I, God, created man in mine own image, in the image of mine Only Begotten created I him: male and female created I them.” (The story of the rib, of course, is figurative.) “And I, God, blessed them (Man here is always in the plural. It was plural from the beginning.) and said unto them: Be fruitful …” The Creators breathed into their nostrils the breath of life and man and woman became living souls. We don’t know exactly how their coming into this world happened, and when we’re able to understand it the Lord will tell us.

Charles Sanders Peirce

The purpose of creation as it must appear to us in our highest approaches to an understanding of it . . . is God’s movement toward self-reproduction.

Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.