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Origins of man: Which path?

How was the earth populated after the creation of Adam and Eve?

  • Incest among the siblings and maybe beyond

    Votes: 4 18.2%

  • Other humans were spontaneously created by God after Adam and Eve

    Votes: 2 9.1%

  • Other humans evolved and mixed with Adam's line

    Votes: 1 4.5%

  • Other (please explain)

    Votes: 15 68.2%
  • Total voters
    22
maquiscat said:
It is still considered incest. Incest is the act of sex between two people closely related by blood. The act of incest has nothing to do with whether or not it is a sin. Incest is incest. Mind you, I would agree that they probably didn't have a word per se' for such relations, but that still doesn't mean it wasn't incest.
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I gave the definition earlier...it is considered a crime/against the law so with that in mind, it was not incest at that time because there was no law against it...it was merely a way to pro-create...
 
calamity said:
I'm referring to the story and how it can remain consistent. My beliefs and opinions on the origins of man cannot be discussed in this sub-forum.
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Your beliefs and opinions on the origins of man, and mine for that matter, are irrelevant to the thread. We are not making suppositions based on what we believe is true, but from the base point given. We are playing a what if game. Something along the lines of "What if Reed Richard became the Human Torch and Johnny Storm was Mr Fantastic?" We would then make guesses on how events would have happened based upon that premise. Now in this case, the base point of our What If, is a held belief by some. And given a seeming inconsistency, I am asking what do you believe would be the best scenario to account for the base point. The inconsistency, is the existence of other humans for Cain to go marry into. So of the three scenarios given, or one of your own that stays within the premise given, where did these people come from?
 
maquiscat said:
Your beliefs and opinions on the origins of man, and mine for that matter, are irrelevant to the thread. We are not making suppositions based on what we believe is true, but from the base point given. We are playing a what if game. Something along the lines of "What if Reed Richard became the Human Torch and Johnny Storm was Mr Fantastic?" We would then make guesses on how events would have happened based upon that premise. Now in this case, the base point of our What If, is a held belief by some. And given a seeming inconsistency, I am asking what do you believe would be the best scenario to account for the base point. The inconsistency, is the existence of other humans for Cain to go marry into. So of the three scenarios given, or one of your own that stays within the premise given, where did these people come from?
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I answered that in my first post, which you quoted earlier.
 
Elvira said:
I gave the definition earlier...it is considered a crime/against the law so with that in mind, it was not incest at that time because there was no law against it...it was merely a way to pro-create...
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I think part of the problem is that incest is also the name of a legal crime. In its most base form the word incest only refers to the sex act between two people closely related by blood. Because a taboo developed within humans (The Westerfield Effect I believe, which strangely enough is not caused by blood relations but by growing up together), it became an illegal thing as well. We have to also remember that the word incest we use today is simply a relatively modern word (16th century) for a concept that has been around for all of recorded history and probably longer.

You seem to be treating the word incest similar to murder. While all murder is killing not all killing is murder. Murder is a specific law based act. Murder is specifically illegal killing. Incest is not illegal sex with relatives. Incest is simply sex with relatives. Yes laws may make incest illegal or even add certain similar non blood relation sexual encounters to the illegal list (such as stepmother/stepson relations being considered illegal under the legal definition of incest.). But the laws do not change the initial original definition of incest.

Here is the definition of incest from a page of a group against sexual assault.
https://www.rainn.org/articles/incest said:
What is incest?
The term incest refers to sexual contact between family members. Laws vary from state to state regarding what constitutes crimes of incest, child sexual abuse, sexual assault, and rape. Regardless of state laws, unwanted sexual contact from a family member can have a lasting effect on the survivor.
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Again, there is no argument against you that incest back then wasn't a sin. But it was still sex between family members.
 
calamity said:
I answered that in my first post, which you quoted earlier.
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This is your first quote:
calamity said:
Other...probably something along the lines of people who were not part of God's chosen tribe. A&E are specifically the first of the Hebrews Nothing more, nothing less.
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Now first glance would be that you are implying that A&E were two among many others, and that these people evolved or developed. Basically that A&E had parents. Now you might also be indicating the opinion, under the premise, that there were other people created, as opposed to evolved or developed. But it is not clear which way you are going with the above statement. Hence my trying to clear up the matter and figuring out where you are coming from with your initial statement.
 
maquiscat said:
This is your first quote:


Now first glance would be that you are implying that A&E were two among many others, and that these people evolved or developed. Basically that A&E had parents. Now you might also be indicating the opinion, under the premise, that there were other people created, as opposed to evolved or developed. But it is not clear which way you are going with the above statement. Hence my trying to clear up the matter and figuring out where you are coming from with your initial statement.
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Huh?

Adam and Eve were the first people the bible pays attention to--the first of the Tribe. There were other people around, a lot of them. But, the Bible only focuses on the lineage of A&E.

How did they come to be? lol...are you asking in real life, or in make believe? By myth, they were specifically created by God. In real life....not so much.
 
Adam and Eve are the archetypal man and woman, not a literal couple that existed in the distant past. Mythology is applied psychology, not history, so it shouldn't be treated as historical fact.
 
APB212 said:
Adam and Eve are the archetypal man and woman, not a literal couple that existed in the distant past. Mythology is applied psychology, not history, so it shouldn't be treated as historical fact.
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Specifically, archetypal Hebrews. The rest of the human race is not included in that book...except as enemies.
 
Incest is against both law and genetics because the genetical outcome is truly bad.

My take is that mankind as it is today is the result of evolution over millions of years. It has nothing to do with a god. Religion keep in mind is a manmade institution. It really has nothing to do with God. Religion as an institution is for keeping law and order by whoever rules at the moment. Look at ISIS and its behaviors against the people who are under its control. Most Moslems will tell you that what they are doing against people of the same faith has nothing to do with their religion. Islam in this case makes for a convenient excuse for the crimes they commit against Moslems and others.
 
calamity said:
Specifically, archetypal Hebrews. The rest of the human race is not included in that book...except as enemies.
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All races descend from Adam and Eve, so they're not Hebrews specifically. Many mythologies feature a first man and woman, so it's unlikely the story originated with the Hebrews.
 
maquiscat said:
There was obviously a second and a third and a fourth. Cain, Able and Seth are mentioned by name. However, nothing is said about how other men came into being. In the case of the three listed, they are sons of Adam by Eve. BAsically, we are asking what came afterwards, for further generations?
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There is NOTHING in the Bible that states that Adam was the only man created by God. When you take into account the verses quoted in the OP, it becomes pretty obvious that Adam was not the only one. I'm an Old Earth Creationist, so I believe that Adam was the first man created in the image of God - with an eternal spirit, not just the first one created. Where the Word states that GOd created him from the earth, it uses a word that had more than one interpretation. It was a reference to the reddish colored earth of the area and it was a reference to people who dwelled there who supposedly had skin of a similar color. IMO, Adam was raised up out of the people of that area, given an eternal spirit and placed in The Garden. He was intended to be the Earth's caretaker and to spread the knowledge of God to all the people who were already there. There are a lot of people who would call this idea heresy, but I believe that there is enough Biblical backing to support it.
 
I like the theory that someone manipulated our DNA (Adam and Eve) giving rise to our unusual intelligence. Apes and monkeys have had similar DNA and we have shared ancestors. It seems they are not evolving our type of intelligence. Even living along side us for a very long time is not bringing about evolution anything close to that of man. I think a god or someone did some tweaking on our DNA and the story of Adam and Eve is a simple explanation given to the people of that day that were thousands of years away from understanding what they did.

I think there was a time when the human species may have been going extinct and a slight DNA manipulation introduced into the species was all it took to stop the extinction and give rise to man. I think there was still a sufficient number of people to eliminate the need for interbreeding.
 
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APB212 said:
All races descend from Adam and Eve, so they're not Hebrews specifically. Many mythologies feature a first man and woman, so it's unlikely the story originated with the Hebrews.
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But, then the story is inconsistent. We know other people existed. Cain and Abel married them. My theory reconciles that inconsistency.
 
PIPEWRENCH said:
I like the theory that someone manipulated our DNA (Adam and Eve) giving rise to our unusual intelligence. Apes and monkeys have had similar DNA and we have shared ancestors. It seems they are not evolving our type of intelligence. Even living along side us for a very long time is not bringing about evolution anything close to that of man. I think a god or someone did some tweaking on our DNA and the story of Adam and Eve is a simple explanation given to the people of that day that were thousands of years away from understanding what they did.

I think there was a time when the human species may have been going extinct and a slight DNA manipulation introduced into the species was all it took to stop the extinction and give rise to man. I think there was still a sufficient number of people to eliminate the need for interbreeding.
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There were several times when hominids neared extinction. That's how we evolved more intelligence. The hominids which came out of each extinction phase alive were more intelligent, cunning and resourceful, which means better adapted to their environment.
 
calamity said:
There were several times when hominids neared extinction. That's how we evolved more intelligence. The hominids which came out of each extinction phase alive were more intelligent, cunning and resourceful, which means better adapted to their environment.
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Could we have evolved the massive intelligence advantage we have over even our closest relative. Yes. It is possible. However it does seem strange that we evolved more in thousands of years than the reptiles evolved in 100's of millions of years. There are many mammals with as large or larger brains than ours. Some like whales have been evolving for 40 million years in comparison to our 1 million years (rough estimate). How long before the next animal on this planet achieves the capability to build a rocket and travel to the moon? Even with our help without DNA manipulation it will be a very long time. Look how long dogs, cats, horses, have evolved alongside man with out any major intellectual evolution. A strong argument can be made towards manipulation by someone. Especially considering that it is a belief of how we came to be.
 
maquiscat said:
I am going to start this in the religious section since it I simply dealing specifically with religious beliefs, however, Mods, if there is a section that is better suited, please feel free to move it there.

Now for the purposes of this particular discussion we are assuming a spontaneously created Adam with Eve having been made from his rib, per the Bible account. Anyone who cannot provide arguments within that context will be given nasty emojis and call a spoilsport and a party pooper.


After we assume our premise, we are left with the quandary of where the rest of us come from. Many people will say we are all descended of Adam and Eve, but few ever think of what that implied.


The first and immediate implication is that we are all distant products of incest. If Adam and Eve were the only people created, then their children would have been forced to have other children with their siblings, and maybe even with their parents. In this case, I use forced as in no other choice not as in against their will.


Our second option is that Adam and Eve were the prototypes and God then later spontaneously created other humans for their children to go out and have children with. The mentioning of other people first occurs when Cain is cursed for killing his brother, and he is worried that others will exact revenge beyond God's punishment, hence the mark from God to prevent that. Yet, after that passage, it is then revealed that Adam and Eve had Seth, noting specifically that they had himafter the loss of Able, and then had many more sons and daughters after Seth. So then where did the others whom Cain was afraid of come from. Eventually Cain found a village and married some one from it, but due to the lack of described time passing, and their multi centuries of life back then, there could have been a population build from any of the methods listed here.


Our final option also stems from the accounting that there were people for Cain to be afraid of and later marry. And that is simply that they evolved and form the main stock of humanity.


So which do you believe is the origin of man after Adam and Eve were created or if you don't believe in the spontaneously created Adam and Eve, which do you feel is the more likely under the assumptions of the thread? If you reject all three, and still remain under the assumptions, what is your theory?
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If we're going by the Bible, it will be through intermarriage.
Intermarriage was not forbidden until the time when there were enough people to make it unnecessary.
Until God had commanded against it, it was not incest.
 
calamity said:
There were several times when hominids neared extinction. That's how we evolved more intelligence. The hominids which came out of each extinction phase alive were more intelligent, cunning and resourceful, which means better adapted to their environment.
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There's 20-some extinct hominid species, that we know of. Everyone not from Africa has between 0.5 and 4 percent Neanderthal DNA (or, in the case of Aboriginies and Melanesians, Denisovan DNA). Neanderthals and Denisovans are just the two best-known extinct hominid species.
 
Grand Mal said:
There's 20-some extinct hominid species, that we know of. Everyone not from Africa has between 0.5 and 4 percent Neanderthal DNA (or, in the case of Aboriginies and Melanesians, Denisovan DNA). Neanderthals and Denisovans are just the two best-known extinct hominid species.
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I know many species of hominids went extinct. I was referring to all hominids becoming extinct. I forget where I saw it, but there was a time when there were fewer than 10,000 hominids of any species left on earth.
 
calamity said:
I know many species of hominids went extinct. I was referring to all hominids becoming extinct. I forget where I saw it, but there was a time when there were fewer than 10,000 hominids of any species left on earth.
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Never read about that. Must have been before the migration out of Africa, around the 'mitochondrial Eve' time.
 
Grand Mal said:
Never read about that. Must have been before the migration out of Africa, around the 'mitochondrial Eve' time.
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Bottleneck period in Africa. Severe drought, IIRC, forced the surviving hominids to the coastal region of Southern Africa, where they supposedly lived off the sea and developed most of their intelligence dragging for oysters. Something about the need to understand tides and other natural rhythms is what forced the intelligence adaptation.

I saw it in a documentary. But, I'm sure it's written somewhere as well.
 
How was the earth populated after the creation of Adam and Eve?
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This is a little like wondering how big a chariot the Egyptian Sun God would have needed to haul the sun across the sky every day.

Give it up guys. What's it going to take to realize these stories were all just the cultural mythologies of the ancient Israelite tribe? You just don't question them as much as the mythologies of the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, or Assyrians because they were hammered into your head since you were a very young and impressionable age, by authority figures you trusted (parents, teachers, priests on Sundays, etc...). But they too in turn had these stories hammered into their heads since a young age, and on and on into the past. So it just becomes an accepted, even identifying, feature of the culture. This is how cultural myths propogate. But now to trying to subject them to critical enquiry and questioning as if they were scientific propositions is ridiculous.
 
calamity said:
But, then the story is inconsistent.
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The entire Bible is inconsistent, being compiled from many different sources.

We know other people existed. Cain and Abel married them.
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The Bible doesn't say that Adam and Eve were the only two people, just that that everybody living is descended from them. They were not literal people; they merely represent Man and Woman, which is why every man and woman suffers the punishment that God inflicted on them. Since they're abstractions of humanity, it's less accurate to say we descend from them, and more accurate to say they ascend from us.

My theory reconciles that inconsistency.
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What's your theory? I'm not trawling the thread, it's too long and you all look the same to me anyway.
 
APB212 said:
The entire Bible is inconsistent, being compiled from many different sources.



The Bible doesn't say that Adam and Eve were the only two people, just that that everybody living is descended from them. They were not literal people; they merely represent Man and Woman, which is why every man and woman suffers the punishment that God inflicted on them. Since they're abstractions of humanity, it's less accurate to say we descend from them, and more accurate to say they ascend from us.



What's your theory? I'm not trawling the thread, it's too long and you all look the same to me anyway.
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It's less a theory than a reasonable explanation: Adam and Eve were the first Hebrews. The other people living at the time were not part of that tribe. But, when they married into the family via Cain and Abel and their descendants, they were accepted into it.

Of course, years later, the true religion was begun under Abraham. But, he is certainly descended from A&E.
 
The Bible can indeed be difficult to understand, may even seem inconsistent and contradictory...there is a valid reason for that...the expression “the deep things of God” includes the understanding of God’s wisdom that is revealed to Christians only by holy spirit but is obscured to others...

"But we speak God’s wisdom in a sacred secret, the hidden wisdom, which God foreordained before the systems of things for our glory." 1 Corinthians 2:7
 
calamity said:
It's less a theory than a reasonable explanation: Adam and Eve were the first Hebrews. The other people living at the time were not part of that tribe, but when they married into the family via Cain and Abel and their descendants, they were accepted into it.
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Problems:

1. There's no evidence to support your theory.

2. Your theory is incompatible with the Biblical accounts on which it is based.

3. Archaeological evidence suggests that the Israelites descended from the Canaanites, whittled down the pantheon to one God over a prolonged time period, expanded their influence peacefully, and that everything in the Bible prior to King Solomon is revisionist history if not myth and legend.

4. My theory works better.
 
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