h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This question has bothered me for a long time.
This seems to be a good place to find the answer.

If Adam and Eva were the first two poeple, then how was the human race populated. It would seem that seems that incest was the only answer, I don't belive this, though it would explain alot.

Yes, the stories in the beginning of Genesis clearly imply what we would now consider incest. It's worth remembering, though, that "incest" as we now define it is more of a cultural/social/psychological concept than a biological one. The cultural definition of incest has changed considerably over the centuries.

Still makes me glad that I'm not a creationist, though....


Mikey (who's awfully glad that Catholicism acknowledges the validity of evolution....)

I think the biological aspect is the important point.
putting the cultural/social/psychological point aside. It seems to me the the only reason that incest became a taboo was due to the fact that biological it is not a good idea.
putting good taste and the current defintion aside, its the aspect of having childern within a limited gene pool that can serously damage a race.
Thanks for the reply.

While that has some truth, there's also the fact that there would have been times when breeding from an incredibly small gene pool would have been the only option. In such situations, inbreeding is better than no breeding at all.

It's also worth pointing out that if the incest taboo was wholly biological in its roots, then this would be a behavior trait exhibited more strongly across a wide variety of animal species.


Mikey

Good point

I think it's also worth pointing out that Adam and Eve were created perfect (creationally speaking of course)... so you could assume their gene pool was far superior to the average human gene today. Even after the fall, the decline of the human gene would have taken centuries... so, you could say that it was "incest" when cain and brothers married... but then again, their genes could have been pure (biologically) enough to handle the *ahem* interaction.

also, the law prohibiting incest hadnt been given to Moses yet... I'm thinkin Gods not going to punish someone for violating a law they've not been informed of yet.....

Ahh, I suppose the Grandfather clause would work with the ten commandments.
A clean and perfect human species at the beginning would explain it.
The direction I was going was that perhaps we started with a corrupted gene pool, the product being modern man.

If you make the assumption that Adam and Eva started with a clean and perfect gene pool, wouln't this still cause issues in future generations?

Today it takes 23 people that are not related to create a society free of defects related to inter-breeding.(I read this somewhere)
so you would think that the first few generations would be fulled with many defect even if Adam and Eve were pure.

if adam and eve were perfect versions of modern man, maybee.... but who can say how man has changed since creation? if you assume that the genetic code has degenerated over time due to the effects of the curse, then it could be possible that the genetic code of adam and eve could have handled the intermarriage that occured. (I'm no geneticist, mind you)

I guess you have to make the assumption that Adam and Eva's genetic code could handle this.
The only alturnitive is that we are all inbreed.
Which would mean that even the best genetic lines, were defective and that any human would start with a base genetic code that would be far from perfect.
It still leaves a huge question of did mankind start at a huge disadvantage due to the material he had to work with.

Thanks for the reply

If genes all travel in pairs, then the best we could hope for is four of each genetic trait to start the race of man. This cannot account for the number of varieties.

Inbreeding is a well-known biological fact, as anyone practicing animal husbandry can tell you. Most of the premier dog breeds exhibit increasing problems from inbreeding. If we tried to breed blond-haired, blue-eyed people by putting blond-haired, blue-eyed people together all the time, we'd run into the same trouble.

And anyone who doubts the veracity of inbreeding as detrimental to human evolution has only to look to the hills of West Virginia, or the royal family, and they will be convinced.

Creationism says we were descended from Adam and Eve, Darwinism says we were descended from apes - perhaps we are descended from both - there were plenty of apes around........work it out for yourself!!

(I AM only joking!! - but it would be the answer to satisfy both sides, and solve the in-breeding problem)

yer, Adam had a fetish for his furs Ay

-- DoctorMO --

What is this tendency people have to swallow a tree and choke on a twig, exactly? Since you ask, G-d just artificially inseminated Eve with a bunch of genetically distinct kids, and continued to do this until there were enough generations to maintain a breeding population. And did it all over again after the flood, too {and with all the animals}. I know, cos I was there.

In other news, every human starts with a set of genes which is highly far from perfect. My genes encode poor hearing, bad eyesight, and a bunch of other defects. 90% of my genetic code appears, as far as the scientists can work out, to be pure junk. Of course, most of the defects are masked partially or totally by other genes, or I'd not have survived this far.

hmmm, makes sense..

Adam and Eve were not the first man and woman: God created man on the sixth day, but didn't get around to creating Adam and Eve until after the first week.

You're reading it wrong. God created man on the sixth day. He created Adam on the first day.

Wrap your head around that contradiction, if you will...

Well, I make it the first day of the second week but there were other people around it's just that they're deemed irrelevent to the story.

By the way, has anyone found that other tree yet?

I always thought they were supposed to be the FIRST people created... but not the only. After all, don't their kids go off and marry people?

The "first day of the second week" thing just doesn't hold. You have two contradictory creation stories. One takes 7 days. The other takes only one day. The order of creation is different in both.

"And Adam called his wife's name Eve; because she was the mother of all living." - The kids do go off and marry people... but if the story is to be believed, they wed their sisters. Adam and Eve live for some 900 years, begatting children left and right. Their own children were apparently pretty good at begatting themselves. And all of this in primitive society, when nobody knew anything about birthing, so the death rate among mothers should have been staggering.

That would explain alot